Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
The return to London after Christmas ought to have felt familiar, for Jillian had made the journey countless times—often with a novel balanced on her knee and a tidy mental list of tasks awaiting her in the city.
Yet nothing about this return resembled any she had ever taken.
She sat across from her husband—her husband, a word that still startled her whenever it crossed her thoughts—and could not help noticing how everything seemed subtly and irrevocably altered.
The winter light filtering through the carriage windows felt different.
The breath of cold air that slipped through the seams felt different.
Even the iron rattle of the wheels on the road sounded different.
She had left London as Lady Jillian Hale, a self-sufficient bluestocking with no expectations beyond surviving another season of matchmaking.
She returned as Mrs. Miles Fairfax, newly wed under circumstances already whispered across half the countryside.
Fairhaven’s gossip—greedy, tireless, and resourceful—would not stop at the borders of Yorkshire.
It would ride ahead of them, reaching London long before their carriage turned onto Berkeley Square.
And London would be waiting.
With curiosity.
With delight.
With sharp, glittering judgment.
Jillian tugged her gloves more snugly, nerves prickling beneath her skin.
Miles sat opposite her, book in hand, the picture of quiet composure—yet she saw the faint tightening around his eyes.
He had worn that expression the first morning at Fairhaven, when she accused him of looking perpetually irritated by the world. The memory drew a small smile from her.
He noticed instantly.
“What is it?” he asked, lowering his book. “You are smiling. Should I prepare myself for calamity?”
She tilted her head. “Are my smiles so ominous as that?”
“Not ominous,” he said mildly. “Simply… meaningful.”
The book was already forgotten, his gaze fixed wholly on her.
Jillian felt her cheeks warm and looked out the window as if the frozen countryside could save her.
“I was thinking,” she said at last, “of how impossible all of this seemed a fortnight ago. Had someone told me then that I would return to London with you as my husband, I would have diagnosed them with overactive imagination.”
“I would have agreed,” Miles murmured. “And yet here we are. Fate appears to have conspired rather effectively.”
“Do not say that to Beatrice,” Jillian warned. “She will claim supernatural intervention.”
“She already claims it,” he reminded her dryly. “She will not surrender the notion that the ghosts of Fairhaven arranged our wedding.”
Jillian sighed, half amused, half resigned. “Well. Whatever the cause, we must prepare ourselves. Society is going to descend upon us like wolves.”
“I had hoped for at least a day’s reprieve,” he admitted.
“There will be no reprieve,” she said gently. “We are too unlikely a match. Too surprising. Too tempting to gossip. Half the matrons of Mayfair will call simply to see if you look cowed by matrimony and whether I have become docile.”
“I shall disappoint them,” Miles said at once. “I do not cow. And you do not docile.”
Her laughter—quick, warm, unexpectedly intimate—filled the carriage and eased something tight in her chest. He reached across the small space between them and took her hand, his thumb stroking softly over her knuckles. A small gesture, but one that sent a flutter of heat through her.
In the days since their wedding, she had expected awkwardness or distance to grow between them, but instead she found something steadier.
They had faced Helena’s shock, Henry’s dismay, Beatrice’s triumphant proclamations, the Hartingtons’ collapse, and the endless whispers of Fairhaven—all as a united front.
Somehow, with each challenge, they learned a little more about how to stand together.
London, though, was an entirely different battlefield.
Still—Miles’s fingers remained twined with hers.
And that might be enough.
Miles had braced himself for London’s reaction with the stoic resolve of a man preparing for siege warfare, but even he had underestimated the capital’s efficiency.
Their carriage had barely rolled to a halt before his townhouse when half the neighborhood seemed to swarm the steps in a flutter of bonnets and raised lorgnettes.
Jillian stepped down first—and Mrs. Peabody launched toward them with a shriek high enough to startle horses halfway down the street.
“Married!” the woman wailed. “Married at Christmas! Married without a whisper of notice! My dear Mr. Fairfax, the entire district is beside itself!”
Miles offered a polite bow. “I regret that our union did not afford London a longer engagement to dissect, but circumstances being what they were—”
“What circumstances?” Mrs. Peabody demanded, leaning forward with ravenous interest.
Jillian, with impeccable calm, replied, “The circumstances of meeting a gentleman who did not require three seasons and a committee of aunts to determine whether I might be tolerable company.”
Mrs. Peabody blinked, startled into silence—then retreated in a flurry of offended skirts.
She was immediately replaced by Lord and Lady Pembridge, then by the determined Miss Headley—whose prior obsession with Miles had been nothing short of alarming—and by three formidable matrons who examined Jillian with the critical interest of jewelers appraising diamonds.
Through it all, Jillian stood straight-backed and utterly composed, her chin lifted, her gaze steady. Miles admired her more fiercely than he could say.
When the townhouse door finally shut behind them with a sound of solid, blessed finality, Jillian exhaled and removed her gloves with meticulous care.
“That,” she said, “went better than expected.”
“Better?” Miles echoed, aghast. “Three people asked if I had been coerced, one implied elopements are romantic in precisely the wrong way, and Lady Pembridge suggested you must possess dangerous charms to have captured me.”
Jillian arched a brow. “Do you disagree?”
He stepped closer, sliding a hand lightly to her waist. “I am coming to appreciate that your charms are numerous,” he murmured, “and devastating.”
She flushed—but she did not retreat. “Flatterer.”
“Married man,” he corrected softly. “Which affords certain privileges.”
Her laughter—warm and low—wrapped around him like a welcome fire. He bent to kiss her cheek, brief yet unmistakably intimate.
The butler cleared his throat.
“A note has arrived, sir.”
Miles exchanged a grimace with Jillian. “They are faster than I anticipated.”
“Like vultures,” she murmured.
The note was from Lady Gilmartin. The entire Ton demanded their presence.
Miles groaned. “We have been home for five minutes.”
“You were overly optimistic,” Jillian said solemnly.