Chapter 2

Charmian didn’t even pretend to smile. Once, long ago, she’d enjoyed Roland’s wry sense of humor. But once, long ago, she’d thought that they’d be happy together for the rest of their lives.

How did that work out, Charmian Barton?

The maid glanced open-mouthed between the two of them. Milly chattered like a parrot. The news of Miss Barton’s mysterious husband’s arrival would be all over the inn before they started serving dinner. “M-Miss Barton?”

He gave Charmian a sardonic smile that she hadn’t seen before. “Miss? You’ve been living under false pretenses, I see. Not to mention you’ve lost your wedding ring.”

She hid a wince. The immediate numbing shock receded a little. The urge to run and hide faded, too. Stiffening her spine, she told herself that she could hold her own against Roland. She wasn’t wide-eyed and innocent and nineteen anymore. If she was honest, most days she felt as old as the millennium.

Had he come looking for her? She hadn’t had a word from him since they’d separated in York. But the marriage stood. They remained linked for life.

“It never meant much,” she retorted, although she couldn’t stop her fingers curling at her sides with a shame that she shouldn’t feel.

“So I see,” he responded, the line of his lips turning bitter. Bitterness had been alien to the man she thought she’d known. But then, she’d long ago understood that she hadn’t known Roland Destry at all.

Seeing him stirred a storm of emotions. Shock. Confusion. Anger. Regret, her constant companion since they’d parted.

Anger emerged paramount.

A hundred furious words rushed to her lips, so it was perhaps lucky that her aunt appeared on the landing above. “Charmian, weren’t you fetching hot water for the Whytes in room twelve?”

Charmian suddenly recollected that she was standing in the middle of a crowded inn during a natural disaster. She couldn’t indulge in the luxury of a tantrum, much as she might want to. “Milly, please look after the Whytes.”

Milly bobbed into a curtsy, although it was clear that she’d much rather stay and hear the gossip. “Aye, Miss.. Mrs…”

“Destry,” Roland said in a low voice, without sparing the girl a glance.

He hadn’t looked away from Charmian since he’d first seen her. She couldn’t help wondering what he saw. Since their last meeting, she’d endured three hard years. These days, she approached the world warily, and she knew that showed on her face.

It was unforgivably vain to want him to think that she was still beautiful. If only for her pride’s sake. She couldn’t bear the idea of him feeling sorry for her.

With an incoherent murmur, Milly left as Aunt Janet marched down the steps. “What is it, love?”

Janet mustn’t have heard Roland say Destry. With so many guests, the inn was in uproar.

Charmian gestured toward Roland. “Aunt, this is Sir Roland Destry. Roland, this is Janet Barton, my father’s sister.”

Her aunt was capable and formidable, ready to withstand any challenge that life presented. A woman running a country inn needed to hold her own with patrons and staff. Charmian had seen her face down a pack of drunk bullyboys and triumph purely through force of personality.

Charmian also knew the kind heart beneath the forbidding exterior. That kind heart had provided unfailing support through the last years.

Now she expected to see dislike or disdain on her aunt’s face. How puzzling that Janet’s first reaction seemed to be fear. She wouldn’t have said that Aunt Janet was afraid of anyone.

“Sir Roland,” Aunt Janet bit out, although Charmian couldn’t help thinking that she was apprehensive under the frosty welcome.

Perhaps Roland’s exalted rank overawed her, although her aunt was used to dealing with the upper classes. The Spotted Fox was the only decent public house for miles, so it received patronage from the local gentry as well as travelers and farmers and agricultural workers.

Aunt Janet performed a curtsy so sketchy, it hardly justified the name. Roland’s bow was more elegant, but then, he’d always had perfect manners. No wonder Charmian felt like a complete bumpkin in his company. “Miss Barton. I’m hoping you can offer me a bed tonight.”

“I’m afraid we have no room. If you go back to Sorby, you may find a place.” This was the voice that Aunt Janet used when she threw drunken yokels out at closing time.

Under that tone, yokels turned as quiet as lambs. Roland was made of stouter stuff.

He’d been a charming young man with a sweet nature. Or at least so Charmian had thought until that last catastrophic quarrel. His reply now conveyed nothing sweet. “Sorby is five miles in the wrong direction. My horse is exhausted. It’s a deluge out there. And I’m frozen to the bone.”

Janet folded her arms over her substantial bosom. “Nonetheless, you must go.”

Charmian sent her aunt a questioning look. “I’m sure we could fit Roland in the taproom, even if on a chair.”

“Don’t forget I’m family.” His dry tone indicated that he didn’t feel like family at all.

Janet’s eyes narrowed. “The taproom’s full.”

The conversation paused while the barman passed them, balancing a tray piled with empty tankards. He threw them a curious glance, but didn’t stop. It was all hands on deck tonight. John should have finished at five and gone back to his family for Christmas Eve.

“I’ll take a blanket and sleep in the stables if I have to,” Roland said with a snap of his straight white teeth. “I’m not putting my horse out into that weather again.”

He’d always been kind to animals and children. He’d been kind to her – at least at first. It seemed that hadn’t changed. When it came to animals anyway.

“We can’t help you, Sir Roland.”

Janet’s uncompromising attitude confused Charmian. There were good reasons for her aunt to dislike Roland, but people died in storms like this. Sending Roland away endangered his life. Charmian might have a few bones to pick with her husband, but she certainly didn’t wish him dead.

She straightened, aware that she was about to make a mistake but unable to think of any alternative. “He can sleep in my room.”

Her aunt paled, even as Roland tilted a doubtful eyebrow at Charmian.

“That’s not suitable, Charmian.” Now there was no mistaking the fear at the root of Aunt Janet’s prickliness.

“It couldn’t be more suitable.” Charmian had had a long, tiring day. She’d had a long, tiring three years. She wasn’t up to dealing with whatever was peeving her aunt. “We’re married, after all.”

“I thought you might have forgotten,” Roland said with a snideness foreign to the lighthearted man she’d married in such haste.

“How could I forget? If I survived the plague, I’d remember the experience,” she sniped back. When they’d wed, that nastiness wasn’t in her vocabulary either. Clearly they’d both changed for the worse since their last meeting.

The door behind them opened, and a shivering family of four tumbled into the hallway. Two men emerged from the taproom on the right. “We’re still waiting on our dinner,” one of them said rudely.

Aunt Janet looked hunted, but she didn’t respond to her customers. Sign enough that she was rattled. She prided herself on being an excellent landlady. “The taproom will be good enough for you,” she told Roland in the voice that always summoned immediate obedience.

Roland’s eyebrows rose in understandable annoyance. Not much obedience to be seen. “You said there was no room.”

John emerged to deal with the new arrivals. He shot his employer another questioning glance, when he saw that she was still busy with Roland and Charmian.

“I’ll make room,” Janet said grimly.

Charmian frowned. They couldn’t stand here, airing their dirty linen in public. “No, I want him with me.”

“I’m overcome, wife,” Roland said. “You do care after all.”

She bit back the urge to say, “I don’t.” It wouldn’t help. Anyway, despite everything, it wasn’t true. “We need to talk.”

“It took three years to reach that conclusion?”

“I haven’t noticed you beating down my door, begging for a reconciliation,” she snapped back. He acted as if all their problems were her fault.

“That’s all very well,” the man outside the taproom said. “But where’s our dinner?”

Aunt Janet sucked in an irritated breath and squared her shoulders. She set a smile on her face – not an entirely convincing effort – and faced the man. “I’ll check with the kitchen, Mr. Smith. I’m sorry you’ve been kept waiting.” She turned to Charmian. “Can you look after the new arrivals and get John to bring another beer barrel up from the cellar?”

“I’ll show Roland to my room first,” she said.

“I’d rather you looked after our guests.”

Charmian frowned. It sounded like Janet tried to keep her away from Roland. Was she worried that he was a danger to her? Her aunt had always been protective of her only niece. “Roland won’t hurt me.”

“You haven’t seen him for a long time.”

Nobody was more aware of that than Charmian. She’d counted every minute of every hour of every day.

“This isn’t getting my dinner,” Mr. Smith barked.

A woman emerged from the parlor at the end of the hallway, clutching a screaming baby and Milly appeared from downstairs carrying two canisters of hot water. This corridor was busier than the Strand on a Monday morning. It wasn’t the place for any sort of meaningful conversation.

“Come with me,” Charmian said to Roland over the din. “I’ll have to come down and help, but upstairs you’ll have a bed and some privacy at least.” She reached to pick up his valise.

“My wife doesn’t need to play the servant,” he growled. “I’m capable of carrying my own bag.”

She flushed a painful red. Because for most of the time that they’d been apart, she’d helped her aunt in the inn. Playing the servant, as Roland put it. He must wonder what madness had led him to marry someone little better than a scullery maid. It was a question she’d asked herself in the depths of many a night during the long, lonely hours when the answers that she came up with were entirely depressing.

“Then please follow me,” she said tight-lipped.

“Charmian, Sir Roland will be better off in the taproom,” her aunt said with barely hidden desperation.

Aunt Janet definitely wanted to keep them apart. Did she fear that this reunion would distress her niece? Of course it did, but it was past time that she and Roland discussed their future. That was never going to be easy.

“No, Aunt. He’s coming with me.” She collected a lamp from a side table and mounted the steps, not needing to check if Roland fell in behind her. From the moment they’d met, she’d felt a preternatural awareness of his presence. That, it seemed, hadn’t changed, despite their estrangement.

“She doesn’t like me,” Roland said.

“No, she doesn’t. For good reason.” Her aunt had been devastated when Charmian returned home, brokenhearted after her reckless marriage.

They continued up past two floors containing guest rooms to the attics. Only when Charmian pushed the door open did she wonder what Roland would make of her quarters. He was a rich man with a large manor house in Northamptonshire. Not that she’d ever seen Leeder Hall. They’d been on their honeymoon in York when they parted.

As he shut the door behind him, she set the lamp on a chest of drawers and folded her arms in a gesture that even she recognized as defensive. “It’s not what you’re used to.”

His lips quirked with the self-mockery that once she’d found so attractive. She still did, plague take him. “No gilded halls and silk upholstery?”

Charmian didn’t smile back. She was far too conscious of the fact that she and Roland hadn’t shared a closed space in years and this was a minuscule room containing a bed. “No.”

He set his bag on the floor and took off his coat, hanging it on a hook in the wall. He was a tall, lean man, and his head came near to brushing the low ceiling in the center of the room. He wouldn’t be able to stand straight at the sides, where the ceiling followed the roofline.

This was her first chance to look at him properly. He’d been a handsome young man. Dark-haired. Dark-eyed. With a flashing smile that stole her silly heart from the first.

Three years of maturity had only built on his attractions. The harder lines of his face lent him character as well as charm.

“It’s fine, Charmian. More than fine. I appreciate your generosity in sharing it. I’ll do better here than I would in a taproom crammed with snoring brutes.” He didn’t sound as confrontational as he had downstairs. Instead, he sounded as tired as she did. “Unless you snore these days?”

He was trying to put her at her ease. She should appreciate it. Meeting an estranged spouse was always going to be awkward.

“How would I know?” she asked sharply, before she kicked herself. Roland was quick enough to pick up on the implication that she’d slept alone since they’d separated, and she wasn’t ready to feed his vanity by revealing that she’d stayed faithful to her vows. “Did you come looking for me?”

“No, our meeting is a pleasant surprise.” She hid a wince at his sarcasm. “I had no idea you were in Yorkshire. I was on my way to visit a friend.”

Of course he hadn’t come looking for her. He never had. Although it perplexed her that he’d been so startled to see her. After all, he must know that she worked at the Spotted Fox. Unless he’d never even read her letters. Which was a very depressing thought indeed.

“I meant it when I said that we need to talk,” she said in a rush. “But the inn’s packed to the rafters and I have to help Aunt Janet.”

“You need to go downstairs.”

“Yes.” She gestured around the small room with its sloping roof and plain deal furniture. “It’s not fancy, but you should be warm and comfortable here. I’ll send John up with hot water. He’ll do the fire, too.”

Roland was removing his gray waistcoat. Only his loose shirt and buff breeches remained. He crossed the room to dip his hand in the jug of water standing by the unlit hearth. “He’s already got plenty to do. He doesn’t need to be hauling buckets of water up three flights of stairs for me. This will do for a quick wash, then I’ll come down and lend a hand.”

“That’s—”

“Beneath my dignity?”

The astringent edge to his humor was new. The young man she’d married had taken a sunny view of life. Too sunny, as it turned out, at least where his marriage was concerned.

She’d been about to say something along those lines, but another pair of helping hands would be useful, so she went for a less adversarial response. “That’s very kind of you.”

The look he sent her said that he doubted her sincerity.

“No, I mean it. We’re run off our feet. Thank you.” And she’d prefer to have him out of this room. Thinking of him waiting for her here, sleeping in her bed, handling her things, would torment her.

“It’s the least I can do.”

“You need to change into some dry clothes.”

He arched an eyebrow at her. “That almost sounds wifely.”

His sarcastic tone made her blush with chagrin. As if all the fault between them lay with her. Her voice hardened. “Then freeze, if you prefer. It’s your business. Not mine.”

His laugh was short and unamused. “Now you sound like you mean it.” He began to untie his neckcloth.

Charmian took a shocked second to realize that he meant to undress fully in front of her. Her cheeks heated, and she jerked her attention toward the window. “I’ll…I’ll see you downstairs.”

That evoked a derisive grunt. “Do you want me to save your maidenly blushes?”

“I’m not a maiden.” She braced her shoulders and glared at him. “Thanks to you.”

“I remember, but I wondered if you did, you’ve come over so coy. Don’t you remember what a naked man looks like?”

He tugged off his damp shirt to reveal a chest that had filled out from the slender man she recalled. Roland Destry had become a much more substantial presence since their last meeting. She suspected that these days he made an implacable enemy. The insight wasn’t welcome.

“I’ve tried to forget,” she said through stiff lips. Which was true, just as it was true that she’d failed miserably. Memories of Roland’s naked body had pursued her since their parting. When his hands lowered to the fastenings on his breeches, she pushed past him and out of the room, even if that gave him victory in their little war. “I’ll see you soon.”