Chapter Nine #3
Jane took to the bellpull and told Sabine that Nell needed more food, and soon a small spread of cheese and fruit arrived, along with another pot of hot water.
Nell tucked into the sharp, salty cheese with satisfaction.
She had been very hungry, come to think of it.
Nell assured Jane that she would still attend the engagement dinner, and not to rescind Beckett’s invitation, as it would be the height of rudeness to do so.
She also agreed that she would still get a dress with Fatima’s help, and she would prepare many scripts in her head to help manage a long evening of socializing.
Once her friend left, Nell sat down with her writing desk and looked at her correspondence. She had not quite finished one of her more political letters and had not yet touched the chess game. She fell more deeply into her writing and was surprised when Jacobs knocked and entered her rooms.
“Ma’am,” he greeted, but his mouth was in a thin line, and he looked somehow even less impressed with the world than he usually did.
“Do you have the paintings?” Nell asked, forgetting all pretense of greetings and thanks.
“No,” he admitted. “But—”
Nell let out a breath and sagged in disbelief.
“But he is here, ma’am. In the parlor. And he demands to see you.” Jacobs narrowed his eyes, as if Beckett’s presence was a personal insult. Indeed, it might be.
But what could she say? The man was already in the house. She sucked in a breath between her teeth.
“I can tell him you are still feeling poorly, though it would be in direct contradiction to my first assurances to his lordship that you were better.”
“What does he want?”
Jacobs looked at her without answering. Quite right, that was out of the purview of his duties.
She looked down at her hands, even more ink-splattered than usual. And she didn’t even have any lemon juice nearby to help wash it off. “You may tell him I will be down shortly.”
Jacobs turned away, and Nell looked down at her hands.
She felt small. Embarrassed, really. It was shameful to have a past such as hers.
It was shameful to lie and dissemble, and doubly so for a woman, it seemed, as women were already accused of being deceitful for every reason under the sun.
Eve’s original sin and other such nonsense.
She sanded her unfinished correspondence and stood, washing her hands in her basin with the scrap of soap she had left.
It stained the lump with ink, but there was nothing to be done about it.
Then she checked her hairpins and straightened her gown, unpinning the apron she put on before she sat down for her serious writing.
Her clean gowns were dear to her, and she couldn’t go staining them with ink.
Readied, she descended and found Beckett pacing in the parlor. In his hand, he gripped the note she’d written. Her heart pounded and her mouth went dry. She was not good at reading people, but even she could see he was angry with his snorting breaths and wide-legged strides.
“Ah!” he exclaimed when he caught sight of her. His eyes were bright and distracting. “So you are alive.”
“My lord?” she asked.
He shook her note. “What is the meaning of this?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but his shouting had rendered her mute.
Anger was an emotion in others that she didn’t know how to deal with.
Some people lashed out with fists. Others in words.
Others cried, and others still abandoned you.
She did not know which way Beckett expressed his anger, and thus she did not know what to say.
“You don’t show up for our walks. You send an absolute travesty of a note such as this! I thought you dead, Mrs. Reid! Do you know what that felt like? Dead, I tell you! Murdered!”
She closed her mouth. That was a response she hadn’t anticipated. “I—”
“To have your manservant at my door, demanding those paintings and claiming your health to be unimpeachable—then! Oh, then, I open this note to see the most gut-wrenching pleading, not like you at all. Gone was the scathing populist tongue that I have grown fond of, gone was the sense of justice and rightness that pervades every word you utter. Dear Lord God, I stole from you and you abase yourself thus?”
He had stopped his pacing for his speech, rattling the letter at her for punctuation, and then resumed when he’d run out of things to say.
“I had not considered you might think me murdered,” she said, finding her voice. Perhaps Jane had been wrong about how to speak to noblemen. Or this one, at least. She’d always spoken her mind with him, and that seemed to be what bothered him so about her note.
Beckett continued his chastisement, and while she listened attentively, the rest of her mind sorted through his behavior and statements, and the paintings, and found a pattern she thought might be the reason he spoke of murder: He knew.
Or at least, thought that he knew. Oh dear. Her stomach dropped. She hoped he didn’t. Hoped he hadn’t found Billig and the inn, hadn’t found her aged parents, hadn’t found the person she had long since abandoned.
“Would you care for a cup of tea?” she asked while he stomped about.
“What?” He raised his head and looked at her, as if he were coming out of a daze. “Tea? Now?”
Nell nodded. This was an appropriate thing to offer when someone called upon a person. The hostess would provide refreshment; it was an understood back and forth that was predictable. Everyone knew this.
“Mrs. Reid,” he said, his tone impressive and big, as if he were addressing the House of Lords instead of just her. “What is going on?”
Nell chewed her lip. There were many answers to that question, and she didn’t want to start guessing his perspective, lest she give away information she still hoped he didn’t have. “You are upset.”
“You’re goddamn right I’m upset. What have you pulled me into? I’m a member of the House of Lords! I have responsibilities! A reputation!”
Again, not what Nell would have thought he would rant about.
His side of the conversation didn’t follow any sense or structure, or at least not to her mind.
It did help her retreat into herself, however, and keep calm as she examined all of her available information.
But one thing she did know for a certainty: She had done nothing wrong.
There was no cause for a man to push his way into her parlor and demand an apology for something she had no control over.
If there was one thing Nell knew better than any other subject, it was the feeling of powerlessness.
She wouldn’t be made to apologize for being so, for it wasn’t her choice.
When she chose to speak, even she could hear the frost in her voice.
“I would apologize, my lord, but I have done nothing wrong. I have minded my own business, gone about my days as I always have. You have insisted on my company. You stole my paintings. And now you rant about me pulling you into something nefarious. I know not of what you speak, but I can tell you, I did not invite you into anything.”
Beckett gripped the back of the loveseat, as if to steady himself. He wiped his hands across his face. “No, I suppose you haven’t invited any of it.”
He stared into the middle distance, and Nell let him. She knew the value of a good think. She waited.
“Mrs. Reid. I find that I—” He cut himself off, as if he were about to choke.
Nell waited, having nothing to add or to say herself. She had no predictions as to what he might say next, lending the moment an exhilarating and terrifying tint.
Beckett cleared his throat and then broadened his gaze to meet hers. His eyes were wild like an unbroken horse’s. What emotion could those be holding in? “Mrs. Reid. I enjoy our morning walks together. Perhaps too much. I have—” Beckett seemed to swallow a lump in his throat and looked away.
She took in his words. Listening, but unable to fully comprehend what he was saying. Their morning walks were a triumphant success, in her opinion. His presence brought her so much peace and companionship, even if they didn’t speak.
“I have missed you the last two mornings. This feeling has made me aware that, er—” Another swallowing. A blush crept up his cheeks. “That I have come to have a regard for you. An affection, one might say.”
This set her eyelids fluttering. “I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, the devil’s bollocks. Mrs. Reid.” He blew air out through his mouth, puffing his cheeks. “What I am trying to say, is that I enjoy your company.”
She stared at him. And then she realized that he was waiting for her to say something in return. “I enjoy your company as well.”
“And, er—” he winced. “I have come to think of you in the ways that a man might think of a woman.”
Nell would have said that she was a woman that could not be shocked.
But this did. A strangled gurgle came out of her mouth.
Had she not attempted and failed to beguile him?
And now he found he held regard? When she expressed interest, he feinted and dodged, and when she no longer availed herself to him, he pursued?
What sort of inefficient dance was this?
Was she supposed to feint and weave, or was she to accept his attentions?
Was there a choreography that everyone else learned and she had not noticed it all along?
“I didn’t mean for it to sound that way. Oh, damn it all. I meant, that my regard is more than that of friendship, though it is that as well, of course.”
A new feeling shoved away her concerns of a script she didn’t know.
This awkward and faltered speech of his was not unlike her own stunted attempts to show her own interest. This new feeling dazzled her in a way she hadn’t felt before.
It was light, fizzy, lemonade colored, and pure.
Before the fast-churning gears of her mind could stop her, let her consult the encyclopedia of possible reactions, she blurted, “I like you, too.”
He met her gaze and stared, as if she were a three-headed goat.
“I mean.” She leaned forward as if she might have to whisper. “I mean it like what you said. As a woman likes a man. More than any other kind of friend.”
Beckett continued to stare at her, and his dark visage could be seen as intimidating and angry, but she knew it now, and it wasn’t that. It was surprise and hope. Even she could see that. That he was unvarnished here, as vulnerable and open as she was.
“Really.”
Nell nodded once. “Yes. I like that you don’t talk to me. On our walks, I mean.”
He huffed a small chuckle. “Yes, I like that as well.”
“There are so many thoughts to sort through. A person needs space and quiet to think.”
“Yes, one does.”
“But I prefer walking with you. It steadies me. And not just when there’s ice on the ground,” she said, referring to the other morning when she’d slipped and he caught her.
“I’m happy to keep you steady. You…warm me. To others.”
She smiled at him, and he returned it. They had an accord. And her chest fluttered with it.
Jacobs entered the room with an unrequested tea tray. Perhaps it was a way for him to check on them, to make sure she was safe. But she was quite safe. The safest she had ever been. But Nell and Beckett continued to grin at each other, waiting for Jacobs to make his departure.
Jacobs glanced about, but Nell didn’t bother giving him instruction. Apparently satisfied, he left. Once he was gone, Beckett sighed.
“I have never met a woman with whom I wanted to spend all day.”
“Most people are exhausting,” Nell agreed.
Beckett picked his hands off the sofa and approached her as if she might bolt. Her heart thundered like a prey animal, but she did not feel hunted in the least. She felt like something wonderful approached. Like a tray laden with all the best cakes.
And then he was in front of her, and she could hear his breath, also shallow and quick, and the smell of the pomade he used to smooth his hair, and the leather of new boots. “I should like to kiss you.”
“I should also like that.” She echoed his phrasing, staring up into his eyes, unsure, uncertain, but utterly entranced. What would come next was outside of her prior experience.
He cupped his hand at her jaw, tentative and gentle as he edged closer to her.
She reached up to mirror his actions, and he bent his head and touched her lips with his.
As if they had both been struck by a spark, they pulled away, eyes locked.
They rejoined again, mouth to mouth, this time firmer, more insistent.
More pleasurable, new sensations pulsed through her, unveiling a host of experiences that now seemed appealing.
Beckett pulled away from her, his eyes as glazed as hers felt. “I want you to consider all the ways in which we may pursue a future. At the moment, all I can think of is to ask you to be my wife. But that position entails a great deal of pressure. Will you think on it?”
Nell nodded, unable to make her mind speed ahead of her mouth as it typically did.
“I have an appointment to get to, otherwise I would stay with you all day, you know I would.”
Nell nodded again, still struck dumb by him. By this. By them.
“I shall return to you tomorrow for our usual walk?” Beckett looked hopeful, his eyes wide, and an expression soft and open in a way she’d never seen. Or rather, never knew how to recognize before.
“Our usual walk,” she echoed.
And he was gone, and her heart took flight.