Chapter 13 #2
“I know. I am proposing that getting me in requires someone who can make a formal introduction on my behalf, which means a Fellow of Merton who knows me, or knows someone who knows me well enough to make the request credible.” He paused.
“My Christ Church credentials carry no weight at Merton. They are a separate and very private college.”
Millie turned this over. “There must be someone at Merton you know from your time here?” she asked, feeling a little desperate.
She had been so proud of what they had achieved thus far that it had never occurred to her that it would all be for naught.
“Your employer’s family, perhaps. Or your own connections from your time at Oxford.
” She knew she had said that last part twice, but it bore repeating even while her panic rose.
They were so close to a resolution, yet still so far from knowing what the journal was about.
His expression resolved, briefly, into the face of a man navigating around a subject he preferred not to address directly. “Possibly,” he said. “Let me think about it.”
She wondered if he had some reason to avoid his past connections, because she sensed a great reluctance she could not understand. But he had said he would think on it, and there was nothing more to be done about it, so she returned to the manuscript. Nick picked up his pencil. The work continued.
Pike entered at half past three. He collected Papa with the calm inevitability of a long-established afternoon routine.
He mentioned, in passing, that Betty had gone to the market and would be back within the hour.
He settled Papa’s coat around his shoulders with conscientious attention.
He guided him toward the door with the firm gentleness born of long experience, understanding that Papa responded to coaxing rather than instruction, and went out.
The door closed.
The study went quiet in a way that a room acquired when the number of people in it changed.
Millie became aware of this with the peculiar, slightly inconvenient awareness produced by emerging from several hours of complete intellectual absorption.
The problem was largely resolved. The decoding was complete.
The Merton connection was established. There was no more she could do this afternoon that would materially advance the work, which meant the afternoon was available for other uses.
She thought about what happened next.
The Merton library. The substitution alphabet.
The enciphered journal and the centuries-old cipher.
The quest was moving forward. The quest was supposed to move forward.
She had been working toward exactly this outcome for years.
She was not going to stop working toward it now because of an awkward silence in a mostly empty study.
But what happened beyond the quest? What happened to this affinity between her and Nick?
She thought about the working rhythm across the study table, the evenings in the firelit room, the eleven days of a cooperation of spirit she had not named because she was not certain she could afford to name it accurately, though she was not counting the days.
At some point, Nick would move on, back to Lord Trenwith or to find new employment. The arrangement between them had been for three months, only just begun, but with an end built into it that she could not forget even when she was not thinking about it.
He is employed, she told herself, with crisp internal firmness.
She had given herself this instruction before and found it adequate on previous occasions.
He is here because I hired him to be. He is kind to Papa because he is the sort of man who is kind to people who deserve kindness, not because he has any attachment to the outcome.
He will leave. That is what employed men do.
They complete their engagement and they leave.
She was staring at her notes without reading them.
She adjusted her spectacles with one finger in the habitual motion she had stopped thinking about years ago.
They slid immediately back to their accustomed position at the end of her nose.
She glared at the translated message and the sketch of the boss, and the notebook full of Nick’s notation, not quite able to name this restless frustration residing in her breast.
She heard his chair scraping and started, looking up.
He was standing very close, gazing down at her with the expression she had been observing for days and had not yet managed to identify well enough for her own satisfaction.
It was not the sardonic expression, nor the neutral one, nor the politely engaged expression he deployed for social purposes, but something underneath all of those that she had only seen clearly in the unguarded moments, of which there had been several, and each of which she had subsequently filed under subjects she was not examining too closely.
He reached out and lifted the spectacles carefully from her nose, the ribbon sliding free from where it had been hooked over her ear. They dangled from the scarlet ribbon at her collarbone, the lenses catching the afternoon light from the window.
His lips quirked into a crooked smile, and he explained quietly, “They have been getting in the way.”
Then he leaned down and kissed her.
This was not the impulsive claiming in the shadowed bedchamber at Grimsfell, born of surprise and raw masculine hunger. Nor was it the brief, tender brush of lips she had gifted him in the firelit room at Cirencester, hers alone in its shy courage.
This kiss had gathered itself across days of carriage-borne sparring and reluctant confessions, of candlelit liniment evenings where her hands learned the map of his scarred thigh, of the quiet triumph when he had placed Matteo’s journal into her waiting palms on an Oxford street.
It arrived freighted with everything they had not yet dared name.