A quick, calculated decision prompted Simon to take Nell to the gallery. Perhaps he hadn’t done a good enough job of showing her the advantages that cooperation would afford her. The gallery would advertise them effectively.
When they rounded the corner, she came to a stop—amazed, as he’d guessed she would be, by the arched cathedral roof and the long wall fronted with stained-glass panels. “Stars,” she said softly. Her hands burrowed like small, frightened creatures into the folds of her gown as she looked around.
While he found himself staring only at her—and remembering, with sudden vividness, how she’d looked that first morning in the library. Exhausted, bedraggled, she had gazed up at the skylights and glowed in just this way, a glow so bright that it had drowned out every ragged detail.
That glow now worked a different magic. Paired with her demure, pink gown, it recast the significance of her features, leading a man to misread the shine in her large blue eyes as innocence—or vapidity, he told himself. That was Kitty’s vacant gaze on her face.
But he couldn’t hold on to the idea. The tight roll of her coffee-brown hair was no mode Kitty would favor. It conjured—ludicrously—a lack of vanity, the style of a girl who ducked her head when walking to church. Only someone who knew her better would guess that those small pink lips, parted now in admiration, concealed a hot tongue that bandied insults like a sailor.
He knew her better.
The thought sent a strange shock through him. That her disguise was so transparent to him suddenly felt profound, an intimacy next to which his irritation seemed trivial.
“It’s like a palace,” she said.
He caught his breath as her eyes found his, shining in a face alight with interest.
Her guttural intonations were not the only thing that distinguished her from her look-alike sister. Despite their unfriendly exchange minutes ago, Nell made no attempt now to hide her admiration. In her sister’s world, in his world, people strove to appear unimpressed.
For the first time, he wondered why that was. Gratification so transparent as this only made a man long to witness it anew. To impress her all over again. He would like to be the focus of such wondering looks at all hours of the day.
The direction of his own thoughts began to unnerve him.
“It’s not at all like a palace,” he said. “I’ll have to show you Buckingham sometime.”
Her glow dimmed. Perhaps she didn’t believe he meant the offer. “Every newly married couple must be presented to the Queen,” he said to clarify. “She’ll not hold another levee until next May, but”—he paused only the barest moment—”if you decide to stay here, we’ll attend.”
Her mouth screwed into a little smile. She did not take his bait. “You’re daft,” she said. “You want to take me to meet the Queen?”
The amusement in her voice caught him off guard. For a moment, and no doubt in tandem with her prudish outfit, it actually chastened him.
Perhaps he was daft. If, come next May, they remained married—if the law had acknowledged her as Cornelia; if wedlock proved financially fruitful—then it still did not follow that they would socialize together. No matter how rich she became, she’d remain a product of the East End, a girl who’d grown up in filth while working for her living. He could not imagine her enjoying his circles.
In fact, he could not imagine her finding anything to admire in them.
The thought unsettled him. But why should it? What did it signify if her upbringing limited her ability to appreciate his world? His friends would see nothing to esteem in her, either. The fashionable set admired his tastes; he could persuade them to believe nearly anything about art that they did not understand. But about poverty, they believed they knew everything. They had maids and coachmen; they each had an amusing tale of encountering some aggressive street Arab. They saw dirt and filth daily, out the glass windows of their coaches. They would see no novelty in Nell, no beauty in her. They would find her terribly uncomfortable, in fact: proof that beneath the dirt lay human beings. She would be, to them, no more than a reproach in human form.
Changing their minds would be a challenge, the greatest he’d ever undertaken.
But he did so love to make people change their minds despite themselves.
“Court is terribly tedious,” he said. “Hot. Dull. You’ll loathe it. But we’ll go, if you stay.”
She eyed him. One moment he saw Kitty’s face, and wondered why he minded so much the thought of her leaving. The next he saw a woman with darker eyes, a blue so close to navy that they put him in mind of the sea five hundred miles from shore. These eyes were an invitation to drown.
He took a sharp breath even as she spoke. “Dull to rub elbows with the Queen, is it? You’re a hard man to impress, you are.”
And then she gave him her back as she turned to look at the paintings.
Bewildered, he studied her slim shoulders. Once again, as in that disorienting moment in front of the staff last week, he felt himself unbalanced by her, adrift in a sea of broken expectations, with no near handhold to cling to. She had something that no amount of money could purchase: an outsized presence.
He wasn’t sure he liked it. She needed to come off the lady, but only grand dames drew admiration for their talents at discomposing a man.
What did she see when she looked at him? Did he even want to know?
Well, in regard to this moment, the answer seemed clear. She thought he’d been bragging.
Good God. Perhaps he had been.
To his disgust and amazement, he felt himself flush.
This business of charming her was idiotic. She needed to cooperate of her own free will. “We could skip the formality,” he said.
She made no reply, turning a little to behold the length of the row of portraits. Her weight shifted to one leg, causing her hip to jut.
She was ignoring him. He realized the novelty of it in the depth of his astonishment. It took effort to check a childish remark: her posture was unladylike in the extreme.
He stepped up beside her, deliberately crowding her. On an intuitive level he understood her show of indifference. After the gauntlet he’d thrown, she salved her pride by demonstrating that it would not be regard for him that kept her here.
But she was too intelligent to let this opportunity for betterment pass her by. Pride got you nowhere, he thought. Use your brain, Nell. This arrangement required concessions from her. She would need to be guided by him. She would need, he thought, to recognize her debts. “You like the clothing I’ve provided you,” he said. “That much is obvious.”
She did not so much glance at him as present a three-quarters profile. Her nose, Kitty’s nose, had been fashioned to support condescension. “It’s good, strong stuff.” She sounded grudging. “I need a better-fitted corset, though. And a bit of lace wouldn’t do any harm.”
Now he did laugh. He was a hard man to impress. But so, it seemed, was she. And he wanted to impress her. He had no bloody idea why he hadn’t managed it yet.
God help him, he was losing his mind.
He cleared his throat. “As I said, this wardrobe is—or would be—a temporary measure, only.”
She nodded. “That seamstress—”
“Modiste.”
She slanted him an unreadable glance. “That mowdeest said it would take ten days for the first gowns to be ready.”
He nodded. A pity that he’d missed that fitting a few days ago. He suddenly envisioned how he might have interrupted it at an opportune moment, discovering her only in her chemise, corded by measuring tape, her pretty lips rounding into an O as she trembled and blushed beneath his inspection.
But he was an idiot. She’d not have trembled; she’d have chucked a stool at his head for spying.
“Who are these people?” she asked.
Right. Here was the main reason he’d brought her to the gallery. He followed her regard to the glowering old man in front of her. “These are your parents,” he said. “The late Lord Rushden, before you. And to the right, your mother.”
Nell’s belly gave a queer little leap. She walked closer to the paintings. The last earl was posing on a horse in front of a long lawn that led up to the building she’d seen in the painting in the library. Paton Park, St. Maur had called it.
The house was too pretty to be believed—a palace of rosy brick set amid low hills greener than St. James in the spring. This was her second view of it. The sight raised a flutter in her breast, a curious feeling that threatened to grow stronger the longer she looked.
She wrapped her arms around herself. These queer notions were the work of her imagination, no doubt. Dazzled by the clothes and the fine surroundings, rattled by St. Maur’s ultimatum, she was inventing lies: You remember. You belong here. You deserve this.
How easy it would be to delude herself! Mum had deluded herself over any number of things. She’d thought herself better, more saintly, too good for everything. Look what it had gotten her! The scorn of the Green, the resentment of the labor-mistress, and the worst job in the factory—a quick road to a painful death.
But for all her foolish airs, Mum hadn’t been cruel. If Nell decided she knew this place, that would mean that some countess had been her mother, and Mum had been more than cruel—she’d done an unspeakably wicked thing.
She swallowed down the weird urge to laugh. It wasn’t funny, not at all. Mum had loved her. She was sure of that. Mum had been touched, but she’d never been dangerous.
“My mum wasn’t bad.” It came out choppily. She shouldn’t have to say such things.
“I’m glad to hear it.” St. Maur put his hands into his pockets, watchful. Waiting. No judgment in his face, no concern.
No concern: that summed him up, it did. That was the phrase she should have used to describe him to Hannah. He seemed wholly unburdened, albeit not in the way of idiots: Nell gathered that he saw the world as cynics did, not looking for false hope.
But he didn’t let the world worry him, either. He had the air of a man who knew that when it came to a struggle, he’d always have the upper hand.
He certainly had the upper hand on her. His offer was devilish, wasn’t it? Become somebody else. Ordinary men bargained only for a woman’s body. His bid was higher, and so was his demand. He was asking her to betray the memory of someone she’d loved.
Nell gave her lip a chew. She’d vowed never to sell herself. But nobody had ever offered her so much. And for whatever it meant … she did know that place in the painting.
On a Bible, she would have said that she remembered it.
She forced herself to look back to the portrait. She’d never backed away from a fear and she wouldn’t do so now. “There’s a bridge. An arched bridge over a river.” She remembered—had dreamed of—dropping pennies into it. Copper flashing in the sunlight.
“A stream,” he said. “Behind the house. Yes.”
His voice was neutral. Unsurprised. Temper lashed through her. She wished something would surprise him. He was the definition of high and mighty, immune to the scrapes and bumps that other people suffered as part of life’s course. He’d probably never been rattled in his life. “Would it matter to you if there wasn’t a bridge? Do you even care if I really am this Cornelia?”
His glance dropped briefly to where she hugged herself. “No, not particularly.”
She straightened her arms, lest he mistake her posture for a sign of fear. “How convenient for you. It’s not your mum they’ll call a lunatic. And if I did remember this place …” Then the names they would call her mum would be true.
What sort of woman stole a child? What could drive a woman to that?
She felt an inkling, dim but unsettling. Mum had called Rushden a lewd devil. She’d always been so convinced that she could tell wrong from right better than anyone else could.
St. Maur took her hand. It startled her, but she didn’t pull away: his grip was firm and he was looking at her squarely, no mischief on his face. “If you remember that house,” he said, “I don’t think you harm your mum by admitting it. What’s done is done. All you do now is gain a new view on what already happened—long ago, mind you. Almost two decades.”
Smooth logic. “And if somebody called your mother a criminal? Would it matter to you?”
“Ha.” An exhalation of breath, distinctly amused. He let go of her hand, put his own into his pocket. “I cannot begin to imagine,” he said. “But her reaction would be spectacular. She guards her good name quite jealously.” His smile was wry. “She got on well with your father in that regard.”
Nell looked to the father in question. He sat atop a horse, Paton Park looming in the distance. She had an idea of what a dad should look like. Her stepfather hadn’t lived long but he’d been sweet, funny, always smiling. He’d bought her fried oysters on Sundays after church and set her atop his shoulders at the penny gaffs.
This man didn’t look like he’d ever let a little girl climb on him. Beneath his heavy, dark brows, his brown eyes glowered. Bushy muttonchops. She knew that look he was giving her. Fancy folks in their carriages who caught her eye by accident, they got just this smirk on their lips, amused, disbelieving.
What sort of man asked to be painted in a way that ensured he’d spend eternity looking down on people?
Still. Somebody might say that she’d gotten her cleft chin from him.
They’d say she’d gotten her eyes and nose from his wife.
She drew a breath and fixed her attention on the countess. Pretty lady. She sat in a light-filled drawing room, one long-fingered hand poised atop the book in her lap. Lovely white shoulders. Kind eyes.
“Was he mean to her?” she whispered.
A slight pause. “He was cold by nature, I think.”
“No, but was he rough with her? Did he knock her about?” Mum hadn’t scrupled to lay on the paddle when she felt Nell’s soul was in peril, but as long as she’d had the strength, she’d never let Michael raise his hand. If Rushden had been a violent type, perhaps Mum had thought it best …
“Not that I saw.” St. Maur paused. “Many men manage their tempers without the use of their fists, Nell.”
She gave a dismissive shrug. That wasn’t news to her. “How did she die, then?”
“Heartbreak, they said. Some two years after you were taken.”
Nell twisted her mouth. “Heartbreak—now there’s a rich woman’s disease. The rest of us can’t afford but to die of a real sickness.”
He glanced at her, the line of his mouth grave. “A clever aphorism. Do you believe it?”
His soberness caught her off guard. He wasn’t behaving as she’d expected. He was actually talking to her, asking her questions as if her answers might be of interest.
How queer. She’d almost prefer it if he remained a haughty, high-handed nob. “I think if a person could die of heartbreak, there’d be a lot fewer of us in the world,” she said slowly.
“You’ve had your heart broken, then?”
“No.”
“You’re fortunate.”
“Or smart.” Not some empty-headed girl like Suzie, to let a handsome face fool her into forgetting her own best interests.
St. Maur studied her a moment longer than felt comfortable. “You’re very young, aren’t you?”
His condescension irked her. “Why? Did somebody break yours?”
“Oh, yes.” He said it easily, without hesitation. “One of the risks of being a wastrel, I’m afraid.”
She stared at him. “Who?” What kind of woman had managed to get under the skin of this one?
“Simply a woman.”
“What sort of woman?”
He shrugged, one-shouldered. “The wrong one, I suppose.” He turned back toward the painting. “The countess wasn’t dull-witted or weak. Too generous on occasion, certainly. Compassionate, caring—everything her husband was not.”
She recognized how neatly he’d sidestepped the issue of this mysterious heartbreaker, but something else struck her more sharply. A warmth entered his voice when he talked of the countess. This wasn’t gossip speaking. “You knew her?”
“Yes.”
Of course—he’d been the old earl’s ward. This woman would have helped to raise him.
She frowned. Something didn’t make sense here. “Your mother—you talk as though she’s still alive.”
“Yes. She is.”
“Why were you the earl’s ward, then?”
An unpleasant smile edged onto his mouth. “Your father thought me inappropriately prepared for the honor to be bestowed on me.”
She hesitated. “So your mum simply … let him take you?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. She’d hit on a nerve. Good to know he had one. “He had a talent for convincing others of his own importance. I don’t suppose it ever crossed my parents’ minds to protest.”
How awful. “We have something in common,” she said, amazed. “If you’re right, we both got taken from our parents.”
He met her eyes. “I suppose we do. Of course, yours wanted you back.”
Not a trace of self-pity colored his words. But their very impassivity revealed an effort to speak without emotion.
All at once, she felt ashamed. She’d been poking at him for her own satisfaction. Now he held her look and forced her to confront the evidence that he had feelings, after all. His parents’ betrayal had rankled.
Something in her softened. She laid her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, St. Maur.”
He glanced toward the spot where she touched him. “Don’t be. As I said, what’s done is done.”
She felt even more strongly now that he was wrong about that. “Are you close with them, then?”
“My parents?” At her nod, he looked mildly incredulous. “Does that signify? My father is dead. As for my mother, I suppose we’re cordial. We acknowledge one another when our paths cross.”
She didn’t see him move, but suddenly his arm was out of reach. She pushed her hand into her pocket, balling it into a fist, feeling awkward. Where she was from, a friendly touch was welcome. “I gather that’s a fancy way of saying no.”
He gave her an unreadable look, then nodded toward the painting. “Do you see the book on her lap? Lovely illustrated copy of Dante’s Inferno. Your love of reading comes from her, I expect.”
She went along with his change of subject. “Do you have it? I’d like to read it.”
“No.” His voice turned dark. “Her books were sold.”
“Oh.” Feeling off balance entirely now, she scouted for a topic that couldn’t rub him wrong. “I want some dresses like that one,” she said. The countess’s gown was frilled and flounced in tiers of blond lace. Must have cost a fortune. Take it apart piecemeal so the pieces could be sold one by one: it would make a nice sort of insurance for a girl.
“Bit old-fashioned, I’m afraid. But why not? Have one, if you like.” He laughed. “Yes, create your own style. Set a new fashion.”
He was joking, of course. “Right-o,” she said.
His smile faded into a more thoughtful look. “But you do realize that’s what I’m offering you. Not simply money, but the power and position to use it in whichever way you please.”
She didn’t see much difference between money and power, but she nodded politely.
It didn’t fool him. “Oh, Nell.” He sighed. “Darling, I know you have an imagination. Is it that you simply don’t know how to use it?”
She frowned at the endearment. She got it regularly from the Irish blokes, but it sounded different in his creamy drawl. Unsettling. Men like him, they called girls like her darling only as a joke. Darling, be a love and bring me another glass. Darling, I’m not paying you to talk. “I don’t follow you.”
He stepped closer to her—and then closer yet. “Dear girl,” he said softly. He lifted his hand and ran his fingertip down the rim of her ear, his touch as soft and warm as a breath.
She took a step back, her stomach knotting. Unlike her brain, her fool body had not an ounce of good sense in it. Her heart began to pound. “Not until we’re married.”
“A touch,” he murmured. He caught her lobe, stroking it with his thumb. “Nothing like sexual congress.” His hand turned, his knuckles brushing down her throat.
Even a touch was too much when he paired it with that smile. It made her pulse beat harder. She remembered again, with visceral warmth, how his kiss made parts of her dissolve. She couldn’t feel that way and keep her wits straight. “Hands off, I said.”
“But you’re irresistible. As proper as a vicar’s wife, scrubbed clean, tamed. I can’t tell if it’s a pity or a terribly effective provocation.”
She pushed away his hand and retreated another pace. “Neither. That’s not my doing.” She wasn’t trying to tempt him into anything. She had no blame in this.
He looked into her eyes. “Are you afraid of me?”
She nearly laughed. Of course she was afraid of him. It would take a newborn not to be afraid of him. He was a bloody peer of the realm. Did he not realize that all his talk of her birth and her fortune were for naught as long as he was the only one who knew it? He could tell her sweet tales of being an empress if he liked; none of it would mean a thing unless he put cash in her hand as he spoke.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said.
“There’s no need, you know.” Still he was watching her, his damned eyes too sharp, seeing too much. She had a bad habit of underestimating him, of forgetting how quick he was, even if he’d been coddled in silk his whole life. “Your best interests happen to coincide with mine. That should comfort you, if nothing else does.”
“You’re right, I’m comforted. Show me more of my family, why don’t you?”
He didn’t take the bait. “In a minute,” he said, still studying her. Why was he so interested? There wasn’t anything in her to hold the attention of a man like him. If he wanted somebody like her, he could go out and buy ten, twenty girls for a night.
But not her. She wasn’t his plaything. She’d be his wife or nothing.
He stepped toward her again and she betrayed herself with a quick step back.
“There we go,” he said on a nod, a man whose peculiar notion had been confirmed. “But it makes no sense. What could account for your skittishness? You don’t seem timid by nature.”
“I’m not.” She resented, bitterly, how breathy those two words sounded.
His gaze dropped, lazily tracing her neckline, trailing down her bosom. He looked her over with a frank, sexual appreciation. Not a drop of shame in the smile he gave her tits, her hips, her mouth—which went dry beneath his look. A girl with any self-respect wouldn’t welcome this survey. He sized her up like a man with a boughten whore.
But she couldn’t lie to herself. To have a man like this stand before her, wanting her, brought out the stupider side. If he were an animal he’d be the prize in every competition, his long, elegant bones strapped by muscle, straight and tall, the prime specimen of his kind. Humans were animals, too, and never before had she realized it so strongly as now, with this heat stirring in her stomach.
Her breath restarted with a gasp that he didn’t even pretend to miss. His gaze lifted, hot, calling to mind dirty words, bodies pressing together in darkness, while his tone contradicted the message in his eyes, growing light, almost playful: “Would it be so bad to marry me?” he asked.
A flush burned through her. She knew what he was asking. Marry had become their little word to stand in for other things. “I don’t know you,” she said through her teeth. “Maybe it wouldn’t. I can’t say.”
“I’m an open book.” He stepped forward once more, and this time she held her ground. To the devil with his hot eyes and his bullying!
He noticed the victory; the smile on his lips assumed a roguish angle. “And you are skittish,” he said. A challenge in those words: he was about to prove it to her. “I promise, lovely Nell, that I have no intention of seducing you before supper.”
She watched in a private agony as he reached out to stroke her neckline. If she backed away again, her reluctance would grow painfully conspicuous.
Normal, she told her pounding heart. He only thought to handle the woman he meant to wed, and that was normal.
But there was nothing normal about the way his touch seemed to burn through the wool, straight to her skin. She was wicked, wanton at heart, and self-destructive as a gin addict on payday. Nothing wise or good could come of wanting a man with the power to grind her to dust, but he touched her like a man bent on more delicate operations, his finger skimming lightly across her collarbone to her shoulder. His hand turned, stroked open-palmed down her arm, slow and firm, feeling the lines of her, and everything in her wanted to incline toward him.
Such a stupid, simple touch! Why couldn’t she hold herself away from it?
He wasn’t unaffected, either. A pulse beat at the base of his throat. His eyes, when they rose to hers, were knowing. “Say it,” he murmured. “You feel this.”
Her throat tightened. “I feel your hand.”
He made a little tsk, a chiding click of his tongue. “Obtuse,” he said, but his tone told her that he wasn’t put off by it. He liked a challenge; it lured him. “I can do so much for you, you know.” Casually, conversationally, he spoke to her, as he handled her flesh. “I’m the last to give you lessons in being a lady, but I could teach you very well about other things. About pleasure, and beauty, art and glamour—all the worthwhile entertainments. Lessons in scandal”—his laughter was soft, an invitation: Think of the possibilities, it invited—”yes, I could teach those very well. And in … power?” He laced his fingers through hers, his thumb stroking across her palm. “You want money; I know that much. But what of power, Nell?”
The word sent a frisson down her spine. Power: what he was exercising right now, holding her riveted with only his words and the light press of his wicked fingers. What a terrible power, too—what a terrible context in which to discover such a power existed. Better for her sake if he’d exercised the clumsier forms: raw strength, muscle, a shout. Brute force she knew well enough.
But no, nothing so simple would appeal to St. Maur. Power, the idea, the very word, assumed new dimensions when purred by the man who owned this house, who’d paid for these clothes on her skin, who’d walked into a jail and thrown over the lawmen in a quarter hour, without breaking a sweat or—Hannah had claimed—even lifting his voice. He looked as cool as the moon now, the devil’s minion who made her skin flame with just the stroke of his thumb. He worked magic with just that one finger, rubbing slowly, intimately, down the center of her palm.
This way was more deadly than the strike of a fist. First he lured her body into colluding with him, and then he asked her imagination to join the plot against her. Her desire, her ambition, and him: she couldn’t fight all of them. He’d make her into her own enemy.
The thought stabbed into her. She met his eyes. She wouldn’t feel this. She’d stay quick. “I’m not weak. You’re wrong if you think I am.”
“Not weak,” he murmured. “But these calluses on your palms tell their own story. Your time and labor haven’t been your own. Imagine what it would be like to set your own course, Nell. To answer to no one’s bidding. I can make that possible for you.”
It wasn’t a promise many could offer. But she didn’t doubt that he could keep it.
He lifted her hand to his mouth, his lips closing on her knuckles, and she felt them everywhere, a liquid warmth that weakened her.
“To ignore the world’s opinions,” he said against her skin. “Or to create their opinions for them.” He lifted her hand to his face, pressing her palm along his cheek. “That’s a heady drug,” he said, and for a confused moment, she thought he meant the sensation of his skin, freshly shaved, hot and smooth.
What an odd thing to do, to make a woman touch your cheek. She stared at her hand where he held it against him. A woman might touch her lover like this to express true and tender affection.
The thought panicked her. He was seducing her not only with his body but with false hopes besides. Look at yourself, his gesture said, touching me as though we might care for one another. What a cruel possibility to tempt her with. What a malicious, wicked strategy. She knew herself and she knew his type, too: when they met, it was usually in a back alley right after coin was exchanged.
She yanked her hand free. “You know I was a thief?”
He might have been deaf for all the effect her angry words had on his smile. “So I gathered,” he said, “when my handkerchief ended up in your friend’s possession.”
“The handkerchief wasn’t anything! I would have stolen more than that if I could have managed it. I would take the rings off your fingers!”
“But now you won’t have to.” He paused. “Does that frighten you?”
“No,” she whispered. Theft didn’t frighten her. She understood well enough what the risks were, there. He frightened her. These feelings he called up inside her … and the dreams he tempted her to entertain …
“If something frightens you,” he said, “that means it’s the best place to start.”
A startled sense of recognition prickled over her. Aye, that was right. If you ran from your fears, they only chased you faster.
She made herself look back to the painting of the last earl, with Paton Park in the background.
Cowards ran from fear, but only a proper fool ran from the truth.
She took a large breath, feeling dizzy, like she hovered on the edge of a fall. “Tell me honestly. Do you really think I’m that girl?”
“Yes,” he said. “And so do you.”
* * * *
That evening, in the hour before Polly brought up the dinner tray, Nell sent Sylvie to the library to find a book that didn’t exist and locked the door.
The sun was well into setting, casting the bedroom into a gloomy blue haze. The murky light suited her mood. She struck a match and set it to a single candle before going to her knees beside the bed.
Prayer wasn’t her intention, but the posture reminded her body of a hundred Sundays spent kneeling under Mum’s sharp regard. She hesitated only briefly before setting the candlestick onto the carpet. Her hands shook as she folded them together at her breast. In the dimness, fragrant with candle smoke and the carpet’s soft perfume, she bowed her head and prayed.
Let her forgive me, she thought. I can’t understand it, but I do love her still.
And then, fingers tightening, she swallowed and added, And please forgive her. She loved me, too.
On a long breath, she pried up the mattress and pulled out her loot.
By the light of the candle she arranged the items on the carpet: candlesticks; doilies; a slim, illustrated volume of Regency-era fashions; a silver spoon; an enameled bowl the color of the summer sky. The bowl fit perfectly into her cupped palm. It was small enough to be ignored and dismissed. But a canny pawnshop broker would recognize its weight and fine glaze as proof of its value. It might easily fetch money for five months of food.
She rose and carried it to the hearth, her hands steady as she replaced it on the small shelf above the mantel where she’d found it.
The handsome book of illustrations—a month’s rent, easy—went to the little tea table in her boudoir. Polly would find it there and return it to the library.
The spoon she put on the seat of the tea chair. Two weeks’ worth of food. The doilies, worth fine tea and hot rolls for six weeks, she strewed across the dressing table in her bedroom. The candlestick holders, silver, heavy, half a year’s surety, she placed by the door to the hall, where someone would be sure to trip over them.
Blowing out her candle, she sat down on the bed and stared at the candlesticks, now veiled by shadows. The gentle tick of the clock measured out her dwindling opportunity to take them back.
This shivering sensation in her stomach was like the feeling of falling.
She remembered pennies dropping over a bridge, flashing in the sunlight. She remembered the sweet floral scent of a woman holding her close, while across the room light slanted through impossibly large windows framed by pale, transparent curtains.
Witches’ dreams, Mum had called them. The devil’s whispers. The dreams had upset her so badly that Nell had learned never to speak of them. She’d stopped asking to hear certain lullabies. She’d ceased to cry for a doll with red hair and blue eyes. She’d come close to forgetting the great staircase she’d once slid down on her belly, a staircase broader than any in Bethnal Green.
She’d thought them dreams.
They hadn’t been dreams.
So she wouldn’t take back those candlesticks. She needn’t feel like a thief in this house. This house had been hers, once upon a time, and so had Paton Park.
She exhaled, long and slow. This is my place, she thought.
Your birthright, St. Maur called it.
Amazement prickled over her, sharp like fear, but so much sweeter. She had not only a fortune and a place to belong, but a person to call her own: him. Simon St. Maur, Earl of Rushden, meant to marry her. The quickest, handsomest, most frightening man she’d ever known wanted to make her his wife.
Who do you think you are? Michael had liked to scream at her. It had only taken one look for St. Maur to know. He’d seen the truth the moment he laid eyes on her.
Feelings knotted in her throat, hot, thick, too many to name. She thought of the way he had touched her and suddenly it took her breath away though he was nowhere in the room. She could have him if she wanted. That magical creature.
God above, but she wanted him. She would admit it now, a secret to keep to herself.
She crossed her arms, hugging tight, holding close these wild ideas. He wants the money, she reminded herself. She couldn’t embroider too many fancies on that pillow. She wouldn’t let herself. She would think of somebody else who was also hers, and not for anything to do with a fortune. She had a sister. Lady Katherine Aubyn had known that bridge, that staircase, that same soft embrace. Flesh of Nell’s flesh, whose bones had formed and grown alongside her own.
So wondrous: somewhere in London, her sister was sleeping.
The hot track of a tear startled her from her thoughts. She pushed it off her cheek with the back of her hand—pushed away, too, the hard-won habit of doubting, scrupling, scorning. This strange turn of events only seemed miraculous because it was miraculous. Anything was possible for her now.
A hitching laugh escaped her. As she fell back onto the sheets, she laughed again, just for the feeling of it, the sheer joyous sensation of believing.
Anything was possible now … even, God help her, learning to waltz.