Chapter 6 #2
An inexplicable look crossed his face. But he didn’t speak. He didn’t question her. He only waited, his gaze fixing on her face with uncommon attention.
It struck Nell that this was exactly how he must deal with one of his skittish feral cats—all immobility, patience, and quiet. Biding his time in silence until they willingly came to him.
In that moment, she understood why they might.
He stood there, so stoic and capable, an intrepid defender poised between her and an uncertain future. The urge rose up in Nell to confide in him. To lean on him a little.
She sensed that he wouldn’t think less of her for it. Wouldn’t see it as a sign that she was weak or lacking in some way.
And she wondered…
What if she did join her fate to his? Could it really be worse than forging ahead on her own? Or was it the only rational answer? The single, solitary course that would ultimately lead her back to the Academy, the one place in the world where she truly belonged?
She clasped her hands tight in her lap. The certainty she’d always possessed as a teacher had left her. In its place was only fear and indecision, and the desolate, dreadful feeling that she was completely and utterly on her own.
“It seems I was mistaken,” she said. “The situation is rather more serious than I’d allowed. Which is to say that you were right. Our happiness doesn’t matter. We must salvage our reputations, however we can. Both of our reputations.”
Miles regarded her steadily. His expression was as unreadable as it had often been in town. Then, Nell had born it because she’d had to. He’d been a stranger and an adversary. But not now.
“Don’t do that,” she said.
“What?”
“Don’t be so…so dashed inscrutable. This isn’t easy for me. And it’s more difficult still when I feel I’m alone in my distress—”
“I don’t mean to distress you.”
“Whether you mean to or not—”
“Nell,” he said gently.
Her throat clogged on an unexpected swell of emotion. She fought tears, reflecting that perhaps an unfathomable Miles was preferable if the barest kindness from him could provoke such an ill-timed reaction.
“Pettiman sent an express to Miss Corvus,” she told him.
“She says that the Academy’s benefactors may soon call for my dismissal.
If I remain, it will harm the school. Which I’ve no wish to do.
I packed my things this morning. As I see it, I have but two choices.
I can either go to Mrs. Royce in hopes that she’ll take me in or… or I can go to you.”
Miles drew closer to her, blocking out the tower window and the stone manor house, too, shielding her from everything and everyone but him. “To me,” he said. “Obviously.”
· · · · ·
Miles waited for Nell to answer, his heart thudding with unusual heaviness in his chest. She’d accused him of being inscrutable.
And he was. He knew he was. It was a skill he’d learned in hard school.
Never showing his rivals what he was thinking.
Never betraying weakness, or an excess of strength.
Being, in short, something next door to invisible.
“It’s the work that matters,” his mother had taught him. “That’s where you must shine. It’s the only way for people of our class to excel—by being better than all the rest. You just keep your head down and forget about anything else.”
Miles had taken her words very much to heart.
He’d seen the truth of them during his apprenticeship, and later when he’d signed on at the Courant as a junior reporter.
Work was how he distinguished himself, not through physical intimidation of his enemies, eloquence with young ladies, or an overzealous investment in social causes.
He’d learned to be cold, methodical, abstract.
None of which served him now.
Nell sat before him, eyes luminous with unshed tears and her plaited flaxen hair glinting with threads of gold in the sunlight that shimmered through the branches of the tree.
Standing over her in that moment, Miles was entirely at the mercy of emotion—both hers, and his own.
A baffling state, and one to which he was completely unaccustomed.
As ever, when confronted with anything he couldn’t rationalize, he reacted by over-rationalizing it.
He sank down on the stone bench beside her, close enough that he caught the elusive fragrance of her perfume.
Some delicate floral something (gardenia, possibly?), applied so lightly as to be little more than a secret.
It tickled at the back of his consciousness, faint but persistent, reminding him that this wasn’t a typical business contract he was negotiating.
“You can’t deny the logic of it,” he said. “The Royces are still abroad. But I’m here. I have a house. A carriage. Adequate means. And there’s the scandal itself to be addressed. Going to live with Mrs. Royce won’t quell it. While if you married me—”
“Yes,” she said softly.
“—we might begin to stanch some of the talk. We can start with my staff at the paper, and then…” Miles trailed off, belatedly registering her reply. He stared at her, his pulse thrumming in his ears. “I’m sorry, did you say yes?”
She gave him a stricken look. “Oh God. Were you not proposing?”
“I was,” he assured her. “I just…” He bent his head on a huff of incredulity. “I hadn’t anticipated you would accept me.”
Not so quickly. Not without a great deal more in the way of rhetorical persuasion.
“Neither had I,” she admitted. “But circumstances being what they are—”
“Quite,” he agreed.
“It’s the logical course, as you say.”
“Eminently logical.”
Her mouth trembled. “I only wish…”
Miles impulsively took her hand. Feeling her fingers curving tentatively around his in return, he was overcome by a feeling he couldn’t begin to interpret.
It was some bewildering mix of protectiveness and possessiveness.
A fierce and powerful elixir that tightened his muscles and deepened his voice.
“Social pressure may have precipitated this match,” he said, “but it needn’t define it. Our marriage can be anything we want it to be. You need only dictate the terms and I will respect them.”
Her brows knit. “Do you mean that?”
“Try me,” he said.
She looked at him for a long while. “There is one thing.”
“Name it.”
“Miss Corvus has indicated that, in time, I may resume my teaching duties. When that day comes, you wouldn’t object, would you?”
Miles sensed an unspoken question within her question. A hidden catch he couldn’t yet discern. He studied her face. She was still so much a mystery to him. It didn’t put him off. Rather the opposite, much to his consternation. “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t object.”
Relief glimmered in her eyes.
“Anything else?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t think now. Not clearly.”
“There’s no expiration on my offer,” he said.
He meant it. Despite his imposing size and his frequent bouts of bad-tempered impatience, he wasn’t a brute. Once they wed, Nell could remain safe in her box and Miles in his. He spent most of his time at the office. She need hardly see him if she didn’t want to.
It was the normal way of fashionable marriages. Each party existing in their individual spheres. Only meeting at night, and sometimes not even then.
Why should his marriage to Nell be any different? Indeed, once they got over the initial upheaval of the arrangement, they could both go on with their separate lives, as countless other couples did.
Except that Nell wasn’t a typical society bride. She was a member of the same secretive organization as Mrs. Royce. And not only a member. Until now, Nell had been deputy headmistress of Miss Corvus’s Academy.
Miles had an idea of what that might mean.
His research into the place hadn’t been completely unproductive.
He’d learned enough to understand that the Academy wasn’t just a charity school, raising orphan girls to exceed their expectations.
It was, he suspected, a training ground for formidable females intent on upending the patriarchy one uncooperative man at a time.
They had begun with Viscount Compton. Who knew where they might end?
And now Miles was proposing to marry one of them.
Nell seemed to read his thoughts, and to echo them in her own uncertainty. Her gaze fell to their clasped hands—his encased in a large black glove and hers small and bare and vulnerable. A frown worked its way across her brow. “I don’t know anything about you outside of your work.”
“Nor I you,” he said.
A thoughtful line etched her forehead. Several seconds passed. “It was here I fell,” she said.
“Fell? When?”
“When I was a girl. I was there, on the roof of the tower, helping a friend down, when I lost my grip.”
Miles followed her gaze to the roof’s edge. Understanding came, and with it a swift sense of dismay. Was this the cause of her limp? A four-floor drop to the ground? His hand tightened instinctively on hers. “Good God, Nell. What in blazes were you doing on the roof? You might have been killed.”
“But I wasn’t. I only concussed myself.” Again, she paused, her gray eyes troubled by memory. “I woke a long while later, with an injured leg, some of my teeth knocked loose, and several other cuts and bruises. I’d saved my friend, but destroyed by own future in the bargain.”
“How do you mean?”
“At your office yesterday morning, you asked me if I’d ever wanted to leave the school and go out into the world.
The truth is, I did before I fell—quite desperately.
I had so many dreams. But not afterward.
Since that day, the school has become the whole of my life. I don’t know who I am without it.”
Compassion stirred in Miles’s breast. “You’re the same, surely.”
“Am I?” she wondered. “All of my learning has been theory rather than practice. My visit to the Courant was the first time I’ve left these grounds since the day I arrived as a child. And we saw how swimmingly that went.”
“You’re afraid,” he concluded.
She didn’t deny it.
Miles hesitated. Duty had brought him to this moment, not infatuation or affection.
But he couldn’t deny that he felt something for her, even if it was only that same nagging ache of responsibility he’d experienced when he’d handed her into his carriage in Fleet Street.
It prompted him to share something he’d never shared with anyone before.
“I was thirteen when I left the Rookery,” he said.
“My mother purchased an apprenticeship for me with a printer in the West Country. I had no wish to go. To live among strangers—my betters, supposedly. It meant leaving the one person I loved. Altering everything I was, my whole identity. I was frightened, too. Change is frightening. But that change…It was the making of me.”
Her mouth curved with bitter irony. “And this one will be the making of me, is that it?”
“It will be whatever we make it,” he said.
We.
The single word didn’t appear lost on her. She wasn’t alone in this. For better or worse, they were in it together.
Her bosom rose and fell on an unsteady breath. She lifted her chin. “Well,” she said. “What now?”
“That depends. Do you require a grand wedding? A gown, guests, and so on?”
“No.”
“Good.” Releasing her hand, Miles reached into the inner pocket of his coat and withdrew a piece of paper. He presented it to her without comment.
“What’s this?” She took it, scanning the printed text and signature. Her face drained of color. “A special license?” Her eyes flew to his. “How on earth did you manage it?”
“I went to Doctors’ Commons yesterday afternoon,” he said.
“But this means—”
“That we can marry anywhere, at a time of our choosing, without the necessity of calling the banns.”
Her throat worked on a swallow. “Anywhere and anytime being…?”
“On the return journey to London,” he said decisively. “If we leave now, we can stop off along the way. There’s a vicar I know of in Enfield who will oblige us. We can be married by the time we arrive at my house in St. James’s Square.”
Nell slowly refolded the special license. Her slim shoulders squared like a brave but unwilling recruit about to march into battle. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll collect my things.”