After the Wedding

by Courtney Milan

  Faith, he thought, was this—believing that the man he’d spent years visiting would say “I love you” in the language that he most often used: “That sounds horrible. Let me take care of this for you.”

  He was jolted from his reverie when the woman from the telegraph office approached him from behind.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said she. “I know you were waiting on a reply to your telegram. It’s arrived.”

  Adrian took hold of the wax-paper envelope and yanked the sheer slip of paper from its container. He read, his heart pounding…

  NO TIME FOR OBSTACLES

  GET WHAT YOU PROMISED ME

  AND QUICKLY

  For a moment, his heart sank. Once again, not even an “if you please.”

  He stared at the paper, willing the dark ink to change. The letters remained firmly fixed in place.

  GET WHAT YOU PROMISED ME

  AND QUICKLY

  Since the words wouldn’t change, Adrian would. He took a deep breath, then another, thinking, imagining, putting things together.

  He shouldn’t make anything of the terse nature of the reply. Telegrams were no place for pleasantries. This wasn’t a letter or a comfortable afternoon talk over tea. One didn’t say “I love you” via telegram.

  It also wasn’t a useful answer. Not in the slightest. What was he to do with this?

  Well. It was likely Adrian’s fault. His original message had been unclear; he’d left doubt. “Emergency annulment” had seemed fairly straightforward in his own mind, but… Without knowing the circumstances, how would his uncle know he was talking about himself?

  His mistake had been in trying to save space. He could be more clear.

  “I’ll need to send a response,” Adrian said. The woman handed him a form, and he thought for a moment before scrawling his answer.

  CANNOT EXPLAIN VIA TELEGRAM

  TASK ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE

  SITUATION DIRE

  He looked at the clerk, who would have to convert this entire thing into dots and dashes. The woman no doubt heard far more entertaining stories.

  Still… It was with grave hesitation that he committed the next lines to paper.

  I HAVE BEEN FORCED INTO MARRIAGE AT GUNPOINT

  I DESPERATELY NEED YOUR HELP

  There. He could not make matters more clear than that. He handed the material to the clerk and slid over a coin. The woman made change, then read the telegram. Her brow furrowed.

  She paused halfway through, frowning. She read it again. “Your pardon. I want to be sure that I have read this correctly. This does say…‘forced into marriage at gunpoint’?”

  “Forced into marriage at gunpoint,” Adrian said. “Yes. That’s exactly what it says.”

  The woman made a notation above Adrian’s light pencil marks in dark slashes of ink. FORCED INTO MARRIAGE AT GUNPOINT.

  “Gunpoint, sir? That word is gunpoint?” Her voice seemed incredibly loud and echoing in the small room. “Are you certain that you intend to say gunpoint?”

  “Yes.” Adrian felt his face heat. Good thing nobody else was about to overhear this. “I absolutely intend to say gunpoint.”

  “Gunpoint.” She frowned at the page. “Well. Will you be waiting for a reply?”

  For God’s sake. His involuntary plunge into matrimony would be the talk of the town.

  “Yes.” He put one hand over his face. “Yes, I definitely need a reply.”

  She turned from him, a frown on her face, and tapped idly into the machine. She then took the sheet he’d written everything on and slipped it into a folder.

  Adrian froze. “Do you have to keep those?”

  “No,” she said with a smile, “but sometimes someone bungles things upstream, and it’s a terrible mess if I don’t retain them. I know; I’ve tried. Besides, it does get quite boring in here.”

  Well. It was good to know the wreckage of Adrian’s life was providing amusement to someone.

  “I hate to be nosy, but…” She paused, raising an eyebrow.

  Adrian met her gaze, doing his best to give her no invitation. Hated to be nosy? He suspected she lived for that very thing.

  “But the woman you married at gunpoint,” she continued, ignoring Adrian’s distinct lack of interest, “was that Miss Camilla Winters?”

  He frowned at her.

  “Bishop Lassiter was here earlier,” she said, “sending a telegram about her. I’ve been rather cut up about it, to be quite honest. I saw her a few times with the rector, when he came in, and…I know it’s not right, to talk that way about the clergy, but the way he’s treated her…”

  “Mmm?” Adrian bit his lip.

  “And the others in that household. He does go through servants. And he said he was paying her half wages right in front of me.”

  “I…see.” He wasn’t sure that he did. “It was her, yes.”

  “Well.” The woman nodded. “Tell her for me, will you? If she needs anything, anything at all, please have her call on me. It’s Beasley, Mrs. Susanna Rose Beasley, at her service. I wish I’d said something to her earlier.” She sighed. “Too late for that now, I suppose. I’ll fetch you if there’s a reply, then?”

  This reply took two hours. Mrs. Beasley took it upon herself to take it to him where he waited with a pint of ale at a nearby pub.

  “Here,” she said, handing the envelope over with a solemn look on her face. “Tell me if you need to respond.”

  NO REPEAT NO UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES

  I BELIEVE IN YOU

  YOU CAN DO IT

  NOTHING IS TRULY IMPOSSIBLE

  ALSO COMPLETELY UNABLE TO HELP WITH ANNULMENT UNTIL CURRENT MATTER RESOLVED

  CHURCH POLITICS

  AM SURE YOU UNDERSTAND

  “Son of a bishop,” Adrian muttered.

  “What sort of church politics?”

  Mrs. Beasley was still standing there, peering over his shoulder. For God’s sake. Adrian looked up at her, considered his ale, and gave up.

  “The political kind,” he said. “The kind you keep secret.”

  She clapped her hands together. “Ooh, those are my favorite! Here, now. What kind of secret? Perhaps I can help!”

  She continued to look at him in slowly dissipating delight before she realized that he didn’t intend to explain.

  Adrian thought long and hard on his reply to his uncle. He could try to explain further—but once his uncle claimed it was a matter of church politics, he was unlikely to budge. And when he thought of it…

  Well, the response did make sense. In a horrible way. Denmore would have to push Adrian’s case through personally. He’d need to vouch for Adrian’s character. If his uncle wouldn’t reveal the truth of his relationship with Adrian at this moment, he couldn’t actually do much about the annulment. Not yet.

  He wouldn’t do anything until Adrian found the evidence of wrongdoing that they both now suspected.

  Except now that Adrian was in desperate need of an annulment, he was unable to obtain that evidence.

  Damn, damn, damn.

  He hated that his uncle had a point. He also hated being stuck in impossible situations.

  He hated that “I believe in you, you can do it” was the way that his uncle said “no, no, under no circumstances will I come to your aid.” He hated it.

  He hated that if Grayson saw this exchange, he’d raise his eyebrow, and Adrian would know that he was thinking that he had told him so.

  Adrian exhaled.

  No. No. If he believed just a little longer—if he did the impossible—it would all work out.

  Still, he tried one last time. He had to try, even though he knew that pushing the matter was already futile.

  YOU PROMISED, he sent to his uncle.

  He drank beer while he waited for one last response—not so much that he lost his senses, of course, but enough that he felt his thinking beginning to fog at the edges. Enough that the connections his mind made started to loosen. Enough that he stared at Alabi’s sketches that he’d
put in his notebook and actually tried to make something of them with his own pencil. He couldn’t draw at all. He made nothing but a mess.

  It was afternoon by the time the response came. Adrian had nothing to show for his time but sketches of lopsided bears, alongside some ideas he had about his uncle’s problems.

  I ALWAYS KEEP MY PROMISES, his uncle’s final telegram said.

  BUT SO DO YOU

  AM COUNTING ON YOU

  Damn it. Somehow, somewhere, Adrian had to find a way to obtain the proof of wrongdoing that he needed. He was going to get it—there were no two ways about it. But until then…

  He glanced at his notebook.

  Disguise? he had written. The word stood next to a giant dark misshapen lump that was supposed to be a hibernating bear. Household informants? Illegal entry?

  Nothing sounded right. In lieu of a plan, he sent his brother a telegram full of lies.

  EVERYTHING GOING ACCORDING TO PLAN

  JUST A LITTLE WHILE LONGER

  WILL RETURN TO HARVIL TO FINISH DESIGNS SOON

  AND TELL YOU ALL AFTER

  There. Now he was committed.

  He’d figure this puzzle out. He had to do so.

  There was a more immediate question that he needed to address. It would have been easy if he had been returning to the inn to simply tell Miss Winters that they’d be off to Gainshire the next day, and they’d have an annulment by the end of the week.

  Now?

  Now Adrian had to figure out how to tell the woman who wasn’t his wife that she was going to have to continue not being his wife for a while longer.

  Chapter Nine

  “You know, dear. You must face the truth. He’s left and he isn’t coming back.”

  Camilla was in the kitchen at the inn where she’d spent the night.

  It had taken two hours for the truth to come out. In the first hour, the innkeeper’s wife, one Mrs. Lawson, had made helpful suggestions for further conveyances to take Camilla on to her destination in Lower…where had Mr. Hunter claimed she was heading again? She couldn’t recall.

  Mrs. Lawson had mentioned guides, helpful farmers going to market, even directions to follow on foot. That was back when she’d believed the story about Camilla being a governess who had become lost.

  Then the truth had arrived in the form of gossip.

  Mrs. Lawson had come out to where Camilla was sitting, waiting and watching the road for Mr. Hunter’s return.

  “Miss Winters?” she had asked. “Lately of Rector Miles’s employ?”

  That was it; the truth was known. Camilla had sighed.

  Mrs. Lawson sat beside her. “I know what’s happened to you.”

  If she had been cruel, Camilla could have held up. Instead, the sheer weight of her unwanted kindness, the sincere depths of sympathy she showed at Camilla’s fall from half-grace, nearly undid her.

  “I should have known,” Mrs. Lawson said. “He did seem to have a bit of a golden tongue. Knew precisely what to say and when to say it, didn’t he?”

  “That’s just what he is like,” Camilla replied, a little too earnestly. “It doesn’t make him dishonest.”

  “And how long have you known him?”

  Four days, Camilla did not say. She didn’t have to; the woman had heard the gossip.

  “We are women, dear.” She said it gently. “And I know you’re still almost a child—”

  “I’ve just turned twenty. I’m hardly a child.”

  Mrs. Lawson just clucked her tongue. “If you insist, of course. We’re women, dear. It’s not an easy world for us, if we lie to ourselves. Your Mr. Hunter said he’d be back before noon, and it’s almost four. He’s gone. He’s not coming back. You must face reality.”

  No, Camilla wanted to say. He’s coming back. He said he would.

  The alternative—that he had lied and already joined the crowd of people who had abandoned her—was too cruel.

  Deep down, rationally, she was sure that Mrs. Lawson was right. The story he’d told last night…it should have beggared belief.

  His uncle was a bishop? His grandfather, a duke? He was pretending to be a valet? She’d believed him because he gave her kind words and enough coin to pay her shot at the inn.

  Logically, she knew that half a pound was a low price for ridding oneself of a wife.

  “You can’t stay,” Mrs. Lawson said, ever so kindly, “not for long. One more night’s stay may be seen as charity on my part. But I’m known for running a respectable establishment. Have you no family you could go to?”

  Camilla had gone through all the family that would have her and then some. They’d all wanted to be rid of her. Camilla just shook her head.

  “There, there.” The woman patted her head. “You’re pretty enough, you know. If you could make it to London, I’m sure you could find some man or such who would be willing to help with your living expenses. And you do seem to be the sort who might thrive in that environment. Take a day and think it over, dear, and you’ll see I’m right. I know it’s not what you had imagined for yourself, but many a woman has done worse, and it is the best you can expect, under the circumstances. For the time being, would you mind staying in the kitchen? I can’t have people seeing you.”

  Being told that she’d ruined herself so thoroughly that prostitution was her best option would not have been Camilla’s conversation of choice on the day after her wedding.

  Still, she stayed in the kitchen and cut vegetables when asked, and slipped salt in the soup when the cook wasn’t looking.

  All the while she dreamed.

  Mr. Hunter would come back. He’d been delayed by…a telegraph malfunction? Oh, why not. She’d hoped for far dumber things.

  Hope, she had been told, was the devil whispering on her shoulder. But if she listened to the thread of doubt that she’d been told was her angelic nature… She would decide to become a prostitute. She was no expert on such matters, but she was pretty sure that theology just did not line up. To hell with Miles and his entire pack of devils. She was done feeling guilty about wanting good things.

  Mr. Hunter would come back, and she would have words for him. It lifted her spirits just to imagine them.

  She would be brave and tell him to have some consideration for her feelings. By the time dusk had come around, she’d figured out precisely what she would say to him and how he would react.

  He was planning to get rid of her by means of an annulment—that made her daydream excessively awkward—but he’d be kind about it, and he’d apologize, and—

  “Miss Winters,” Mrs. Lawson said, appearing in the doorway. “You’ll never imagine who has arrived.”

  Camilla didn’t have to imagine. Mr. Hunter was standing right behind Mrs. Lawson, a head taller than her. He wasn’t smiling—that was different; in her daydream, he’d smiled when he saw her. His clothing was rumpled and dusty from the road.

  What the hell. He’d come back? He had actually come back?

  Camilla was used to daydreaming; she wasn’t used to her daydreams coming true. Dear merciful heavens.

  “Let me guess,” she said slowly. “Telegraph malfunction?”

  He sighed. “I could only wish for such luck.”

  “I was here all day.” She had planned out the speech so perfectly in her fantasy that it seemed a shame not to use it. “It didn’t take long for the gossip to arrive. I’ve had to spend the remaining hours listening to advice on the best way to go about starting my new, exciting career as a prostitute.”

  At least he winced. That was good.

  It was a good thing she’d had hours to imagine going over this speech; she’d never have been able to deliver it off the top of her head.

  “You should have sent word that you were delayed.”

  “I should have.”

  “I know I said I didn’t wish to be a burden on you, but in retrospect, for as long as we are…whatever we are? I should like you to remember that I am a fellow human being. With feelings. And I don’t—”r />
  I don’t like to feel abandoned, Camilla almost said, but it was so close to her real feelings that it crossed the line, pulling her sharply from her practiced fantasy into reality. Reality was the ache of her chest, the throb of her heart.

  She dropped her voice instead. “Do you know, they all believed you’d left me. Forever. For good. They believed we were lawfully wed and I’d been ruined and then abandoned. I had to wait for you here, smothered by the weight of their belief, the entire day. It wasn’t pleasant.”

  He sighed. “I can see how it must have looked. You must have believed that I’d left for good.”

  “Not entirely.” Camilla didn’t want to explain that she was all too good at hoping for the best. “You said you would come back.”

  He seemed puzzled by this. “I knew I would. You know nothing about my character.”

  “Well, that’s not true,” Camilla heard herself say. “I don’t know everything about your character, but I do know something. I know you told me a ridiculous story last night.”

  He made a face. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but—”

  “Let me finish, please. You told me that your uncle is a bishop in the Church of England, that your grandfather was a duke, and that our marriage can be annulled.”

  “All of those things are true, and—”

  She held up a hand.

  “You said we would work together, but you gave me the barest description of the situation and disappeared without listening to me this morning, when your supposed mission—finding out about Bishop Lassiter and Rector Miles—requires you to know about the inner workings of a household where I have lived for eighteen months.”

  “I will listen to you—in fact, as it turns out, I—”

  “Let me finish,” Camilla said. “I also know that whatever it was that happened in the bishop’s bedchamber? You were the only person who spoke up in my defense. I know you have never called me a name just because others did. You were a little thoughtless today.”

  “I’m not sure where you’re leading right now.” Mr. Hunter rubbed his head.

  “I have spent the entire day being told that I was an idiot for believing one word of your cockamamie story.”