Chapter Eleven #2
Cillian turned at once. The moment he took in her face, his expression grew grave. Not enough, perhaps, for Mrs Holt to remark upon it; but Molly saw it. The almost-softness that had been gathering in him over these past days sharpened into a quiet, intent attention.
He had been watching from the street. She knew it from his face. Not everything—he could not have heard through the glass—but enough. Enough to know the man had not come to buy a hat.
“Miss Granger,” he said.
The formality steadied her. It reminded her where they were, who might be listening, and how much depended upon not giving the shop anything to gossip over.
“Lord Harrowden.”
Mrs Holt looked between them, her concern sharpening.
Cillian bowed to her with perfect correctness. “Mrs Holt, forgive the intrusion. I wonder whether I might have a word with Miss Granger.”
Mrs Holt’s gaze moved to Molly. Whatever she saw there decided her.
“Of course,” she said. “Molly, dear, you may use the back room.”
Molly did not trust herself to speak. She turned and walked back to the supply room she had only just left. Cillian followed, leaving the door not quite closed behind him.
The propriety of that small gap was so instinctive it was almost military.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Cillian said, very quietly, “What happened? Who was that man?”
“His name is Hugh Prescott.” Her voice came out steadier than she felt. She stood among the ribbons with her arms wrapped around herself, afraid that if she unclasped them her hands would begin shaking again. “He represents Lord Vyne.”
“I saw him through the window,” Cillian said. “I could not hear what passed.”
“He was polite. He was the politest man I have ever met, and it was worse than if he had shouted.” Her voice cracked on the last word.
She steadied it. “He said Lord Vyne is willing to forgive my embarrassing departure and proceed with the arrangement. He said my father is in considerable debt, and Lord Vyne has generously offered to resolve it. He said he would be sorry to see Sir Gerald lose the estate because of a young woman’s nerves. ”
“Nerves.”
“He said it as a physician might pronounce a fever. As though I had run because I was anxious. As though Lord Vyne had given me no reason to run beyond my own foolish imagination.” She drew a breath. “He also mentioned my mother’s grave.”
Cillian went very still.
“He did that on purpose.” Her hand had risen to the locket at her collarbone. “He knew exactly where it would land. He let the words rest there a moment. He did it like a surgeon placing a blade. And then he said Lord Vyne intends to come to Bath. Quite soon, he said.”
“Prescott,” Cillian said when she had finished.
He was not looking at her now, but at the shelves beyond her shoulder, with the fixed, middle-distance stare of a soldier whose mind had already begun arranging facts into formation.
“Hugh Prescott.”
“That is what he called himself.” Molly released the locket. Her fingertips had gone white where they had pressed against it. “He was also in the gallery.” Her voice thinned. “At the Assembly Rooms.”
“That was why your mood changed.”
The fact that he had noticed—had been watching closely enough to mark the precise moment when joy became defiance—struck a place in her too tender and complicated to examine in the middle of fear.
“You saw that?”
“I did.”
He said it without ornament, without any attempt at effect, and the simplicity of it was almost more than she could bear.
The Earl of Harrowden had been watching her with an attention so complete that a shift in her dancing had reached him from across a crowded ballroom.
It was frightening. It was comforting. It was both at once.
“He said Vyne is coming to Bath.”
“Then we prepare.”
Cillian said it quietly, but the word we settled between them with the weight of a decision already made.
“We?”
He moved at last, crossing the small distance between them, and stopped a foot away.
He did not take her hands. His own remained at his sides, deliberately still.
Yet he angled himself between her and the half-open door without seeming to think of it, his body placing itself between her and the shop beyond before courtesy could overrule instinct.
“We,” he said. “I told you I was staying until this was resolved. It is not resolved.”
He looked down at her, and his voice dropped.
“And no man is going to walk into this shop and speak to you in that manner again. Not while I am here.”
She stood in the little supply room and looked at him: this quiet, watchful, careful man who had come to Bath to take her home and now stood before her with the bearing of a soldier preparing for battle.
The battle was for her. The knowledge was too large to fit properly inside her chest, and so it rose into her throat instead.
She had to look away.
If she did not, she feared she would do something reckless, something neither of them was ready for: cross the remaining foot of space, put her arms around him, and hold on.
Not yet.
Not here.
Not while Prescott’s shadow still lay across the shop.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Do not thank me. Thank me when it is over.”
When Cillian left, the bell above the shop door sounded ordinary again.
Molly remained in the supply room for a moment longer, among ribbons, tissue paper, and hat forms. The shop was unchanged. Bath was unchanged. Pale stone waited beyond the glass; carriages passed along Milsom Street; somewhere nearby, someone laughed as though nothing at all had happened.
But something had changed.
Not the danger. That had only taken a clearer shape. Not the fear, which still sat cold beneath her ribs. What had changed was the conviction that she no longer stood beneath it alone.
Cillian Swifton was carrying part of it with her now, and the sharing of it felt less like weakness than the first true act of strength she had managed since the night she climbed out of her window and ran.