20. Come With Me
COME WITH ME
Rose did not immediately make her report to Nell when she returned to The Domus. She didn’t speak with any of the other women, feeling like doing so would break her apart.
Over the next few days, she moved through the house as though she were no longer entirely inside her own body. She helped the maids prepare the receiving rooms. Tested every bellpull and latch. Reviewed the evening menus and checked the household lists.
All the ordinary things she had done a hundred times before.
Only now, each one felt like a farewell.
Because she wouldn’t have the choice of staying at The Domus—with or without Reginald Preston.
At times, Rose would stop and force herself to notice everything—the gleam of the polished banister, the murmur of women talking in the corridor, the scent of bread drifting up from the kitchen. She tried to press it all into her memory before it was taken away.
At other times, the days passed so quickly they frightened her.
And always, just below the surface, was Reginald’s offer.
Come with me.
He had offered her the world. Foreign ports. Open seas. A life beyond London and anything she had ever dared imagine.
Freedom. Affection. Him.
She wanted all of it so badly it hurt.
But wanting and needing weren’t the same.
And she needed The Domus. A need that went much deeper than habit or fear.
Before The Domus, Rose had had nothing that belonged to her. Not even her own body. Every decision had been made by hunger, cold, or whichever person held power over her that day.
There had been no future. Only the next meal. The next night. The next danger she had to survive.
People who had always slept behind locked doors could not understand how narrow the line could be between living and dying.
Rose had lived on that line once.
She had survived because of The Domus.
And now she would have to find some way to survive without it again. Reginald had made that clear.
He had promised money. Assistance. Time to make other arrangements.
But whenever Rose tried to imagine what those arrangements might be—where she would go, how she would live, who she would become without this place—her thoughts simply stopped.
Panic rose too quickly. Too sharply.
The closure of The Domus would not merely mean losing her home and her livelihood. It would mean facing everything The Domus had saved her from—the streets, the hunger, and most of all the knowledge that she’d once again be all alone.
Despite all of Lord Reginald’s arrangements.
She was warring with the logic of that when Nell found her.
“You think you have failed,” Nell said.
Rose looked up from the book she had been staring at without reading.
Nell closed the door behind her. “That’s because you are, in fact, very, very close to succeeding.” The kindness in her voice undid what remained of Rose’s control.
“I wish I could believe that. But he’s already decided.” She tossed the book aside. “I tried, Nell. I tried to make him understand, but he isn’t going to change his mind.”
She told Nell everything. His offer. His promise to wait until the month ended. The terrible certainty in his voice when he said the only decision remaining would be hers.
“I’m sorry.” Rose pressed trembling fingers to her lips. “I’m so sorry, Nell. I couldn’t save it.”
For a moment, Nell said nothing.
Rose lowered her hand, bracing herself for anger—or worse, defeat. But Nell’s expression held neither.
“It isn’t over,” she said.
“He’s made his decision.”
“He believes he has.” A fierce light entered Nell’s eyes. “This is a test.”
Rose went still.
“Tomorrow is the thirty-first,” Nell continued. “You must go to him tonight.”
“Go where? He isn’t here!” Rose lifted her hands, gesturing in frustration.
“No. He is aboard his ship.”
The Phantom Gale. The place Reginald considered home.
A chill moved through Rose.
Nell moved closer.
“Go to him there. Finish what you began.” She lowered her voice. “Make him drunk on the thought of you. Make it so he never sleeps without needing your body. Can’t breathe without needing your scent.”
Rose’s pulse quickened.
“Make him need you so badly that denying you feels like denying air itself. And then…”
Nell held her gaze.
“Tell him what you want.”
Rose stared at her, shaking her head. No.
But she already knew what Nell was asking of her.
“He needn’t actually manage The Domus. He need not even approve of it. He only has to leave it standing.”
The plan was a desperate gambit.
But it was also clever. Cold. And devious.
Reginald trusted her. He wanted her. He might even believe that he loved her.
And Nell was asking Rose to use every one of those things against him.
“It won’t work,” Rose said. She couldn’t do it. Could she?
For the first time, something shifted in Nell’s expression. A hint of…
Terror.
Rose saw then that Nell, much like herself, was desperately afraid of losing this place.
This wasn’t just about Rose. It wasn’t just about Reginald.
She studied the woman who had found her half-starved and alone after a particularly bad string of nights.
The woman who had brought her inside, fed her, taught her, and given her the first sense of safety she’d known in years.
Now she was asking Rose to do this one thing.
Rose swallowed against the ache in her throat. Then she nodded.
“Tonight?”
Nell held her gaze.
“Tonight.”