Page 44 of Married to a Frozen Duke
The coachman looked doubtful, glancing at Ophelia in her silk dress and delicate shoes. "In this weather, Your Grace?"
Alexander was about to say something cutting when another crack interrupted him—this one from above. He looked up just in time to see the luggage, which had been strapped to the roof, break free from its restraints. His valise and Ophelia's trunk crashed down into the mud with a splash that sent brown water flying in all directions.
"Oh no," Ophelia breathed, and for the first time since they'd left, she showed real distress. "My things..."
She was already moving to open the door, but Alexander caught her arm. "You can't go out in this."
"But my trunk...all my clothes..."
"Are already soaked. Getting yourself soaked won't help them."
She looked at him with those brown eyes that were far too expressive for his comfort, and he saw something that looked dangerously close to tears. Not about the morning's humiliation, not about their forced marriage, but about her ruined belongings.
Women and their clothing. Though he supposed for her, those clothes represented her new life, her attempt to fit into his world. And now they were drowning in mud.
"Jeffords," he called to the coachman, "retrieve the luggage. We'll take what we can carry."
"Your Grace, in this rain, walking a mile..."
"Would you prefer we sit here until we grow roots?" Alexander snapped, then immediately regretted it. The man was only trying to help. "We haven't much choice. Retrieve what you can, and we shall walk."
He looked at Ophelia, who was staring at her trunk being pulled from the mud. Even from here, he could see water pouring out of it. "Do you have anything practical to wear?"
She gave him a look that suggested he'd asked if she could fly. "I'm wearing my most practical traveling dress."
He examined the silk creation with its multiple flounces and delicate embroidery. Practical for a duchess, perhaps. For trudging through a storm? They'd be lucky if she made it ten yards.
"Right," he said, more to himself than anyone. "Jeffords, is there an umbrella?"
"Just one, Your Grace."
One umbrella for two people in a deluge. The Coleridge curse was really outdoing itself.
Alexander shrugged out of his greatcoat. "You'll wear this," he told Ophelia.
"But you'll be soaked..."
"I'm going to be soaked regardless. At least one of us might stay marginally dry." He didn't add that he'd rather be wet than listen to her teeth chattering for a mile. That seemed unnecessarily cruel, even for their circumstances.
She took the coat with obvious reluctance. It swallowed her when she put it on, the hem dragging despite her height. She looked like a child playing dress-up, and something about the sight made his chest feel odd but he ignored it.
"Can you walk in those shoes?" He gestured to the delicate slippers peeking from beneath her hem.
"I'll have to, won't I?"
Practical. He hadn't expected practical from a Coleridge. Of course, he also hadn't expected to be standing in a broken carriage in a storm on his wedding day, so clearly his expectations were worth nothing.
They climbed out into the rain, which was somehow worse than it looked. The wind drove the water horizontally, rendering the umbrella almost useless. Alexander held it over Ophelia anyway, though within seconds he was drenched.
"This is insane," he muttered, then louder: "Jeffords, bring what you can of the luggage. We're going."
The road was more river than path. Ophelia took two steps and immediately slipped, only his quick grab of her elbow keeping her from falling face-first into the mud.
"Thank you," she said, having to raise her voice over the rain.
"Try to step where I step," he instructed, though he wasn't sure his boots were faring much better than her slippers.
They made it perhaps fifty yards before she slipped again, this time her shoe staying behind in the mud while she stumbled forward.
