Page 11 of To Marry and to Meddle
“Oh, no, I—I was woolgathering,” she said, because she certainly wasn’t going to tell him the direction her thoughts had taken. It was one thing to engage in whatever acts made up a wedding night, but quite another thing totalkabout them. With aman. “I apologize—it was frightfully rude.”
“No, it wasn’t,” he said, frowning a bit. “You’re not here to entertain me. You’re allowed to be lost in your thoughts.”
You’re not here to entertain me.
Emily wasn’t certain why it was these words, more than anything else that had transpired that day, up to and including the moment that Julian had slid a wedding band onto her finger, that drove home the reality of her current situation, but they did, with great force.
She wasn’t in this carriage to entertain him. Her family’s fortunes no longer depended on her entertaining a man, keeping his interest, projecting sweetness and light and charm. She was married to a man who knew precisely why she had married him—and who had his own, equally practical reasons for marrying her. He didn’t expect her—at least in private, when it was just the two of them—to be anything other than herself.
She wasn’t a source of entertainment. She was merely his wife.
“Now you look as if you might weep,” he said, beginning to sound truly alarmed, as men so often did at the prospect of female tears—one of the many reasons that, as Diana was fond of noting, it was absurd that ladies were considered the weaker sex.
“No, no,” she said hastily, covering her mouth before any sort of alarming sound, be it a sob or a fit of hysterical laughter, could come out. “I’m merely thinking how… relieved I am. To be married to you.”
“You don’t look relieved,” he said skeptically. “You look… er.”
“Yes?” she asked, fighting harder than ever to resist the impulse to laugh.
“I don’t know,” he said frankly, leaning forward as if to get a better look at her face.
This was the last straw; Emily let out a peal of unladylike laughter, so loud that it made Julian start slightly in his seat, and dissolved into helpless giggles.
“If this is the effect marriage has on a lady, I’m not sure I recommend the institution,” he said, looking utterly perplexed.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she managed to say before collapsing into further giggles. “I never behave like this.”
“I’d noticed,” he said, still regarding her as if she’d recently escaped from Bedlam. “Are you going to spend the entire journey back to London doing this?”
“I hope not,” she said, reaching up to wipe her eyes—at some point, a few tears had joined the laughter. An instant later, Julian was pressing a handkerchief into her hand; for a man with such a scandalous reputation, he had a surprisingly proper handkerchief, a carefully pressed, white linen affair, with the initialsJABstitched in one corner.
“What’s your middle name?” she asked as she wiped her eyes and he continued to regard her uneasily.
“My middle name?” he repeated, confused, and she waved the scrap of linen in his face. “Oh—well.” He looked a bit cagey all of a sudden. “I don’t think it really signifies.”
Emily raised both eyebrows. “Oh, now you absolutelymusttell me—and if you will recall, I did make you promise me honesty, so do not attempt to wave me off withAlexanderorArthuror anything else similarly mundane.”
Julian sighed heavily.
“If you must know,” he said in aggrieved tones, “it’s Albinus.”
“Albinus?” Emily asked incredulously, and dissolved into laughter once again. “Why on earth were you given that middle name?” she asked several moments later, once she’d gotten herself somewhat under control.
“It was a difficult birth, and my parents wished to acknowledge the doctor who saved my mother’s life,” he said with a long-sufferingsigh. “It would be too much to ask that their doctor be named John, apparently.”
“We’ll certainly exercise more caution in our own choice of physician,” Emily agreed solemnly, managing to keep a straight face for approximately five seconds before being overcome by laughter yet again.
She felt… giddy. It was as though some sort of heavy weight had been lifted from her shoulders; she had felt this way to some extent for the entire duration of the house party, so liberating was it to be out from under her mother’s watchful eye, free from Mr. Cartham’s company for evening after evening. But now, with wedding vows having been spoken, there truly was no going back. She did not belong to anyone anymore.
Or, rather, she belonged to Julian. Legally so. But they had an understanding—they weren’t going to make any sort of unreasonable demands on one another. They would simply be husband and wife.
It was going to bewonderful.
And as she sat there happily, grinning across the carriage at him, delighted to see a reluctant smile appearing on his own face, seemingly against his will, she thought that so far being married seemed very nice indeed.
And then, just as that thought flitted across her mind, there was a loud cracking sound, followed by an alarming swaying, and the carriage, without any further warning, proceeded to topple onto its side, sending Emily and Julian crashing into each other as it fell.
Three
