It Happened One Night Anthology

Was she?

The passengers were being called for with some impatience. Some of them had already gathered and were taking the best places by the windows.

He stepped inside the i

But why?

She was already at the foot of the stairs, her valise in hand. Their eyes met as he strode toward her and took the bag from her.

“You heard the call, then?” he asked.

“Yes.”

She was looking slightly pale. Her eyes looked enormous. Her hair had been ruthlessly brushed back beneath her bo

Was he going to let her go without a fight?

He could clearly see those six months following their wedding exactly as they must have appeared through her eyes. He had meekly allowed her father to take her back home with him and declare their marriage invalid. He had made no attempt to follow her or to see her afterward. He had not written to her. And then, after she must have heard about the change in his fortune and after she and her father had become poor, he had written out of the blue to offer her marriage. To gloat. Her father must have done all in his power to coerce her into accepting. Her own common sense must have told her what the alternative would be. She had had the courage to refuse him anyway.

Not because she no longer loved him, but because she believed he had never loved her.

She was staring into his eyes.

“Miss Ryder?” It was the coachman’s voice, loud and impatient, calling from the door. “Is Miss Ryder in here?”

“Nora,” Richard said, “that letter was not written to insult your father. Or to gloat. It was a last despairing attempt to persuade you to come back to me.”

She stared mutely at him.

“Miss Ryder?” The voice was coming from out in the yard now, irritated, angry. “Does anyone know where the blasted woman stayed last night? Does anyone know what she looks like?”

“I wrote to you every day for the first month,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “Every single day. But not one of the letters was sent. I had nowhere to send them. I did not know where you were. You had simply vanished. Without me. And not a word from you. Not one. I am sometimes lonely now-the life of a lady’s companion is not a delightful one. But I have never known loneliness as I knew it during those months. I had been married and then-nothing. And then that letter out of the blue, so cold, so formal.”

“Written a hundred times over before that particular draft was sent,” he said. “It was my one final chance. I did not want to squander it. But I did anyway.”

“Miss Ryder?”

The coachman appeared in the doorway again. He had bellowed the words. “Drat the woman! Where is she? Do you know anything of her, landlord?”

“Not me,” the landlord said.

“I am going to have to go without her and serve her right,” the coachman said. “I can’t keep everyone else waiting. Not again.”

Nora looked beyond Richard’s shoulder, and for a moment there was something like panic in her eyes.

“Don’t go,” he said, setting a hand on her wrist. “Don’t go, Nora. Stay with me. Stay for the rest of your life.”

She shook her head slightly.

“Mrs. Kemp, ma’am.” The landlord appeared beside them. “May I have your bag carried out to the curricle? And may I have yours brought down, sir?”

She bit her lower lip and kept her eyes on Richard’s.

From outside came the sounds of wheels rumbling on cobblestones and horses’ hooves clopping and the deafening blast of a yard of tin being blown to warn other vehicles away from the gateway onto the road.

The stagecoach was on its way.

Without her.

“Yes, if you please,” Richard said, and the landlord scooped up the valise and hurried outside with it, calling to someone unseen to go up and bring Mr. Kemp’s bag down without further delay.

“You are my wife, Nora,” Richard said.

Her eyes were suddenly bright with tears.

“That marriage was not valid,” she said. “It was-”

“Valid,” he said firmly. “Though I do not doubt that some money changed hands and all documentary evidence disappeared. That does not make it less of a marriage, Nora. You are my wife.”

“Richard-” she said.

“I love you,” he told her, his voice low and urgent. “I always have. I have hated you, too, I suppose. But always, always I have loved you. Last night was all about love, Nora. You must know that. Come with me.”

“Oh.” She sighed. “I ought to go on the coach.”

“Too late,” he said. “It has gone.”

“Has it?” Her eyes widened.

Incredibly, she had not heard it leave. She had been too focused on the drama unfolding between them.

“You are stuck here again,” he said. “Stranded. With me.”

“Oh,” she said. “For the rest of my life?”

“For at least that long,” he told her.

They stood staring at each other-until he smiled at her, and slowly an answering smile first tugged at the corners of her mouth and then lit her eyes.

“But not necessarily here in Wimbury at the Crook and Staff,” he said. “I have a curricle and horses ready to go outside.”

“Where will we go?” she asked him.

“On a long journey to the rest of our lives,” he told her. “But first to London, where I will procure a special license as soon as I possibly can. We may know beyond any reasonable doubt that we are not living in sin, but the rest of the world may not be so willing to believe it.”

“Oh, Richard,” she said.

He took her right hand in both of his.

“Will you marry me, Nora?” he asked her. “Again?”

He was gri

“Oh, I will,” she said. “But only once more, Richard. I positively refuse to make a habit of this.”

They both laughed, suddenly giddy with joy, and he leaned forward to set his lips to hers at the exact moment when the manservant who had been sent upstairs came clattering back down with Richard’s bag and the landlord stepped in from the yard outside, having just stowed Nora’s valise in the curricle.

The manservant hastily and noisily retraced his steps, and the landlord coughed and discovered something else outside that needed his urgent attention.

Richard wrapped his arms about his wife’s waist, and she twined hers about his neck. And they indulged in a lengthy and really quite scandalous display of public affection.

For the moment the rest of their lives could wait.

About Mary Balogh

MARY BALOGH grew up in Wales, and after graduating from university, moved to Saskatchewan, Canada, to teach high school English. Her first Regency love story, A Masked Deception, was published in 1985. She has written more than seventy novels and almost thirty novellas since then, including the New York Times bestselling Slightly sextet and Simply quartet. She has won numerous awards, including Bestselling Historical of the Year from the Borders Group, and her novel Simply Magic was a finalist in the Quill Awards. She lives in Regina, Canada.

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