Chapter Twelve #4
“And I find that I desire you—” Beckett choked on his words.
“Most ardently.” He cleared his throat. “Which is, in my experience, vanishingly rare. You are the first, as a matter of fact. And as such, you are precious to me, and I find myself doubting my worthiness. That precisely because I want you so badly, that I should not get to have you. Colloquially speaking, of course. I claim no ownership.”
Her stomach flipped over. No one had ever wanted her before. Or at least, not to her knowledge. There was so much more to say. Suddenly, the protection of her identity and smokescreen of her past felt deceitful and vicious. “Beckett, I—”
“And you’ve had a husband, of course, which only churns my guts even more. That you have known a loving embrace as I have not. I shall get over it. I know I can, given sufficient time.”
“Beckett, no.” She put her hand on his shoulder, and he flinched. She pulled her hand away.
“The idea of another man with hands on you. I can’t tell you how that eats at me—” His words were tart and bitter.
“I’m not a widow,” she blurted.
Beckett stopped and turned to her, his eyes wide. “I beg your pardon?”
Nell shook her head, all her words wanting to tumble out at once. The noise in her head was loud, so insistent, she wasn’t sure she could even open her mouth.
“Your husband is still alive?” he choked out.
She could feel his pain like a whirlwind of hurt and pain, threatening to consume them both. It was difficult to speak, and she wished her thoughts could crackle through her bones and into his. “I’ve never had a husband.”
His body, which had previously been subject to minor movements and twitches, stilled completely. “You’ve never had a husband?” he repeated slowly.
Nell shook her head. “I needed the protection of widowhood when I moved to London. Mrs. Dove-Lyon suggested it, knowing there was power in even a fictious man’s family willing to protect me.
We chose the name together and she produced a few forged documents to help my case, should I ever need it.
Otherwise, I could not set up my own accounting. ”
Beckett sat back, letting the news wash over him.
She watched him, wondering if yet again, this truth would wound him.
He rubbed his hands over his face and then into his hair, as if scrubbing a fog from his mind.
But his shoulders relaxed. Whether it was from the knowledge that there had never been a Mr. Reid, or that this was how he looked when solving problems, she couldn’t guess.
“This has to do with the missing painting instructor, doesn’t it?”
So he did know. Her stomach conjured a millstone and dropped it hard in her belly. She should have known that somehow, someone would find out. That any man couldn’t merely disappear in a small village like hers. That there would always be a balance for a life taken. “Yes,” she whispered.
He nodded and sat back in the chair, his spine straight. His demeanor changed, going from the emotional, personal Beckett to the powerful, unimpeachable lord who fixed the empire’s troubles. “Tell me the story then, for I need to know what I have to do.”
“I don’t understand.” While her stomach was weighted down, her brain churned with the sudden appearance of bees.
Her thoughts became erratic now, unable to finish one and move to the next, rather veering from topic to topic, unable to predict what he would do about anything, other than finding clothing that actually fit him once the rain let up.
“As your husband, I would have influence.” His voice was so calm.
As if he were explaining the rules of a resolution being passed in the House of Lords.
As if this—her convoluted past—were something so mundane.
“I need to know what information to bury, who to bribe, what to conceal to keep you safe.”
Her stomach flipped around the millstone. What an acrobat it was this evening. “Oh,” she said, for nothing else came to mind. “This does not scare you?”
Then, her personal Beckett appeared again, and he reached for her hand.
It was a tentative movement, far better suited than her attempt to touch his shoulder.
“I thought it would. I tried to make what I learned about the disappearance of the artist the reason I doubted being with you. But in the end, it was a lie. The reason I doubted you was jealousy. I could not stand the idea of other men being important to you. That you had a past marriage I could never know. But you arriving in London, needing the help of a woman such as Mrs. Dove-Lyon does not make you a person who would commit murder for your own gain. Tell me all, so that I may fix whatever is left.”
For the first time in over ten years, Nell spoke of her past in that small village.
How her parents kept the inn, about her brothers and sisters.
About the day the painting master came and his lessons for the girls.
How she had not been allowed to attend, given her off-putting strangeness, and how she hid in the recesses of the barn to listen to his lectures and then her attempts later, since she could recall his words verbatim.
How, at the time, she did not understand why he would put his arm around a student to guide her paintbrush.
They did not use paints, but tinted water to learn, so why would his hands linger on a waist of a pupil, or dip lower for just a fraction of a second?
His smile was wide and odd to Nell, imbued with meanings she did not understand.
As Nell told of Monsieur Cobb, Beckett’s lips tightened, and his eyes narrowed, but he did not interrupt.
She described sneaking into the barn, where the other students kept their supplies, and using her own tinted water to imitate the lesson from the day.
She kept to the dark corners where no one would catch her if they entered to retrieve any supplies.
And how, on one of those long summer evenings, her sister, Evangeline, the most beautiful of all of them, guided Monsieur Cobb into the barn.
How she spoke of missing brushes, and Nell expected to be caught and beaten for her trespass.
But instead of discovering her in the corner, Monsieur Cobb grabbed her sister’s arm and pulled her into a hard embrace.
Evangeline fought against him, and he pushed her down onto the crates of French brandy her father had just imported.
How Evangeline cried out and kicked and fought, despite the Monsieur Cobb’s paint-stained fingers rucking up the hem of her home-spun dress.
How, with her head full of bees and fear, she picked up the mucking shovel next to the horse stall, a heavy thing she could barely lift, and let it crash down on the painting master’s head.
How Evangeline screamed. How Nell screamed.
How blood, darker than the vermilion Nell would have thought it would have been, coated the soft, dirty boards of the barn floor.
How it seeped below the crates of French brandy and coated the stray pieces of straw.
Evangeline pushed out from underneath the limp body, blood streaking on her dress, spattered on her cheek that she had turned toward him.
Nell had shaken, standing there, frozen, still grasping the handle of the heavy shovel.
It was their mother who followed the sound of the screams, a mother’s intuition that these were not the sounds of a play fight or a surprise discovery of a spider.
The painting master was not dead. Not yet. They wrapped his head and carried him to his unpaid room at the inn. They told the village that he’d fallen on the steps, though no one would have mistaken the wound for anything other than a caving in with a shovel.
Nell continued her story, clear and careful in her detail, how, as the body gave up over the course of days, the blood never fully clotting, the color draining from his skin, their mother wrote letters and scavenged supplies.
It was their clever mother who sent Nell to Mrs. Dove-Lyon, and Evangeline north to distant family.
How she apologized to both of them over and over, telling them they must cut all ties “for our own safety.” That she would not have a child of hers swing for a crime that did the world a favor.
Beckett’s lips twitched as he listened and thought. “Your mother is a wise woman.”
“Indeed she is. Was. I have no idea if she still lives.” It was a sadness that she’d put aside long ago. A fact of her life that was inevitable and inescapable.
“She does,” Beckett said. “I had your background investigated. I—I was so struck by the pathos of your paintings. I wanted to be sure of you. To know that you were who you purported to be.”
“But I am not,” Nell said, confused once more. “I have lied to you. Not on purpose, of course, not because you are you, but to protect myself.”
Beckett’s brows lifted in acknowledgment. “But you seem to be the least capable of true deceit. From all our time together, I know you to be honest to a fault, not even to spare your pride and reputation.”
She chewed her lip. “I do not like to lie.”
They held one another’s gaze until the soft knock on the door preceded the entrance of Sabine and her promised tray of hot goods. The woman’s entrance broke their bubble, and they both looked away.
Sabine left the tray wordlessly, and while she tried to catch Nell’s eye, Nell couldn’t bring herself to return the woman’s gaze.
She felt too raw, too exposed. She was all soft underbelly and possessed none of the protective shell she wore during the day.
The door closed behind Sabine, and they were alone once again.
“May I?” Nell asked, gesturing to the tea tray.
He nodded, and his face was as open and soft as she felt. In a way, it warmed her more than even the fire did. She poured a cup for him and one for herself, ignoring the short decanter of sherry and the two small glasses.