The Elopement by Megan Chance Read Free Book Online

more than you say. We are all more like each other than you suppose.”
    A laugh burst from his lips. “My God, I hope not!”
    She was filled with impatience. “Tell the driver to hurry.”
    “Are you certain? Be certain, my love. Would you not rather I ask him to go slow, and we make love the way we did before? Do you remember it? It was in this very carriage. You were moaning beneath my hands—”
    “Of course I remember it!” she burst out. “Oh, why can’t we go faster?”
    She noted his sudden pained silence and thought with sorrow that she’d hurt him, and when he said acerbically, “Don’t worry. We’ll make it in time. Your precious reputation will be untarnished,” she knew it for certain, and she wanted to cry. To hurt him was not what she wanted to do, but every decision she’d made since she’d met him had been wrong. All but one.
    The carriage jerked, hard enough that they were both thrown out of their seats. She heard a shout, a terrible crack, and a sharp cry of terror from the horses, and then the floor tilted and he was falling into her and they were both flailing about, unable to gain purchase, tumbling like stones in a current, helpless. She was aware of pain and confusion, and then the carriage settled, suddenly still. They were tangled together, and she still didn’t understand what had happened. Pain lashed through her shoulder; she let out a little cry, and then she heard the jangle of harness and the scrabbling of boots, and he was saying to her in a frightened tone, “Are you all right? Tell me you’re all right!”
    The door above them opened—it was only then that she realized that the door was not where it was supposed to be, but above her head, and the window was now the floor, and she was knotted together with him, his elbow jammed painfully into her shoulder.
    The driver peered down at them. “Miss? Sir? Are you hurt?”
    “No,” she said, struggling to free herself.
    Her lover helped her regain herself, a gentle hand, a concern in his eyes that surprised her—why, she wondered, should she be so surprised at that?
    “What the devil happened?” he asked the driver.
    “The wheel cracked,” the man told them, reaching down to help her to her feet. “Flew clean off and splintered into bits. There’s no repairing it.”
    “No repairing it?” she asked in dismay.
    The driver shook his head sorrowfully. “I’ll have to find someone to help. There was a house a few miles back. Should only take an hour or so for me to walk there.” He cocked his head to look over his shoulder, back out the door at the falling sunlight. “Won’t be back before dark, though.”
    Her heart sank. She felt it all slipping away, falling from her grasp. “That will be too late.”
    She did not look at her lover. Not when he and the driver helped her climb clumsily from the carriage and then he climbed out himself. Not until the driver set off down the road, and the two of them were sitting on the axle while the horses grazed nearby. Not until he said, “Well, it’s done then.”
    His hands were clasped between his knees. His dark hair came forward to hide his face. She felt something in him she had never felt before. Dismay, she thought, and then he looked up, and she saw it wasn’t dismay at all. It was despair.
    A despair that matched her own. She said, “Michael will never forgive this.”
    “Nor should he,” her lover said. He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Once the wheel is fixed, we’ll go on. We’ll be married as soon as we can. They’ll forgive us. Eventually.”
    She said nothing. How could she tell him that their judgment wasn’t what frightened her? That it had never been what frightened her?
    A flock of starlings rushed overhead in a cloud of fluttering wings, descending into a nearby tree with the setting sun. They were loud, twittering. She thought of the canary that Michael had given her. How he’d said it reminded him of her, and she felt that woman—the