Chapter 2 #2
As of now, only Higgins and Flack were aware of Miles’s apparent misconduct.
Miles didn’t like to think how the rest of the paper would react on hearing that he’d been discovered in a compromising position with a source for one of his stories.
And in his office, no less, during the height of the business day.
It didn’t matter that Miles could explain it all.
Middle-class morality demanded more than excuses and apologies.
It was an exacting arbiter, defined by suffocating conventionality and a hidebound adherence to proper behavior.
A workingman—a self-made man—had little else but his good name to recommend him. To lose that was to lose everything.
Higgins caught up with Miles in seconds. “Your hat, coat, and gloves, sir,” he said, passing the items to him.
Miles took them. He shrugged on his coat as he walked. His gloves came next, obscuring the evidence of where Shadow had bitten him. He made a mental note to apply a poultice to the wound at the first opportunity—whenever that might be.
Higgins hurried along at his side, matching every one of Miles’s long strides with two of his own. “And here’s that package that was delivered for you.” He extended a small box, wrapped in brown paper and twine.
Miles accepted it with a distracted frown. “Who did you say—”
“A street boy, sir. Claimed a beggar woman paid him a penny to give it to you. He didn’t know who she was—or who might have put her up to it.”
“Of course not,” Miles said irritably. He tucked the box in the inner pocket of his coat. Up ahead, Miss Trewlove vanished through the door at the end of the hall, moving extraordinarily briskly for a lady obliged to rely on a cane.
A cane.
Miles hadn’t even noticed it when he’d first entered the office and seen her seated there. And he prided himself on noticing everything.
It wasn’t the first mistake he’d made with her. It had been misstep upon misstep since the instant she’d lifted her veil, all of it culminating in that ultimate moment when they’d been caught, compromised.
And he didn’t even know her given name.
Yet.
He overtook her on the stairs as she descended to the ground floor. “Miss Trewlove—”
“Do you have any idea where he’s staying?” she asked abruptly.
“Pettiman? No. I presumed he lived near enough not to require a hotel. As I recall, I wrote to him at his premises in—”
“In Waltham Abbey, yes. But he’ll have taken a room for the night somewhere. He values his comforts too much to travel to town and back in the same day.” She opened the door to the street before Miles could do it for her.
He caught it with his hand, holding it for her anyway. It was impossible to tell whether she appreciated his effort at chivalry. That dratted veil was covering her face again. She walked under his arm without breaking stride.
She didn’t stop until she reached the pavement facing the busy street. Private coaches rolled past, interspersed with teeming carts and an overcrowded omnibus. “I must hail a hackney.”
“I’ve ordered my carriage,” Miles said, coming to a halt beside her. “You’ll find it more comfortable than a cab.”
Her head jerked in his direction. “I told you—”
“I heard you,” he said. “And I trust you heard me.”
She drew herself up to her full height. It wasn’t much. Even with her hat on, she scarcely reached his shoulder. “It’s no business of yours, sir. I’m the one who will be obliged to face the consequences of this disaster, not you.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” he said grimly.
She didn’t seem to comprehend his meaning. Either that or she was being willfully blind to it. “It’s always the women who must pay the price,” she continued. “But I won’t refine on it. Whatever happens next—”
“Concerns us both now.”
“Really, sir,” she protested.
“Really, Miss Trewlove,” he volleyed back, rapidly losing what was left of his patience. “I don’t know what sort of gentlemen you’ve been used to dealing with, but I don’t shirk my responsibilities to a lady. Any lady.”
His carriage rolled up in front of them before she could supply a suitably sharp retort. Miles had no doubt that she wanted to. He could feel her efforts at self-restraint vibrating through her crinoline-clad frame.
He opened the carriage door. Stepping back from it, he offered his hand to assist her in. “If you would allow me, ma’am?”
Miss Trewlove hesitated a fraction of a second before grudgingly setting her hand in his. “It’s Penelope,” she informed him tightly. “Or Nell, rather, since it seems we must be intimates.”
Nell.
Miles’s jaded heart performed a troubling double thump.
He was already weighed down with too many burdens. Societal backlash from his articles, dwindling newspaper sales, a missing reporter, and an as-yet uncongenial street cat residing in his office, to name a few. He had neither the means nor the desire to take on another troublesome concern. And yet…
As he handed Nell into the carriage, he felt all at once the profound responsibility he had for her. He hadn’t asked for it. Hadn’t wanted it. But after today, it was his.
She was his.
The prospect, he found, wasn’t as repellent as he had earlier imagined it.