That first night, their wedding night, she sat in the bedroom, tense and fearful, waiting for him to come to her. She sat by the window, shivering and staring out into the darkness, seeing nothing, but determined to stay as far away from the big double bed as she could. She kept her eyes averted from it, trembling at the thought of what she must endure. Carrie was no maiden, afraid of the unknown. Her fear lay only in that, having known the joys of loving with Jamie, she must now submit to the passions of a man she did not love. They had been welcomed into the inn by the beaming landlord, who, though she could see the question in his eyes, politely ignored the incongruity of a well-dressed gentleman accompanied by a gypsy girl. “I’ll be wantin’ a double room,” Lloyd Foster had said firmly, and Carrie had felt a twinge of revulsion at the thought of what was to happen that night. “An’ mind the bed is clean and warm for my wife, an’ a fire in the grate.”
