Chapter 26 #2
Nell hadn’t imagined she could feel any worse. “I’m sorry if I—”
“Don’t apologize,” he said. “I won’t hear it. It was I who—”
“Yes, but I do understand. I should have—”
“Why would you? You don’t know me well enough yet to realize that I’m a man of my word.”
Nell inwardly winced. He was being unduly generous.
She may not have experience with the strength of his word, but she did know that he was a man of principle.
One willing to take any number of risks to do the right thing.
It was the whole reason the Courant was in its present predicament, because Miles had risked public support for the paper in order to expose the corruption and hypocrisy of a powerful man.
She dropped her hand from his. Folding her arms again, she walked to the recessed window on the opposite side of the room.
The curtains were drawn back, revealing the low, cushioned seat.
Outside, rain clouds filled the evening sky, blocking out the setting sun. A soft drizzle fell against the glass.
“It’s easy to forget how short a time it is since first we met,” she said.
Miles came to stand beside her. “We’ve been in each other’s company’s a great deal since then.”
“Yes.” Nell had marked every second of it on her heart.
“It’s unusual,” he said. “Most couples meet only a handful of times before they marry.”
“At a ball or a concert, I imagine. Everything formal and proper.”
“And brief. They don’t spend hours together on trains, or traversing the London slums.”
She gave him a fleeting half smile. “But that was after we married,” she said. “You might call it our honeymoon.”
The muscle at the corner of his mouth twitched. “A singular honeymoon.”
“An exciting one,” Nell said. “Yet for all that…you’re right.” She sat down on the window seat. The rain-beaded glass was cold at her back. “We don’t know each other as well as we ought, do we?”
Miles sank down at her side. His body was very close to hers. Tall and broad-shouldered and impossibly warm. “We know that we like each other tolerably well.”
Nell recognized the words she’d uttered to him two nights ago. The same ones she’d said when she’d proposed that they practice kissing. A disconcerting heat pooled low in her belly. “More than tolerably well, surely,” she returned, echoing the reply he’d given her then.
Miles was provoked into another wry smile. It didn’t last. His face reverted to solemn lines. “Are you returning to the Academy?” he asked.
Nell’s stomach trembled, recalling the things she’d said to him at the height of her distress. She’d never intended…
But it was too late now.
“I had planned to, when you first proposed,” she admitted.
Miles’s gaze was unflinching. “Had,” he repeated. “Past tense?”
Nell was ashamed to confess it. Too long had she prided herself on her dedication to the Academy. It had defined the last eighteen years of her life.
“What does that say about me?” she asked. “That I’ve devoted my life to teaching those girls, only to abandon the cause the moment I’m comfortably ensconced somewhere with a gentleman?”
“Not just any gentleman,” Miles said. “Your husband. And you’ve hardly abandoned the cause since we wed.”
“No,” Nell allowed. “I suppose not.” She subsided into silence, caught in a moment of aching indecision. For all their closeness, the weight of her secrets still remained between them.
And not only hers. The secrets of the Academy.
Nell didn’t want them there. Not anymore. Not if it meant being divided from the man she was coming to care for above anyone else in this world.
“As to the cause,” she said slowly, “it’s not what you think.”
Miles’s already rapt attention sharpened with journalistic awareness.
“Miss Corvus has no interest in grooming lady spies or female revolutionaries,” Nell told him.
“Her first and best concern has always been in instilling us with an unfettered sense of our own strength. That’s the mission of the Academy.
We’re encouraged to be self-sufficient in every regard.
To think for ourselves, and to defend ourselves. ”
Nell was rather proud of that fact, both as a teacher and as a former student.
“Society makes a prison of women’s bodies and minds,” she said.
“It’s how they control us, by diminishing us.
Academy girls are aware of such limitations, but we are none of us bound by them.
We’re taught to navigate the confines of social restriction—to utilize our natural talents to advance the cause of women and to rectify wrongs when we can. ”
“Such as the wrongs perpetrated by Viscount Compton?” Miles asked.
“His crimes were outside of the common way, but yes,” Nell acknowledged. “We have special classes for the most promising of our girls. The majority of them are never called on to use their skills, but given the chance…there’s little they’re not prepared to do.”
Girls like Nell, Effie, and Gemma. And Flora Brent, too, Nell endeavored to hope.
“The parish council doesn’t object to Miss Corvus’s curriculum?” Miles asked. “But I suppose they don’t know about it, do they?”
“No one does. At least, no one who might interfere. That’s why we couldn’t allow you to write about the Academy. We daren’t risk the scrutiny.”
“Understandable,” he said. “You wouldn’t want the rest of the world to know that Miss Corvus is in the business of forging weapons.”
“And now you’ve married one of them,” Nell said. A quiver of uncertainty entered her voice. “It can’t be what you wanted.”
“Having you here with me?” Miles brushed a lock of hair from her cheek. His touch was infinitely tender. “It’s all I want.”
Her vision blurred. She blinked rapidly to clear it.
He searched her tear-damp eyes. “What do you want, Nell?”
Nell’s throat tightened. She hated to make herself vulnerable, to him or to anyone, but there was no denying the truth. Not anymore. “To be with you,” she said softly.
The words sent a visible tremor through Miles’s frame. He took her in his arms. She caught a glimpse of his face as he pulled her close. His solemn expression had fractured.
“There,” he said, his voice gone gruff. “That wasn’t too painful, was it?”
Nell burrowed into his embrace. His arms were strong around her, his body hot as a furnace. And still she wanted more. More of his strength, his heat, his reassurance. She exhaled a ragged breath. “It’s been a dreadful day since I found those papers.”
“I know, sweetheart.”
“And all because of that wretched Pettiman.”
Miles’s cheek was pressed to her temple. She felt him smile. “You weren’t really going to invite him for tea?”
“I did invite him,” Nell said. “I suggested a date next week, after we return from Hertfordshire. I’ll be better equipped to deal with him then.”
“I suppose it’s preferable to having him as a houseguest.”
“The lesser of two evils, certainly.” Nell hesitated. “Miles?”
“Yes, my dear?”
She slowly drew back to meet his eyes. “How did you know about the samplers?”
Miles didn’t answer immediately. He only looked at her. “The lack of order,” he said at last.
Her brows notched. “Is that all? Not all samplers are orderly.”
“Do all samplers include a raven with a white-tipped wing?”
She started.
“You did ask,” he said apologetically.
“It’s not that. It’s just—” She gave a disgruntled huff. “I tell the girls that no one looks that carefully at our samplers. And if they do, they’re only examining the quality of our workmanship. How well we stitch our numbers and letters and so forth.”
But she hadn’t reckoned for Miles Quincey. He noticed everything. Or perhaps just everything about her.
“What I wonder,” he said, “is why the Academy uses them at all.”
Nell’s chin lifted with a trace of pride. “It was my idea.”
Miles’s eyes softened with an unidentifiable emotion. “I gathered that. But why are they necessary? Why not simply write letters?”
“Miss Corvus wrote letters all those years ago when she was engaged to Lord Compton. Her brother meddled with her post. Her letters were surveilled, opened, and read, sometimes destroyed. It was another way of manipulating and controlling her.”
“And you and the others at the Academy worry that the same might happen to you?”
“It easily could,” Nell said. “Women have little privacy in this world, not in our correspondence, our bank books, not even our own bodies. And legal rights are largely denied us. In most circumstances, we’re considered little more than property, dependent for our kind treatment on the better natures of our brothers, fathers, and husbands. If they should fail us—”
“Quite,” Miles said grimly. “I don’t wonder that you think so ill of my sex.”
“I don’t,” Nell replied. Not all of them, anyway. “At the same time…my own sex would be woefully remiss if it didn’t endeavor to acquire power of its own.”
“Power comes in many forms.”
“It does,” she agreed. “Knowledge is the ultimate power.”
“To know your surroundings,” he murmured.
She smiled briefly. “Essential for any female entering a new situation.”
Shadow chose that moment to creep out from under the bed. She padded across the woven rug, step by cautious step. She’d been eating well since coming to live in St. James’s Square. Her coat was glossy and her stomach was much rounder than it had been when Nell had first met her in Miles’s office.
“Look, Miles,” Nell whispered.
Miles’s gaze followed hers, watching the little tabby approach. He didn’t speak. Didn’t move a muscle.
“You wait for them to come to you, don’t you?” Nell inquired softly. “Not me. I’m far too impatient.” Slipping from his arms, she descended to the carpet in a pool of her poplin skirts. Her left leg twinged in protest.
Shadow hesitated but a moment before resuming her course. She came straight to Nell, slowly, carefully, tail upraised and whiskers quivering with alertness. When Nell stretched out her left hand, the cat advanced to delicately bump it with her nose.
She’d let Nell touch her this way before Miles had entered the room, but now, she permitted a further intimacy. Rubbing her cheek against Nell’s fingers, she allowed Nell to pet her—first her head, then the curve of her small back, and even her tail.
Nell glowed with pleasure. She cast a beaming glance up at Miles. “Do you see how friendly she is?”
But Miles wasn’t looking at Shadow. He was looking at Nell, an expression in his eyes that made her heart skip a beat.
And Nell knew, as suddenly as she’d known anything, just why it had hurt so much to think he’d betrayed her. And it wasn’t because of her pride, or her history with her mother, or any loyalty she owed to Miss Corvus and the Academy.
It was because Nell was falling in love with him.