Chapter Twelve
The common room had if anything gotten more crowded. Alexander found a corner near the fire—strategic positioning that would dry his boots while keeping his back to a wall. Years of social warfare had taught him never to leave his back exposed.
The whispers started immediately.
"Is that...?"
"Can't be..."
"Look at him, wrapped in a blanket."
"Where's his wife then?"
Alexander stared at the fire and pretended he was somewhere else. Anywhere else. Perhaps dead. Dead seemed preferable to sitting in a common inn wearing a blanket while strangers gossiped about him.
"It is him!" A woman's excited voice carried over the crowd. "It's the Duke of Montclaire! I saw him this morning at St. George's!"
Alexander's jaw tightened. Of course someone would recognize him. Because this day hadn't been humiliating enough.
"The duke what got sick on?" someone else asked with obvious glee. "At his own wedding?"
"His bride did it! Cast up her accounts all over him, right at the altar!"
"No!"
"True as I'm sitting here! Lady Jersey herself screamed!"
"Poor man."
"Poor man, but he still married her! Stood there covered in sick and finished the ceremony!"
Alexander concentrated on the fire so intently he was surprised it didn't explode. This was what his life had become—entertainment for commoners in random inns.
"He must have really needed that inheritance," someone speculated.
"Or maybe he loves her," a younger female voice suggested.
The laughter that followed that suggestion was particularly galling.
"Love! A duke and a merchant's daughter? More like he was trapped good and proper."
"Coleridge merchant's luck strikes again!"
"Turned it around on the nobility for once!"
Coleridge merchant's luck. There it was again. The family's reputation for stumbling into fortune despite their common origins. And now he was tarred with the same brush, literally married into their curse.
Jeffords appeared, looking harassed and soaking wet, carrying what remained of their luggage. "Your Grace," he said quietly, "I've salvaged what I could, but..." He shook his head.
"How bad?"
"Your valise took the worst of it. Her Grace's trunk..." Jeffords winced. "The clothes are ruined, Your Grace. The water got in through the seams."
Of course it did. Alexander wondered if it was possible to annul a marriage on grounds of supernatural bad luck.
"See what can be dried," he instructed. "And Jeffords? Find yourself some food and a drink. You've earned it."
The man looked grateful as he departed, and Alexander returned to his morose contemplation of the fire. He was calculating how long he could reasonably stay here before having to face the room—and its bed—situation when Ophelia appeared.
He almost didn't recognize her.
Gone was the elaborate wedding dress, the carefully styled hair, the duchess-in-training appearance. Instead, she wore a simple blue wool dress that had seen better years, a plain white shawl, and her hair was pulled back in a simple knot. She looked like a governess. Or a merchant's daughter.
Or, he realized with uncomfortable clarity, like herself.
She made her way through the crowd with surprising grace, ignoring the stares and whispers, and sat down beside him as if it were perfectly normal to find one's duke husband wrapped in a blanket by a common room fire.
"Feel better?" he asked.
"Drier, at least. You?"
"I'm contemplating whether one can die of mortification."
"If one could, we'd both be dead by now."
"True."
A serving girl appeared with bowls of soup and bread. It was simple fare, some sort of vegetable and barley concoction, but it was hot and Alexander was surprised to find he was actually hungry. Dying of embarrassment apparently worked up an appetite.
Ophelia ate with unexpected enthusiasm, tearing into the bread like she hadn't seen food in days. Then again, she'd been sick twice that morning and barely touched the wedding breakfast, so perhaps she was starving.
"This is good," she said, sounding surprised.
"It's peasant food."
"It's hot food, which makes it magnificent." She paused. "Have you ever had simple food before? Just basic, filling, no-fancy-sauce food?"
"Of course not."
"You should try it sometime. It's oddly satisfying."
"I am trying it. Right now. In a blanket."
"And?"
He took another spoonful. "It's... adequate."
"High praise from you."
They ate in surprisingly companionable silence while the storm raged outside and the crowd around them gossiped.
Alexander caught more fragments about their wedding, each version more elaborate than the last. Apparently, in one version, Ophelia had tried to run and he'd dragged her back.
In another, he'd fainted too. In yet another, the Archbishop of Canterbury himself had had to be called to decide if the marriage was valid.
"We're becoming a legend," Ophelia observed, obviously hearing the same stories.
"A horrible legend."
"Still a legend. In a hundred years, people will probably still talk about the wedding where the bride was sick on the groom."
"Wonderful. My contribution to history."
"It could be worse."
"How?"
"You could be forgotten entirely. At least this way, you're memorable."
"I preferred being dignified."
"Did you? Because dignified seems rather boring."
He looked at her incredulously. "Boring? I'm a duke. Dukes aren't boring."
"Name one interesting thing you did before today."
He opened his mouth, then closed it. Because what had he done? Gone to Parliament, attended balls, managed estates, fulfilled duties. Nothing that would make anyone remember him as anything other than 'that Montclaire duke, the cold one.'
"See?" she said. "Today you became interesting. You're the duke who stood at the altar covered in vomit and still finished the ceremony. That's... actually quite impressive."
"It's humiliating."
"It's both. The best stories usually are."
A fiddler in the corner struck up a tune, and several couples got up to dance. It was nothing like the formal dances of society ballrooms; this was energetic, casual, people actually enjoying themselves rather than performing for witnesses.
"I love this song," Ophelia said wistfully.
"You know it?"
"Our cook used to sing it. When I was little, I'd sneak into the kitchen and she'd teach me the words."
"You spent time in the kitchens?"
"Where else was I supposed to go? My brothers were always fighting or scheming, my parents were always worried about money or reputation. The kitchen was warm and safe and nobody expected anything from me there."
Another piece of the puzzle that was his wife. Alexander filed it away, though he wasn't sure why he was collecting these pieces. What did it matter if she'd hidden in kitchens as a child?
"Would the young couple like to dance?" A cheerful older woman appeared before them. "You look like you could use a lift in spirits!"
"We don't..." Alexander began.
"We couldn't..." Ophelia said simultaneously.
"Oh, come now!" The woman grabbed Ophelia's hands, pulling her to her feet. "A pretty girl like you should be dancing on her wedding day!"
The room went silent. Every eye turned to them.
Alexander felt the blood drain from his face. They knew. This woman had just announced to everyone that they were the couple from the morning's disaster.
"Leave them be, Martha," someone called. "They've had a tiring day."
"All the more reason to dance!" Martha declared. "Come on, Your Lordship, dance with your bride!"
Your Lordship. Still not the right title, but closer.
Ophelia looked at him, and he saw his own panic reflected in her eyes. But then something shifted in her expression; a sort of resignation mixed with determination.
"One dance couldn't hurt," she said quietly. "We're already a spectacle."
She was right. Refusing would just make them more of a story. At least if they danced, they might seem human instead of tragic.
Alexander stood, letting the blanket fall back on the chair, grateful his trousers had mostly dried. He was still shirtless under his damp waistcoat, but at this point, what was a little more indignity?
The fiddler, sensing drama, started a slower tune. Alexander offered his hand to Ophelia with formal correctness, and she took it. Her fingers were warm, callused in unexpected places. Not a lady's hands, despite her breeding.
They took position, and he was surprised to find she knew the steps. Not perfectly as this wasn't a dance taught in drawing rooms, but well enough.
"The kitchen staff?" he guessed.
"They had gatherings sometimes. They let me watch, and eventually join in."
"Your parents allowed that?"
"My parents never knew. I was very good at being invisible, remember?"
They moved through the steps, and Alexander found himself oddly aware of her. The way she concentrated on the movements, the slight flush in her cheeks from the warmth of the room, the way her borrowed dress made her look younger, less guarded.
"You're not terrible at this," she said.
"I had a dancing master."
"For common dances?"
"He believed in being thorough."
"Did he also teach you to dance while shirtless in random inns?"
"That was notably absent from the curriculum."
She actually smiled at that—not her polite society smile, but something more genuine. It transformed her face, making her almost...
No. He wasn't going to finish that thought. She was a Coleridge. His unwanted wife. The source of his current humiliation. Nothing more.
The dance ended, and the room applauded; not mockingly, but with apparent genuine warmth. Several people raised their tankards in salute.
"There now," Martha declared. "That's better! A bit of music makes everything brighter!"
They returned to their corner, and Alexander was disturbed to find he actually felt... not better, exactly, but less murderous. Which was something.
"Thank you," Ophelia said quietly. "For dancing."
"The alternative seemed worse."
"Still. You didn't have to."
"Yes, I did. Martha would have dragged us out there by our ears otherwise."