The Marriage Act by Alyssa Everett Page B

carefully over a chair. She’d be more comfortable if she took off her petticoat and stays, but she wasn’t about to strip all the way down to her shift with Welford in the room, husband or no.
    He sat on the bed and tugged off his boots. “I’ll take the floor.”
    “No, I’ll sleep on the floor. I said I would.”
    “Whatever was said, you can’t possibly have credited I would leave my w—a lady to sleep on the floor while I occupy the bed. I’ll take the floor.”
    He would enjoy that, wouldn’t he, if she went back on her word? It would be one more shortcoming he could add to the tally he kept, one more way he’d be in the right and she’d be in the wrong. “I said I would sleep on the floor, and I mean to sleep on the floor.”
    He unbuttoned his waistcoat. “I’m not taking the bed.”
    “Neither am I.”
    He snatched up the quilted coverlet without further comment, leaving her the sheets, blanket and feather pillow. He shook out the quilt and settled it on the flagstone floor, between the bed and the door.
    Not to be outdone, Caro stripped off the blanket and spread it out on the opposite side of the bed, near the window. “You can have the pillow.”
    “Don’t be absurd.”
    She reflected a moment and then took it. She might have promised to sleep on the floor, but the pillow had never been part of their bargain.
    Across from her, Welford rolled his coat into a ball. “Leitner will have my head for treating good tailoring by Weston this way.” Still in his shirt and breeches, he stretched out on the coverlet, tucking the makeshift pillow under his head. “Good night.”
    “Good night.” Caro blew out the candle and likewise got down on the floor, the bed between them. She lay on her back and wrapped the woolen blanket over her.
    The flagstone floor was cold and every bit as uncomfortable as she’d feared. She was tired, but not the least bit sleepy. She closed her eyes and tried to block out all the worrisome thoughts swirling in her head—anxiety for her father, plans for the next day’s journey, the disturbing events of the past half hour, and most of all that Welford was mere feet away.
    He must have been just as uncomfortable as she was, for after a few minutes of silence his voice came from the other side of the bed. “This is ridiculous. Both of us on the floor, allowing a perfectly good bed to go to waste, because you’re too stubborn to give in.”
    “I’m not about to go back on my word.” Drat. She should have thought before she spoke. Now she’d opened the door for one of his acid remarks—
Ah yes
,
we both know how good you are at honoring your promises
or
I
bow to your exalted sense of right and wrong.
    But he only said, “Do as you please. But if you change your mind in the middle of the night, the bed will be unoccupied.”
    She wasn’t going to change her mind. Still, it was a relief he hadn’t leaped on her blunder, and a relief, too, that he wasn’t going to take the bed and then crow about how much more comfortable he was. The floor was hard enough and drafty enough without his adding to her wretchedness. Not that she’d really expected him to take the bed. Welford might be coldhearted, but he was too set in his ways to do something so ungentlemanly.
    As tired as she was, sleep refused to come. Perhaps if she weren’t in her stays...But it sounded as if her husband was equally restless. Every minute or so, the rustle of his tossing and turning punctuated the silence.
    “Welford,” she said into the darkness, “do you ever worry this is how we’re going to live out the rest of our lives—both of us miserable, because neither of us is willing to let the other win?”
    “Win? I assure you, there’s no winning for me in this marriage.”
    “I suppose
win
was the wrong word, and I meant...Oh, I don’t know what I meant.
Give in
or
forgive
or
let go of old wrongs
—”
    “All of which apply to me, I notice, while glossing over your own lack of affection,