Merely the Groom (Free Fellows League 2)

She was married. Frowning, Gillian glanced down at the third finger of her left hand. Where there should have been a ring, there was nothing. Her finger was bare. Her husband hadn’t sealed their vows with a ring. In his haste to whisk her off to Scotland, he’d forgotten the ring. He’d assured her that he had a gold band for her and a family betrothal ring to go with it, but she would have to wait until they returned to England to take possession of it. He’d assured her that the absence of a wedding band didn’t change the fact that she was married. Or the fact that she was no longer the innocent Miss Gillian Davies.

The marriage bed and the intimate acts that went on beneath the covers of it were no longer a mystery. They had proven to be more than a bit disappointing, but they were no longer a mystery. Gillian shuddered at the memory. Her loss of innocence had been embarrassing, messy, and painful. But mercifully brief.

It had also been incredibly lonely. She had thought that the act would be one of sharing, when the two would become one. But she’d experienced none of the closeness, none of the sharing she’d expected. After the embarrassingly intimate act, she’d felt alone, lonely and ill used, and she’d lain wide awake battling tears of frustration and disappointment as she listened to him sleep. If she were completely honest with herself, she had to admit that although she’d loved the romance and the stolen kisses she and Colin had shared during their secret trysts in London, the intimate acts of the marriage bed had been a colossal disappointment. But she supposed that was the way of it for married women. And she was Mrs. Colin Fox. She had been for over a week.

She’d been married nine days, six of which she had spent alone. Her husband—her bridegroom—the man who had swept her off her feet and romanced her all the way to Gretna Green, had left her alone in a cold, cramped room in a less-than-reputable inn, far from the border on the Edinburgh waterfront, and although Gillian was relieved that she hadn’t had to endure a repeat of the marriage bed, she was very much afraid of being left alone, and she was very much afraid that he wasn’t coming back.

Biting her bottom lip to keep her teeth from chattering, Gillian leaned her head against the windowpane and sighed, watching as her breath coated the glass once again. She hadn’t liked the things he’d done to her beneath the bed covers, but she had liked him. Even loved him. He had been quite dashing and a wonderfully romantic companion—right up until he’d relieved her of her maidenhead.

She wasn’t sure if her misgivings about the marriage had begun at that very moment, but sometime between her romantic elopement and the loss of her maidenhead, Gillian had begun to have severe doubts about Colin and reservations about their future.

She discovered, upon losing her virginity, that she was married to a stranger. Colin changed so much in that brief time that Gillian barely recognized him. It was almost as if, having succeeded in marrying her, he no longer wanted her. It was almost as if he didn’t care about her at all. Gillian glimpsed it in his eyes, heard it in his voice, and she began to worry.

She told herself that she had imagined the change. She told herself that Colin loved her. She told herself there was any number of reasons for the way he looked at her and the way he spoke to her. She could tell he was disappointed. But he was her husband, for better or for worse, and Gillian did her best to please him.

But she’d only had three days in which to prove her devotion. He had left, and now she feared for his safety as much as for her own. She knew his work was dangerous, knew he could be captured—perhaps even wounded or killed—and she’d tried to be brave and strong and patient, but it was hard to be brave and strong and patient when she was plagued by hunger and cold and loneliness and the constant nagging fear that somehow everything had gone terribly wrong.

If only he’d left her with some money or her jewelry or something of value to trade for coal and food. If only he hadn’t needed it all. Gillian bit her bottom lip a little harder, hoping the pain in her lip would distract her from the empty rumbling of her belly and the cold.

She had never thought of herself as a particularly selfish person and would have willingly given her husband the cash and coin she kept tucked away in the hidden pocket of her reticule for emergencies, if he’d only said he needed it.

But Colin hadn’t mentioned needing her emergency money to finance his journey. He’d simply taken it, along with her grandmother’s pearl earrings and the gold locket her parents had given her to mark her fourteenth natal day.

Three days after their marriage, Colin had taken everything she had, slipped silently out of their room, and disappeared. And she didn’t know if he was coming back for her.

During the past few days, Gillian had suddenly become aware of the precariousness of her situation. She’d been so busy worrying about her husband and the state of her marriage that she hadn’t given a moment’s thought to herself. But then she realized she had no money to pay for the coal for the fireplace or for the little luxuries she’d always taken for granted, like food and hot water and clean clothes, a bed to sleep in, and a roof over her head. Gillian supposed it was cowardly to admit it, but she was a stranger in a strange land, and she’d suddenly become very aware that any day now, she could find herself at the mercy of innkeepers she could not pay.

She couldn’t go back home. Edinburgh was a long way from London and without money her best option had been to go down to the docks and obtain passage on her father’s ship, The Lady Dee. Gillian calculated that it should still be anchored in the firth, but her room faced the close instead of the waterfront. Unfortunately, her only access to windows that faced the waterfront was the inn’s taproom, and her first foray into that territory had proved disastrous. After being rudely and roughly accosted by several of the inn’s drunken patrons, Gillian had been forced to call the innkeeper for help. He’d escorted her to her room and strongly suggested that she remain there where she was safe.

But later that day, Gillian had tried again. She avoided the taproom on her second attempt to find out if The Lady Dee was still in port by slipping out of her room and down the back stairs. She’d gotten as far as the laundry before the sudden appearance of a gang of sailors sent her ducking into a storeroom. She’d pressed her back against the wall of the storeroom, barely breathing as the sailors lurched past her. She thought briefly about presenting herself to them, of throwing herself on their mercy and begging to be taken to the captain of The Lady Dee, but her sense of self-preservation prevailed. These men were common sailors. Drunken sailors. Gillian could smell the rum and grog they’d consumed and she could tell from their conversation that they’d been months at sea and were currently on the prowl for loose women. She was a woman alone. Appealing to their sense chivalry was risky at best and useless at worst.

Praying for courage, Gillian fought to maintain control of her shaking limbs as she waited for the group of men to stagger past.

“Are you looking to get yourself raped?”

Gillian turned to find the innkeeper’s wife standing beside her. “N-no.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Mistress Douglas demanded.

“I wanted to see the ships in the harbor.”

The innkeeper’s wife narrowed her gaze. “Why?”

“I heard The Lady Dee was in port.”

“She was,” the innkeeper’s wife replied. “But she’s gone. Sailed on the morning tide.”

“Are you sure?”

“Very.” The innkeeper’s wife gazed at Gillian, studying her reaction. “If you were looking to book passage on her, you’re out of luck. Course, you’d have been out of luck anyway. She was fully loaded. There wasn’t any room for passengers. And there’s the matter of your bed and board at the inn. I don’t hold with folks—even quality folks—skipping out on a bill,” she warned. “If you try that again, I’ll call the constable. Unless you’ve a mind to pay your bill in full tonight...”

Gillian shook her head.

“Then you’d better get back to your room, before I rent it to someone else.”

Gillian had returned to the Blue Bottle and she hadn’t left her room since. There was no reason to leave. Where would she go? And how would she get there? Nor could she guarantee any sort of welcome should she manage to make it home to London.

The best that she could hope for was that her husband would return or that he had posted the note she had written to her parents, informing them of her elopement to Gretna Green as he’d promised to do once they reached Scotland. Gillian had wanted to leave the letter to her parents on her bed, but Colin had insisted that they’d needed a few days’ head start to Scotland in the event that her father decided to pursue them. Colin had reminded Gillian that her father was much more likely to accept their marriage if it was a fait accompli when the baron learned of it. And Gillian had agreed because it had sounded so romantic when Colin suggested it. They were two lovers marrying in secret like Romeo and Juliet. Gillian scoffed at her foolishly romantic heart. She should have known better than to be swept off her feet. She should have known better than to accept the first romantic proposal or succumb to the lure of the flattery and the first romantic kiss she’d ever received.