Page 12 of The Trouble with a Dare

Chapter 4

Dearest Arabella,

Grace was married this morning. She is now Mrs Oak of Thistley House Farm. I wanted to cry the entire way through the service. Her poor parents tried so hard to look as happy as they ought, but it was clear their hearts were breaking for her.

Henry assures me he is a good man, but I am still worried sick. I am glad to be her neighbour at least and close at hand. I dare not visit at once but intend to call upon her in the next week or so, by which time I pray she may have found her feet. If by any chance you would like to come and visit me—as you promised faithfully you would as you could not attend my wedding—and visit Grace too whilst you are here, I should be so very grateful for your company.

―Excerpt of a letter from Mrs Florence Stanhope (daughter of Lady Helena and Mr Gabriel Knight) to Arabella Grenville, The Most Hon’ble, The Marchioness of Bainbridge (daughter of Mr and Mrs Nathanial and Alice Hunt).

4th of September 1839, on the road to Thistley House Farm, Sussex.

Mrs Grace Oak did her utmost to remember how to breathe. It had always been such a simple thing, something that needed no force of will to accomplish, but that had been before she’d set foot on the path that had led her to this moment. Of late, the simple act of inhaling and exhaling had been something she needed to concentrate upon. Since dawn this morning, the knack had escaped her utterly. She had the forceful conviction that she had been holding her breath since the sun had come up, and her tight chest seemed to back up the fanciful notion.

She glanced sideways, darting a look at her new husband. They had married early that morning at the church in Mitcham Village with her parents, her friend Mrs Florence Stanhope, and Florence’s husband Henry in attendance. Mr Stanhope had acted as best man for Mr Oak—Sterling. No longer Mr Oak. He was Sterling to her now.

Her husband.

She slanted another glance at him, and her stomach pitched and roiled. It had nothing to do with the motion of the carriage, which was very well sprung. It was new, a shiny black-and-yellow phaeton, and had been his gift to her, something that had given her hope he might be a man she could come to like. After all, if he’d been planning on keeping her locked in an attic, as she had once accused him of, he’d hardly have given her something that would grant her freedom.

“It is a very fine carriage, Mr… Sterling.”

He took his eyes off the road long enough to look at her. “Your father said you were handy with the ribbons.”

Grace smiled and nodded. “Yes. He taught me himself.”

Sterling’s dark eyebrows drew together, and he seemed to consider this. “Would you like to…?” he began, offering her the reins.

“Oh, no. Not today. You are clearly proficient, and I enjoy watching a clever whip. I don’t think I could concentrate. I… I am a little overwhelmed, truth be told,” she admitted, hopeful that he might soothe her anxiety with a kind word of reassurance.

“It’s not over yet,” he said, with such a fatalistic air that Grace could have cheerfully kicked him.

“Why, Mr Oak, that sounded positively Gothic,” she said, with forced good humour, for surely, he could not have meant to make her so ill at ease. “You make me feel as if I am about to meet a face worse than death.”

“Close enough,” he muttered. “My mother.”

“Oh.”

This awful pronouncement was enough to strike her dumb until the end of the next lane, where Sterling skilfully manoeuvred his way around a wagon which had been so overloaded with bushels of wheat that its axle had broken. It lurched drunkenly to one side and had spilled much of its precious cargo over the road. Sterling took the horse wide to avoid trampling the crop and nodded sympathetically towards the men stood about it, cursing their rotten luck.

“Your mother does not approve of…. Well, of course she doesn’t,” Grace said with a bitter laugh. “What mother would welcome me in my state? She must despise me.”

Misery welled inside her and it was a long moment before she realised Sterling had pulled the carriage to the side of the road.

“That’s not it.”

Grace turned to look at him, staring into that uncompromising face with no trace of anything soft about it, and felt a desperate surge of despair. With great effort, she fought the emotion down. She would not cry. Her fate was her own and in the state it was because she’d been weak and foolish. This man had saved her, and she owed him everything. The least she could do was not weep all over him.

“She thinks the bairn is mine and you’re never to tell her otherwise. Never. You hear?”

Grace swallowed hard and gave a quick nod.

“She’ll despise you all the same,” Sterling went on, his voice dull. “And I’m sorry for it, but there’s no point in pretending you’ll find her easy. She thinks I’ve married far above my station and that you’ll make a fool of me with your fine ways.”

“B-But why should she think so? You are a gentleman!” Grace exclaimed, some instinctive desire to protect him emerging from she knew not where.

He snorted at that. “By the skin of my teeth, aye.”

Well, admittedly he was rather rough about the edges, but still she felt certain that was more his uneasiness in social situations than any lack of education or manners. “I am proud to call you my husband, Sterling. I could never feel ashamed of the connection and… and I shall try to be of use to you on the farm.”