This time, Nell didn’t let him keep her out of his conference with Daughtry. When the lawyer arrived and Simon tried to dispatch her upstairs, she stood firm. She kept her composure when Daughtry said, “Plainly speaking, this looks very bad.” When he said, “It would be irresponsible of me to suggest that these charges do not deserve your grave concern,” she received the words calmly.
Simon did not.
He lost his temper, though the lawyer wasn’t the man who deserved his abuse. She listened to his anger, so different from Michael’s, words without fists, the cold beneath it harder and more dangerous than Michael’s fire—but not to her. It was clear to her suddenly that he’d never be a danger to her.
The lawyer tried to defend himself. She could see in his uneasy, sidelong glances toward her that he was censoring what he really wanted to say. He wanted to urge Simon toward that annulment, no doubt. “I must remind you,” he finally said, red with frustration, “of the provision we once discussed. If your financial concerns are paramount, then you must consider … that discussion.”
Simon cursed. “Absolutely not.”
Well, yes, she thought. It had come to that, now.
She slipped out. Simon caught her on the stairs. His hand closed on her arm to commandeer her progress, to direct her, to make it seem, maybe, as though she moved at his bidding. He was, after all, the Earl of Rushden.
She didn’t fight. She came to a stop. “He’s right,” she said. “Nothing good can come of it now.”
“You cannot mean to give up,” he said.
“It’s not giving up. It’s sound strategy.”
His voice came in her ear, a raw whisper. “God damn you, Nell. Do you not understand that I’m in love with you?”
She stared unseeing, straight ahead. Those words. “I wish you weren’t,” she said. It made everything so much harder.
Abruptly his arm was beneath her knees; he was scooping her up, lifting her. As he looked down at her he showed her the face of a savage. “You’re not running away,” he said.
She turned her own face away. As he carried her, stone busts marched by, eyeing her from their comfortable pedestals. In love, he’d said.
He shifted her in his arms, his biceps flexing as he angled himself to strike the door with his shoulder. She could feel him vibrating, the muscles in his chest and abdomen contracting, turning into stone. A clever trick, a handy ability for his kind. In death they became immortalized in stone busts; in life they turned to stone when events opposed them. He stalked onward, immovable against her squirming.
She twisted out of his arms in his sitting room, turning to face him.
He stared at her. Not stone, after all. He looked … ravaged. Exhausted. “I would never let you go,” he said slowly. “Do you believe me, now?”
“Yes,” she said. She wanted to weep for them both.
He pushed his hand slowly up his face, through his hair, knocking it into disorder. Beautiful, weary, and all at once, visibly disgusted: with her, or himself, or both of them, who’d made a simple business deal into something so dreadfully messy.
He turned away, pacing toward a cabinet; pulled out a decanter of brown liquid, making violent splashes into two glasses with a hand that shook.
Her numbness evaporated so suddenly and completely that she keened silently for its loss. Without its substance to cushion her, she felt hollow, ripe to shatter. He’d decided love was a part of it now. The money had always and ever been his explicit aim, but now he felt differently—now, when she’d be a criminal, not an heiress at all.
“You wanted the money,” she said. The reminder felt like a favor she was doing to him at her own expense; the words lacerated her throat.
He loved her. They loved each other. She loved him, too, and that was now the secret she was keeping. Because tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that—what was to hold him when they had nothing? What was to hold him when he woke up to poverty?
He knew so little of being poor. He couldn’t understand what it meant. He traded on credit, but credit could not last forever. Then life would grow bitterer than he could imagine. There would be no piano for him to play. Had his thoughts gone that far yet?
He turned back. At first she thought he meant to hand her one of the glasses—and perhaps so did he. But he bolted the first one directly, and then, looking at her, he lifted the other and drank it down, too.
He sat into a wing chair. “Yes,” he said dully. “I did want the money. And so did you.”
She sank down across from him, unable now to remove her eyes from his face. Complex, important things moved across it, tightening his mouth, narrowing his eyes as he looked blindly around him, from her to the fire to the glasses in his hands, the sight of which abruptly caused him to grimace. He set them onto the table and locked his hands together, his fingers threading, folding at his mouth as he drew a long breath.
“This will be difficult,” he said. “More difficult than we imagined.”
He sounded dazed. A sharp little laugh caught in her throat. Defeat, the world’s refusal to bend to him, had stunned him.
“But that doesn’t mean—” He locked eyes with her and she felt as though she’d been pierced, blinded by a sudden bright light. She looked down, blinking back tears.
“That doesn’t mean,” he said hoarsely, “that we turn back now.”
He sounded desperate, as well he might. If he wanted reassurance, she could give him none. His lawyer knew better. Grimston knew better than both of them. Even she herself had always known it was a gamble. But a good gambler knew when to withdraw.
She exhaled, twining her own hands together, squeezing hard. He would hold her here and watch her be jailed. She would go to jail for him, because he was the only reason she’d not taken Grimston’s offer tonight. She would rot in prison and he’d be left bankrupt—rotting more slowly, but rotting all the same.
He believed that keeping her here was love. They both would suffer for it.
Only natural that she saw it more clearly than he did. His arrogance was finally blinding him to facts. She could not wait, for love of him, to be captured in Grimston’s trap. One of them needed to be sensible, and she, the one with the most to lose, would have to play that role.
She’d planned for this once. It seemed hard to remember that conversation with Hannah in the coach. So long ago, it seemed now. The … dresses, she thought. Her brain moved sluggishly. She’d promised she would take the dresses when she went.
“Nell,” he said. “Look at me.”
She lifted her head and fixed on a point just to the right of him. She didn’t want to look at him like this, with his desire plain on his face, more vulnerable than she’d ever wished to see him. She couldn’t wish to hurt him. But he himself had planned to leave her once, and he would hurt her if she stayed—hurt not just her but also himself.
He had such faith that life would turn out right in the end. Maybe it was his gift to believe that in spite of all that her father had done to him. Maybe that was why he’d hidden himself from the world: so it couldn’t correct these romantic notions.
She would have liked to live in his private world. To keep this precious confederacy of two, their bold, intoxicating alliance. But love wasn’t enough—not in a world where her history in Bethnal Green could become a weapon to be wielded against her. Not when both their futures were at stake.
He spoke flatly. “You are a coward.” He saw in her face, perhaps, the path her thoughts had turned down.
She shrugged. Maybe she was cowardly. She couldn’t live here on a knife’s edge, her heart growing ever softer, sprouting countless tendrils that would wrap around him so tightly that she’d never recover her own independent shape—knowing, all the while, that the day might come when they would be yanked apart, and the sudden distance would rip her heart from her chest.
The law would take her from him. And as she sat alone in jail, Daughtry would come whispering in his ear. He might reconsider his love. He might not. She and he would both be doomed, regardless.
She rose slowly. She had the dresses to gather.
In the next second he was in front of her. She didn’t see him move; she didn’t realize he had until his broad palm cupped her head, his fingers pushing through her hair, pulling her face up, his mouth coming down onto hers.
A hitching little sound escaped her. She leaned into the kiss, let her arms twine around him. She ached, and when he touched her, the ache did not lessen; rather, it strengthened, it grew unbearable—but sweeter, all the same. This dark, consuming kiss assured her that there was cause to ache, that something great and magnificent would be lost tonight: the sweetness of him, the perfection of him, the strength and the skill and the force of life in him, were worth aching for. It was like holding her hand to a flame, but she put herself to him and reveled in the pain.
Somehow they were moving now; somehow she was lying back on the bed as he came over her. Feverishly they kissed; their hands coursed over each other’s bodies as though not touching this curve or that surface would consign parts of them to the ether; as if only their touch made this real. In the back of her brain, that pulsating, terrified part of her so concerned with survival, with tomorrow, warned her, screaming, that she should not take this risk. Carrying his bastard, she would find the path ahead even steeper to climb.
She didn’t care. Life had denied her a million things, the chance to know her true family not least among them. Now it was denying her him. Life was cruel, not a fairy tale; one took one’s happiness long before the ending, because the ending never came prettily or well.
She struck his shoulder, sharply, the blow itself reviving her anger. Nothing was ever fair. He understood; he caught her hand and held it to him as he rolled, putting her on top of him—for once, in these brief moments, in control.
She wanted him beneath her; but then she didn’t. She did not want to look at him. She shook her head as their eyes met, furious, furious as she took him by the hair and pulled up his head, pulled him halfway off the bed and shoved his jacket from his body. Off with the waistcoat and the braces and the shirt and the vest beneath it; she fell back over him like a ravening creature, sinking her teeth in the solid muscle of his shoulder, glad, violently so, when he shuddered beneath her.
He needed scars. His polished skin required wounds, bruises, signs of what had happened here and would be over tomorrow. She turned her nails into him as her teeth moved down his chest, closed on the flexing muscle that banded his waist. He made a guttural noise but it spoke no protest; he arched beneath her as his fingers made quick work of her gown. The fabric sloughed from her like the skin of a snake, leaving her stronger, more resilient beneath: she was a creature who made her own protection, who carried it in her very skin. She pressed herself against him, naked, exulting in the heat of his flesh.
They rolled again, limbs tangling. He caught her hands, placing them above her head, pinning them within the circle of his fingers as he reached down to bring his cock against her. His eyes seemed lit from behind, his expression fierce, feral, as he thrust into her.
She bucked beneath him, wanting more. She wanted that small pain she’d felt that first time—or, no, something worse, something awful to balance out the perfection of this moment. It was too much; it was enough to keep her from sleep for the rest of her life. He released her hands and gripped her jaw as he thrust into her slowly, steadily, his eyes pinning hers, daring her to look away as he took her. The slap of their bodies grew louder, an excuse if she wanted it, but she held his gaze, not even blinking.
Only when he lowered his head and took her mouth did she shut her eyes. She wrapped her hands, her arms, around his head and pulled him down to her, then rolled and came atop him. It should have been her victory, to put him beneath her and take him inside, but his hands at her hips directed her, urged her faster, and when the contractions seized her, it was with nothing like joy. The pleasure hurt; it spiraled beyond her ability to bear; at last, her courage snapped, and she hid her face in his chest as he shuddered inside her, hoping, praying, he did not feel her tears.
When he woke in the morning, she was gone.
It took Simon less than a quarter hour to understand it. He’d slept so lightly, waking twice in the night, the last time in the hour just before dawn; he remembered viscerally his relief at finding her still wrapped around him, at how pliantly her limbs had entangled with his as he’d drawn her closer. How had he gone back to sleep? When had she slipped out of his bed?
He didn’t find her in her rooms.
The dining room was empty, though the breakfast dishes sat ready, covered, awaiting her usual appearance.
She was not in the library.
It was the little blond maid who put to rest the growing suspicion in him. As he turned to mount the stairs again—thinking, still, that he had missed her, telling himself that she would be upstairs—he found the maid standing helplessly above him, her hands twisting at her waist.
“The d-dresses are gone,” she stammered. “My lady’s dresses!”
He nodded once and turned on his heel, not knowing where in damnation he was going.
He found himself back in the library. Staring sightlessly at rows of books. One still sat open on the table, marking the spot where Nell had abandoned it. She’d found another of her mother’s books. The Tempest. Some weeks ago, they’d had a discussion—some vigorous, miraculous debate—about this play. Had she come down here at dawn to dwell on that conversation? He recalled little of it but his own astonishment, his growing wonder, at discovering the woman across from him to be so much more than he’d imagined—a world unto herself, begging to be explored.
A passage on the page leapt out at him.
You taught me language, and my profit on’t
Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you,
For learning me your language!
Words spoken by Caliban, the poor, savage monster whom Prospero had sought to tame. Nell had reviled him, refused to grant him an ounce of pity. At the time, Simon had found her opinion diverting. He’d wondered smugly if she gathered the irony of a woman from the slums, come to convert herself into a lady, sneering at a spirit who had resisted being enslaved by the hypocrisies and strictures of Prospero’s civilization.
He touched the page with a hand that trembled. The memory of his amusement sickened him now. Caliban had nothing to do with her. It was not she, but rather he, Simon, the bloody Earl of Rushden, who had learned a new language during her time here. He’d rediscovered it, maybe, gained a better understanding of it, a new fluency.
He had no doubt where she had gone. It was not the first time a woman he loved had measured her prospects and chosen a better offer. He couldn’t blame her. Their situation had looked dire last night. Grimston’s payment was a wise choice by any view.
His hand made a fist. The page ripped, a long, tearing, ugly sound. He exhaled slowly.
He picked up the book and threw it.
It slammed into the dead fireplace. Pages flew, flapping like the wings of mourning doves.
He waited for the lash of humiliation, the deep burning breaking feeling that had driven him after Maria’s desertion, that had hounded him for years afterward: Not good enough. Not worthy.
But it didn’t come. What filled him was a wild, unmanageable grief. He couldn’t blame her for leaving. He’d seen enough to understand what drove her. Perhaps she even returned his love, but his love was no guarantee in her eyes. From the moment she’d discovered the option of the annulment, she’d known how little his words had meant when he’d vowed to take care of her, in good fortune and bad. What was love next to the guarantee Grimston had offered?
But she was wrong to trust that bastard. She was smart, savvy, shrewd, but her heart was not black enough to lead her imagination down all the possible avenues that Grimston would have charted.
He leaned heavily into the table, staring at the book where it had fallen.
She’d gone to his worst enemy, and it made no whit of difference.
He still had to find her.
Some commotion in the hallway brought his head up. The door flew open. Paralyzed for an instant—joy, relief, anger, love swelling in him—he stood there staring at her, her face tear-stained, her lips trembling.
“I was going to look for you,” he said hoarsely, then came to a stop, the words tangling in his head: it would have made no difference had she gone to Grimston; he wanted her to know that, to know he was done with pride: he would have gone to find her all the same.
And then she blinked, swallowed, and that small movement was enough to break his daze, to shatter it into shards that spread through him as a prickling, rippling, ripping realization.
“Katherine,” he said slowly. “What are you doing here?”
She made a panicked noise and came toward him. “Listen to me,” she said. “I was—I was wrong to deny her. But he—you cannot understand, for so long he has hounded me—I did not want to marry him, he only wanted my money, he told me I could choose where I liked so long as I denied her—and I didn’t know!” Her voice was high, frightened. “I couldn’t be sure of her until—until—”
“Don’t concern yourself,” he said softly. “I have plans for your guardian.”
“Oh.” She went paler yet. “But I think—I think he has plans for her. I told him, you see, that I mean to acknowledge her as Cornelia. And he thinks it is his fortune that will be halved in the process. I think—she’s in very great danger.”
Nell left the two plainest dresses at Hannah’s and bundled the rest into a ruder carpetbag, borrowed; the one she’d taken from Mayfair would attract too many eyes. Brennan’s was a long walk down the broken pavements, and Hannah had wanted to accompany her, but she couldn’t bear talk right now. It was enough simply to keep moving; she did not have the strength to explain anything, to put into words what she’d just done: gutted herself, used a knife to slice through her life, putting herself squarely on this, the bleaker and bleeding side of the rest of her days on earth.
She would never see him again.
Never touch him.
Never hear his voice.
She took a deep breath as she crossed the street. Her mind was dull but her body remembered the way, bolting to safety around the onward charge of a coach, the driver throwing a curse at her in passing. She stepped through a muddy puddle without feeling the damp soaking through her kid shoes.
Better the shoes be sullied. Bright, new shoes advertised to curious eyes certain comforts that she no longer had to spare. She was back where she belonged, on the narrow road between crouched buildings, where broken glass littered the ground and people leaned against buildings, talking in loud voices, eyeing passersby curiously, nodding to acquaintances.
But nobody nodded to her. Familiar faces fell silent as she looked into them. The greengrocer lifted his brows and turned away, whistling in astonishment as his shop boy gawked.
The back of her neck began to prickle. Eyes were following her, prodding into the back of her skull. She forced a smirk onto her lips and held it there as she walked. “Nellie,” she heard someone mutter. “That’s Nellie.”
“What on earth? Do you think—”
“Don’t look so flush now, does she—”
“—bloke left her flat?”
“God save her,” someone whispered.
A shiver passed through her. For a moment, in dumb reflex, her thoughts flew toward Peacock Alley, the only place here that she’d ever called her own. Before Mum had taken ill, that flat had been her safety.
She thought of Mum’s grave, of the rough wood marker on which had been painted “Dearly beloved. Forever missed.”
Here, in this narrow lane, lined by broken windows and stares, she thought for the first time in weeks of Jane Whitby without feeling pain. They had something in common. They’d both fled that scented, plush world for these streets. Desperation had driven both of them; nothing else would have done it.
Whether or not it was right, she would forever miss Mum. Love didn’t have to be pure or blameless or free of anger to be true. You could blame somebody and love her anyway. You could blame him but love him none the less for it.
She pushed Simon’s face from her mind.
In the dark confines of Brennan’s, the proprietor nearly dropped his pipe for shock.
“You’re back!” Brennan’s rheumy blue eyes narrowed as they took in the bag she clutched. He missed nothing, the old codger. He glanced beyond her, toward one of the cracked mirrors he’d set around the shop to catch thieves: they gave him every angle.
He removed his pipe and tapped it thoughtfully against the counter. Ash floated down, landing lightly on her dark wool gown. She’d donned it herself, in the hour before dawn, wrestling with the laces on her corset, weeping as her fingers fumbled over the buttons.
“Tossed you out, did he?” Brennan asked.
She hauled the bag up onto the ledge. “I’ve got quite a load for you.”
“I read of it in the papers, you know.”
Her hands paused on the bag ties. His thick Irish voice held no glee for her comeuppance. “Did you?”
“Oh, aye, and who didn’t?” He put the pipe back into his mouth, squinting at her as smoke roiled up around his head. “Came here alone, did you? Best take care, Nellie. Been too much talk for you to traipse about as you please.”
She nodded once, her jaw tight. It was a warning, but not one she needed. She’d known what it signified when people failed to greet her.
The knot that closed the bag resisted her fingers. “This load should fetch a fine price,” she said. The words felt stilted. She listened to herself go on. “Only worn once or twice, each of them. So don’t be thinking to cheat me, old man.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t,” he said, his manner too kind, absent of the blarney he’d usually muster for such a charge. Leaning onto one bony elbow, he dropped his voice: “What happened, Nellie? I thought we’d never see a hair of you again. Wasn’t you that girl, then?”
Her hands stilled. She looked up into his face, so familiar to her—more familiar suddenly than her own in the glass behind him. Dizziness rocked her, a sense of being removed from her own skin. That pale girl with circles beneath her eyes: who was she now? Not Cornelia. Not the Nell she’d once been, either. She’d changed. Her very lungs had altered. The fumes from Brennan’s pipe felt unbearable, thick and toxic. Another minute in this shop and she’d be puking all over her wares.
She shook her head and shoved the bag toward him. “I trust you,” she said quickly. “And I’ve counted them to a stitch. You send a note to the Crowleys with your bid, aye? I’ll be back to let you know what I think of it.”
“Not alone,” he said softly. “You bring Garod Crowley with you, you hear me?”
She stared at him. “Aye,” she said. “Aye, I will.”
Back in the street, the clouds were thinning, shedding a clearer view of the sun, causing her eyes to sting. She stumbled over a chunk of pavement and slammed up against someone. Muttering an apology, she pushed past—and was caught and hauled back.
She blinked up.
“I was looking for you,” Michael said with a smile.