Chapter 26
Miles returned early from the office on Monday evening, in possession of the architectural plans for Northwick Hall.
He was eager to present them to Nell. She’d been at the forefront of his mind all day, while he’d sat through dreary meetings about dwindling sales and loss of advertising, while he’d argued with the other editors about who was best qualified to take over Cowgill’s column, and while he’d revised a lengthy article one of his reporters had written on the rumors of war brewing in Japan’s Shimonoseki Straits.
But when Miles looked for his wife, first in the drawing room and the library, then upstairs in her room, she was nowhere to be found.
He exited her bedchamber, frowning, the portfolio that held the plans still tucked under his arm.
Gladys was scurrying down the hall with an armful of linens. She stopped when she saw him, dropping a curtsy. “Mr. Quincey, sir.”
“Has Mrs. Quincey gone out?” he asked.
“No, sir,” Gladys replied. “She’s in the guest room, with the new cat.”
Miles felt an unmistakable surge of relief. For a moment—
Stupid.
Nell wouldn’t have left him. They were growing closer every day.
Even after Miles had dealt with Silas, she had—by some miracle—understood.
She had stroked his hair, and bandaged his bleeding knuckles.
He’d carried her to her bed afterward, kissing her softly before retiring to his own.
It had seemed to him that they’d parted on the best of terms.
He walked down the hall to the door of the guest room where Shadow had been safely ensconced since last week. He entered quietly.
It was a modestly sized chamber, furnished with a canopied bed, a chest of drawers, a small walnut secretary desk, and several comfortable chairs. Nell was seated in one of them, her arm still in its sling. She wore a loose-fitting brown dress.
Miles’s mouth hitched. “Making progress?” he asked as he closed the door behind him.
Nell didn’t smile in return. “Remarkably so.”
“Let me guess,” he said. “Shadow darted beneath the bed the instant she heard me open the door?”
“She did.”
“Sorry for that. I’m afraid I couldn’t wait. I have something for you.” He lifted the portfolio. “The architectural plans for Northwick Hall. As requested.”
Nell gave him an unfathomable look. “I have something for you as well.”
Rising from her seat, she went to the secretary. He belatedly registered that the writing surface had been opened on its hinges. Papers were laid out across it.
“Do you recognize these?” she asked.
Miles set aside the portfolio and joined her at the secretary. His heart stopped as he skimmed the pages. They were his notes about Miss Corvus’s Academy. “You went into my desk.”
It was the absolute wrong thing to say.
Nell’s gray eyes hardened to flint. “I wasn’t prying into your affairs, if that’s what you mean.”
“It isn’t—”
“I was searching for paper to write a note to Reverend Pettiman—”
“What?”
“To invite him to visit us.”
“Why the devil—?”
“Mrs. Royce called this morning. She told me that Pettiman’s been stoking the scandal over our marriage, because the banns weren’t called and because there was no formal announcement in the papers.
Miss Corvus suggests we invite him here in hopes of finally putting his concerns to rest. Which we must do somehow or else I’ll never be permitted to return home. ”
Miles froze. It seemed for a moment that the ground shifted beneath his feet. “What do you mean return home?”
“To my life at the Academy,” Nell said hotly. “To teach. To live. To be with the people who actually care about me.”
His stomach sank. She’d mentioned something of the sort when he’d proposed to her. Of resuming her duties as a teacher once the scandal died down. But she’d said nothing about returning to the Academy to live.
Is this what she’d been planning all along? To abandon him at the first opportunity?
The realization turned Miles’s blood to ice.
“That’s why I went into your desk,” she said. “Imagine my surprise when I chanced upon your treatise about Miss Corvus, our graduates, our curriculum, and everything else that you’ve been—”
“It’s not what you think,” he said.
“Oh, isn’t it?” There was an alarming quaver in her voice. “Then you aren’t writing a story about the Academy?”
Miles took a step toward her. Any distress he felt on his own behalf was at once overshadowed by concern. “I’m not. I swear I’m not.”
“It appears you are.”
“I take notes,” he said. “When there’s a story—even one I’m not going to publish—I have to organize it so that—”
“By writing down things I’ve told you in confidence?”
“What things?”
“Coded samplers,” she said, furiously tapping the word on the page with her fingertip.
Miles shook his head. “You didn’t tell me anything about them. I merely deduced it.”
Her cheeks flushed with anger. “How dare you? To be spying on me and making your deductions? I thought—”
He caught her arm to stop her retreating from him any further. His voice deepened. “If you would have been honest with me from the start, I wouldn’t have had to deduce anything.”
“Honest? Why? So you can add it to your rough draft?” She gestured to the page again with an angry flourish. “And what about that? That was this morning, Miles!”
He shot a glance back to his notes. To the line he’d added before departing for the office. Know your surroundings. He suppressed a flinch. “It was stupid of me to record it,” he said. “But it struck me as being important.”
She wrenched free of his grasp. “What a fool you must think me.”
“Nell—”
“Every conversation. Every secret. You made me forget—”
“Stop. Listen to me.”
She turned her back to him. “I came to London to prevent you writing about the school. And all I’ve done is given you fuel to compose your most damning article yet.”
He came up behind her. “Is that what you think of me?”
“I think you love the Courant,” she said. “That you’d do anything to save it. It’s why you married me, isn’t it? To save the paper from another scandal? If you’ll go that far, I must suppose that no length would be too great.”
“I do want to save the paper,” he acknowledged. “But—”
“Mrs. Bright said you were anxious to find a story that would restore the Courant’s fortunes.
” Nell’s words thickened with emotion. “What better than a tale about a school full of upstart women attempting to reform the world on their own idiotic terms? It will be both titillating and hilarious to your gentlemen readers, I daresay.”
Miles’s chest tightened. He feared she might be weeping. “You wrong me.”
She folded her uninjured arm over her injured one. Her head bowed, revealing the vulnerable curve of her neck.
Miles had to clench his hand at his side to keep from reaching out to her.
“If I am guilty,” he said, “it’s only in the method of my mind.
It requires order to such a degree that if I don’t set the facts of a situation down on paper, I can’t make sense of them.
That’s all those are. My attempts to make sense of the Academy—and of you. ”
She flashed him a narrow glance over her shoulder. “Me?”
He was relieved to see she hadn’t shed any tears. “You’re still nine tenths a mystery to me.”
She scoffed.
“You are,” he said. “I don’t believe you even belong to me. You’re still hers. Still theirs.”
“I belong to no one.”
“Your loyalty does.”
Nell turned back to him. Her arms were still folded protectively in front of her. “And what about your loyalty?”
“You have it,” Miles said without hesitation.
This time he couldn’t refrain from touching her.
He lifted his hand to her face. Blessedly, she didn’t pull away from him.
She remained there, still as a trembling kitten, uncertain yet whether it would permit the impertinence or whether it would dash off and disappear.
And he felt so much for her.
It coiled tight within him. A vital, palpable thing. Friendship, he’d thought. A mad, desperate attraction. But it was something else, wasn’t it? Something far more perilous to his heart.
She was right. He did love the Courant. Until she had come into his life, it had been all he’d loved.
But not anymore.
He held her gaze. “You’ve grown up hearing about how Miss Corvus was betrayed by the blackguard she was meant to marry. She’s raised you to distrust all men as a result. With good reason, I don’t doubt. But you can trust me, Nell. You can trust me. I would never hurt you. Not on purpose.”
Her mouth trembled.
“And I’m not going to publish that story,” he said. “Not for any reason. Not even if you left me tomorrow and never came back.” He swallowed against the lump in his throat. “But…please don’t do that.”
· · · · ·
Nell’s hurt and anger were already beginning to fade. At Miles’s husky plea, they disintegrated further.
It occurred to her that she may have been unfair.
No. Not unfair. Unreasonable.
She’d assumed the worst of him on the flimsiest evidence. And not based on his own actions, but on the actions of men so unconnected with him—with either of them—as to not matter at all.
But when she’d seen his notes…
The feeling of betrayal had been so stark and sudden. Like a slap to the face, but worse. And it wasn’t her anger at Miles that had pierced her to her soul. It was her anger at herself.
She’d let down her guard with him. Had lowered her defenses and allowed him into her confidence, her bedchamber, her heart, by heaven. And like any skillful thief he’d taken everything she’d offered—and several things she hadn’t.
“Regrettably, his best quality is also his worst one,” Nell recalled telling Effie. “He pays attention.”
Isn’t that what he’d been doing ever since they’d met? Noticing everything? Cataloging it and organizing it, setting it down on paper like the analytical madman he was?
It wasn’t malice, she realized. It was simply Miles.
Some of the starch went out of her spine. At length, she covered his hand with her own.
A spasm of relief crossed his face.