Chapter 29: The Wedding Night We Never Had

Wexmoor was lit from the front steps to the attics when the carriage came up the drive.

Maud had sent word ahead, and the whole household stood in two rows on the gravel.

Wynne took my cloak without a word and gave me a look that said everything.

Then she took the pin out of her mouth and put it in her pocket.

"Hot water is in your room, Your Grace," she said. "And in his."

"One of them will not be needed. I'll tell the kitchen."

"Wynne."

"I'm going, I'm going."

My room was the one I had been given the day I came, the room with the door that locked from my side.

I stood in the middle of it in my travelling dress.

Four weeks ago I had lain here with a candle burning all night.

I had listened for his step in the passage and hated the sound of it.

I washed my face.

I took my hair down and brushed it out, and then I pinned it up again, and then I took it down.

I put on the white nightgown Wynne had laid across the bed.

It was the one from my trunk, the one my mother had made for my wedding, which I had not worn.

I had not worn it because I had not been a bride.

I had been a woman making a plan.

I opened the door between our rooms.

I had never opened it from my side.

He was standing by the window in his shirt, with the scarred hand open on the sill.

He turned.

He did not say anything.

I watched his eyes go down me and come back up, slowly, and I saw his throat move.

"I never had a wedding night," I said. "I want one."

"You have had a night."

"I have had several. I have not had a wedding night, Alaric. I had a plan and a grudge."

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