Nell tested the ropes again, flexing her fingers, trying to recover sensation. “Just fetch me a knife,” she urged. “Please, Suzie.”
Across the room, huddled against the wall, knees pulled to her chest, Suzie stared back, blank-eyed, as though she no longer understood language. In a bad way, was Suzie, bruised and battered, shaking like a leaf. “You shouldn’t have come back,” she said again, her voice barely audible. “You should’ve known, Nellie.”
“Should’ve known?” Nell’s laughter scraped her throat. It made Suzie shrink back into the wall. “Should’ve known what?” She was trussed to this chair, corded like a game hen—a solid, proper chair, a new acquisition, no doubt purchased with the coin Hannah had given Michael for the spoon. “That Michael’s a bloody lunatic? You’re right, no news there!”
Suzie folded her arms over her knees and set her head down atop them. “It’s not just Michael,” she whispered.
Nell stared at the crown of Suzie’s head, the crooked parting in her dark hair. Not just Michael? She gritted her teeth and gave the rope a hard yank, then hissed at the pain. For her efforts she was only wearing herself bloody. “Who else is it, then?” She had an idea. Where else would Michael have found the money for that cab he’d bundled her into?
Suzie didn’t look up as she shook her head. “I don’t know his name.” She drew a shuddering breath, then peeked up over her arms. “Posh bloke. Tall, thin—” She broke off on a gasp as footsteps thumped in the corridor outside.
Michael’s voice came through the door, sharp and angry. He wasn’t drunk, more was the pity. Sobriety, height, and muscle had worked to his advantage on the street. A few people had called out in protest as he’d knocked her around; Brennan had even come out of his shop for the first time in probably a decade. But when Michael had flashed the gun, not a single person had dared lift a hand to help.
“—better deal than you can offer,” Michael was biting out in the hall. “Maybe I should ask Rushden how much he’d be willing to pay for her.”
The reply was too low to decipher, but Nell recognized the voice all the same. Grimston. What in God’s name did he want with her? He was sharp enough to have put two and two together. He’d know that if she was back here in Bethnal Green, then she’d left Simon. He should be grateful; he’d gotten what he wanted without spending a penny.
The door opened. Michael stalked through, cursing. On his heels came Grimston, dressed from head to toe in black, his top hat crushed beneath his arm. He fixed Nell with a sour smile—which disappeared at the sound of Suzie’s whimper.
Pivoting, he glared. “What is this?” he demanded. “Who is this woman?”
Michael’s jaw jutted. Belligerent as a mule, he was; it was Grimston’s mistake to have taken him as a partner in this dirty business. “She’s none of your concern,” he said.
Grimston’s laugh cracked like dry twigs. “My God. What do you think we’re about? You invite witnesses?”
Nell went cold. Witnesses to what? What sort of occasion did they have in mind? Suzie was gazing upward at Grimston, her tear-stained face, her slack jaw, lending her a strange look of awe, as though the tall man in his fine clothes had dazzled her beyond her senses.
And as Grimston looked back down at her, his expression shifted. For a moment, he looked mildly disgusted, as though viewing something unwholesome that he’d just knocked from his shoe. Then his face smoothed. A cold smile curved his mouth as he turned away; his hand moved into his jacket. “Very well,” he said. “Let her stay. No matter.”
Every hair on Nell’s body stood straight. My God, she thought. Her brain scrambled to deny it but her instincts insisted: he hadn’t come here bent on intimidation.
He meant nobody to leave this room save himself.
“Michael,” she said. “Michael, make Suzie go.”
Michael gave her a curious look. Grimston, his smile widening, gave her a wink.
“Get her out of here,” Nell said, pulling again, so uselessly, at the ropes, as Michael decided to enjoy the moment, the fool, grinning at her, his lips already moving to shape some gloating remark as Grimston pulled the pistol from his jacket and she threw herself sideways and he fired.
The explosion rang out and kept ringing, drowning out the world, flattening all other sound, setting up residence in her brain, ringing and ringing. There was blood; she could see the pool spreading but it wasn’t hers; she couldn’t tell whose it was; her cheek was flat against these rough floorboards where Mum had died.
A crash. Michael and Grimston rolled past her, tangling, Michael’s hand gripped hard over Grimston’s, holding the pistol up, away from the both of them. Michael was bleeding. She saw the stain spreading across his side, soiling his shirt.
A cold hand closed on her arm. She flinched convulsively, then cried out at a stabbing pain.
The ropes fell away from her wrists. Suzie knelt down by her feet, wielding a knife, cutting free Nell’s feet. Nell clambered up as Suzie spun away, lifting the blade in the direction of the two men rolling on the ground.
Nell grabbed her shoulder. “No. Go—run! Fetch the bobbies!”
Suzie looked at her, slack-faced, understanding nothing. Nell pried the knife from her hand and pushed her forward, stumbled after her out the door. Doors were slamming up and down, but nobody came to see what was happening: a gunshot was like fever; you kept your distance if you wanted to live.
Another shot rang out behind them. Suzie screamed. “No! Michael—”
Nell pushed Suzie down the stairs, but her own feet, numb from the constriction of the ropes, failed her; she grabbed for the banister and it wobbled and broke free under her hand, sending her to her knees, tumbling headfirst down the stairs. A bright light slammed into her head.
She opened her eyes to a world gone silent. Suzie stood above, hands cupped to her mouth, staring up the stairs.
“Not an inch,” came a cool instruction from above.
The stairs creaked. Grimston was coming down.
Nell wet her lips. Damn Suzie for a fool, and for not being fool enough: she knew what Grimston’s appearance meant. With a wordless keen, she stumbled back against the wall and slid down to the ground.
Here where Nell lay, where they would die together.
No.
Nell’s hand tightened around the knife she still clutched. Her grip felt slippery. Blood. Suzie had cut her when slicing the ropes. She stared at the top of Suzie’s head and waited, counting the treads on the steps. He might not shoot her till he could look her in the eye, in which case he might make the mistake of stepping too close beforehand.
Or he might not wait. She’d lie here letting her chances slip away while Grimston took aim.
She took a deep breath and forced herself to her feet and around, staring straight into the lifting barrel of his pistol. The knife had its own intelligence; the knife and her hand understood each other; they flew toward his belly like magnets to iron, slamming—
—into bone. Hot agony spiked through her wrist, throwing her off balance again—throwing him, too, off balance, a miracle; she felt the gun press between them as he staggered and fell toward her, his shoulder clipping hers as he staggered past. He went down on his knees and bumped and tumbled down the stairs. She wheeled, catching herself, staying upright only by sheer instinct, a long-ingrained habit that snapped her hand up to clutch the edge of the next flight of stairs, over her head.
Grimston landed facedown, his head by Suzie’s foot.
Suzie screamed, wordless and terrible, and gave him a boot in the skull, a heavy blow from a working woman’s thick-soled shoe, no flimsy slippers here. He groaned and raised one sluggish hand to protect his head. Nell couldn’t see the pistol—trapped beneath his body maybe; she didn’t intend to wait and find out.
She leapt down and grabbed Suzie’s wrist, yanking her onward. On the first turn of the stairs she heard him again, regaining his feet, thundering after them. The light came into view, the exit into the street. Suzie was sobbing, gabbling about Michael. Nell pulled her faster, taking the steps two by two, now, reckless, forgetting which step wobbled, which was loose and might give way—
A shot cracked by her head, plaster exploding before her. The doorway was only four more steps—three—
The light went dark, the doorway filling, a tall man stepping into it. A grim, cold look; steady eyes. He lifted his pistol and took aim. Fired.
A garbled gasp. And then, down the stairs, came the heavy thump of a body falling.
She let go of Suzie. She staggered forward, fell onto her knees in the doorway.
The man knelt, too. It was Simon kneeling before her; he looked stricken now, not cold at all. His hands shook as they framed her face, but when he pulled her to him, his embrace was hard, his grip steady and unbreakable.
Seated by the fire in Simon’s dressing room, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, Nell watched the doctor draw the final stitch through her skin. The needle flashed as it exited. The thread pulled tight. Her flesh felt like rubber. It didn’t hurt at all.
The doctor glanced at her over his spectacles as he pulled out a pair of scissors. Behind him stood the open door into Simon’s bedroom. On that bed with solid walnut posts, she’d become Simon’s wife.
She stared at the bed, a piece of her own history, where she’d laughed and imagined such a different future for herself—a lovely one, full of light, free of blood. The memory already felt distant. For the rest of her life, it would only keep slipping further away.
Why had Polly insisted on bringing her upstairs? She could have stayed in the drawing room where the police were interviewing everyone. Michael and Grimston were dead; they needed to know how it had happened. Nell could have helped them. She could have spoken about it very clearly.
But with this view in front of her, she couldn’t think clearly about anything. Facts, simple ideas, kept slipping out of her head. That bed. Why was she in Simon’s rooms? She’d never thought to see this house again.
“That does it,” said the doctor. He tied off the bandage at her forearm. Nell hadn’t caught his name, but for a moment, under the reassuring pat of his hand, she felt a real emotion penetrate her numbness: Mum needed a doctor like you, she thought.
She barely registered the flavor of this feeling—sadness, bittersweet regret, or maybe only gratitude for his service now—before it faded and she felt cold again.
The doctor rose and turned away. “If she takes a fever,” he said, “you’ll call me at once.”
“Of course,” came the reply, which handily pierced her daze. Katherine Aubyn had slipped in from the other door and now slithered up like a snake, taking a seat on the stool that the doctor had occupied. “Nell,” she said. Her cool hands pressed over Nell’s knuckles, a touch as light as the breeze, and then, all at once, the touch settled, pressing firmly. “I am so sorry,” she whispered.
Nell thought about curiosity, how she should be feeling a healthy dose of it. Maybe she should ask, Who asked you here? A touch of sarcasm wouldn’t go amiss. The bobbies are downstairs. P’raps you might invite them to arrest me again.
But Katherine spoke first. “I don’t expect—I don’t hope for your forgiveness.”
“Good.” It would take a fool to trust this Judas again.
Katherine moistened her lips. “But if you—if you should ever take pity on me and let me explain …”
Nell allowed herself a small smile. Explain what? Sorry about that arrest. I was … Bored? Greedy? She shrugged. “I’m not interested.”
“I don’t seek to excuse myself,” Katherine said huskily. “I know it was unforgivable. Only—if I told you something of myself—of what Grimston said of you—and of me—and—and perhaps in the course of this conversation, I could learn something of you, too—which would be my greatest wish of all, to know you—” She expelled a breath, and her hands tightened before slipping away. “To know my sister,” she said very softly. “Nell, I would be so grateful for that.”
Nell stared at her. “Your … sister.”
“Yes.” Katherine made a fist and set it to her breast. “Here,” she said. “I know it.”
“And where did you know it when you plotted to have me jailed?”
Katherine paled and bowed her head.
Nell felt no urge to make the moment easier. As she waited for the girl to speak or go, she wondered how she’d ever looked into Katherine’s face and confused it for her own. They’d been cast from the same mold but shaped in different forges. Katherine’s smooth brow said she had not frowned as hard as Nell had. She had no lines around her eyes from squinting into the sun. The uniform darkness of her hair betrayed a life of protection from the elements.
But then she lifted her face again, and Nell did recognize something: the look that Katherine wore.
For the first time, Katherine was looking at her as she had once looked at a photograph of Katherine: with wonder and astonishment and a slowly growing fear.
“Perhaps …” Katherine took a gulping breath. “Perhaps I was afraid to see it. Before, I mean. I’d always felt … so certain that you would remember me. I can’t tell you how—how long I prayed for you, how I felt so deeply that …” She shook her head. “I always knew you lived, but I felt …” Her lashes fluttered; to Nell’s astonishment, a tear slipped free. “I felt sure you would come back,” she said in a choked voice. “Only I thought you would come back for me.”
Nell sat wordless—stunned—not so much by what this girl said but by the sudden feeling welling within her.
My God, she thought. After all this?
After all this, then. She could still hope.
“It was foolish, terribly stupid,” Katherine said rapidly. “And what I did … yes, unforgivable. I can only say that I was afraid of a great many things, all of which suddenly look very … cowardly, when compared to what you’ve faced.”
Nell snorted. “I’m no heroine,” she said. “If somebody told you differently”—for it occurred to her that Hannah knew the whole tale of what Katherine had done, and, having encountered Katherine downstairs, would have shared her own opinion of it, loudly—”then they were lying.”
“No,” Katherine said. “I don’t think he was lying at all.” She took another breath. “Well. You are—welcome at my home. Wanted there, always.” She bit her lip. “Of course you are. It is your home, too, is what I mean.”
Your home. The two simple words checked Nell’s urge to scorn the offer outright. Your home, too.
Once, she and Katherine had shared a home. A nursery. So many things. “Do you remember the doll?” she asked—and felt a blush start up. “I’m probably imagining it. But … red hair. Blue eyes. Button nose, shiny dress. A big collar at her throat, something lace—a ruff?”
Katherine’s lips made an O. “Elizabeth—Elizabeth Regina, we called her.”
Her throat thickened. Elizabeth Regina. “Aye.” She pushed the back of her hand across her nose. “That sounds right.” She’d loved that doll. She remembered, faintly but clearly, that she’d not been the only one to care for it. She’d had company in love, back then.
She’d had this girl to love alongside her.
“Do you still have her?” she asked when she felt sure of her voice.
“I can find her,” Katherine whispered. “I promise you, I’ll find her for you.”
“I’d like that. And maybe … I’ll come visit you.” Only good sense to have a backup plan, Nell told herself. Wasn’t like she was bound for the old flat, now. Blood still dripping through the floorboards.
Which reminded her. “Have you space for Suzie at your place?”
Katherine frowned a little. “The—lady downstairs?” Clearly she wasn’t sure the term lady applied in this instance, for she hurriedly clarified, “I mean, the one whose husband …”
“Was my stepbrother,” Nell said. “Yes.”
“Oh.” The word came out very high. Katherine’s lips folded, her chest rising and falling on a long breath. Suzie was no doubt a sight right now, with Nell’s blood on her ragged skirts and grief roughening her manner. “Yes,” Katherine said finally, but her voice lilted, making a question of it.
Nell began to feel amused. How hard this girl was trying. How transparently she was failing. “Too lowborn for you, eh?”
“No!” Katherine’s eyes widened. For a moment she looked plainly horrified. But then she squared her shoulders and set her jaw. “She is welcome,” she said firmly. “Any of your friends are welcome. Whomever you wish. It is your home, as I said.”
And some devil prompted Nell to reply, “How very kiiiind of you,” in her best nasal drawl.
Katherine’s eyes narrowed. Not stupid. She knew she was being mocked. But after a second, a small smile crept onto her lips. “I deserved that, of course.”
“And much more,” Nell agreed, but somehow, against her will, she was smiling, too.
Katherine cast a glance over Nell’s shoulder, then rose. “Well,” she said briskly. “I’ll be downstairs.” She gazed down at Nell, and then, on a quick breath, bent down—her kiss the briefest graze across Nell’s cheek.
Puzzled by this abrupt retreat, Nell turned to look after her—and discovered Simon in the doorway. He stepped aside to let Katherine pass, murmuring something to her that Nell could not make out.
The sound of his voice ran through her like a line of fire. In her mind she saw his face as he’d lifted that pistol. She’d felt so much in that moment: the sudden certainty of safety, of relief so profound it had caused her knees to fold, putting her at his feet as he’d lowered the gun.
She found herself rising, seized by the urge to bolt, forcing herself to resist it by standing perfectly still.
He came toward her. “I told the inspectors they could speak to you tomorrow if they thought it necessary,” he said. His voice was bland. Unreadable.
She fixed her eyes on the carpet, one of those threadbare affairs, the Oriental pattern worn down at a spot next to her feet. She scuffed her toe across it—adding a bit more wear, a bit more value, she thought. “Thanks,” she said.
His voice came from much nearer. “You’re not going to look at me?”
No. She’d left this place—she’d left him—for true and wise reasons. She’d been right to go. As matters had stood, it had been the only choice. But the act of leaving had still been an abandonment.
She’d fled in the night like a thief slipping away from a crime.
I had no choice, she thought, but he might not understand that—and she did not want to look into his face now and discover how her decision had changed his view of her.
“You don’t need to be afraid any longer,” he continued. “They’re both dead. They can’t hurt you …” The rest of his words were lost in the roaring shock of that single word: afraid.
She lifted her head. “I’m not afraid.” Leaving him had taken impossible strength. If she’d had the courage to leave him, she certainly had the courage to look at him now. “I was never afraid of them.” They’d had nothing to do with why she’d left. Did he imagine that Grimston had driven her away?
Her fears, all of them, had centered around the man before her, who now blinked and tilted his head, looking at her as though she were a stranger. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said.
His remote manner struck her like a slap. The next second, she felt a dread-filled recognition, as if she had lived through this scene already. In her nightmares, she had lived through it. She’d feared there would come a time when his illusions would wither and he would finally see her as she truly was.
Yes, she thought. I ran away from you. You see me as a coward, a selfish woman now.
She took a hard breath and made herself hold his eyes. “I’ll be going, then.”
“Going,” he said slowly—as though it were a word from a foreign language.
“Aye.” She swallowed and spoke faster. “Katherine has offered to take me in. Of course, I’ll be giving you half the inheritance. That was our agreement. I mean to honor it.”
He ran his hand through his black hair, tousling it. The weariness on his face suddenly struck her.
Why, he’d killed a man today. For her sake, he’d murdered someone.
She took a step toward him. “Are you all right?” God above, she hadn’t even made sure of that. “You’re not hurt?”
He stared at her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, did you get hurt?” She looked him up and down, panic thrumming through her. Bullets had flown. But surely she’d know—”You spoke to the doctor?”
He frowned. “Nell, I wasn’t hurt. I came—” His laughter cracked, short and humorless. “I came barely in time,” he said. “At the end. Another second—”
“But you’re fine.” Suddenly she had to sit again, so great was her relief. She was shaking. “You’re fine,” she repeated softly. Thank God.
“No.” He crossed to her in two long strides. “No,” he said emphatically, crouching down before her. “I am not fine.” His hand gripped her chin, lifted her face so their eyes met. “Nell. You look into my eyes and hear me out. Listen to me when I say this. Are you listening?”
Having him so close only made this shaking worse. With inches between them he was still too far away. So hard the world tried to keep people apart. Otherwise it might have been easy to span the bridge between separate universes; human flesh, pressed together, recognized no impossibilities.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I’m listening.”
He nodded once, tightly. “When I woke up to find you gone, I thought you had decided to accept Grimston’s offer after all.”
Her fingers cramped, closing like vises on the edge of the seat cushion. She’d known when she’d walked away that she would never be able to come back. She’d abandoned him just as that other woman had. He wouldn’t forgive her for it. “I didn’t take his offer,” she said.
“I gathered that.” His eyes searched hers. “But it would have made no difference if you had.”
Her throat tightened. “What?” How could that be true? “After what that other woman did to you—” Anger prickled through her. “You would have been a fool to forgive me.” Or a condescending ass. Did he think he could expect no better of her than betrayal?
“Perhaps.” He smiled slightly. “But this is love, I gather: I find it has no separate existence from trust, not in any way that signifies. You could not destroy the one without destroying the other. And so, when the first held strong, the second only bent slightly, for a small moment. For a moment, it mattered to me, this idea that you had taken Grimston’s money. And then it simply … didn’t.”
He let go of her and took a deep breath. “I do love you,” he said slowly. “I have said it before but now I say it with a better understanding of what it means. Had you died today, I would have lain down in an early grave.”
Tears blurred her vision. She blinked them away, dashing her hand across her eyes. The anger slipped away, now, leaving only her view of his dark, resolute face as he said: “And for that reason alone, I tell you this—you should go.”
She shook her head, uncomprehending. “What?”
“You have all the choices in the world. I was not truthful when I told you that before; I deceived you, as you realized. But now, with Katherine’s acknowledgment, it is true—beyond dispute. Beyond my power to alter. And I mean to make sure you realize that.”
He retreated a pace and linked his hands behind his back. In measured, formal tones, he said, “Daughtry can end this marriage for us. Not on the grounds that you are a fraud, of course—but that I coerced you into marriage. It would be easy for him to do so. I am willing to give him those instructions. The choice is yours.”
He was putting this choice on her? Wasn’t that the easy way! “You want to be free of me, do you?”
“Free of you?” His lips rolled together into a flat line. He turned away, then wheeled back with a savageness that made her flinch. “Tell me,” he said, low and sharp, “why I am the one who must answer that question? You have left me once already. I came after you. I have said that I love you. Tell me, what maggot in your brain still insists that I am the one who wishes to be free?”
“I …” Because I’m the factory girl, and you’re the lord.
These words, even in her mind, sounded small, pathetic. They sounded afraid. She could not speak them.
“You want to stay married?” she whispered instead. He did not blame her for abandoning him?
“Enough of what I want,” he said flatly. “What do you want? Do you wish to spend the rest of your life with me?”
Yes.
She took a breath to say it but fear stopped her dead. A cold revelation washed through her.
She’d always known that Simon could not be for her. She’d been waiting for the unhappy ending. Only a fool, a woman weak enough to deserve the bad end coming for her, would have dared instead to believe that miracles could come true.
Sitting in jail, she had despaired, but she had not for a moment felt surprise.
She looked down to her hands, her square-tipped fingers knotted so tightly together. She squeezed them harder yet, focusing only on the ache. So Katherine would acknowledge her as Cornelia. But this wouldn’t change the past. She still would be a woman who’d been raised in Bethnal Green, who could not take fine dresses for granted, who knew nothing of music—who might, like a beast trained to do tricks, grow less amusing to the audience over time.
“I love you, Simon.” The hoarse words seemed to be jerked from her by some outside power. She froze, panic and dread leaping up inside her.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “But do you want to stay here with me?”
She forced herself to look up. His steady gaze seemed to drill straight into her skull.
He saw her so much more clearly than she’d seen herself.
She wanted to stay with him. But to stay here? That bridge she’d walked across to reach this world—it supported no middle ground. But in jail, faced with that sneering inspector who had learned all about her from his daily newspapers, she had come face to face with the truth: a girl could never leave the past behind. It would follow her across the bridge.
“I’ll never belong here,” she said. “You know that.”
“But here is where I live.” The roughness of his voice startled her. “If you think there is a better place for you, then go look for it. I will not stop you; I have no interest any longer in playing the tyrant. But if you want me, you will have to take my world along with me.”
“It’s so easy for you,” she choked. He would never have to walk that bridge. Whatever rebellions and infamies he’d committed, they were born of the world in which he already lived. In the future, he would not be tested at every turn, every day, by those who knew how little prepared he’d been for their judgments.
His jaw muscles flexed. “Yes,” he said. “Very easy. Because it is my world—not their world, Nell, or that lot’s world, or the do-gooders’ world, but my world. And it requires you. I require you.” He took a long breath. “However, if you doubt that we could carve a space in which we, together, might belong … then you underestimate my love, or I have overestimated yours. In either case, your decision seems clear: you must leave and be glad of your freedom.”
She gaped at him. “Glad of it?” The idiot, the arrogant bastard; of course she would not, could never, be glad to leave him! “You can’t be such a fool.”
“Can’t I?” He made an impatient noise and took her arm, pulling her to her feet. “Come, let me remind you how such decisions are made. One simply—walks out.”
She tried to yank free but he propelled her toward the door in an iron grip. In the hallway, he released her, looking down into her face and snarling, “You see? One goes. You did it once: was it so difficult then?”
As he started to turn away, she lunged toward him and caught his elbow, yanking him back around. “It’s my decision! Not yours! I’ll go when I’m ready to go!”
They stared at each other. Down the hallway, from some remote reach of the house, came the faint sound of laughter, as puzzling and foreign to Nell’s ears as the language of a distant land. There was nothing to laugh about.
The look that fleeted over his face—frustration, grief, resignation—made her go cold. “My God, Nell. You would stay for days … years, no doubt … if you thought that to leave me is to admit your own weakness.” He shook his head. “I could goad you into staying forever—and God help me, I am tempted to do it. But I won’t,” he added with a shrug. “I won’t do it, Nell.”
That shrug paralyzed her breath. It seemed so completely … indifferent.
He turned on his heel and began to walk away.
She stepped back against the wall, her shoulder knocking a vase, setting it to wobbling. Her hands balled into fists as she watched his back. Damn him for a coward! He was giving up. He was already leaving but she hadn’t even gone yet.
The next second, all her rage turned on herself. He said he loved her. She knew she loved him. What was his fault in this? It was all hers.
Why did she find despair so much easier to depend on than happiness? For love of Simon, she had turned down five thousand pounds; she had returned to the Green; she had given up all her hopes. Love had been a sound and sustaining reason to endure despair. Love had given her the strength for it.
Why was it so much harder to make love the reason for hope? Why could it not give her the strength to believe in their future joy?
“I’m a factory girl,” she whispered.
He was ten paces away now.
Somehow he heard.
He turned on his heel and fixed her in a calm, grave look. “Yes,” he said. “A factory girl. My wife. The Countess of Rushden.”
She put her hand to her throat, because panic was swelling there. “I wouldn’t be a lady like the rest of them. I … won’t care for drives in the park.” Each word grew harder to say, peeling away another strip of her skin, exposing her messy innards and ugly yellow guts. “Small talk at parties won’t interest me. I’ll never know how to do it. How to charm people as you do. How to care so much about music. I won’t want to attend other people’s concerts so often, because it …” The words burst from her: “It seems a waste of time and I’ve got other things to do.”
“Such as?” He was watching her very closely, but his tone revealed nothing.
“I mean to buy that factory, but—” She wet her lips. “Only as a start. I’m going to buy as many as I can, I think; I’m going to improve all of them.”
He nodded and took a step back toward her.
“And I’m going to do something about doctors for poor women, too.” She hesitated, startled by how fluently these intentions spilled from her. They felt familiar, intimate, as though they had been born and molded in the sleeping parts of her mind, and now sprang free fully grown. “That doctor today … I mean to build a hospital where such men will tend to women like my mum.”
“I see,” he said slowly.
“Do you?” The world didn’t want to hear that she had loved Jane Whitby. Very well. She would show it she had.
“I think so,” he said.
They stared at each other. Dimly it surprised her that she didn’t feel foolish for speaking such ideas aloud. Then, with a little shock, she wondered if it was because he was listening that these ideas seemed so good and true.
“You think I can do it,” she said. “You do.”
“Of course I do,” he said.
She nodded once, carefully, because something was swelling inside her, and it felt huge and powerful and able to knock her off her feet if she moved too suddenly. Until she had met him, her dreams had been small by necessity.
“You made me think I could do it,” she said. If he hadn’t pushed her to dream bigger, to think about power, to ponder what wealth could do, these larger ambitions might never have occurred to her. She might have been content to give Hannah a violet dress every spring. “But the point,” she went on quickly, “is that I won’t hold myself away from it like the do-gooders tend to do. I’ll be in the thick of it, making sure my money won’t go to waste. It won’t be proper at all.”
“The best things rarely are,” he said gently.
A choking little laugh slipped from her. “You certainly aren’t,” she said. “You’re …” The kind of man that life in Bethnal Green hadn’t prepared her to imagine.
Maybe, to dream these things and feel these things, she already was living in his world.
She saw him swallow. “So,” he said. “Shall I show you to your sister, now?”
“No,” she said.
He opened his mouth. Hesitated. Put his hands into his pockets and looked at her.
Loving him would not be easy. It would mean never again completely belonging anywhere—save with him.
But she would belong with him. He would be her home, she thought. And with him at her side, she would do—anything. Anything in the world would be possible.
He shifted his weight and she realized suddenly that he was not waiting calmly. He stood rigidly, biting his tongue with visible effort, his hands in his pockets clenched now.
He was not at ease in the slightest.
The astonishing prospect of Simon St. Maur at ill-ease unearthed a very odd impulse: she giggled. And then slapped her hand to her mouth, hearing the slightly hysterical note in it. “Simon,” she said through her fingers. “I can’t leave. I love you. I can’t go.”
He nodded, his lips white. “But do you trust me, Nell?”
She was too full of feeling to even fathom the meaning of doubt. “Down any road, as far and as long as we travel. You’re mine and I’m keeping you, Simon.”
She heard the long, slow breath he blew out. “You,” he said as he came toward her, “are the most incredible, extraordinary, stubborn woman—”
A hiccup—a squawk—some curious noise came out of her. “Remind me,” she said. “Remind me.” She stepped forward and took hold of his shirtfront and pulled him to her.
There was nothing delicate or refined about this kiss. It was dark and rude and heedless of the world; only him beneath her hands, his hair now clutched in her fingers, his body pressing hers into the wall. She had no interest in anything but this.
“I beg your pardon,” came a horrified voice from behind them. Nell recognized it: Mrs. Hemple, beholding a faux pas of unforgivable proportions.
Simon paid no heed. Nell laughed into his mouth and kissed him harder, while a disgusted snort, followed by the clip clip clip of heels, announced Mrs. Hemple’s passage onward.
When, after a minute or more, they finally broke apart, breathing hard, she smiled into his eyes. “I am going to be a very vulgar wife,” she said. “Terribly, terribly vulgar.”
He laughed back at her. “I do hope so,” he said.
Oh ho! She took him by the wrist and pulled him back toward his bedchamber, saying in his ear, “No use in hoping where his lordship can be certain.”