Chapter 20
“There may have been another course. I did not take it.”
From the private journal of Lady Isla Scott, her final entry.
* * *
They had married quietly.
A license, a morning, Mr. Metcalfe on Pike’s arm appearing pleased in a way that was either entirely lucid or entirely fortuitous. Betty in a new ribbon. A marriage book signed. Millie’s hand in his.
That was the whole of it.
Simon and the baron would be disappointed that he had not waited so they could attend.
Nicholas had considered this and decided he could live with it.
He had been disappointing the Scott family at irregular intervals for many years and had developed a reliable tolerance for it.
And Mr. Metcalfe had been there, which mattered most. Pike had been there, meaning every syllable of his congratulations, which mattered.
Betty had been there, her expression saying plainly that she had formed a strong preference for this outcome and was gratified to see it arrive. Which also mattered.
And, most importantly, Millie had been there. She had said I will in that adorable pragmatic voice and had stared at him with the blue eyes and the undivided attention and had meant it without reservation. Which was the only thing that mattered at all.
This is my family now.
That had been a few days ago. Now they were on the road back to Grimsfell.
The Cirencester inn was warm and the fire in their room was going out, and Nicholas had the notes of Matteo’s substitution alphabet spread across the small writing table, copying the deciphered version into a second notebook.
Clean, neat notation that Lorenzo would be able to work from directly. The pictogram key in one column. The corresponding letters in the next. The deciphered passages on the subsequent pages.
His pencil moved steadily across the page, and he was not thinking about anything except the work which was going well. And which came to a complete stop when he felt her arms come around his shoulders from behind.
Her chin dropped beside his ear. Her lips were close to his neck.
“It is time,” she said quietly, “to see to your leg.”
He set the pencil down.
His leg had been conducting its usual emphatic inventory of grievances since they left Oxford days earlier, and he had been ignoring it with the determination that had become his primary method of management.
He rose from the chair and limped across to the bed.
They were married. He removed his banyan and his small clothes without ceremony and lay facedown across the counterpane.
He occasionally had turned over for Angelo, to grant access to a different portion of his thigh.
He felt the relief of the horizontal position immediately, and it was considerable.
He heard the liniment pot being opened. The sharp herbal smell of it reached him a moment later.
Her hands found the back of his thigh, and he closed his eyes.
She worked the unguent into the damaged muscle with the firm, circular strokes she had developed as her personal style of treatment. Thorough in the way she was thorough. Sincere in the way she was sincere.
He felt the tension in the muscle begin to ease under her hands with the gradual reliable surrender of tension held too tightly for too long.
Then her hands moved upward.
He opened his eyes.
She kneaded his buttocks with the same absorbed concentration she brought to manuscripts and ciphers and the management of her father’s household.
Determined. Unhurried. Completing a task she had decided was worth completing properly.
His body responded with the immediate, uncomplicated enthusiasm it had developed for her proximity since meeting her.
He did not attempt to conceal it because they were married now and concealment was no longer relevant.
He heard the rustle of fabric behind him.
He turned his head.
She had removed her robe and her shift. With a wicked smile, she draped herself across his back … warm and decisive and bemused about what she was doing.
Her bare skin against his was heated. Her nipples pressed into his back, diamond hard. He drew a sharp breath and let it out slowly.
“Millie,” he said.
“You are supposed to be relaxing,” she said against his spine.
“I am finding that somewhat difficult.”
“Allow me to assist.”
She pressed an open-mouthed kiss between his shoulder blades.
Then another, lower. She had been an eager student of carnal relations since their betrothal and had committed herself to the subject with the same determination she committed to everything else she decided was worth understanding.
Her hands moved over his sides, stroking and caressing, warm and exploratory, paying attention and putting what she had learned to use.
She worked her way down his spine with her mouth. Slow and studied. Each kiss placed with considered precision. He gripped the counterpane, enjoying her ministrations without any thoughts but feeling her hands on his back.
She moved back, her hands on his hips, and coaxed him to turn over.
He turned.
She stared down at his throbbing manhood with hungry eyes and the direct expression. Decision made. Proceeding. Then she did the same to his front. Her mouth moved over his chest and down his stomach, warm and unhurried. He lay back against the pillows and let her.
Then she moved lower.
He felt the warm heat of her mouth close around him, and he yelped.
She lifted her head immediately and regarded him with the expression she wore when correcting a factual error.
“You have done this to me,” she said. “It is my turn.”
He stared at her. “I was not,” he said, haste making the words tumble out in the clumsy fashion of a man dropping his things on the street, “complaining. That was not a complaint.”
“What was it?”
“Surprise,” he said. “Purely surprise. You should by all means continue.”
“I had intended to,” she said.
She devoted herself to the task with the thoroughness he had come to expect from her in all things, her mouth warm and her tongue mischievous and darting, her attention entirely and absolutely on what she was doing.
He lay back and let her and felt the pleasure build in his groin.
He was arching before long, his hands in her hair, his breath unreliable.
Then he stopped her.
“If you continue,” he said, from somewhere below coherent speech, “I will not be able to take care of you.”
She lifted her head. She weighed this against her other priorities.
“That,” she said, “is a reasonable objection.”
“I am glad you think so.”
He pulled her up and kissed her thoroughly, tasting her mouth and feeling her smile against his. She settled over him with the familiarity of a woman entirely comfortable with where she was and with no intention of being anywhere else.
He moved down her body and returned the favor in full.
His fingers and his mouth worked together with the patient, thorough attention she deserved.
He had learned by now where she was most responsive and returned to those places intentionally.
The subject was genuinely interesting, the study indefinitely ongoing.
She gripped the pillow. She made the sounds she made when she was fully absorbed by the sensations he produced.
He worked her thoroughly until she was breathless and shaking, and she reached down and took a fistful of his hair.
“Nick,” she said, into the pillow.
“Yes?” he said, not stopping.
“Now,” she said.
“Are you certain?”
“Nick.”
“Asking,” he said.
“Now,” she said, with considerable emphasis.
He moved back up her body and entered her slowly, watching her face. She gazed up at him with a blunt challenge. No armor. Just her. He moved with a smooth, slow rhythm because they were married and the night was long and the fire was warm and there was no reason to hurry any of it.
She pulled him closer. He obliged.
She mounted him when he drew her up. Settling over him with her knees on either side of his hips.
Her back arching. Her full breasts above him in the warm firelight, moving with an unselfconscious, wholehearted energy that was his Millie through and through.
He reached between them and found the central point of her pleasure and worked it slowly and deliberately.
Watching her face change as the sensation built.
Watching her head fall back and her lips part and the color rise in her cheeks.
She moved above him with increasing urgency.
She was close. He knew her well enough now to know exactly when she was close.
She made a sound.
“Shh,” he said.
She looked down at him with breathless indignation, objecting strongly to the instruction.
Not in a position to mount a sustained argument about it.
He maintained his composure with some effort and kept his hand moving.
She came apart above him with her face pressed into his neck and the sound muffled against his skin.
He followed her with the gathered force of what he had been holding back.
And for a considerable time, there was no sound, no movement in the room, except the fire and the sound of their panting exhalations.
They lay still afterward in the warm disarray of the bed.
“You shushed me,” she said, after a while.
“We are in an inn,” he said. “I did not wish the other gentlemen in residence to hear us.”
“You shushed me in the library as well,” she said. “When Papa was in the study.”
“Because I need to be able to look him in the eye at breakfast without wondering if he is aware of the activities you and I are up to,” he said, then added, “I am glad Pike hired the extra footmen. Searching for him was a rather disheartening experience. Learning that he was right about being followed, even more so.”
“You trust them.”
“Pike chose them,” Nicholas said. “That is sufficient for me.”
She was quiet for a moment. Her fingers moved absently against his chest.
“He liked you,” she said. “Papa. From the very beginning. He said Blackwood when he first saw you.”
“He did.”
“I thought it was one of his non sequiturs.”
“It may have been,” Nicholas said. “Or it may not have been. He understands more than we give him credit for, I think.”
She fell silent, but he felt her thinking.
They lay quietly for a time. The fire settled lower in the grate. The Cirencester evening was dark and still outside the window. The notes of Matteo’s substitution alphabet were spread across the writing table. None of it required his attention right now.
Then Nicholas said, “It is time to leave.”
She lifted her head and frowned.
“The men who were watching the Oxford house,” he said. “Pike told me the morning after Cresswell’s rooms. Two men, different positions each day, same faces. They have followed us from Oxford.”
She sat up. The direct expression was back. Fully assembled. Shifting registers. One subject put away and another picked up, in the efficient way she managed all transitions.
“Cresswell,” she said.
“Or others from the Dominus,” Nicholas said. “Cresswell is one piece of a larger structure. We should proceed as though they know what we know.”
“What is the plan?”
“Betty and our coachman take our trunks to York in the morning,” he said. “Early departure, visible, convincing. A newly married couple traveling north. Anyone watching will follow the trunks.”
“And us?”
“There is a private coach I have arranged at the inn down the road,” he said. “We leave tonight, quietly, before anyone is watching for movement. The hired coach takes us to Grimsfell.”
She regarded him steadily. “You arranged this without consulting me.”
“I did,” he said. “I will consult you in future if you wish.”
“Yes,” she said. “You will.” She paused. “It is a good plan.”
“Thank you.”
“Lorenzo is at Grimsfell,” she said.
“Lorenzo and Gabriel and the others,” Nicholas said. “We have the key to the journals there. It is time to bring everyone into the same room with the same information and determine what comes next.”
She was quiet for a moment. He could see her thinking about the unexpected change in their evening plans.
“Then we should go,” she said.
They dressed quietly in the low firelight.
Nicholas put the second notebook and the notes of Matteo’s alphabet into the folio portfolio.
He had her pack a valise of what she needed from her travel trunks, then they closed them up, ready for their coachman in the morning to make the misleading trip to York.
Millie tied the scarlet ribbon and settled her spectacles on her nose. And they went out into the Cirencester night together and did not look back.