CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
July 20th, 1812
Exeter, Devonshire
TO NELL’S RELIEF, Mordecai Black didn’t act the lover at breakfast. He was friendly and polite, not amorous. He didn’t mention their kisses, but memory of those intimacies hummed in the air between them. He had kissed her and she had kissed him, and it had been the most exhilarating experience of her life. She had felt alive in a way she hadn’t realized was possible, as if she’d sleepwalked for twenty-three years and only been truly awake for that half hour on the sofa.
She understood now why Sophia had run off with her soldier. Who wouldn’t run off with a man who made one feel like that? Who wouldn’t choose ruin over respectability, if that was ruin?
After breakfast, Nell gave him the sketch and the names of the midwives in the West Quarter. “Be careful.”
“I will.” Black hesitated, and she thought he was going to forbid her to leave the inn, but all he said was, “Please don’t take any risks.”
“I won’t.”
Black didn’t look entirely convinced.
“I shall visit the cathedral,” Nell told him. “And perhaps look at some of the shops on the High Street. I’ll take Bessie with me and I’ll be everything that is prudent and respectable.” An edge of tartness crept into her voice. “I know how to do that; I’ve been doing it my whole life.”
“So you have.” Black gave a nod of acknowledgment. “Very well, I trust your judgment.”
EXETER’S CATHEDRAL WAS a handsome structure, but Nell had little attention for the immense vaulted ceiling or the astronomical clock; she was worrying about Sophia, worrying about Black. It was all very well for Black to tell her not to take risks today, but what if he took one?
After viewing the cathedral, she walked across the green to Exeter’s High Street, Bessie at her heels, but she had no interest in shopping. She passed the haberdasher’s without pausing and cast only a cursory glance at the bonnets displayed in the milliner’s window. Even the bookshop failed to hold her attention; Nell picked up several volumes of poetry, flicked through them restlessly, placed them back. The only time she halted was at a bustling confectioner’s shop. Reid & Houghton, the sign proclaimed. People were queueing for fruit ices. Nell’s mouth watered. She heard her father’s voice in her ear: Respectable ladies do not eat in public.
For a moment she was tempted to buy an ice just to defy him—and then she thought of her little hoard of coins, and turned away.
She saved a few more pennies by returning to the inn on foot. It was yet another warm, airless day. By the time she and Bessie reached the inn Nell was hot enough that she wished she’d bought herself an ice. “Get this wig off me, please,” she told Bessie. “I’m dying of heat.”
It was a relief to be rid of the wig, even if it meant she couldn’t leave her room. Nell sent Bessie down to the private parlor to fetch paper, ink, and a quill, and then sat at the little dressing table and wrote to her cousin, Georgiana Dalrymple.
Dearest Georgie
As you will see from the postmark, this letter comes to you from Exeter, not Bath. A lot has happened since I wrote to you last month.
She told Georgie about receiving Sophia’s letter, about her hasty journey to London, about meeting Mordecai Black and all the help he’d given her—and their failure so far to find Sophia.
Baletongue will come in two days’ time and I shall ask for the gift of finding people, so I shall shortly be reunited with Sophia. Once I am, I’ll write again and let you know how she and the baby are.
We shan’t come to stay with you, Nell wrote firmly. So don’t ask! We will be able to live quite comfortably on the interest from my portion. That was almost a lie. By scrimping they should be able to live on eighty pounds a year; whether they’d be comfortable was debatable.
And then Nell remembered that she was Mordecai Black’s mistress now, and that many men set their mistresses up in houses of their own.
Nell chewed on her lower lip and decided that if Mordecai Black did offer her a house, she would accept. For the sake of Sophia and the baby.
She continued with her letter: Please tell your mother that I shall not be shortsighted in choosing my wish. It is not merely Sophia I shall be able to find, but anyone.
Lady Dalrymple was scathing on the subject of poorly chosen wishes. Don’t squander your wish, she had told Nell more than once. Choose something that will last a lifetime. Lady Dalrymple’s favorite example of a well-chosen wish was Nell’s great-great-grandmother, who’d wished that no ship her husband was on would ever sink—and throughout his forty-year career in the navy, her husband’s ships had survived storms, reefs, waterspouts, and cannonballs. Twice his ships had sunk within minutes of his disembarking.
I know that Hubert’s whereabouts is as important to you as Sophia’s is to me, Nell wrote. I promise I shall write as soon as I know where he is. Which meant: where Hubert’s bones lay. Because everyone knew that Hubert was dead, somewhere in the Scottish Highlands.
My love to you and your parents,
Nell
The letter written, Nell went through her few clothes, looking for something to darn, but Bessie had been before her and there was nothing. At the very bottom of her valise was a small jewelry pouch. Nell loosened the drawstring and emptied its contents into her hand.
Three brooches. One set with pearls, one with amethysts, one with rubies.
She carefully polished each brooch and returned it to the pouch. The pearl one first, since it was the one she liked least. Then the amethyst. And lastly, the ruby.
Her father hadn’t liked the ruby brooch. He’d pronounced it gaudy and refused to allow her to wear it. But Nell loved the deep, lustrous crimson of the stones. Such a bold color, full of fire and warmth and life.
Nell spent a long time buffing each ruby with a scrap of muslin. When she’d finished she held the brooch in the sunlight and watched the facets blaze. Glittering, barbaric, beautiful. From my grandmother to my mother to me.
Two things she’d inherited from her mother: brooches, and a Faerie godmother.