Chapter 9 #2
“Thank you,” she murmured, slipping it from between his fingers.
She paused for an excruciating moment, then turned to fix her hair as well as she could, blind.
“Mr. Moore, though I know you have done much for me already, I would ask that you repeat to no one what you witnessed tonight.”
His brow furrowed, not believing what he was hearing. “Pardon? You would not wish De Rees brought to justice? Miss Tate, I will not accept—”
“You must! For what justice will there be?” Miss Tate scoffed sadly, bringing her hands into her lap.
“The man will either say that he did not touch me or proclaim gladly that he did, but I was a willing participant. In either case, I would be ruined... No one would believe me even if I attempted to defend myself, even if I spoke the truth as I know it happened.”
“I believe you,” he said, a paltry offer of support.
Nicholas had lived too long, seen too much of polite society, to know that Miss Tate was unfortunately right. And he snarled at the thought, hiding the intensity of his disgust for De Rees, for all men like him, from Miss Tate.
“That is because you do not know...” She stopped herself, shaking her head.
“What is it? What do I not know?”
Miss Tate wiped her eyes again, though this time they were dry. “You know who my father is,” she spoke ambiguously.
“I know his name, yes.”
“But you have not heard...” Evidently, she realized that he had not, because her eyes widened in surprise. “Well then, I shall not be the one to tell you.”
“Miss Tate, you puzzle me more with every second that passes. Is there aught you wish to tell me or not? Now is not the time for being coy, I am sure you will agree.”
She fell quiet, then began folding his soiled handkerchief into a square.
“Mr. De Rees believed he could have his way with me because my mother was mad, and they believe me to be mad too.”
She fell silent. So did Nicholas.
“If you did not learn it when we first met, you may well have learned it since,” she murmured. “You truly did not know?”
He had asked George what he knew of Miss Tate the day they had first met. But George—genteel, polite George—had only shared with him the most basic information: her name, her father’s rank, the place where she had been born.
Taking a moment to consider her words, Nicholas found himself without a reply. He had come to Oxford with hopes of a tabula rasa. To have found himself entangled with the daughter of a madwoman, someone who claimed that she too was mad, was hardly going to support his case in London.
Though when he looked at Miss Tate, when he considered everything he knew about her, the strength, the kindness, the wit she had shown so far, it seemed unlikely she had inherited the maladies of her forebearers.
Unlikely but not impossible, he thought. You are allowing your admiration for the woman to compromise your judgment. It is not the first time you have been lured in by a pretty face. Or have you forgotten recent times in London?
“I could not speak on the matter,” he replied carefully. “I know nothing of you.”
She laughed grimly, and Nicholas immediately wanted to recant his answer.
“No?” she asked, then lamely wiggled her bloody fingers at him. “Not even a little something?”
“Well, perhaps now I am not so certain. A sane woman would not seek to cast doubt on such a thing...” he confessed with a little mirth, made uneasy by her confession as affection and caution warred inside him.
She smiled sincerely for the first time since he found her. “It does not matter. Whatever I am or am not... Mr. De Rees sought to take advantage, and...” A beat. “If you would, still, keep this secret for me... I would be in your debt for as long as we both live.”
He stood firm. “You cannot expect me not to seek him out, especially considering what you have divulged—”
“Do not,” she ordered, seeming to surprise herself with the passion of her command. “My family has suffered enough already because of me. You need not play the gallant knight for my sake.”
“Perish the thought.”
“Still, please, do not interfere, sir.”
Nicholas hesitated for a second, then ultimately nodded, though he was still convinced De Rees deserved to face the harshest punishment. “You are a strange woman,” he said. “Not mad perhaps—I shall reserve judgment on that matter for now—but strange indeed.”
“You only have yourself to blame for feeling I hid my strangeness from you,” she quipped. “No sane woman would recruit a man like you to lie to her landlord. You should have known from the first what I was.”
“I knew you only to be desperate.”
“A thin line.”
“Hm.”
Seeing no reason to denounce her—least of all to incriminate himself—Nicolas assented at last. “If you do not wish me to involve myself for the time being, then I will not. But I would heartily recommend you—”
“You need not say another word, sir, for it would be spoken in vain.”
Knowing he was defeated—knowing he should not have cared anyway about this woman he barely knew—he extended his hand for her to take, lifting her to her feet. She stumbled slightly forward, colliding with him again. Softly, this time.
“Mad,” Nicholas whispered, looking down at her. She could not have been mad. Not with eyes like hers. “I...”
He did not know what he had planned to say, and it did not matter. The moment his lips parted, the doors nearby creaked open and laughter flowed therefrom.
Panic flashed in Miss Tate’s face as she quickly stepped back. She looked helplessly toward Nicholas, who edged toward the balustrade, prepared to jump over and run. Being caught together, no matter the circumstances, would only result in calamity.
He shot into a stand as the door whined open, confident that Miss Tate would lie about their meeting under dark.
But the moment he sought to leave, he caught movement from Miss Tate in the corner of his eye.
Her face, no longer panicked, was frozen in terror. Her hands clutched at her chest, and suddenly, her body convulsed.
Nicholas’s blood turned to ice in his veins as she fell toward the ground, spasms wracking her body. He had never seen anything like it in his life, but jumped quickly to action.
“Miss Tate,” he cried, catching her before she hit the ground. “Miss Tate!”
“Amelia?” a shocked voice said from behind him.
There were more bodies, then, closing in on them. Hands and fingers reaching for the convulsing form of Miss Tate. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and a woman screamed.
“Fetch Papa!” someone ordered. “You must fetch him now!”
Nicholas held on to Miss Tate fiercely as the door opened and closed behind him. He froze in fear, brushing the hair out of her face.
“What is the matter with her?” he asked. “Miss Tate, please—”
“The Duke of Avon...” the woman beside him gasped. “But it is you...! What were you doing with my cousin?”
A more complicated question had never been asked.
Nicholas glanced at the woman beside him—his eyes leaving Miss Tate for only a second. She resembled Miss Tate somewhat. A relative...
A relative who had seen Nicholas with Miss Tate. Who, despite the agony her cousin suffered, smiled at the sight of him.