Chapter 1 #2
Joy rose to her feet as she heard the innkeeper approaching along with the gentleman who so kindly offered his own room. She mustered a smile, preparing to offer a polite curtsey and the most emphatic thanks it would be acceptable for her to give to a man she did not know.
Then the innkeeper appeared, a mug of something steaming and delicious in each hand. But she hardly noticed because her gaze was snared by the face behind him.
The gentleman stood much taller than the admittedly tiny proprietor of the inn, and his shoulders were probably more than twice as wide.
He wore a simple but richly colored burgundy jacket over a linen shirt that was more cream than white.
It suited his slightly darker than typical skin, and the very dark brown hair that grew thick on his head.
He was clean shaven, because there was no need to obscure a jawline like that.
And his eyes, oh, his eyes. As seductively and deeply emerald green as they were, it seemed impossible that there should be another pair of eyes like that in all of England.
And indeed, there was not. The eyes, the face, the height and breadth. All of it was singular and belonged to a singular man. A man she knew all too well.
The innkeeper was blessedly unaware of Joy’s shock as he shoved a steaming mug of spiced cider into her hands, and then did the same for Wren.
He said, “Ma’am, I am delighted, delighted beyond measure that one of our guests has surrendered his own room so that you and your girl may wait out the storm in comfort and—”
“Joy.” The gentleman was staring at her with as much shock on his face as she felt in her own body. Those emerald green eyes had gone wide, and the way he said her name—of all the many, many ways he had said her name in the past—told her that she was the last person he expected to see.
“Douglas,” she replied, despite her throat starting to close up with the threat of tears. “I’m to be beholden to you for my shelter?”
Wren’s mouth hung open in slack-jawed astonishment at the way her mistress was behaving. The ever civil and gracious Joy was being rude to a gentleman who had literally just walked into the room.
The innkeeper’s gaze flickered between the both of them as the truth slowly dawned. “The two of you are already acquainted?” he asked.
“From a long time past,” Douglas said, evidently still reeling. “It is a miracle to see you again, Joy. Er, Miss Plummer.”
“It is Mrs. Whitfield now,” Joy replied in her coldest tone.
He looked stricken, but she quickly turned to the innkeeper, saying, “My maid and I shall wait in the common room until our sleeping quarters are available.” Clutching the mug of cider, which was so hot it practically burned her hands, she silently demanded that Wren join her, leaving the innkeeper standing behind her, next to the last man in England she wanted to see again.
The common room was mostly empty, and Joy hurried to the fireplace, turning away from the hall as if she could will away Douglas’s presence.
“Who is that, ma’am?” Wren whispered between sips of cider. “How do you know him? And why do you despise him so? Will he take his room back? Will we be sent out into the snow? Ought you go back and speak more softly and perhaps be a little more accommodating?”
“I will most certainly not go back and be more accommodating,” Joy informed her.
“Yes, I know the man. He courted me a decade ago, and then proposed to another woman without any warning. I discovered his change of heart at a party on Christmas Eve, in fact. It is my most sincere wish that he will be stabbed with a thousand icicles and never again be able to startle me in some part of the country where he has no business being.” She took a deep breath and added, “I hope that everything he eats from now on will taste of olives.”
“But you like olives,” Wren pointed out, perplexed.
“Yes, but he finds them disgusting.”
“Oh, you really do know him.”
“More intimately than I care to remember.”
Wren’s eyes widened. “Intim—”
“Not like that!” Joy clarified. Though there had been the kisses. The kisses that nearly burned a hole in her heart. “I was a proper young lady. For all the good it did me.”
Joy took a swig of the cider, still hot enough to burn her tongue. Her eyes watered, but she refused to spit it back out, instead swallowing scalding liquid and letting it scorch its way down her throat.
She hated Douglas Sterling more than she hated moldy cheese or injustice. She hated him with the sort of power that came only from also having loved him.
Ten years ago, she had been enjoying her first winter in London before the beginning of the social season, which promised to be a great success for her.
People already acknowledged Joy as a rare beauty (despite her freckles), perhaps even the diamond of the season…
if Fate smiled upon her. Douglas had begun to court her, drawn to her despite her acerbic tongue (according to her mother) and her inappropriately political remarks (according to her father).
Yet he called on her again and again, and they were never at a loss for something to say to each other.
The consensus among the ton was that he would doubtless propose before another rival appeared, even though there were shrewder matches to be had.
He seemed besotted with Joy; evidently her lack of dowry or annual income would not be a significant impediment.
Joy had believed this herself, and was overjoyed to have found a gentleman who placed love and affection above purely monetary concerns.
And then at a party on Christmas Eve she learned that he had proposed to another lady altogether!
She remembered everything about that night.
She remembered the red velvet dress she wore.
She remembered the smell of evergreen boughs and spiced rum punch.
She remembered the gentle strains of a violinist, interpreting ancient carols for the pleasure of the guests.
And she remembered multiple people coming up to her expressing sympathy for the unreliability of a man’s attention.
The woman to whom he had proposed was considered very pretty indeed, and of more refined stock. More salient, the lady had an income more than ten times Joy’s own, and was reputed to have expectations of even more—should certain uncles shuffle off this mortal coil in a fortuitous order.
Douglas did not warn Joy of this decision, and he did not explain himself afterward.
He never called upon her, he never wrote to her, and she never so much as passed him on the street.
She certainly never wrote to him, and resolved that she would rather die than exchange another word with the man to whom she would have pledged her entire life, only to be cast aside when a more profitable proposal came along.
Joy realized that she was wool-gathering while Wren was waiting on tenterhooks for a useful explanation. Aloud, she said, “He married someone else. A very wealthy young woman with an excellent pedigree.”
“Pedigree? Like a horse?” asked Wren, wrinkling her nose.
“Very like. And his heir was announced just over a year later, so she was obviously the perfect wife, to produce a son so quickly and efficiently.”
“And are they a happy couple?”
“How should I know?” Joy asked. “I stopped following society gossip after society was done with me. My own marriage was hardly the stuff of dreams, and my husband’s circle was decidedly commonplace. I did not have any reason to cross paths with an ea….with Mr. Sterling again.”
Yet now, here they were, both stranded at the sign of the Boar’s Head.
Both stuck under the same roof until the weather decided to release them.
And worse, he had performed a kindness that she could not ignore.
Perhaps she could have rationalized the action if he had known who she was when he made the offer to give up his own room.
She could’ve said he was only speaking out of guilt, or thought this somehow evened out the extraordinarily uneven score between them.
But he hadn’t clapped eyes on her when he told the innkeeper of his offer, and he’d obviously been just as stunned as she was when they encountered each other in the foyer.
How could so cruel and self-serving a gentleman perform such a selfless act? Was it the magic of the season? she wondered sourly.
For her part, she wished with all her heart to be magically whisked away to anywhere else in England.
No, strike that. She would take any destination in the British Isles, no matter how remote or miserable, so long as he was not also there.
How could she sleep at night, knowing that he also had a bed nearby?
Should she inquire politely about his wife, and what would she say if he inquired about her husband?
How could they possibly have a civil conversation and pretend that he had not broken her heart and altered her life’s path with one simple decision?
“Ma’am?” a feminine voice called. From the door, Beatrice, another of the innkeeper’s daughters, beamed at Joy. “The gentleman wished me to tell you that your room is ready.”