The next morning, Nell woke with a headache that only sharpened as the light grew stronger. She ordered her breakfast to be brought to her room, then picked at it listlessly as the clock in the hallway counted out the painfully slow march onward into the day.
Sylvie offered to accompany her for a walk. But the thought of being chased by journalists did not appeal. She did not want company at all. She felt too inclined to burst into tears.
Finally she took herself down to the library in search of distraction—braced, at every turn, to run into Simon. But the hallways were empty and so, too, the library. Inside, in the murky light shed by the cloudy sky without, the still air smelled of paper and old leather. She walked along the shelves, through a silence that seemed to thicken with every footstep. She grew strangely conscious of the accumulated words in the volumes all around her, the restless thoughts of men long dead, each soundlessly begging for attention.
“Any of them will do.”
She gasped and turned. Simon sat in a wing chair in the far corner, the white cravat at his throat catching what little light the room retained, cutting a precise and ghostly shape in the shadows.
Her mouth went dry. She made herself attend to his remark. “Am I disturbing you?”
He placed a bookmark in the volume in his lap and retrieved a glass from the table beside him. Some quality in his movement—a cold, unhurried efficiency—set her heart to drumming. “My wife asks if she disturbs me,” he murmured. “How remarkable.”
“Is it?” When he spoke so coolly, it felt like talking to a stranger—a glossy, handsome stranger with no use for her. “I thought it was polite.”
“Oh, it is. Very proper, I assure you. We husbands and wives of the aristocracy must ensure that we never speak in an unmannerly fashion to our spouses.”
Something dark was edging into his voice—sharp and soft and more cutting than simple irony. Abruptly she decided to come back later, once he’d left.
But as she turned away, a book on the long reading table caught her eye: very old, she could tell at first glance. She brushed the cover with her fingers, feeling how worn and soft the leather was. There were two categories of old things, she’d gathered: for the poor, old meant worn-out, useless. For the rich, a thing just got more valuable the more it aged, because that meant that somebody with enough money to buy a new one had kept the old one for a reason. She’d gathered this logic from the mere fact that so many carpets in this place were worn to threads. “From the seventeenth century,” Polly had told her of one of them—although a sensible person might take that as a good reason to buy a new rug already.
At any rate, this book clearly belonged to the rich and worn-out category. But when she opened it, she realized she was wrong to compare it to a threadbare carpet.
It was gorgeous. Illustrations of saints’ martyrdoms in vivid, shocking colors. As she turned the page, Simon spoke.
She stiffened. “I thought they all got sold.”
He shrugged and took a sip of his drink.
“Did you buy this back?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She absorbed this silently as she flipped a page. “Any others?”
“All of them, if I can.”
Her hand stilled. She felt a sting at that admission, a sting that spread out into a broad ache and made her entire body throb like a bruise.
He’d told her enough of his own history for her to gather that the countess’s kindness must have been very important to him. Rare and precious. Now he was repaying it by buying back her mother’s books from the hands of strangers.
The thought caused something to untwist inside her. He knew what it meant to be hurt, just as she did. His family had cast him out, turned him over to an unfeeling stranger. She’d been lost to her family, and then shoved away when she found them. They’d both lost something a person shouldn’t have to lose. They both had been marked by it.
“You may take it, if you like,” he said.
She clutched the book to her chest and walked quickly out of the room, back down the hall and up the stairs. Once in the safety of her apartments, she threw herself into a chair and stared at the book.
He’d hunted this down because it had been her mother’s. Reclaiming it could not have profited him. But he’d done it anyway, because he’d loved the countess.
She took a choking breath. The thought seemed very important. He’d loved her mother and he’d kept loving her even after she died. He hadn’t let go of love when it had become more convenient to do so.
She tried to push the idea away. But when she set herself to reading, the words blurred, and her hand shook as she turned the pages.
Yesterday, her rage had been clear and strong and insulating. But in the night, the sound of that piano had cracked the shield that protected her from the murky turmoil of these other feelings for him. These longings, this desperate need for him, now felt as strong as her anger.
She told herself that she couldn’t trust her judgment of him. But perhaps she had it wrong. Perhaps her fears kept her from trusting her judgment.
Maybe he was right, and she was a coward.
When the door opened, the leaping of her heart—her anticipation of seeing him—brought her to her feet.
But it was Polly who was bobbing a curtsy in the doorway. “Lady Katherine Aubyn to see you, milady. Shall I say you’re at home?”
Her mind went blank. “What—what does his lordship say?”
“His lordship just stepped out,” Polly replied. “But Lady Katherine, she asked after you, ma’am.”
Lady Katherine waited in the rose drawing room, staring out the window into the damp street. As Nell entered, she jumped and pivoted as if fearing to be caught at some mischief. Her gloved hands locked tightly at her waist. “Good morning,” she said stiffly. She wore a dark blue walking dress and a matching hat with a narrow brim, atop which two little stuffed quails lifted their wings at a very unlikely, vertical angle.
Had it not been for Mrs. Hemple’s so-thorough instruction, Nell wouldn’t have caught the insult in Katherine’s decision to keep her gloves on. This call wouldn’t be social, and it wasn’t intended to last long.
Nell took a breath and closed the door. “Good morning,” she said.
Katherine moved toward a brocade chair, then appeared to think better of her presumption and decided to hover beside it. “I … had hoped to speak with you,” she said.
A passive way of telling Nell to sit down so she could do the same. For a moment longer, Nell held on to the doorknob, the darkest corner of her heart tempting her to turn around and leave.
But returning upstairs would mean returning to this terrible inner battle over thoughts of Simon. She was glad to be supplied a distraction from it. And now that she’d laid eyes on Katherine, her curiosity was stirring. Katherine was shifting her weight like a nervous schoolgirl, and the pallor of her face suggested that the situation already was costing her something. Why was she here?
Nell told herself to stay wary. She let go of the door and took a seat.
“This is awkward,” Lady Katherine acknowledged as she sat down opposite. “I had thought perhaps to run into you at a social event—but you’ve made no appearances since the Allentons’ rout.”
Nell shrugged. “You’re here now,” she said, “and I’m listening.”
“Yes.” Katherine took a visible breath. “Sir Grimston met with Rushden’s solicitors this morning. Some matter of new evidence? At any rate, he tells me that he has decided not to challenge your claim. He will recognize you as my sister, he says.”
Nell nodded slowly. They weren’t entirely identical, she observed. Katherine was built on a slightly larger scale—taller by an inch and a bit broader through the shoulders and hips. Her slimness had disguised that at first. “And you? Will you recognize me?”
The other woman glanced down to her hands, which had been twisting in her lap but now fell still. “I am led by my guardian.”
That string-thin man who snapped and barked? “From what I’ve seen, that looks like an unpleasant position for you.”
Katherine gave her a startled look. After a brief pause, the girl said, “He is only concerned with my best interests.”
How convenient that those interests also put money into his pocket. Nell contented herself with another shrug. It wasn’t her business, after all.
Katherine cleared her throat. “More to the point: I was … wrong … to speak to you so coldly, before. You must understand how shocked I was—I fear my emotions got the better of me.”
“I understand.” But Katherine had them under a tight control now. Maybe she still thought Nell a fraud and only felt bullied by the circumstances into hiding her doubts.
“Well—that is kind of you. Generous.” Katherine’s lips rolled inward, making a flat line of her mouth. No, she didn’t believe it. The christening spoon hadn’t made a whit of difference to her. But now Nell’s claim looked ripe to be accepted, she had no choice but to put a polite face on her anger.
Not a happy girl, Lady Katherine, not at all pleased to speak her next words: “Nevertheless, I feel compelled to make amends. I wonder if … if you would do me the kindness of joining me for a drive in the park?”
Nell stared at her. “Why?”
“Why … it’s a fine day,” she said, making an awkward little wave toward the window.
Nell followed that gesture and lifted her brows. The window showed a cloudy sky and leaves still damp with drizzle.
Katherine gave a little laugh. “All right, it’s a dreadful day. But—well—there will always be people in the park at this hour. And I—I might as well be honest with you. If we’re to share social circles, I think we might as well make a public appearance together as soon as possible. It would be terribly uncomfortable, don’t you think, to have the whole world speculating on our opinion of each other—watching us and whispering behind our backs? But if they see us together, behaving in a cordial fashion, the question of our feelings might be laid to rest. I cannot wish to be the subject of wagging tongues, you know. Nor can you, of course,” she added hastily.
Nell smiled despite herself. “I don’t seem to have much choice in it. I don’t suppose you missed the flock of reporters on the pavement.”
“No,” Katherine murmured. “Perhaps we could—have my driver meet us in the mews?”
Nell hesitated. The memory of their last meeting recommended against this invitation. But maybe … forgiveness wasn’t always unwise. In difficult situations, people could make mistakes, could act to protect themselves without thinking through the consequences.
Simon hadn’t known her when he’d plotted the grounds for an annulment.
Katherine hadn’t been prepared to meet a long-lost sister that night at Lady Allenton’s.
Nell lifted her eyes to her sister’s face—this face so like her own. Of course she wanted to know the woman behind it. Katherine must feel the same.
“All right,” she said. Perhaps this could be a new beginning for them.
Inside the safety of the coach, they sat in silence as the driver navigated slowly onto the road. The clop of the horses’ hooves was nearly drowned out by the yelling from outside:
“Lady Rushden—just one question—”
“Is it true what Mr. Norton says, that you worked as a common hand in his factory in Bethnal Green—”
“Is she your sister, Lady Katherine? Do you confirm it?”
Katherine reached up to give a dainty pat to her ridiculous hat—taking care, Nell noted, to avoid poking the hapless quails. “One of them was pointing his camera through the railing,” she said with a grimace. “I believe they photographed me.”
“You look well,” Nell said without thinking, as if this were Hannah or somebody she felt able to reassure, instead of a girl who looked hard-pressed to sit across from her without spitting. “The hat’s on straight.”
Katherine eyed her. “The toque is not meant to sit straight. At a slight angle, in fact, over the brow.”
“Oh.” Hannah would have known that. “Well, um—should I—just—” She leaned forward and gave the hat a slight tug, tipping it down a bit to shadow Katherine’s forehead.
Katherine did not move or protest, but when Nell sat back, she found the girl staring at her, wide-eyed, looking stricken.
Nell found herself caught in that look, returning it with a rising sense of helplessness, of confusion—that dizzying sensation of looking into herself. “Do you really not believe it?” she asked softly.
Katherine took a sharp breath and looked away. The coach was picking up speed, beginning to rattle and thump properly now. “It must be safe now,” she muttered, and reached for the shade, drawing it up with jerky, staccato yanks.
“I’m sorry I don’t remember,” Nell whispered. “I wish I did.”
A brief glance was all she got in reply. Katherine seemed determined not to look at her too long.
Nell bit down hard on her cheek. It was her natural instinct, or perhaps a habit formed through hard practice over long years, not to offer more than she was offered in turn.
But she owed it to herself now to try. She wanted to know her sister. “I was … gutted,” she said, “after I saw you at the Allentons’.”
Katherine spoke in a choked voice: “Don’t. Just—please, don’t.”
“Why not?” Frustration pulled Nell forward in her seat. “That’s what you came for, isn’t it? To speak to me? To settle this question in your mind? This is a closed coach, Katherine. If you wanted to show us off at the park, you’d have come in a barouche.” Simon had made a joke of it, one day when they’d driven in Rotten Row: a brougham was for business; a barouche was for seeing and being seen.
Katherine shook her head. She was biting her lip, a frown cramping her brow. All at once she twisted to knock on the back window. “You’re right,” she said rapidly, “this weather is wretched. Hardly an opportune occasion.” When the footman popped his head down, she spoke quickly: “Return us to Rushden House at once.”
A lump hardened in Nell’s throat. She spoke around it, hoarsely. “You’re taking back the invitation, then?”
“It was wrong to ask you. I would not wish to discomfort you. You are not ready to make a public appearance—your husband did not grant permission—”
“I don’t need his permission. If Grimston makes you take his, then he’s not a guardian so much as a jailer!”
Katherine squinted at her, as though looking into a light too bright to be viewed comfortably. “You understand nothing. You—” Her voice broke. She wet her lips, leaning forward a little, and the urgency in her expression, the white-knuckled tension in her hands gripping the edge of the bench, communicated an alarm that suddenly became contagious: Nell found herself holding her breath. “In the future,” Katherine said, “please, please don’t leave the house without your husband.”
The carriage slowed. Rocked to a halt. They looked out the window as one. “Stopped too soon,” Nell muttered, just as a rattling came at the door.
“Oh, my God,” Katherine said in a low voice. She threw herself toward the handle, seizing it, bracing herself against the paneling to hold the door shut. “Go away!” she cried.
Shock prickled through Nell. “What are you doing?”
A muffled voice from without shouted, “Katherine, are you all right?”
“Go away,” Katherine said shrilly. “I’ve changed my mind! Go away!”
Dread pulled Nell off the bench, put her into a crouch so she could see out the window. Two bobbies stepped into view and her heart banged into her ribs. “What have you done?” she whispered.
White-faced, still holding the door closed, Katherine stared at her. “I didn’t know,” she said. “Or I didn’t—I was so confused—”
The door burst open, and Katherine fell directly into Grimston’s arms.
His dark eyes found Nell’s. “That’s her,” he said crisply.
A policeman stepped into the doorway. He had a mean look to him, one familiar to Nell: lantern-jawed, heavy-browed, satisfied-looking, smug on his own authority. His beady eyes fixed on her as his thick lips formed a smirk.
“Come down then like a good girl,” he said.
Katherine twisted in Grimston’s grasp. “Leave her alone!” she screamed.
Nell stepped back but there was nowhere to go. “You can’t take me,” she said as the bobby started into the coach after her. “You can’t.” The words tumbled from her in a rush. “I’m married now. I’m the Countess of Rushden. You can’t do this.”
The bobby’s partner appeared below, a heavy baton in hand. As his thick hand closed on her wrist, the bobby said, “All I know is, you’re to come with us.”
The inspector, Mr. Hunslow, was a slight, bald man whose sallow face shone in the gaslight as though he’d been dipped in oil. Every few seconds, he paused to lick his lips, which were badly chapped, cracking at the corners. “The police-magistrate does not sit again until ten tomorrow morning,” he said. “It would be better for you to speak frankly, while you remain comfortable.”
Nell understood that for the threat it was. This room was small, the air stale, only a single high window to prove the outside world existed. But it was private. It wasn’t the usual prisoner’s lodgings.
“I have told you,” she said, her voice flat. She felt somehow removed from this scene, disbelieving of it, disbelieving of her own stupidity. “I didn’t steal the spoon. I had it from a man named Michael Whitby.” She would not call him her stepbrother any longer. She would not think of Katherine as her sister, either. She would never spare a thought for either of them again.
Hunslow’s jaw ticked side to side. Through the bare, whitewashed walls came the sound of ordinary justice being done: somebody wailed; a baby cried; two voices lifted in argument. He was in a quandary, the inspector. He believed her a pretender and a thief; he knew—and had mentioned straightaway—that she came from the part of town where people properly feared his kind. He’d read the newspaper accounts, he’d informed her with a thin smile.
But he also knew she was married to a lord. He couldn’t lay a hand on her, and evidently he didn’t dare to raise his voice, either. Without the usual tactics, he had no idea how to browbeat her.
She stared up at him, not blinking, until he hissed out a breath and said, “We’ll look for this man. Mind, though—should we happen not to find him, this story will do you more harm than good.”
“Then go look for him,” she said. “I can’t do a thing but tell you the truth.”
A knock came at the door. Hunslow tugged down his dark jacket and went to answer the summons.
Nell returned her attention to the crack in the bare, whitewashed wall opposite. It seemed important to focus on that crack. That panic in the first moments after they’d nabbed her—that sick tide of betrayal as she’d looked into Katherine’s tear-stained face—had transmuted into a more comfortable numbness that she didn’t want to fade. She wouldn’t think about herself, about the circumstances, about the fact that Simon could have no idea where she was. She’d only focus on that crack in the wall.
“Very good,” she heard Hunslow say, and the note of triumph in his voice made her stomach tremble. She swallowed hard. The walls needed a new coat of whitewash. Flakes of paint dusted the wooden floorboards where they met the walls. These sorts of walls, they rubbed off on your clothing when you leaned against them. A terrible pain, washing out those powdery white smears.
The door closed. The hollow thump of footsteps announced Hunslow’s return. Only when she looked up, it wasn’t Hunslow before her but Sir Grimston, cadaverous in a black suit, the slightest smile on his thin lips.
“Yes,” he said thoughtfully, taking up the chair last occupied by the inspector, folding himself into it as stiffly as though his gawky limbs had never bent before. “You do look at home here,” he said.
She’d never seen a man so emaciated still able to walk. There was something fascinating and terrible about how clearly the bones of his face stood out beneath his sunken skin. His Adam’s apple protruded too distinctly; it looked like a ball stuck onto his throat.
To imagine himself as Katherine’s husband, a man with these ugly looks would need to be possessed of a terrible arrogance—the sort that could excuse any manner of sin. “I reckon you gave Michael that spoon,” she said.
“Conjecture,” he murmured. “Very difficult to prove. Nearly impossible, in fact.” He crossed his legs, his trousers whispering. His long fingers, clad in black leather, drummed once atop his knee. “Yon soldiers of the law will discover that he was on a holiday in Ramsgate the day the theft occurred. His friends, an innkeeper, and a barmaid will vouch for his alibi.”
She kept breathing. She looked him right in his dark, cold eyes, set deep into his face like holes in a skull. You didn’t look away from fear; you didn’t back down. “You made a mistake,” she said. “You put your cards on a greedy drunk. That spoon came through somebody else, who will vouch for his possession of it before I ever saw it.”
Grimston’s laugh sounded like the rustling of dry leaves. It raised goose bumps on her flesh; it seemed to skitter off to scrape along the walls. “You refer, I suppose, to Miss Crowley? Oh, yes, I do invite you to tell the inspector of her role in it. A woman who should be in Newgate for thieving—whose freedom was won not through the lawful channels of the courts, but a bribe. How interested they should be to learn of her collusion in yet another theft. Do tell them, Miss Whitby.”
Her throat was closing. He’d done his research, all right. He’d seen the angles before she’d even thought to look for them. He was right: she’d never bring Hannah’s name into this. “What do you want?” she whispered.
“Ah. Nothing too dreadful,” he said. “I wish you to go away, Miss Whitby. It needn’t be jail, however. You understand, with this new mark against your reputation …” He paused, looking struck. “Which, come to think of it, is not the first time you’ve committed a crime, is it? Why, my men have turned up not a few accounts of a certain meeting at some ladies’ society. I understand you ardently proclaimed your larcenous tendencies before company. Can that be?” He gave her a benign smile. “Tell me, what could have driven you to commit such a marvelous indiscretion?”
She set her jaw hard. He’d talked to the ladies at the GFS. They’d told him of the day Hannah had been arrested, when she’d tried so loudly to draw the blame back where it belonged: on herself.
She’d called those bints every nasty name she’d ever heard. Sure and certain they’d be glad to speak against her to a judge.
“Well,” Grimston said, studying her curiously. “I see you have no defense at hand. Which is fitting: the witnesses to your earlier confession will not help your defense in court, should I choose to prosecute you for theft of the spoon.”
“Get to the point,” she said through her teeth.
“The point is merely this: your most recent crime surely ends all hope you may have had for claiming Lady Cornelia’s inheritance. If I do not choose to withdraw my accusation against you, you will be tried as a thief and most likely convicted. Once that verdict is issued, I cannot think of a judge in the land who will be kindly disposed to call you Lady Katherine’s equal.
“An imposter and a confidence artist,” he continued smoothly. “Those are the more likely names for you, and they carry heavy punishments of their own. Your lodgings”—he flicked a speaking glance around the small, rude room—”will make these look quite magnificent by comparison.”
She took hold of the bench beneath her hard enough to draw a splinter. It was a very convincing picture he painted. She’d always known the courts would be set against elevating a girl from her background. They didn’t like to give poor folks ideas. And Michael’s wretched state on his release from prison showed clearly enough how the law dealt with people who dared reach above their station.
But Simon wouldn’t let them jail her.
Where was he?
He would come. Her doubts were nothing compared to her trust in him in this matter. He’d free her. He’d do it very easily, just as he’d done for Hannah.
But Hannah hadn’t had a fellow as powerful as Grimston angling to prosecute her.
She couldn’t draw a full breath suddenly. Simon wouldn’t be able to make this problem disappear as easily as he’d done before. All the lessons, the deportment and speech, the fancy clothing, would be for nothing. On the dock nobody would see a countess. They’d see a factory girl who’d stolen a bloody spoon.
She spoke slowly, her voice seeming to come from outside herself. “And if you choose to withdraw your accusation?”
“Quick-witted,” Grimston said pleasantly. “Or perhaps only animal instinct: you scent the blood in this proposition. I am not a hard-hearted man, Miss Whitby. I understand your background is humble, your prospects—until recently—pitifully dim. I could hardly ask you to surrender your only chance at betterment, no matter how slim it now seems.
“However,” he went on, “it is not your only chance. I am glad to offer you another path. I would be willing to gift you a not-inconsiderable sum with which you might return to your old haunts and live very comfortably. But you would have to return there. You would never set foot among your betters again, and you would admit, publicly, that you are only Nell Whitby, no one more. You would repudiate your claim to being the Aubyns’ lost daughter.”
She let go of a breath. “That would be all but admitting to fraud.”
“Or perhaps only confusion,” he said with a shrug. “You are female. Ignorant, uneducated, easily misled. Perhaps you were unduly influenced by the lies of an evil man who whispered in your ear for his own gain.” He smiled thinly. “Lord Rushden has been known to influence the opinions of those far more sophisticated than a factory girl. I do not think anyone would be too surprised if it transpired that he had swayed you.”
Everything in her rebelled. “I will not do it,” she said. “Look elsewhere if you want to hurt him.”
His lips flattened; for a moment, he visibly battled irritation. “You can’t be so foolish,” he said. “Never say you care for the man.”
“I won’t do it,” she repeated.
He expelled a hard breath through his nose, then shrugged again, less fluidly this time. “As you wish. Tell the world you had an episode of madness. Whatever you want, so long as you admit that you are nobody: only Nell Whitby, the daughter of a yeoman from Leicestershire. Do you follow me? I will ensure you aren’t prosecuted for fraud or any other matter. And for your pains, you’ll be granted your liberty and a thousand pounds to spend as you please. What do you say?”
A thousand pounds.
She’d not imagined he’d offer so substantial a sum. She wet her lips, unable to speak.
He saw her amazement and leaned toward her slightly, as though the sight gratified him so intently that it merited closer inspection. “Exactly so,” he said softly. “A thousand pounds at no risk whatsoever. On the other hand: prison and penury. I should think your choice is clear.”
She struggled to think clearly. He spoke as persuasively as the devil, but everything in her cried out against it. Her heart said, Simon will solve this.
Her heart! What sound decision had ever been made by a heart? If there was one thing she’d learned in life, it was the danger of romantic notions, the poisonous work wrought by wishful thinking. She’d always looked for the brighter way, but every effort to hold out for hope had ultimately led to disaster. Instead of whoring she’d thieved, and Hannah had suffered for it and Mum had died anyway. Instead of keeping her mouth shut at the factory, she’d asked for improvements and been sacked. Simon had come along like a miracle and for a short, blissful time it had seemed that all her secret desires were coming true. Then she’d overheard Daughtry.
History taught lessons to those who attended to it: why should she be surprised now to learn that all her hopes, once again, had been in vain?
She searched herself for a solid objection that did not center around foolish dreams. She couldn’t bank on hope, on faith, on … on whatever she felt in her heart for her husband.
But he was her husband. “I am married,” she said hoarsely—unspeakably relieved to realize that there was an objection. “Even if … you are right, and I will never be recognized as Cornelia, I cannot simply go back whence I came.”
Grimston burst into a laugh. The surprise in his face struck her as the first genuine emotion she’d glimpsed since his entrance, and the sight closed around her heart like a cold fist. “You poor girl,” he said. “Marriages can be undone very easily these days.” She tried not to react, but his laughter trailed off as he leaned closer to her. “Oh yes,” he said, his voice oily. “I can see you do know this fact.”
She stared at him. He poked squarely at a bruise that didn’t heal, that only seemed to grow sharper with each passing hour. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing it. “You should go,” she said.
“Five thousand pounds.” He sighed. “But that is my final offer, Miss Whitby. You have a minute to decide.”
Five thousand pounds.
She swallowed a surge of bile and looked away from Grimston, fearful of what he might read in her expression. The small window set high into the far wall showed a patch of sky that grew steadily darker. Night was falling and Simon hadn’t come yet.
If he knew what had happened, he must be horrified. It was the end of his hopes for the inheritance.
Oh, of course he’d know she was innocent, but what difference would that make? He’d said the money didn’t matter … that he’d keep her, regardless … but if she truly wasn’t to be an heiress, she’d be naught to him but a terrible mistake—one he’d spend the rest of his life regretting.
And now she’d be in prison to boot.
She closed her eyes and pushed down the despair. She had to deal in facts. Simon would no more wish to have a wife in prison—a poor wife, like a millstone around his neck—than she’d wish to live and die there.
It would mean his freedom to take this money Grimston offered. And her own, as well. Walk away free and clear of this mess. No courts or judges to concern her. No more agonizing nights pretending to be somebody she wasn’t, fearing of how she might disappoint somebody. How she might drive a man—her husband—to turn away from her, or worse yet, to regret his decision to stay by her side.
Taking Grimston’s offer would be a favor to Simon, really. He needed money. He needed to profit by marriage.
But taking Grimston’s money and walking away from Simon … Hadn’t another woman done the very same?
Her stomach cramped; her eyes began to burn. She bit down on her cheek, dragging in a hard breath, resisting the tears. The woman he’d loved once—she had done this to him. She’d broken his heart. He hadn’t said much on the subject, but that song, that achingly sad song, had told her everything.
“Time is up, Miss Whitby.”
She opened her eyes and looked Grimston in the face. She’d be a fool not to take his five thousand pounds. If she turned down his offer and her future fell to tatters, she’d never be able to blame anyone but herself. This moment, in retrospect, would have been her doom.
“All right.” She managed a single nod. “I’ll accept your offer if it means I can leave this place right now.”
He broke into a wide smile. “But of course. I’m very glad to hear that wisdom has prevailed.” He rose, flipping out the tails of his jacket, and then turned on his heel, snapping his fingers at her. “Follow me,” he said.
She understood her part well enough. Head bowed, she trailed him into the hall, where he announced that there had been some mistake; the spoon had not been stolen, only lent unwisely. Dismissing the inspector’s blustering protest with cool efficiency, Grimston then took her by the elbow and escorted her in a hard grip out the door and into his coach.
Increasingly she felt sick. Five thousand pounds: a bloody fortune and her freedom to boot.
On the other hand … Simon.
He’d lied to her, yes.
But then he’d told her he’d never let her go.
Could it be that she believed him? Now that her fears and doubts in him were put to the test, she couldn’t hold on to them. All she could think was how gravely this betrayal would strike him. The devil might have designed it. To do to him exactly what that other woman had done … even if the gain to her would be immeasurably great, her freedom and a fortune …
God help her. God damn her. She couldn’t bear to lose her freedom but she couldn’t bear to buy it if her soul was the price.
“Where are we going?” she asked, once they were closed into the dark little compartment and bouncing down the road. Her voice sounded properly shaky, as well it might. One moment she felt numb, the next, inclined to hysterical laughter. She couldn’t believe what she was about to do. She was a thrice-damned idiot.
“I am taking you to my lawyers,” Grimston said, “where you will sign a document disavowing your former claim, and receive a bank check to reward your good sense.”
She nodded and settled back against the squabs. Tears pricked her eyes—tears born of disbelief, of dumb amazement. Simon had been right; she loved him, there was no other explanation for this, yet she’d mistrusted him, reviled him, because it was easier by far to hate him. Of course it was easier to mistrust than to love. She’d seen firsthand the hells into which a heart could lead. She’d seen where love had taken Michael’s wife.
Yet here she went, tripping down the same path for Simon’s sake! Twenty years from now, no doubt, she’d still be cursing herself for this unforgivable stupidity.
When the coach took a sudden, sharp turn, she manufactured a choking noise.
“What is it?” Grimston asked.
“Nothing,” she whispered.
A brief silence fell.
She took a deep breath, willing all this pain, this confusion and despair, into her stomach. If only she could rid herself of them and feel nothing at all—not even love. Especially not love.
She retched.
“Good Lord!” Grimston snapped straight. “Are you going to be sick?”
“Think it’s—the nerves,” she mumbled.
He banged on the roof. “Do not vomit in this vehicle,” he said sharply.
“No, no—” She clutched her stomach and heaved again as the coach slowed.
“Open the door!” he shouted, and then the cool night air was flooding in, and strong hands wrapped around Nell’s waist to lower her to the ground.
She bent double as though to puke, and then straightened with her elbow aimed straight for the footman’s groin.
The man howled as the blow connected. She hiked up her skirts and started to run.
Grimston’s roar echoed after her down the street: “You are making a grievous mistake!”
She didn’t waste her breath on a reply.
Simon spotted Nell in the road, stumbling to a stop, her hand lifting, waving tentatively at his vehicle, as though she feared he wouldn’t stop. His rage was an animate, living creature that had overtaken any part of him that he recognized. He banged the roof and did not wait for the vehicle to slow; he opened the door and leapt down onto the pavement, catching her by the elbows as she sagged against him.
Her warmth, her cheek beneath his, was the first clear and clean sensation he’d felt for an eternity it seemed. “Are you all right?” he demanded.
She was breathless, her body shaking with exertion, her skin damp with sweat. He pressed his lips against her brow, his hands flexing on her arms, straining not to tighten too fiercely, not to hurt her.
“I’m—fine,” she gasped. “Please—let’s go—he was turning the coach—to—follow me.”
“Grimston,” he said.
She nodded against his chest.
He would rip the man limb from limb. He would cut that bastard’s heart out and feed it to the crows. He lifted her, ignoring the way she jerked, her startled exclamation, and installed her in the vehicle. “Take her home,” he said to the staring coachman, who had twisted from the waist to peer at these curious events.
“What—” Nell leaned forward, the light from the streetlamp on the pavement behind him lending her face a bluish hue, rendering in chiaroscuro her panicked expression. “You come with me!”
“You said he is coming,” Simon said flatly. “I need to—speak with him.”
Her eyes rounded. “Not now! Simon, please—”
Please. Her voice broke on that syllable. He sucked in a long breath. Please. She’d been arrested. Katherine had sent a goddamned note. A note to break these tidings, a slip of paper that had lain in the entry hall hidden amid a pile of bloody invitations for—he knew not how long.
“Please,” she repeated, and her voice snapped him back from red reverie: he looked at her, exhaled, and bounded into the vehicle, slamming the door shut himself.
As he sat down on the bench beside her, the vehicle launched forward, jolting her into him. He felt the contact like a shock, a blow to the brain; his intentions shifted, resettled; he drew her to him so fast and forcefully that she made a small sound of protest.
On a long breath, he forced his grip to loosen. His fingers threaded through her hair; he stared unseeing at the window as her breath puffed against his throat in ragged, uneven pants.
“How long?” he asked.
“What?”
“How long were you there?”
“Oh. A … few hours?”
He gritted his teeth. What to do with this emotion: he held very still, not even daring to breathe for a long moment, because his muscles were knotting and balking and she leaned against him, fragile, shaking, he was going to kill Grimston subtly; the man did not deserve a trial or a notorious death; he deserved to be stamped out, exterminated like a rat, in some back alley execution.
She tried to pull away. He stopped her, and then caught himself and let her go. She would be angry at him, no doubt. She had every right to rage. She was his wife. She was … Nell, he had let her spend hours alone, surrounded by enemies—”I didn’t know,” he said hoarsely. “I promise you—the moment I found out, I came. The carriage was already readied—I was going to look for you—my God, had I not thought to look at those letters, I’d have gone in the opposite direction, to Bethnal Green—”
His throat closed. The prospect of her running alone in the dark—not encountering him—fleeing from Grimston—caught by him—
“It’s all right,” she said softly. She shoved a hand across her nose and blinked at him. The curves of her face, the wideness of her dark blue eyes—he was not going to recover from this: the agony of helplessness in which he’d sat right here, not minutes ago.
He exhaled. Marshaled his thoughts. “Why did they take you?”
Her breathy laughter hitched. “You didn’t know? The spoon. Grimston says I stole it.”
He nodded. He could not take his eyes off her. “Are you all right? Did anyone lay a hand on you?”
She blinked. “No. I’m … fine.”
Of course. She was always fine. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said after a pause. “Yes, Simon: I mean it.” A frown dawned on her brow. “Come here,” she whispered, and then contradicted herself by moving back into his arms.
He closed his eyes as he held her. His pulse was finally slowing. “When I read Katherine’s note—” He swallowed. “Nell, I might have—” He felt a shudder move through him. Words defied the experience.
“I can guess,” she murmured. Her face turned, her nose pushing hard into his chest. “He offered me money to leave you,” she whispered.
Fleeting surprise flattened into black humor. Of course Grimston had offered her money. He’d been the messenger sent to Maria, too, so many years ago.
But unlike Maria, Nell had refused his bribe.
He turned his face into her hair, breathing deeply. Nothing in the world had ever felt so right as her in his arms.
“What will we do?” she asked.
We. Never had a word sounded so sweet. “It’s a lunatic charge,” he said. “We’ll put them on Michael.” And he would deal with Grimston.
She shook her head. “Michael was in Ramsgate when the spoon went missing. And I can’t have the Crowleys involved.”
None of this interested him. He wanted her home, upstairs, as far from the exits as possible, with every door between her and them locked, bolted; he wanted to have her squarely, securely, ensconced. Miracles were to be guarded. He would guard her with his life.
“Not right now,” he said. “Later, we’ll discuss it.”
“But—” She sat up, pushed away from him. “I can’t involve the Crowleys. There’s no way to disprove it.”
“I’ll make it go away.”
“But what if you can’t?” Her wide eyes searched his.
“I can.” If he could do anything, put his mind and all his energies to anything, it would be this.
She stared at him a moment longer. Opened her mouth as if to reply—then seemed to think better of it. With a sigh, she rested her head again on his shoulder, exactly where it belonged.