Chapter 18
Nell had to stand up on the toes of her half boots to reach Miles’s mouth. He didn’t make it easy for her. Not at first. Not until she curved a hand around his neck and tugged him down to her.
She was being impulsive. Nonsensical. A victim to the roiling emotions inspired by the last several days of heartbreak and upheaval. Until today she’d thought she was managing it. But she wasn’t.
She couldn’t.
Not any longer.
Miles bent his head to hers, a frown furrowing his brow.
His lips were firm and unyielding. Until suddenly they weren’t.
The change came over him in a delirious instant.
One moment he was rigid and resisting, the next his arms were around her in a crushing embrace and his mouth was claiming hers—fiercely, hungrily.
Nell clung to him, breathless. This—this is what she needed. To be wanted beyond sense. Beyond logic or reason. Her fingers tangled in the thick hair at his nape as she kissed him back with half-parted lips.
They were closer than they’d ever been—locked in each other’s arms, her bosom pressed to his broad chest and her skirts tangled precariously about his legs. It still wasn’t close enough. She pulled at him restlessly.
Miles’s arms tightened about her waist in response. The bones of her corset creaked in protest. His voice was a harsh rasp against her lips. “I fear I’m crushing you.”
“I want you to,” she whispered back. “I want more.”
He gave it to her, pressing hot kisses to her cheek, her jaw, her throat. The scratch of his stubble grazed her skin in the most delicious fashion.
Nell’s fingers clenched in his hair. Her heart was beating in triple time.
There was no room for anything but sensation.
It felt good to be wanted. To be desired.
To know that, despite whatever it was that had made him resist her initially, he couldn’t resist her in the end. In that, at least, she had power.
“Easy,” he murmured as she brought his mouth back to hers. “Easy, sweetheart.”
“I’m so restless.”
“I know.” His hand splayed at her back—a large, heavy weight, holding her steady. “There’s no rush.”
Heat crept into her face. She feared he was rejecting her. “You’d rather we stop?”
“No,” he said. “No. It’s just…this is unexpected.”
“You hadn’t thought that I—that we—”
He huffed. “I’ve been trying like the devil not to.”
She stared up at him, painfully conscious of her own inexperience. “Then you do want me?”
Miles’s gaze softened. His hand came to cradle her cheek. “Desperately,” he assured her.
A surge of emotion constricted Nell’s throat. Perhaps she’d been wrong to kiss him. Perhaps she was using him shamelessly.
But no.
That would imply that anyone would have done. Any man. Any friend. Anyone who might help to keep the storm of emotion at bay. But it hadn’t been just anyone she’d wanted as she’d departed Lady Belwood’s house this afternoon. It had been Miles.
She turned her face into the curve of his palm. “I want you, too,” she told him. “I’m sorry I was so clumsy about it.”
“Not clumsy,” he said. “Wonderful.”
Her mouth lifted in a tremulous smile. “After all but mauling you in your library?”
“Mauling me,” he repeated with a trace of husky amusement. “Is that what you did?”
“I fear I did.”
He stroked her cheek with the pad of his thumb. His expression grew serious. “What I don’t understand is why.”
“Must there be a reason?”
“No, but I suspect there is one.” He smoothed a lock of her hair from her face. “What happened today, Nell?”
Nell’s eyes burned with the threat of tears.
She slowly pulled away from him. He made no effort to stop her.
His hand dropped from her cheek and his arm loosened at her waist. She took a limping step back.
She was at once colder. More alone. Just as she’d been when she’d stood in Lady Belwood’s drawing room, staring at her ladyship’s retreating figure in stunned silence.
A tremor went through Nell to recall it. Her voice cracked. “The silliest thing,” she said. “I believe I met my mother.”
· · · · ·
Miles settled Nell back in her chair by the waning fire. He pressed a snifter of brandy into her hand. “Lady Belwood?” he said. “Are you certain?”
“As certain as I can be.” Nell’s slim fingers curled around the bowl of the glass. “I don’t resemble her. Not enough that anyone would notice. But I know that perfume. And she was familiar. It’s the only explanation—”
“Drink,” he urged her.
Nell took a grudging sip. She grimaced as she lowered the snifter. “I’m not distraught,” she said. “Only unsettled.”
“I should say so,” Miles replied.
He was rather unsettled himself. Not five minutes ago, he’d been kissing her like a madman. His body was still coiled tight, his blood still surging in a dangerous simmer.
It shouldn’t have happened. Not any of it.
But it had, to his amazement. She’d kissed him.
And just like that, he’d abandoned his reason, cast aside restraint, and given in to the impulses he’d been battling since the moment they’d met.
There had been no more room for logical argument.
There had only been Nell. Her soft mouth and body, and the feel of her fingers twining insistently in his hair.
She was, indeed, the heavy artillery. Once she’d turned her sights on him, Miles hadn’t stood a chance.
“Lady Belwood sponsored Mrs. Royce’s entrance into society, did she not?” he asked.
“She did.”
“Then she’s a connection of hers?”
“Not of hers, no. Of Miss Corvus’s. It was she who provided Effie with an introduction to Lady Belwood.”
Effie. The former Euphemia Flite. Now Euphemia Royce.
Miles had always suspected the woman was trouble. And if she was, the mysterious Miss Corvus must be doubly so. It was she who had sent Mrs. Royce to London to ruin Lord Compton. She who had directed Nell to come to Miles’s office to put his questions about the Academy to rest.
A woman who was recruiting girls with natural talent. Girls who grew into formidable ladies like Nell and Mrs. Royce and God knew how many others that were even now embedded in fashionable households, well-to-do schools, and perhaps even married to powerful men.
“I don’t believe I was ever supposed to meet her,” Nell said. “If Effie had severed the contact, I never would have done. But now…I can’t simply pretend I didn’t see her. That I don’t know who she is.”
“Of course not,” Miles said. “What about her? Lady Belwood? Did she show any sign of recognition?”
“No. Though…she did appear distressed to hear I was affiliated with the Academy, but she rallied when she discovered I was a teacher. I daresay she assumed it meant I wasn’t an orphan.”
“She’s afraid of encountering the child she gave up,” Miles concluded.
“I suppose she has reason.” Nell took another grimacing sip of brandy.
“She’s very rich, I believe. Or rather, her husband is.
He’s consumed by the consequence of his family pedigree, apparently.
I didn’t ask when they married, but if it was eighteen years ago, it would explain why she gave me away. ”
Miles sank down onto one knee beside her. At the moment, the empty chair opposite her seemed too far away. “Eighteen years? Do you mean that…she kept you for a time?”
“Not personally, no. Two servants had charge of me in a little house outside a village somewhere—I don’t know which one.
Lady Belwood sometimes came to visit. She used to bring me sweets, and pinch my cheeks.
She called me her bonnie girl. It was the only name I knew until Miss Corvus christened me Penelope.
I had a little toy loom, you see, like Odysseus’s wife.
I was permitted to bring it with me when I came to the Academy. ”
“Lady Belwood surrendered you there?”
“Not her. She hadn’t the courage to do it herself. She simply stopped coming. It was the servants who took me to the Academy. I can only presume Lady Belwood had arranged it with Miss Corvus ahead of time.”
He studied Nell’s pale face. “Miss Corvus never told you?”
Nell’s mouth was set in a bleak line. “Miss Corvus is not a great believer in looking backward. She sees no utility in the past.”
“What about Mrs. Royce?”
“She doesn’t know. If she did, she’d never have taken me there. Effie’s not cruel like that.”
“I didn’t expect she was,” Miles said. “I only thought that, if you confided in her, she might have offered you some comfort.”
Nell stared into her glass. “I didn’t tell her.”
“Why not?”
“It’s complicated.” She paused. “Mothers are a sore subject with some of us.”
“I’m beginning to see that.”
“Was your relationship with your mother—?”
“Complicated? No. It was brutally straightforward.”
She looked at him in question.
“My mother had me out of wedlock,” Miles said.
“She lost her position as a result. She had been a governess.” He didn’t know for whom.
He’d never managed to find out. “She had nothing and no one. Only me. She poured all of her learning and all of her ambition into me. The moment she could manage it, she sent me away—to save me, she said. She died while I was serving my apprenticeship. Caught a putrid fever in the Rookery and was gone in two days. I learned about it in a letter from Gabriel.”
Nell’s face contorted with sympathy. “Oh, Miles. That’s dreadful.”
“It was, rather.”
The last of the fire crackled and popped, embers floating up the chimney from the grate.
Absalom and Virgil stretched idly on the hearthrug, completely unconcerned about revelations from the past. They were creatures of the moment.
And this moment was warm and safe, despite the presence of two increasingly melancholy humans.
Nell searched Miles’s gaze. “At the Academy, you told me that taking up your apprenticeship meant leaving the one person you loved. Was it her you meant?”
“It was.”
Her soft gray eyes shimmered in the firelight. “I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago,” Miles said. “In any case, she’s not forgotten. I honor her in everything I do. I daresay it’s why I made such a bother over my ruined reputation. She sacrificed everything for me to become the gentleman I am today.”
“You’re a splendid gentleman,” Nell said. “She would be proud of you.”
His mouth hitched briefly. “Splendid,” he murmured. “I shall add that to the list I’m compiling, along with brilliant, fearless, and a champion of truth, and justice, and cats.”
“Do,” she told him. “I don’t mind.”
The way she looked at him, so tender and sincere.
It had a perilous effect on his heartbeat.
Indeed, since entering the library, it was beginning to seem to Miles as though he’d lost control over the basic rhythms of his own body.
His pulse was too heavy. His temperature too hot.
And his muscles in a perpetual taut state of readiness.
His gaze fell to the lush curve of her lips. He wanted to kiss her again. But the timing wasn’t right. Not now when she was upset, and when they were both talking about their mothers, for God’s sake.
He stood. Plucking the half-empty snifter of brandy from her fingers, he returned it to the sideboard. “Lady Belwood is attending Lord Amstead’s shooting party?”
“She is.”
“If we attend—”
“When we attend,” Nell corrected him.
He came back to her. “You’ll be in company with her for three days.”
“I’m aware.”
“What do you propose to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” Nell said. “Perhaps nothing. It’s only three days as you said. My attentions will be focused on discovering the link between Lord Amstead and Mr. Cowgill’s death. I doubt there’ll be time to spare for any personal concerns.”
Miles nodded, resigning himself to their course. She was right. However dangerous, it was the best way to find out whatever it was that had led to Cowgill’s death. They’d be foolish not to seize the opportunity.
“The third of September is right around the corner,” he said. “I’ll have to arrange for my absence at the Courant. And you—”
“I shall need some new gowns if I’m to play my part,” Nell told him. “If you wouldn’t mind standing the expense?”
It wasn’t the most passionate of marital intimacies. But it was an intimacy all the same. At the moment, Miles would take it.
“Naturally,” he said. “You’re my wife.”