The Abandoned Bride

October 1812

₁

The innkeeper was very concerned about the young gentleman. The wind outside his snug establishment was kicking up for a rare blow, a real autumn storm. Bits of gravel and rag ends of fallen leaves were dashing against the windowpanes along with the rain, and the whining blasts seemed to shake the very walls of the wayside inn. Such weathers ought to have made his elegant young patron glad of his comfortable surroundings, the innkeeper reasoned, for there was nothing like a storm without to make a fellow glad of the peace within. But there the young nob sprawled in the common room, growing increasingly disheveled even as the wind increased in velocity, muttering for yet another cup of punch as though he were only another wild manifestation of the storm itself.

The innkeeper sighed and shrugged resignedly at the serving girl’s questioning glance. He agreed with her unspoken comment on his guest’s condition. The young gentleman certainly did not seem to be in need of any more rum punch. But the look in his eye precluded disagreement. The Quality, the innkeeper had lea
rne
d from hard experience, could get devilish thorny when they were thwarted. And the fellow was Quality, you
could tell it from his look and his voice, even in his present condition. When he had arrived only a few hours before, one glance at his equipage and one stare at his fine clothes had sent the innkeeper hurrying to his bidding. And the first command, disguised as a request, given in that languid, cultured voice, had verified his host’s first impression.

The Partridge Feather was only a humble hostelry on the North Road, but that did not mean that its owner did not have grander dreams. It was, after all, a neat, clean establishment. Mine host’s wife had a rare way with simple country cooking; the linen was, if not of the finest, then certainly the most frequently darned; and the
r
e was always fresh brewed ale in readiness. It would be nothing wonderful if the gentry didn’t discover the place and make it as famous and as lucrative as The Rose and the Bear in Ludlow or The Maiden’s Head at Uckfield. The Partridge Feather had not been so happily designated yet in its long history, but that did not mean that a fellow should give up his dreaming. So when the elegant young gentleman had alighted from his crested coach wit
h
his lovely, laughing lady, the landlord’s hopes had risen higher than the wind which now battered upon his doors.

But air-dreaming did not blind a fellow. When the young gent had signed the register with only a common surname and
then given the young lady’s name as a “Miss Hastings,” the innkeeper’s hopes had shriveled even as he had read the drying script. For if the young gentleman were a mere “mister,” the innkeeper was a monkey’s relative, and if he were green enough to believe that the glowing young female answered to the name written, he didn’t deserve to walk upright either. For a “mister” didn’t talk or walk that way, and after being a hostelier for over a decade, the innkeeper wished he had a pennypiece for every fancy piece of a “miss” that registered at his in
n
with a gentleman rather than a lady’s maid to attend to her.

But only a fool rushed to conclusions, and the innkeeper’s mama hadn’t raised any nodcocks. For all the signs of mischief, the lass had looked so rare and spoken so soft, it had been hard to think worse of her. So he had been as sweet as he could stare, and had been rewarded for it. Within moments of their arrival, the young man had come down the stairs to have private conversation with his host. Then he had commenced to order up a lavish repast, as well as another bedchamber for his best man. Then he had coolly requested the services of a justice or a vicar, he declared, whichever one could make his lovely lady legally his the faster.

They were only hours from the border, where the deed could have been done in a moment, and the young gentleman knew it. But he didn’t want a havey-cavey soft of wedding day to look back upon, he explained, he wanted it done both legally beyond question and before the day was out. And
a
s he had a special license and a full purse, the landlord hastened to make preparations to do his bidding.

Between shouting orders to his wife, and sending a messenger to the old vicar, and seeing to the cleaning of the private parlor and the best suite, the landlord had only a moment to wonder at the deficiency of his own usually sound judgment. Owning an inn high on the North Road, he had often encountered young runaway lovers, and yet this time he had not for a moment considered that possibility before the young man had spoken. It was generally an easy matter for him to spot a pair bound for elopement. But then, couples bound for a wedding over the anvil usually had a hunted look about them. The fellows were invariably anxious. The females were often fearful. Their moods varied between high excitation, punctuated by bursts of brittle laughter, and frequent awkward silences, as though they were suddenly doubting their judgment or fearful of pursuing papas. But this pair had been calm and easy, graceful and smiling.

The young gentleman, slender and beautifully dressed, tawny-haired and self-assured, had stayed belowstairs for a while and condescended to drink a prenupt
i
al toast or two with his host as he awaited his friend and the vicar. But because of the growing storm, the roads were slow, and the vicar was, after all, too old to leave his dinner beforetimes and go plunging out of doors, all haste, into the raging evening just for the sake of a few extra shillings. So the young gentleman had time for several toasts, so many in fact, that the landlord had to silently congratulate him on his hard head when he was able to mount the stairs with a steady tread as he went to reassure his waiting bride-to-be.

But then, within the half hour, he was downstairs again, his face white and set, his soft mood vanished, his words clipped and hard as he rapped out an order for more drink, and threw down coins to pay the vicar when he arrived, both for his trouble and for services he need not now trouble to render.

As the gentleman sat and drank steadily, the landlord kept a worried eye upon him. He had paid and dismissed the incredulous vicar, as he had been bade, for the young man refused to spare even one word for the angry old fellow. And now as the hours wore on and the storm picked up fu
r
y, the host of The Partridge Feather wondered what, if anything he ought to do about the situation. He could not help but worry about the young female. She had
not shown her face since she had been shown her room. She might be in need of consolation, indeed, she might even be in dire distress. But a fellow could not build up a reputation as an innkeeper to the Quality by putting a foot wrong. A maid had been sent up to the room with fresh towels and water, and had been allowed to enter, so it could be proved that at least the young woman still existed. But what else might be done, the landlord could not say. For a look at the jug-bitten young gentleman showed that a word about the young miss he had arrived with might cost a careless innkeeper his front teeth, if not his life. So the host of The Partridge Feather-polished glasses and took care of his other customers and kept his tongue discreetly between his intact teeth. For his conscience’s sake, he thought he would have a word about the female with this “friend” when he arrived, and he entertained himself as he waited by wondering how many more rum punches it might take to put the young man beneath the table entirely, instead of only half sprawled upon it.

It was nearing midnight when the other
gentleman
entered the inn. By then, the room was empty save for the young gentleman. The other customers had gone, the travelers to their rooms, the local lads to their homes. The young gentleman, his snowy cravat rumpled and askew, his embroidered waistcoat unbuttoned, his tawny “wind-swept” hairstyle as tousled as though he had been out in the storm all night, was still sitting as he had all evening, brooding and drinking. He did not even look up as the other gentleman entered. That it was the expected friend, the landlord had not a doubt. Although he was many years older than the young gentleman, his refined face and sober but exquisitely cut clothes marked him as a member of the same lofty class. He paused in the doorway for only an instant and then spied the young man before the landlord could come out from behind his station. Then he walked quickly to the young man’s side.

“Am I too late?” he asked urgently.

The young man raised his head at that utterance and then both recognition and a slow, bitter smile appeared upon his face.

“Too late for the ceremony?” the young man drawled, pulling himself up straight. “Too late for the hymn to Hymen? Too late to congratulate my blushing bride? Are your pockets burdened with unshed rice, my dear Edwin? Have you hurried all this way only to miss the bedding ceremony?”

“So you have done it,” the older gentleman said heavily.

“So I have,” the younger man agreed, nodding repeatedly to himself and to his friend. But as the other sighed and sank to a chair, the young man added reflectively, “It’s all over, dear Edwin, and you have missed the lot. I declared myself, and carried her off, and procured the special license, and engaged the vicar, and ended it all just as you would wish.”

“Then there’s nothing to be done but to wish you happy,” the older man replied sadly. “It is not as I would wish, but perhaps the best can be made of it, perhaps I was wrong, after all. But do not let me keep you from her now. I was late due to the storm, and I would not come between you now.”

“Come between us?” the younger man mused, and then let out a raucous roar of laughter that startled the innkeeper, who was listening in as quiet a manner as possible. “Why Edwin, my noble Edwin, my sweet counselor, the Edinburgh Coach could come between us now and not ruffle a hair on our heads. Don’t you listen, Edwin, my dear? I said it was over. And so it is. Over. Not wedded, not bedded, not saved. Over.”

“
Then you thought better of it?” the older
gentleman
asked.

“Not thought better of it, Edwin, my friend,” the young man said loudly, but in what he thought were confidential tones, since he bent close to his friend, “but
knew
better. Was forced to know better. I could not do it, Edwin,” he cried out in a wild sort of anguish; “when it came to it, I could not.”

“It’s all for the best, Robin,” the older man said softly. “You know it is.”

“Ah yes, as you said,” the young
gentleman
nodded, calm again. “Shall we drink to it? Landlord,” he called out, “another, and for my friend as well.”

The landlord hesitated, but when he saw the older gentleman nod in affirmation, he reluctantly left off listening to the conversation so that he could prepare two new cups of his heady, steaming punch.

“Robin,” the gentleman called Edwin asked as he drew his chair closer to his young friend, “how did the girl take it?”

“Beau-ti-fully,” the young gentleman said lightly. But then he began shaking his head and frowning as though he sought to clear it, and by so doing facilitate his speech as well, for now he took care to speak slowly and carefully, enunciating each syllable. “Beautifully, magnificently, stoically, a treasure of a girl. Oh Edwin, you should like her, I’m sure. No underbred whining, not a whimper.”

“I’m sure I should,” the older man replied evenly. “And her family, they said nothing? They will not make difficulties?”

The young man began laughing at that, and could not seem to stop. He laughed until tears started in his eyes. He laughed on an increasingly high note, until his friend took; his arm and shook him hard.

“Oh leave off,” the young gentleman snarled, snatching his arm away violently, his mood veering. “I’m half sprung but I’ve had more, and done less. Yet there simply isn’t enough rum, dear Edwin, not in all the Indies, to make me forget the look in her eyes. Or to let me forget how
i
gno—how igno-min-ious—fiend take it, how completely I failed. Damme, the drink takes my tongue, but leaves me my heart. Isn’t that nicely put, Edwin?” He laughed.

“The family, Robin, how did her family take it?” Edwin asked patiently.

“And how should I know?” the young man grumbled, leaning far across the table to scoop up the mug the landlord had placed cautiously just outside his reach.

When their host had retreated a respectful distance, the older gentleman waited until the younger had done taking a large swallow and whispered, “You mean to say you just announced your change of plan and left her there and walked away?”

The young man put down his mug and stared at his inquisitor with as much insolence in his gaze as his unfocused eyes could maintain. “Certainly not,” he said arrogantly. “What sort of a fellow do you take me for? I have not left her suddenly. She is still here. Or was here a few hours ago. Upstairs,” he added, before he drank deep again.

The older gentleman drew in his breath and half started from his chair as he gasped, “She is still here? You brought her all this way before telling her?”

The young gentleman gave him a singularly sweet, sad smile, but no reply.

“You must take her home again at once,” Edwin cried.

“No,” his friend replied, in a curiously sobered tone.
“
You
must, Edwin; I was waiting for you. No, don’t say a word. I simply cannot. I have done so much, I have done all that you said was honorable, but that I cannot do, not for her, not even for you. I took her from her doorstep this morning, while her father beamed and her mother shed happy tears and her little sisters strewed flowers, or so it seemed. How can I bring her back in the night and say, ‘Oh, terribly sorry, I’ve changed my mind’? But you can. You must. I have done so much,
”
he complained even as he began to nod as though his head had grown too heavy for him to continue to hold upright. “You must do the rest,” he murmured as he at last put his head down upon the triangle his arms made on the tabletop.

The older gentleman stifled an oath and clenched his fists in anger. But after a moment, his shoulders slumped. “So it seems I must,” he breathed, almost to himself.

The landlord readily gave the older man the direction of the young woman’s room and then, upon stiffly given orders, he himself went quickly to rouse up the stableboy to prepare his new guest’s coach for travel again. He rushed about his task, not only so as to please the gentleman, but so that he might not miss a moment of the unfolding drama. Yet for all his hurrying out into the wind-swept night and back again, it was still several moments more before the older gentleman came down the stairs with the young woman. She wore a dark traveling cloak, and went out into the night without a backward glance at the young man now seemingly asleep, his head cradled upon his arms upon the broad-planked table.

But within a few moments, while the landlord was still
staring at the closed door he had exited from, the older gentleman returned, his driving cape streaming rain.

“Robin,” he said sternly, “only one thing. Wake up, Robin, there is only one thing I must know. What did you tell her? How did you tell her?”

The young gentleman opened his eyes, but did not lift
his head. His voice came soft but clear.

“Why, the truth, Edwin. The truth, of course.”

As the older man stiffened, the younger said, as though repeating a thing he had learned by heart for
a ste
rn
schoolmaster, “I told her that I could not wed her. I told her it was because there was another whom I loved, but whom I could not wed due to cruel circumstance. I told her that it was not fair for me to wed her with half a heart. I told her the truth, did I not, Edwin?”

“Yes, Robin,” the older man sighed. “I will take her home now. You stay on here and I shall come for you tomorrow evening, as soon as I may. And then we will leave. Do you understand?”

The young man raised one hand and then let it fall to the table. Edwin walked a few paces to the door and then wheeled around again. “Her family, Robin. Shall there be serious trouble?”

“I am not that sort of coward,” the young gentleman said wearily. “No. What sort of trouble could there be? Papa and Mama are decidedly commoners. No, no trouble from that quarter.”

“And as to what will become of the girl?” Edwin persisted.

“
What do you think?” came the reply, with a curious note of bitter laughter. “She’s no debutante. Do you think she’ll be ruined? Refused admission to Almacks? Come, come, Edwin my dear, she’ll be married before the year is out. They are not so top-lofty in the provinces, you know. This affair may even lend her a certain cachet.”

“And your family?” Edwin asked quietly.

“Ah, my family,” came the reply in a muffled voice. “I shall tell them only what they wish to hear.” As I have told you, the young gentleman thought before he lay his head upon his arms again, and this time found the oblivion he had sought all evening.