Page 4 of Miss Louisa’s Final Waltz (Merry Spinsters, Charming Rogues #4)

Chapter Four

She was married.

With the arrival of Reverend Shaw, everything unfolded in a whirlwind. Louisa felt so overwhelmed by the rapid succession of events that she could scarcely comprehend it all. She barely heard the words spoken, she signed the papers in a daze, and before she knew it, Reverend Shaw was congratulating her and addressing her as “Mrs Jones.”

There had been a moment of awkward silence during the ceremony where everyone had looked at her expectantly. A rushing sound filled her ears. She’d been so lost in her own thoughts that she hadn’t heard a single word uttered by the minister.

Louisa blinked, shook her head as if to clear her mind, then said, “I will.”

There was an arrested expression on her bridegroom’s face, a curious mixture of alertness, bafflement, and unholy amusement. She briefly wondered if she’d missed something important. Perhaps she’d imagined it. His demeanour quickly shifted as he hooded his eyes, and his face was as impassive as before. The minister continued as Robert placed a simple gold band on her finger, which her father had given him, and their marriage was solemnised.

That’s how quickly one got married, Louisa thought as she hurriedly signed the register, without seeing a word on the paper.

She stared in disbelief at the stranger, that large hulk of a man standing next to her, who was now her husband.

A dirty costermonger she’d picked up on the street a few minutes earlier.

Good heavens.

What on earth was she supposed to do with him now?

Surely, in a few hours, she would heartily regret this course of action, but at the moment she felt merely … numb.

Everyone was still giving her strange looks. A hushed silence had fallen over the room. Sarah had dropped her handkerchief and looked at her with wide eyes and half-parted lips. Phibbs wore a distinct expression of puzzlement, and footman John outright gaped. Only her father displayed satisfaction, puffing out his chest proudly as if he had accomplished some insurmountable feat.

“Well, finally. I thought I’d never see the day,” he said with false heartiness as he rubbed his hands. “Now that you’re a married woman, you will naturally follow your husband to his home. For that is the natural course of things. Say, where do you live, Roger? Robin? Richard? ”

She didn’t blame her father’s inability to recall his name. She had already forgotten it herself.

“Robert. I rent a room in St Giles, yer graceship.”

“Merciful heavens,” Sarah groaned. “The rookery! The poor child will be living with the cadgers and thieves in the worst slum in London.”

“It ain’t that bad,” Robert offered. “But I daresay my room might be getting a tad too tight, since I’m sharing it with two other mates. A chimney sweep and an ironmonger.”

To this, Sarah found no answer but merely stared in mute despair at her new son-in-law.

It was a dream, Louisa decided. It was all just a dream. And since it was a dream, there was no harm at all in saying, “Let’s go then to your home in the rookery.”

Robert nodded at her in approval. “You’ll like it. It even has a window overlooking Gin Lane.”

Gin Lane was the most notorious part of St Giles, the hubbub of the gin sellers, which meant the street was teeming with drunkards, hardly something to brag about. But Robert seemed to think the contrary.

Mr Highworth cleared his throat. “I’ve already told the maid to pack a small trunk of essential items for you. You won’t need much for your new life. This”—he lifted a purse so that its contents clinked—“is for you, the promised dowry.” He tossed the purse to Robert, who caught it deftly with one hand.

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. You won’t regret it, sir. Yer graceship.” He beamed, flashing his teeth at him.

Louisa returned to her room and changed her thin muslin gown for a woollen one and her thin slippers for leather walking boots. She wouldn’t need any of her silk ballroom dresses, but she made sure her maid had packed her shawls, coats, petticoats, and stockings. The pearl necklace and earrings were hers; she would take them with her and sell them. And she had some pin money left; not much, but it was better than nothing. That, too, she packed away in her reticule. She put on her bonnet and went downstairs where her father and husband were waiting in the hall.

Her father cleared his throat anew and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder, and Sarah had pulled her into a tearful embrace. Suddenly, Louisa found herself on the costermonger’s cart, together with a small trunk—and her husband beside her.

“Hiyup,” he told the donkey, and the cart began to move.

It dawned on Louisa this was truly happening. She had married a stranger from the street and now she would go live with him.

He drew the cart to a stop right in front of the Hyde Park Turnpike, lowered the ribbons, turned to her, and said something.

She didn’t react until he repeated himself for the third time, when he snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Attention, Louisa. Look at me,” he commanded.

When she finally snapped her eyes up, she met his flinty gaze, which bore intensely into hers.

“Well?” He had sharp hazel eyes, tinged with a hint of mockery and expectation as if—as if—he was waiting for something significant?

Louisa knitted her eyebrows together in confusion. He seemed to be waiting for some sort of reaction from her. But what?

He crossed his arms and his mouth twitched.

She shook herself. “Yes? Did you say something?”

He stared at her intently a moment longer.

It crossed her mind that he didn’t like her. She drew herself up and lifted her chin. It mattered not whether he liked her. Not even if he was her husband. She certainly didn’t like him.

When she didn’t react, he huffed and shrugged. “It occurred to me, with all the blunt, we’re rather rich, now, yes?” He patted his pocket where he’d stuffed the purse her father had given him.

Money. Again. Louisa curled her lips into a cynical smile. “Rich is a relative word, but yes, I suppose in your world, we could be called thus.”

“Well, now that we’re rich, I was thinking we don’t absolutely have to return to St Giles.” He raised a hand to indicate the turnpike. “Not unless ye’re keen on it. We could go somewhere else.”

Louisa looked at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. “Are you saying we could leave London?”

“Why not? The whole world is open to us. No one will miss me if I don’t return. And this,” he gestured to the produce in his cart, “is mine anyhow. Don’t have to sell it at the Fleet market, can sell it anywhere I want. How about an adventure, madame? Where to?”

As the impact of his words sank in, she almost lost her breath from the sudden sense of excitement that swept through her. “You mean, we could go anywhere? We could travel? ”

“That’s what I said! Where would you like to go? North? South? East? West?”

She didn’t have to think long. “West.”

“Yer wish is my command.”

He made a mock bow and set the cart in motion.

He asked her at every crossroad which way to go, and she directed him to the south-west. They drove in silence. Louisa stewed in her own thoughts, sitting upright, gripping the edge of the hard wooden seat to keep from falling off. Even though he snuck occasional sideways glances at her, he made no attempt to engage her in conversation.

Louisa was grateful for that. She feared that if he did, she’d either burst into tears, start howling, or, what’s worse, curse her father, her life, her fate, and everything in between.

Judging from his wary, searching glances, she suspected that her husband was expecting precisely that sort of behaviour from her.

“Not tired yet? Would you like to go back? Just say the word and we’ll return to London,” he asked her at regular intervals.

Finally, she retorted in a waspish voice. “Stop it. I don’t tire easily, and we’re not going back. I don’t tend to retract my decisions, ever.”

“Indeed?” he drawled. “We shall see. Very well, then, Ice Damsel.”

“Stop calling me that,” she snapped, but he just grinned .

He was making fun of her. He expected her to turn into a watering pot. What had he said earlier? That she would be ‘no use to him if she melted like sugar in the rain.’ She gritted her teeth. Since that was exactly what she wanted to do more than anything else in the world right now, she decided it was better not to say anything at all and to hold on to her composure with an iron reserve for as long as it lasted.

After they’d passed safely through Hounslow Heath without being robbed or attacked by highwaymen, he pulled up the cart in front of a seedy-looking inn. The creaky sign above the entrance said, “The Red Rooster”. Several horses and carriages stood in the muddy yard, and a stable boy was running back and forth with buckets of water for the horses. Louisa looked at the inn doubtfully. She’d never set foot in a place like this. It was much too inferior compared to the richer inns where the Highworths usually stopped to change their horses.

“It’ll be dark soon. Might be a good idea to get a room for the night,” he suggested.

Louisa’s first inclination was to agree. She was uncomfortable on the hard seat, shaken to the bones by the bumpy ride, and she wouldn’t mind a room, a soft bed, a bath, and a proper tea tray with almond cakes and cucumber sandwiches—but wait.

“We can’t afford it.”

That was the reality. True, her father had given him a small pouch with money, but it hadn’t looked like it was much, and she’d rather not squander it on the first day of their trip. She was her father’s daughter and had some business sense, after all. It was best to keep the money for later.

“I daresay we could at least afford a room for the wedding night,” he drawled.

Wedding night!

Now that was something that had completely eluded her. But he was right, wasn’t he? Where there was a wedding, there was a wedding night, as certain as the sun rising in the east, as certain as the letter B following the letter A, and as inevitable as death and taxes.

She looked at him with wide, horrified eyes.

He raised his eyebrow and smirked. To Louisa, it looked like he was leering.

“No,” she said with alarm. “Out of the question.” She shifted to the far end of the bench, as far away from him as possible without falling off the seat. “I mean, it’s not a good idea. We can’t afford a room. It’s best if we spend the money wisely. If we start squandering it now, we won’t have enough to rent a cottage later, when we settle down somewhere. It’s better to invest the money in something that will last.”

He weighed his head. “Settle down. Rent a cottage somewhere. That sounds nice. Is this our plan?”

“Yes. We must find a place to live, of course. It has to be affordable. So you see, we must save the money and not waste it on irrelevant things like”—she lifted a hand—“a room for the night.”

He weighed his head solemnly, as if gravely pondering on her words. “Yes, that’s rather irrelevant, to find a room for the night. Who needs a roof over one’s head with a comfortable bed for a wedding night? Certainly not us.”

Was he mocking her? But his face was straight.

“Tonight,” she said, looking around at the fields that surrounded them, “we’ll have to sleep outside.”

There it was again, that hard, mocking look. But also, something more, as if he was assessing her. A hint of grudging respect, maybe? The man probably hadn’t imagined that the Incomparable would have no qualms sleeping on the bare ground outside.

“Very well, then.” A slight smile played on his lips, as if this situation amused him. “Let’s make camp and bivouac under that oak tree over there. It’s warm enough. And you’ll discover that sleeping on the ground can be just as restful as sleeping on the softest feather beds.”

Well, if he always agreed with her without any objections in that docile manner, they were bound to have a fabulously happy marriage, indeed, Louisa thought sourly. She was not oblivious to the challenge uttered in those words. This was her opportunity to prove to him that she was more resilient than people thought.

She climbed down from the cart and studied the field in front of them. There, under that tree, the ground seemed dry and suitable for sleeping.

“There’s some moss on the ground over there. And for supper”—she turned to regard the cart and swallowed—“we have parsnips.” She walked over to the side and lifted a box. It was heavier than it looked, but she managed. There, she’d done it. She gave him a challenging look. Had he seen that? She’d proved she was strong enough to lift the box .

But Robert was busy elsewhere as he began to rummage around, rearranging the contents in the crates. “I’ll be back shortly.” He hauled a crate filled with fruit and vegetables on top of each shoulder as if they weighed nothing, and before she could ask what he was planning on doing, he’d left in long strides towards the inn with a whistle on his lips.

Consider it an adventure, she told herself. A grand journey like the travels of Gulliver. Travelling to unknown, magical places. It was a clear summer night, and with some luck it wouldn’t rain. She sat down on the mossy ground under the tree. At least it was soft. She leaned against the trunk.

What would the beau monde say now if they saw her now? What would they say if they saw the Incomparable camped out in the country like a regular country bumpkin?

She plucked a blade of grass from the ground.

Little did they know that once upon a time, she’d enjoyed doing that. Scrambling about in the forest, swimming in the lake, fishing in the brook, climbing trees, taking naps in the meadow. None who knew her as Miss Louisa Highworth would have thought it possible that she’d used to scamper about the countryside like a veritable peasant boy.

When had she last done this?

Memories surfaced; memories she’d long forgotten. Memories she’d wanted to forget.

She hadn’t been alone, then, no. She’d had a companion then, a dear friend.

Will .

The only friend she’d ever had. They’d made promises to each other they couldn’t keep.

She stared blindly into the distance.

It was so long ago.

A familiar, dull pain pressed down on her chest. She took a deep, shuddering breath and tapped her hand against her breastbone.

The costermonger, that is, Robert, her husband—she must begin to think of him in that way—came striding back from the inn, this time not carrying a wooden crate, but a basket. He had some blankets tucked under his arm.

Louisa scrambled up.

“I was able to sell all my apples,” he reported cheerfully. “In return for some woollen blankets”—he threw them beside the tree—“and some food.” He set the basket on the ground. It contained a tankard of liquid, a bowl with vegetable stew, bread rolls, and two spoons.

It smelled divine.

“What is it?” She sniffed the pungent liquid from the tankard.

He handed it to her. “Ale.”

She took a tentative sip, grimaced, and took a second sip.

The stew was a thick soup consisting of indefinable vegetables and grains. It was poorly seasoned, and though Louisa made a face at her first taste, she ate until she was full. Meanwhile, he built a fire with quick, sure movements, as if he’d done it a thousand times before.

Then he sat down next to her, took the bowl, and shovelled the rest of the stew into his mouth, taking turns to bite into the bread. Then he finished the ale from the tankard and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Ahh, that was good.”

Louisa watched him dispassionately. He had the manners of an uncivilised boor. But she supposed one couldn’t expect anything less from a costermonger from St Giles.

“I am going to sleep,” she announced.

“Do that,” he agreed. “I’ll keep watch and tend the fire.” He lay down on the grass, his head on his arms, staring up at the night sky and chewing a piece of bark.

“Don’t you want a blanket?” she asked after watching him for a while.

“No. You can have it. Don’t mind me. I’m used to sleeping in all sorts of places, including the bare ground. This isn’t the worst.”

For a moment, Louisa wondered what kind of life he’d led to be used to sleeping like this. Then she shrugged, grabbed one of the woollen blankets, placed it on the ground at a safe distance from him and lay down on it. She covered herself with the second one, and then, for good measure, with her Kashmiri shawl. It was hard and uncomfortable, but she was warm.

She would survive.

The night sky was clear, and a billion stars twinkled above.

She would not cry.