Chapter 13
The following day, at precisely nine o’clock, Nell entered the offices of the London Courant on Miles’s arm.
She had arranged her hair in an unostentatious roll, and dressed with care in her best blue silk day dress, understanding only too well the importance of appearances on this occasion.
Her drawstring workbag was looped over her arm in lieu of a reticule.
Miles had told her he’d need to remain at his office for an hour or two this morning.
It would be the ideal opportunity for Nell to finish the sampler she’d begun last night.
“You should know,” Miles said, “my staff will have no reason to suspect ours is a marriage of convenience.”
Nell ascended the stairs at his side, cane in hand.
Her limp was less evident today owing to yesterday evening’s bath and a judiciously applied hot water bottle.
She’d even managed to get a few hours of sleep.
Horus had kept her company until dawn, a great solid weight against her back, ensuring that she didn’t have to spend her first night at St. James’s Square completely alone.
“I should think they’d suspect the reverse,” she replied frankly. “Given the haste with which we married, most will doubtless believe our match was inspired by some outrageous passion.”
Miles showed no sign of discomfiture at her pronouncement. On the contrary, his face might have been carved from granite. He was that controlled. That unemotional. He’d been so since she’d joined him at the breakfast table this morning.
“Very probably,” he acknowledged.
Nell paused as he opened the door for her. She supposed he regretted kissing her. Why else would his aspect be even stonier today than it had been when they were strangers to each other?
But they were still strangers, weren’t they?
An easy thing to forget when she had taken the man’s name and was currently living in his house.
“Would you rather they believe that about us than know the truth?” she asked.
“That we’re madly in love?” A frown crossed Miles’s brow. “Hopefully, they won’t require specifics.”
Nell passed ahead of him into the hall. She set her hand back on his arm when he came to join her. “They won’t need to, providing you can see your way to regarding me with something marginally warmer than your present state of glacial indifference.”
He flashed her a dark glance. “Glacial indifference?”
“I speak as I find.” Her skirts brushed against his leg in a soft rustle of silk over starched petticoats as they walked. She felt his muscles tense beneath her fingers.
And she wanted to tell him that he wasn’t alone in his regret. She was regretting their kiss, too—though likely not for the same reasons that he was.
No.
She regretted that she hadn’t done more. That she’d been so dashed passive instead of kissing him back, touching him back. And now she would never know what lay beyond that soul-quaking moment. She would have to spend the rest of her life imagining it.
“In any event,” she said, “it’s not my opinion that signifies. It’s the employees of the paper we’re trying to convince. We must both do our part, mustn’t we?”
“The performance will hardly be useful if my staff doesn’t recognize me.”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“They know me to be a serious man, not a sentimentalist.”
She smiled. “Surely, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Not when a gentleman is newly married.”
Miles’s frown deepened. “Perhaps not.”
Nell refused to let his flinty demeanor affect her sense of purpose.
Emotion was the enemy of resolve. It prompted one’s mind to wander down dead-end roads, ruminating about unfulfilled wedding nights, smoldering looks, and sweetly scorching kisses.
Nell had neither the time nor the inclination to indulge such romantic fancies.
Not today anyway. She was focused on the task at hand—redeeming both Miles’s reputation and her own.
Together, they passed the exact editorial offices she’d walked by two mornings ago, with the same busy newspapermen bustling in and out through the hall.
Several stopped with a start, seeing Nell on Miles’s arm, her raven’s head cane in hand, recognizing her as the mysterious woman in black who had called at the paper on Wednesday.
Nell’s fingers curled tighter on Miles’s sleeve.
She was fairly certain these men had spent the past days gossiping about the fact that she’d been discovered on the floor of their editor’s office with her skirts above her knees.
And now she was back to face them, this time without the protection of her veil.
But this wasn’t the moment to succumb to some misplaced notion of feminine modesty. She kept her head held high, ensuring that her composure didn’t slip an inch.
“Mr. Quincey!” A familiar gentleman, with pomaded hair and a pocket watch, cut through the throng to meet them. Mr. Higgins, if Nell recalled correctly. He goggled at her before turning his attention on Miles. “Excellent timing, sir. If you could spare a moment to…”
Miles silenced the man by the simple expedient of covering Nell’s hand with his. The uncharacteristically affectionate gesture had the effect of bringing both her heart, and all the newspapermen in the hall, to a standstill.
“My dear,” Miles said with all the outward sincerity she’d requested of him.
“May I present my assistant, Mr. Higgins. And this is Mr. Griffiths, our managing editor; his secretary, Mr. Parker; our news editor, Mr. Cadwallader; assistant editor, Mr. Priest; Mr. Cadwallader’s secretary, Mr. Singh; and Higgins’s junior, Mr. Flack.
Gentlemen, I have the honor of introducing my wife, Mrs. Quincey. ”
A chorus of astonished murmurs rose up in a mighty conflagration. Some of the men grinned broadly. Others exchanged meaningful looks. Several more appeared distinctly relieved.
“Mrs. Quincey?” Mr. Higgins’s face was transformed by a beaming smile. “I say, but this is an agreeable surprise!” He bowed to Nell before reaching to press her hand. “I had little idea when you called on Wednesday that you and Mr. Quincey had an understanding of this sort. Had I known—”
“But we might have guessed, mightn’t we?” Mr. Flack said. He clasped Nell’s hand in turn. “The only explanation, isn’t it? Just as I said to Mrs. Flack, Mr. Quincey would never conduct himself in any way other than with complete dignity and discretion.”
“We are pleased, ma’am. Exceedingly pleased,” Mr. Cadwallader added. “And may I say, vastly reassured. The Courant couldn’t have withstood another scandal.”
“A joyous occasion,” Mr. Griffiths said, talking over the others. He was an older man, gray-haired and portly, with an air of authority. “I heartily congratulate you, ma’am. And you, Quincey. I trust this will finally convince you to take some time off and leave the paper to me.”
Nell smiled at each of them in turn with what she hoped was an adequate degree of newlywed demureness—a few blushes, a few flutters of her lashes, and a few shyly murmured words of thanks.
It wasn’t all contrived. Indeed, standing with Miles, his hand covering hers on his arm as a crowd of well-wishers congratulated them, she might be forgiven for believing it was real.
That she was truly Miles’s new bride, married out of a surfeit of honest feeling and not out of cold necessity.
“So many editors,” she said when all of the gentlemen had finally ceased speaking. “I thought my husband was the only one.”
“He’s our editor in chief, ma’am,” Mr. Griffiths explained. “He bears a responsibility for all of us, and for everything that’s printed. But the day-to-day running of the paper falls to me and Mr. Cadwallader.”
“Mr. Quincey still keeps a hand in with our most important stories,” Mr. Higgins said.
“Quite,” Miles agreed brusquely. “Speaking of which, I’m expecting that article on the Lord Mayor of York, Griffiths. And Priest, you owe me a draft of tomorrow’s society column. Higgins, Flack, with me.”
Uttering a few final words of congratulations, the crowd of newspapermen dispersed. Nell accompanied Miles to his office, with Mr. Higgins and Mr. Flack trotting dutifully behind them.
Miles waited until they were inside, with the door shut and Nell comfortably seated on the fringe-skirted sofa, to drop his affectation of connubial warmth. “I believe Cowgill was murdered at a brothel in Whitechapel,” he said.
Both Mr. Higgins and Mr. Flack went ashen at the news. They remained standing in front of Miles, utterly at a loss.
Miles leaned back against the edge of his desk, facing his two underlings. “The boy who brought Cowgill’s severed tongue round on Wednesday, he spoke with you, Flack, did he not?”
Mr. Flack recovered himself enough to dart an apprehensive look at Nell, plainly doubting the propriety of uttering the words brothel and severed tongue in the presence of a lady.
“You may speak freely,” Miles told him. “I have no secrets from my wife.”
Nell glanced up from removing her sampler from her workbag, meeting her new husband’s eyes. Her heart stopped for a beat, just as it had when he’d covered her hand with his. She was sure it was only more playacting. Nevertheless…
Partners, he’d said yesterday in Whitechapel.
She had the feeling he meant it.
“Er, yes, sir,” Mr. Flack answered.
“What else can you tell me about him?” Miles asked.
“Only that he was a street urchin,” Mr. Flack said. “He claimed a beggar woman in Blackfriars gave him a penny to see it delivered to you.”
“To me?” Miles asked. “By name?”
“ ‘To him what’s the editor in charge of the paper,’ I believe the boy said,” Flack replied.
Miles nodded. “I thought as much.”
Mr. Higgins gave Nell a look similar to the one that Mr. Flack had given her. His disapproval at her remaining in the room to hear such talk was evident. “If you know where he was murdered and by whom,” he said to Miles, “then why—”