Regency Innocents by Annie Burrows

the sailing while he went off for a walk. On the few occasions when he had deigned to speak to her, he had done so with such icy civility she just knew he regretted giving in to the rash impulse to marry her.
    And who could blame him? No one was more unsuitable to be the wife of such a man than she!
    By the time he came to inform her it was time to embark, she was trembling so badly she had to cling to his arm for support.
    Just as they reached the companionway, a messenger dashed up to them. ‘Countess of Walton? Formerly Mademoiselle Bergeron?’ he panted.
    When she nodded, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a letter. ‘Thank heaven I reached you in time.’ He grinned. ‘Urgent, the sender said it was, that I got this to you before you left France.’ His mission complete, the man melted back into the crowd that thronged the quayside.
    â€˜You had better open it at once,’ she heard Charles say, and he pulled her slightly to one side, so that they did not impede other passengers from boarding.
    â€˜It is from my mother,’ she said, after swiftly scanning the few lines of hastily scrawled script. ‘Du Mauriac is dead.’
    Translating for Charles, she read, “‘… the Royalist officials sent to arrest him employed such zeal that many Bonapartists rushed to his aid. In the ensuing brawl, somebody stabbed him. Nobody knows yet who it was …’”
    She clutched the letter to her bosom, her eyes closing in relief. Charles was safe.
    â€˜What violent times we live in,’ Charles remarked, wondering why it felt as though the dock had lurched beneath his feet.
    Heloise had only married him to escape Du Mauriac’s clutches. What a pointless gesture she had made. If only she had waited a few days, and not panicked, she would not have had to make that ultimate sacrifice.
    â€˜Dear me,’ he observed. ‘You need not have married me after all.’

Chapter Five

    O h, poor Charles! He was already smarting from taking on a wife he did not really want, and now he had learned that at least part of his reason for doing so had ceased to exist.
    But, instead of betraying his annoyance, he held out his arm and said in an icily polite voice, ‘Will you come aboard now, madam?’
    Oh, dear. She gulped. How he must wish he could just leave her on the quayside and go back to England alone. But he was too honourable even to suggest such a thing. Laying her hand upon his sleeve, she followed him up the gangplank, her heart so leaden in her chest she wondered it could keep beating.
    He showed her to the cabin he had procured for the voyage, then informed her that he was going on deck. His face was frozen, his posture rigid, and she ached for his misery. It hurt all the more to know she was the cause of it!
    Charles hardly dared breathe until the last rope was cast off and the ship began to slide out of the harbour. She had not made a last desperate bid for freedom. Even whenthe coast of France was no more than a smudge on the horizon, she remained resolutely belowdecks.
    Avoiding him.
    He paced restlessly, heedless of the spray which repeatedly scoured the decks.
    His conscience was clear. After a night spent wrestling with it, he had deliberately given her several opportunities to give him the slip during the day. Why had she not taken them? She was not staying with him because she was avaricious, nor was she all that impressed by his title.
    The only thing that might explain her resolute determination to stick to their bargain was the fact she had given her word. Did it mean so much to her? He pictured her eyes, burning with zeal when she had promised to be the best wife she knew how to be, and accepted that it must.
    It was a novel concept, to link a woman with integrity. But then Heloise, he was beginning to see, was not like any woman he had ever known.
    Below decks, Heloise groaned, wishing she could die. Then he would be sorry. She whimpered,