Chapter 23
The next morning, for the first time in memory, Miles didn’t go into the office.
Instead, after a night spent in the chair beside Nell’s bed, he rose at dawn to wash and dress.
He laid a fresh fire in Nell’s room, attended to Shadow (who was gradually beginning to warm to her new surroundings), and—when the hour was passing reasonable—went down to the kitchens and personally requested his wife’s breakfast.
Mrs. Bright hurried in as Gladys and Cook assembled the tea, toast, sausage, eggs, and porridge. “Mr. Quincey! You needn’t have come yourself. You’d only to ring and I’d have sent Gladys to the mistress’s room with a tray.”
“I’ll take Mrs. Quincey’s tray to her,” Miles said. He was in his shirtsleeves, his jaw freshly shaven.
Mrs. Bright and Cook traded glances, and Gladys disguised a smile.
“Strawberry jam or marmalade, sir?” the maid asked, holding up two small pots for his perusal.
Miles frowned. He didn’t know which jam Nell favored. In truth, he knew little about her likes and dislikes. “Both,” he said. “And some of those honey cakes, too. And an orange, a plate of smoked herring, bread rolls, and a pot of cocoa.”
When the tray was heaped high with anything he thought might tempt Nell, he carried it up to her room. She was still snuggled beneath the counterpane of her four-poster bed, just as he had left her when he’d finally departed her room. Except now, Horus was curled up at her side.
Miles pushed the door shut behind him as he entered. The soft click was enough to make Nell stir.
She emerged from beneath the coverlet with a groan of protest, her uninjured arm flung over her eyes. “What time is it?” she asked.
His gaze traveled over her as he approached the bed.
Warmth ignited in his veins despite his best efforts to contain it.
Last night he’d removed all but the final layer of her clothes.
He’d taken down her thick, silken hair. And he’d kissed her with all the restraint of a starving man who had inexplicably found a feast laid before him.
For that’s what Nell was—a feast, a banquet, a beautiful, decadent meal made up of lush curves, sultry sweetness, and unapologetic cleverness and daring.
He’d wanted to devour her whole. To make her his in the truest sense of the word.
And she had, for those brief heated moments, seemed to want him just as furiously.
It had been evident in the way she’d touched him, the way she’d kissed him back, if not precisely in her words.
“I do like you so much,” she’d said to him.
Like.
Like.
Not I want you desperately. Not I’m mad for you. Not any of the passionate nonsense he’d uttered to her over the last two days. But like.
Yet, she’d spoken of their kissing again. Or rather, of their practicing kissing.
Miles would be a fool to believe any of it. She’d been suffering the aftereffects of a painful ordeal, both physically and emotionally. Not to mention the fact that she’d taken a generous dose of laudanum. If she remembered even half of what she’d said—or what they’d done—he’d be amazed.
“It’s early,” he said. “How’s your shoulder?”
“Sore.”
“And your head?”
She squinted at him from beneath her bare arm. “Splitting.”
“That’s to be expected.” He set the heavy tray down on the mattress beside her. “It’s the laudanum. You’ll feel better once you’ve had breakfast.”
Horus rose from his place beside her with a languorous stretch. He sharpened his claws on the counterpane.
Nell turned her face back into her pillow. “I couldn’t eat a morsel.”
“You will,” Miles assured. He nudged the shapely curve of her hip. “Can you sit up?”
Another groan. “Miles…”
“Cook’s gone to tremendous effort. I’d hate to return your tray untouched.”
Nell made a soft sound of complaint. “Oh, very well,” she grumbled. “For Cook’s sake.”
Folding her right arm protectively against her bosom, she struggled to a sitting position.
The coverlet slid to her waist. Her long-lashed eyes were sleepy, and her unbound hair adorably rumpled.
The short sleeves of her muslin chemise drooped low, exposing a tantalizing expanse of creamy porcelain skin.
But it wasn’t that which commanded Miles’s attention. It was the enormous bruise blooming where Silas’s fist had struck her.
Miles’s muscles tightened with cold fury to see it.
Garrick had warned him not to act. That to exact any form of vengeance on Silas would impede justice for Cowgill and Miss Brent. But in that moment, Miles didn’t care about his late gossip reporter, or even about the little orphan girl.
Turning abruptly, he strode out of Nell’s room through the connecting door to the bathing room and from there into his own darkened bedchamber. Absalom and Virgil were sleeping soundly on his bed. Miles passed them without a word, heading for his wardrobe.
He extracted one of his plain white linen shirts from inside.
Twisting it into a semblance of a sling, he knotted the ends of it.
Mrs. Bright would have likely come up with a more elegant solution, but Miles had no interest in involving the servants any more than was necessary.
It was doubtless counterproductive given the circumstances, and very probably ill-advised, but he felt a fierce possessiveness toward Nell.
If anyone was going to look after her while she recovered, it was going to be him.
Returning to her room, he found her nibbling a morsel of one of the honey cakes, her hair tumbling about her shoulders in a chaos of flaxen waves. Horus stood over her breakfast tray, tail twitching as he presumptuously sniffed the plate of smoked herring. Nell made no move to discourage him.
Miles picked up the cat and unceremoniously dropped him onto the floor. Horus stalked off across the carpet with offended dignity. “You shouldn’t permit his impudence.”
“I daren’t do otherwise,” Nell replied as she popped a crumb of cake into her mouth. “He’s been in residence far longer than I have.”
“You’re mistress here now,” Miles said. “It’s your home, as well as his.” He lifted the makeshift sling. “If I may?”
She gave it a dubious look. “Is that one of your shirts?”
“It is.”
An endless pause. “Well,” she said. “I expect it will do.”
She held herself still as a statue while he placed it over her neck, wincing only once as he carefully settled her bent arm in the cradle of the sling.
“There,” he said. “How’s that?”
She exhaled a breath he hadn’t been aware she’d been holding. “Much improved, thank you.”
A stab of tenderness took him unaware. She was more self-contained than she let on. Despite her recent confidences. Despite her kisses. Her true feelings ran deep—her discomfort, her disappointment, her sadness. He suspected she’d had years of practice concealing them.
“Most of the pain you’re feeling is from the swelling at the joint,” he said. “It will go down in a day or two. Until then, ice will help. I’ll have Mrs. Bright bring some up after you’ve eaten.”
Nell broke off another morsel of cake. “Have you eaten?”
“Not yet,” he said.
“There’s plenty here.”
“Yes. For you.”
“You might at least have some tea. There are two cups.”
“The other is for your cocoa.”
“Tea and cocoa?” Her dimple appeared to the right of her mouth. “You must think me ravenous.”
He ran a hand over the back of his neck, sheepishly admitting, “I didn’t know which you’d prefer.”
“Tea,” she said.
“What about jam?” he wondered. “Strawberry? Marmalade?”
“Strawberry. And no herring,” she added. “I dislike fish intensely.”
“Noted.” Miles committed her preferences to memory.
“And you?” she asked.
“Given a choice? Tea, strawberry, no herring. Otherwise…” He shrugged. “When I’m busy working, I eat whatever one of the clerks bring me.”
“Then you won’t mind eating some of this,” she said. “I’ll never finish it all on my own.” She gestured to an empty spot on the bed. “You can sit there if you like. There’s room now your cat has gone.”
Miles hesitated but a moment before succumbing to the temptation.
He wasn’t, after all, made of stone. The mattress dipped beneath his weight as he sank down across from her.
The breakfast tray stood between them. He watched with solemn attention as Nell poured him out a cup of tea from the small silver pot. It was…
Wifely.
“As you see, I’m not entirely incapable without use of my right hand,” she said. “I can even sew with my left if I’m pressed.”
“No sewing,” Miles said as she passed him his teacup.
Her brows lifted. “You don’t mean to say you were serious about that?”
Ah.
So, she did remember last night.
“Given the amount of laudanum you took, I assumed you had forgotten our conversation,” he said.
A hint of color pinkened her cheeks. “I wouldn’t call it much of a conversation.”
An answering heat crept up Miles’s neck. “No,” he said a little gruffly. “I don’t suppose it was.”
She raised the silver teapot to fill her own cup. Her gold wedding band glinted on her finger. “In any case, you may as well attempt to prohibit me from breathing.”
It took Miles a moment to recall what they’d been discussing. Her sewing, hadn’t it been? Her secrets, more like. “It’s that important to you? Those samplers you’ve been sewing night and day?”
“Samplers, plain work, fancy work. Any sort of sewing.” She added a dash of milk to her cup. Miles made a mental note of it—tea with milk, no sugar. “When I was recovering after my fall,” she said, “I’d have lost my sanity if I hadn’t had a needle and thread in my hand.”
“You sewed to pass the time?”
“There was a great deal of it to pass.” She raised her teacup to her lips. “I’m rather good, you know. At sewing.” She flashed him a roguish smile over the brim of her cup. “So, if you have any missing buttons that need attention…”
Wifely, he thought again. It shouldn’t be so attractive to him, these glimpses of domesticity. But it was. Because it was her pouring his tea and offering to mend his clothes. And because he hadn’t been lying last night. He was mad for her.