Page 43 of Married to a Frozen Duke
She started at hearing her given name from him.
"Yes?"
"Today was... unfortunate. But it's done now. We're married, for better or worse."
"Much worse, apparently."
"Yes, well. We can make this as miserable as expected, or we can attempt to make it tolerable."
"Tolerable. How romantic."
"Romance was never part of this arrangement."
"No, I suppose not."
"What I'm attempting to say is that we should establish some sort of... understanding."
"What kind of understanding?"
"The kind where we maintain civility despite our circumstances."
"Civility."
"It's better than open warfare."
"That's a rather low bar, Your Grace."
"It's the bar we have," he replied, while the rain intensified.
Chapter Eleven
The rain had progressed from unpleasant to biblical in the hour since they'd left London. Alexander stared out the carriage window at the drowning countryside and wondered if perhaps the universe was trying to tell him something. First, a bride who vomited on him at the altar. Now, what appeared to be a great flood. What next?
"Bad luck Coleridge charm," he muttered under his breath, quiet enough that Ophelia, sitting across from him, wouldn't hear. Though given the drumming of rain on the carriage roof, he probably could have shouted it.
She was pretending to read a small book she'd pulled from her reticule, though he'd noticed she hadn't turned a page in ten minutes. Her face was still pale from the morning's disasters, and every time the carriage hit a rut, which was frequently, given the state of the roads, she pressed her lips together in a way that suggested her stomach hadn't quite forgiven her for earlier.
He should probably feel sympathy. Instead, he felt a sort of grim vindication that she was suffering too. Petty, perhaps, but he was sitting here in his second-best traveling clothes because his wedding outfit was being burned, so he felt entitled to a little pettiness.
The carriage lurched suddenly, more violently than before, throwing Ophelia against the window and Alexander half out of his seat. There was an ominous crack, followed by a grinding sound that definitely didn't belong to any properly functioning vehicle.
"What on earth..." Alexander began, just as the carriage tilted at an alarming angle and stuck fast.
Through the window, he could see the coachman jumping down into what looked like a small lake that had apparentlyreplaced the road. The man's expression as he surveyed whatever damage they'd sustained did not inspire confidence.
"Your Grace," the coachman appeared at the window, water streaming from his hat. "We've hit a rut. A deep one. The wheel's caught, and..." He hesitated.
"And?"
"It's cracked, Your Grace. We're not going anywhere in this carriage."
Alexander closed his eyes and tried to remain calm. Of course the wheel was cracked. Of course they were stranded. He'd married a Coleridge that morning, and clearly their legendary merchant's luck, the bad kind, had transferred to him like some sort of matrimonial plague.
"How far to the nearest inn?" he asked with forced calm.
"There's one about a mile up the road, Your Grace. It's not... that is, it's not the sort of establishment you'd usually..."
"I don't care if it is or not. Can we walk there?"
