Free Sherri Cobb South by French Leave

Helen’s hand and clattered to the table. She was not ready. She had not yet decided what she would say to this man she had thought she knew so well. When he had not come home for dinner, she had assumed she would not see him until morning, and she found it grossly unfair that she should have to face him now, undressed and with her hair hanging down her back.
    “Ethan, darling,” she said, smiling through stiff lips. “You are looking well.”
    “Never better,” he declared, crossing the room to take her in his arms. “I didn’t think to see you until next week, though. You took me by surprise.”
    “Yes, I daresay I did.”
    He would have kissed her soundly, had she not pulled away after the briefest of pecks. He released her, since she seemed to wish it, but far from leaving the room, he sat down on the edge of the bed and regarded his wife steadily. “I’ve missed you, ‘elen.”
    She would have reminded him that they had endured separations far longer than this, but something about the look in his eye and the tone of his voice gave her to understand that he was referring not to the previous fortnight, but to a longer period—one approaching six months. The knowledge that he would come to her now, straight from his mistress’s arms, made her feel ill.
    “It’s late, Ethan, and I’ve still a thousand things to do— ’“
    “Aye, love, I won’t press you,” he conceded, not without regret. “I’ve waited this long, I daresay I can wait a bit longer. I trust you ‘ad a good journey?”
    “Well enough, though rather long,” she replied, both relieved and disappointed at his easy capitulation. “There was an accident involving a farm cart and a load of turnips, so we were obliged to make a detour. Down Green Street,” she added pointedly.
    She might have saved her breath; he had not the grace to look ashamed. “I don’t care ‘ow you came, just so long as you’re ‘ere,” he said with such conviction that Lady Helen almost believed him. “And the children?”
    “They slept much of the way, and Miss Colling was a great help in entertaining them when they were awake.”
    “She’s an ‘elp you won’t ‘ave after today,” Sir Ethan told her. “Waverly’s purchased a special license. They’re to be married tomorrow morning.”
    “Are they, indeed? It seems a very odd match.”
    “Aye, that it does. But so did we, love, and just look at us.”
    “Yes,” she said sadly. “Just look at us.”
     

Chapter 6
     
    We will be married o’ Sunday.
    WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
    The Taming of the Shrew
     
    Lord Waverly called for Lisette promptly at nine o’clock the following morning. She was fetchingly attired for her nuptials in a pink muslin morning dress fashioned for her by Lady Helen’s mantua-maker in Manchester, there having been no time to order a wedding gown from that lady’s more fashionable London modiste. Her ravaged curls were hidden—and her heart-shaped face charmingly framed—by a deep-brimmed bonnet trimmed with pink roses.  She looked absurdly young, and Waverly wondered anew at the vagaries of Fate in contriving such an ill-assorted union.
    He did not voice these reflections to his bride, however, but handed her up into his curricle, climbed up beside her, and set the horses’ heads toward St. George’s, Hanover Square. They had gone some distance in silence when Lord Waverly, glancing at his bride and seeing naught but the brim of her bonnet covering her downcast face, asked, “Are you frightened, Lisette?”
    “Mais non,” she replied without looking up. “I am not frightened, milord.”
    “Nervous, perhaps?”
    “Perhaps a little,” she confessed. “After all, one does not get married every day.”
    Having been aggressively pursued by damsels eager to hear themselves addressed as “my lady,” he found her reluctance less than flattering. “I’ll not eat you, you know.”
    “Oui, I know,” she said sadly.
    Having arrived at the church, he drew the