CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MR. BLACK WENT to Stepcote Hill by hackney, leaving Nell at the inn. She wasted no time being annoyed with him. She didn’t have time to be annoyed with highhanded males. Her birthday was in four days, and her Faerie godmother would grant her a wish and she would know where Sophia was—but if four days was a short time, it was also a very long time if one was penniless and with a young baby. And even though Mr. Black had refused to allow her to go to Stepcote Hill, there were things Nell could do. Someone must have helped Sophia give birth. Had she been tended by a midwife? Gone to a lying-in hospital? Did Exeter even have a charitable lying-in hospital?
She posed that last question to the innkeeper, who told her that a very good lying-in hospital for poor women had recently been established, and that it would be quite safe for her to visit it. In fact, it was less than ten minutes’ walk from the inn.
Nell went back upstairs at a pace too fast to be called ladylike. Her father would have scolded her for it. A lady never runs, Eleanor. How many times must I tell you that?
Bessie was in the bedchamber, checking Nell’s few clothes, determining what needed washing, what ironing, what darning. “Bessie, you’re to come with me.”
“Where to, ma’am?”
“The lying-in hospital.” Nell crossed to her valise, dug inside it, and drew out a thin package: two rectangles of pasteboard, bound together with ribbon. She hesitated, then untied the ribbon and parted the pasteboard, revealing the pencil sketch: herself and Sophia. Her throat tightened and for a moment she was unable to speak.
Bessie inhaled a reverent breath. “How beautiful.”
Yes, Sophia was very beautiful. The pencil strokes couldn’t show the golden hair and violet eyes, but they perfectly captured the loveliness of Sophia’s features. She gazed out of the portrait and you could see who she was, could see her youth and her innocence, her capacity for joy, see that she was someone who always believed the best of people, who saw good in everyone.
Nell cleared her throat. “She drew this. Sophia did. That’s her name: Sophia.”
The sketch had been intended as a gift for their father, but it had never been given. And now never would.
Nell slid the sketch back between the pasteboard rectangles and briskly retied the ribbons. “Fetch your bonnet, Bessie.”
THE CHARITABLE LYING-IN hospital was located in what had once been someone’s mansion. A merchant’s mansion, Nell thought, given its location amid Exeter’s warehouses. The building had an imposing façade, but once inside it was oddly welcoming. Welcoming and clean and busy.
Nell spoke to the superintendent, a jovial man with spectacles and curling gray whiskers. She showed him the sketch.
“Within the last month, you say?” the superintendent said, peering at the sketch.
“June, I would think.”
“I haven’t seen her, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t here. Come with me, Mrs. Trussell-Quimby. We’ll ask my colleagues.”
But no one within the lying-in hospital had seen Sophia either. Nell tried not to let her disappointment show. “Are there any other charitable lying-in hospitals in Exeter?”
“No,” the superintendent said.
“Midwives, then. Do you perhaps have a list of midwives in Exeter?”
“I know a few names, but there’d be dozens more. Any woman may call herself a midwife, Mrs. Trussell-Quimby, but whether she actually knows what she’s doing is quite another matter!”
“May I please have those names?”
The superintendent wrote them down for her. Six names, each with an address jotted alongside.
Nell examined the list. The addresses meant nothing to her. “Would it be safe for me to visit these places alone?”
The man hesitated, and then said, “I wouldn’t advise it, Mrs. Trussell-Quimby.”
“But none of them are as rough as Stepcote Hill, are they? None of them are actually dangerous?”
The superintendent made a movement of his head, neither nod nor shake, but something in between. “Not dangerous, no, but it would be best to take your husband with you.”
Nell thanked him. Outside, on the steps of the lying-in hospital, she hesitated, unsure what to do next.
Across the street was a bakery. Reid & Houghton, said the sign. The bakery was doing a busy trade. Nell watched the customers come and go. Should she return to the inn? Or search for midwives?
She studied the superintendent’s list again. Pinhoe. St Leonard. Heavitree. St. Paul. St. Mary Arches. Parishes she didn’t know, in a city she didn’t know.
Where are you, Sophy?
“To the devil with prudence,” she muttered under her breath, and then she said, more loudly, “Come along, Bessie. Let’s find a hackney.” But when they found a hackney rank, caution made her hesitate. I can’t take Bessie somewhere that may not be entirely safe. Nell glanced at the girl, and suddenly knew how Mordecai Black felt—and why he’d refused to allow her to accompany him. So instead of directing the jarvey to drive them to the nearest parish on the list, she asked him to take them back to the inn.
“Please wait here,” she told the jarvey. “I shan’t be above five minutes.” And then she hurried inside in search of Black’s footman. “Walter! Fetch your hat. You’re coming with us.”
THUS IT WAS that Nell interviewed three midwives that afternoon, in the company of her maid and a footman. One midwife lived in the parish of St. Mary Arches, the other two in St. Paul. Nell showed all three women the sketch of Sophia. None of them had seen her, but they gave her the names of four more midwives, one of whom was in Stepcote Hill.
Nell thanked the third woman for her time and went back out to the street, followed by Walter and Bessie. The hackney she had hired was waiting, both horse and jarvey half-asleep.
Nell read out the address the third midwife had given her: Smythen Street. “Is this nearby?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Take us there, please.”
The jarvey hesitated. “It’s in the West Quarter, ma’am.”
“You think it’s unsafe?”
The jarvey glanced from her to Bessie to Walter, and back again. “It ain’t the safest part of the city, ma’am.”
Nell looked down at her list. “Coombe Street, then. Or Preston Street.”
“They’re also in the West Quarter, ma’am.”
Nell blew out a breath, and studied the list again. She skipped over Stepcote Hill. “St. Leonard? Is that also in the West Quarter?”
“It’s a little ways outside the city, ma’am.”
“Is it safe?”
The jarvey shrugged. “Safe enough.”
But it was outside the city, and intuition told her that Mr. Black wouldn’t be pleased if she ventured that far without him.
“How about Heavitree, then? How far is it?”
“Couple of miles past St. Leonard, ma’am.”
“And Pinhoe?”
“Even further out.”
Nell hesitated, and examined her locket watch. It was later than she’d thought. “How long would it take to get to St. Leonard and back?”
The jarvey shrugged. “An hour.”
Which meant that she wouldn’t be back at the inn until dusk.
Nell bit her lip, torn between wanting to find Sophia as fast as possible and the knowledge that if Mordecai Black returned to the inn and found her gone, he’d be worried.
She weighed the choices in her mind: Sophia’s safety versus Black’s worry. But perhaps Black has already found Sophia in Stepcote Hill?
“Very well,” Nell said. “We’ll return to the inn.”
BLACK ARRIVED BACK fifteen minutes after Nell. He hadn’t found Billy English, or Sophia and Lizzie. He looked disheveled and sweaty and slightly more dangerous than usual. Nell couldn’t put her finger on why he seemed more dangerous . . . until she noticed that his right glove was split across the knuckles. “What happened?”
“Someone tried to rob me.”
“Are you all right?”
“I am; they’re not.”
“They?”
“There were two of them.” Black peeled off the ruined glove. Nell saw blood on his knuckles. “I need a wash. Dinner in an hour suit you?”
Nell nodded.
The next time she saw Black he was freshly shaved and impeccably dressed. He didn’t look like a man who’d recently brawled with two thugs in a seedy part of Exeter—unless one examined his hands. His knuckles were faintly bruised, and one of them sported a tiny gash.
Black caught her glance. “Cut it on a tooth.”
“Is Stepcote Hill very dangerous?” Nell asked, serving herself from the dishes laid before them.
Black shrugged lightly. “No more than Seven Dials.”
“But we weren’t set upon in Seven Dials.”
“We weren’t there long enough.” Black helped himself to some beef olives. “If we’d been there for several hours, if we’d gone down every side street and alley, then I can guarantee you we’d have been set upon.”
“But I thought pickpockets were sly, not violent.”
“They weren’t pickpockets. They were after more than my purse and my watch.”
Nell frowned at him. “They were?”
“Look at my clothes,” Black said. “How much do you think they cost?”
Nell’s gaze jerked down to his chest—the blue superfine coat, the crisp, white neckcloth, the silk waistcoat—and then back to his face. “You think they would have taken your coat as well?”
“I think they’d have stripped me,” Black said bluntly. “And probably put a knife between my ribs for good measure.”
Nell stared at him, shocked. “You mean . . . murder? For your clothes?”
“My clothes cost more money than those people will ever see in their lives. It must have been like watching the Bank of England walk past. An irresistible temptation.” Black shrugged again, and added some larded sweetbreads to his plate.
“I didn’t realize Stepcote Hill was so dangerous,” Nell said, aghast. “You could have been killed.”
“There were only two of them. And they were half-drunk.”
“But there could have been four.”
“I would still have won. I learned to fight on the streets, not in Gentleman Jack’s Saloon. I don’t follow Broughton’s rules.”
Nell didn’t know what Broughton’s rules were, but she knew arrogance when she heard it. “You would have won a fight against four men?” she said dryly.
“Four men who were fuddled with gin? Yes.”
But what if they hadn’t been fuddled with gin? Or what if there’d been six of them, or eight? “I don’t want you to go back there,” Nell said.
“I have no reason to,” Black said, serving himself from a dish of green beans. “Your sister isn’t there. Nor is Lizzie. And Billy English has moved up in the world.”
“Moved up?”
“He’s left the West Quarter.”
“Stepcote Hill is in the West Quarter?”
Black nodded.
Nell thought of the jarvey’s reluctance to take her to the West Quarter, and silently blessed the man. “Where is Billy English now?”
“Down by the river. Cricklepit Street.”
“Is it safer than the West Quarter?”
“Marginally. I’ll go there tomorrow, see if I can find him.”
Marginally. Nell pondered this word while she ate. It seemed to her that marginally safe was still very close to dangerous, and that Cricklepit Street might be a street where half-drunk men would try to rob Mordecai Black for his clothes and his purse. And stick a knife between his ribs.
I will know where Sophia is in a few days. I can’t let him risk his life for this.
Nell laid down her cutlery. “While you were gone, I tackled the problem from another angle.”
Black glanced at her.
“I went to the charitable lying-in hospital.”
Black didn’t move, but everything about him seemed to tighten—his shoulders, his jaw, the skin around his eyes, his grip on the knife and fork.
“It’s in a perfectly safe neighborhood,” Nell told him. “I checked with the innkeeper first. And I took Bessie with me.”
Black didn’t relax. He looked like a man trying to hold his temper in check.
“Sophia hadn’t been there, but the superintendent gave me the names and addresses of several midwives.”
Black closed his eyes in a wince. “Tell me you didn’t—”
“I did,” Nell said briskly. “And before you ring a peal over me, let me tell you that I took both Bessie and Walter with me.”
Black opened his eyes and studied her for a long moment—jaw still tight, grip on his cutlery still tight—and then asked, “Where did you go?”
“St. Mary Arches parish,” Nell said. “And St. Paul parish. Several of the midwives live in the West Quarter, but I didn’t go there.”
“The West Quarter?” Black put his knife and fork down with a loud clatter. “Good God! Do you have any idea how much danger you’d have been in if—”
“I’m not a fool,” Nell told him. “I asked the jarvey whether he thought the West Quarter was safe, and when he said it wasn’t I heeded his advice.”
Black said nothing. He looked as if he was gritting his teeth.
“A number of the midwives live in parishes outside the city. I would like to visit them tomorrow.”
Black’s eyebrows lowered. He drew breath to argue.
“And I’d like you to come with me,” Nell said.
Black processed these words. After a moment, he said, “What about Billy English and Cricklepit Street?”
“I’d like to try the midwives first.”
Black thought about this for several seconds, and then said, “Very well.” He visibly relaxed, the tightness of jaw, eyes, and shoulders melting away. “We’ll go tomorrow.” He gave a nod and returned his attention to his food.
He thinks he’s keeping me safe. What he doesn’t realize is that I’m keeping him safe, too.
They ate in silence. Nell had little appetite. She pushed her food around her plate. She knew what would happen once the meal was over: Mordecai Black would renew his offer of marriage.
He would sit there—or perhaps stand there—looking impossibly beautiful, and he’d ask her to be his wife, and she’d have to struggle with the urge to say Yes, because the more she grew to know him, the more she was drawn to him.
Yes, he was a man who publicly paraded his aristocratic lovers, yes, he was highhanded and masterful, but he was also kind and generous and, in his own way, very moral.
And he was lonely. As lonely as poor Arabella Knightley—and that knowledge made her heart ache.
Nell cast him a covert glance. Mordecai Black, the notorious rake, eating his dinner quietly.
Her pulse gave its familiar little flutter. It would be so easy to fall in love with him. Terribly easy. She was halfway there already—but if part of her yearned to accept what Black offered, the rest of her knew better than to take that step. Because Mordecai Black was as autocratic as he was kind, and she would not marry a man who told her what to do.
But if she were to cast aside her virtue, she wouldn’t mind being his mistress.
Nell allowed herself to imagine it for a moment: being Black’s lover, sharing his life but being independent in a way a married woman could never be. As Mordecai Black’s mistress, she wouldn’t have to obey him, she’d be able to make up her own mind what she would and wouldn’t do—and she could walk away if his autocratic nature became too much. She’d be utterly ruined, of course, not merely tarnished as she was now—but wouldn’t being Black’s mistress be worth being ruined for?
Her thoughts jammed for a moment, temptation and horror tangling together. How could she have thought such a thing? And having thought it, how impossible it was to unthink it.
Nell looked blankly down at her meal, and knew she wouldn’t be able to swallow another mouthful.
She carefully laid her knife and fork on the plate, and glanced at Black. God, he was beautiful. The strength and symmetry and dangerous angles of his face. The long eyelashes. The imperious nose. The soft lower lip.
Nell’s throat tightened in a moment of pure physical yearning. Heat swept through her. Her pulse didn’t merely flutter, it began an agitated dance.
She looked hastily away from him and set herself to examining the parlor instead—the sturdy green sofa, the little writing desk in the corner, the two armchairs by the fireplace. Even though the coffee room lay below, no hum of voices penetrated the floorboards.
The tightness in her throat eased. The heat faded. Her heartbeat steadied.
“Not hungry?” Black asked.
Nell glanced up and found his dark eyes on her. Her pulse gave a little kick. She shook her head.
“Tell me about the lying-in hospital,” Black said. “And the midwives you visited.”
Nell did, sipping her wine, but if half her attention was on her recital, the other half was very firmly focused on what would come next. Sometime between finishing his meal and bidding her goodnight Mordecai Black would propose again, and she would say No because it was the best thing for both of them, and then she’d go up to her room and cry because he was kind and lonely and her refusals hurt him and she didn’t want to hurt him.
Black ate his last sweetbread. He laid his cutlery neatly on his plate. “And the parishes outside the city walls? Which ones are they?”
“Pinhoe,” Nell said. “And Heavitree.” Her stomach tied itself into a knot. “And . . . um . . .” She cast desperately for the third parish. “St. Leonard.”
“They’re not too far.”
The knot in Nell’s stomach became tighter as she watched Black fold his napkin and place it alongside his plate. “What time would you like to leave tomorrow?” he asked.
What time did midwives rise? “Eight o’clock,” Nell said.
Black nodded, and reached for his wineglass. Her gaze fastened on his bruised knuckles.
“You said the other midwives are in the West Quarter?” Black said. “I’ll visit them once we get back.”
Nell’s gaze jerked to his face. “No.”
Black’s eyebrows rose. “I beg your pardon?”
“I don’t want you to go to the West Quarter. It’s too dangerous.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“You were careful today, and you almost got a knife between your ribs!”
Black put down his wineglass. “Miss Wrotham—”
“I don’t want you going to the West Quarter any more than you want me going there,” Nell told him. “And if I’ve heeded your wishes with regard to my safety, I hope that you’ll heed mine.”
They matched gazes for a long moment. Black’s face was perfectly expressionless. Nell wondered what was going through his mind. Would he tell her that she was just a female, that he knew better than she did, that he’d do as he wished?
Black inclined his head slightly. “Very well.”
Surprise held her motionless for a moment, and then she said, “You won’t go to the West Quarter? Or Cricklepit Street?”
“I won’t go unaccompanied. Will that set your mind at rest?”
Nell considered this for several seconds, and then nodded.
Black didn’t pick up his wineglass again and relax back in his chair; instead, he stayed as he was, leaning slightly forward, his gaze intent on her face. “Miss Wrotham . . . will you marry me?”
Oh, God, not this again. Nell’s thoughts scattered in panic. She put down her glass jerkily, almost knocking it over. She didn’t want to hurt him. If only he’d stop asking . . .
An idea sprang into her head between one blink of her eyelids and the next. A shockingly scandalous idea—but one that she knew would work, because if there was one thing she’d learned about Mordecai Black it was that he would never ruin a woman.
Nell bit the inside of her lip. Dare I?
The knot in her stomach tied itself even tighter. She stared at Black. He stared back at her.
The silence between them grew, along with her panic.
“Miss Wrotham?”
If there was ever a time to put her idea into action, it was now . . . but Nell discovered that she hadn’t the courage. “Why?” she blurted instead. “Why me?” And then she added: “And don’t tell me it’s because you saw me riding in Richmond Park or that we danced together once. Those aren’t reasons to marry.”
“Aren’t they?”
“No!”
Black was silent for several seconds, then he leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know if you recall, but last year, before the Season had fully started, you had an altercation with a jarvey.”
Nell stiffened in shock. “I beg your pardon?”
“In Halfmoon Street,” Black said. “Outside the Dalrymples’ house. I imagine you’d just arrived in London.”
Nell found herself unable to speak, unable to confirm his guess. She stared at him, aghast.
“The jarvey had almost run down a child, one of those urchins who peddle goods door to door. I was too far away to see what he had in his tray. Ribbons, perhaps. Or brushes.”
Nell moistened her lips. “Blacking,” she managed to say. “Blacking and bootlaces.”
Black’s eyes met hers for a long moment. “You remember.”
Nell nodded.
“Then you know what happened next.”
She nodded again. The jarvey had jumped down from his box in a fury of fright, grabbed the boy by the scruff of his neck, and given him a fierce thrashing.
“He was almost as large as me, that jarvey, a big brute of a man, and yet you marched right up to him and dressed him down as if he was no larger than a child.”
Nell stared at him, transfixed with embarrassment that he’d witnessed that scene.
“I couldn’t hear what you said—I was too far away—but I saw the jarvey’s face when he drove past me. He looked quite chastened.”
Nell felt herself blush scarlet. She looked down at her table setting.
“And then your father dressed you down, if I’m not mistaken.”
Nell grimaced. No, Black wasn’t mistaken. She could remember her father’s exact words, his cold, low-voiced rage. I’ve never been so mortified in my life. How could you? Brangling with a jarvey as if you were a fishwife, not a lady!
She’d protested that the child had needed help, that the jarvey was hurting him.
Then you should have requested a footman to intervene, her father had told her coldly. That’s what servants are for.
“Your father didn’t seem pleased.”
Nell huffed a humorless laugh, and glanced at Black. “No, not pleased.”
“What did he say?”
“Oh . . .” Nell pulled a face. “He said that I’d behaved like a hoyden and it was a blessing no one had witnessed it, that it would have given them a disgust of my manners. And he said that I’d proven I was too immature to go about in Society and he had a good mind to send me home.”
But her father hadn’t sent her home. She had had her Season, and Roger had offered for her, and she’d seen her chance at freedom and grabbed it with both hands.
“Disgust? Yes, Roger would certainly have been disgusted. I, on the other hand, was not.”
Another blush rushed to Nell’s cheeks. She fixed her gaze on the tablecloth, mortified with herself. She’d learned to control her expression years ago, to present a cool, aloof, ladylike face to the world; it seemed so unfair that Mordecai Black could make her blush like a schoolgirl.
“I never pay the slightest attention to débutantes,” Black said. “But I paid attention to you after that . . . and I liked what I saw.”
Nell’s cheeks grew even hotter.
“Is that reason enough for you, Miss Wrotham?”
The question made her glance at him—and having glanced, she was caught. Caught by his dark, dark eyes.
“Will you marry me?” he asked.
Nell’s panic came surging back, and with it was longing. An intense, foolish longing to throw caution to the winds and accept his offer. To marry Mordecai Black.
Her heart thumped loudly in her chest. She had the sensation she’d had once before—dancing with him at the Moorecombs’ ball—that she stood on edge of a fiery pit.
It was tempting to throw herself in and burn in the pleasures that waited there. Very tempting. But while part of her wanted to make that leap, the rest of her didn’t. Because she knew that if she flung herself into that fire, it would consume her. She would burn, and the flames would be bright and marvelous while they lasted, but once they died down she would be left with ashes. Because Mordecai Black was an assertive, masterful, highhanded man. A man who would control her life, who would tell her what to do. A man she would grow to resent, perhaps even to hate.
And that was no good future for either of them.
Knowing it didn’t make it any easier to refuse. Each time he asked she wavered a little more.
I must stop him asking. Before it was too late. Before her common sense eroded and she made that fatal fall.
Nell swallowed.
It was time to put her idea into action.
Courage, she told herself. Her palms were damp with perspiration, her lungs tight. She moistened her lips, took a shallow breath, and said, “No, I won’t marry you. But I’ll be your mistress.”
The shock on Black’s face would have been comical under other circumstances. He physically recoiled, as if a jack-in-a-box had sprung open in front of him, and then sat like a man turned to stone, staring at her, his mouth half open, clearly speechless.
Nell gripped her hands together and hoped that her assessment of his character had been accurate. A knot tied itself tightly in her belly.
After a moment, Black closed his mouth. He blinked and swallowed, still looking faintly stunned, and then an expression slowly formed on his face. It was one she’d seen on her father’s often enough: affront. “No!” he said, almost an explosive sound. “Absolutely not!”
She’d been correct in her estimation of him. Nell’s panic subsided. The knot in her stomach unraveled. She tried not to let her relief show. “Why not?”
“Why not?” Outrage gathered on Black’s face like storm clouds. “Good God, how can you ask such a question? You know why not!”
“Because it would ruin me,” Nell said. “But in the eyes of Society I’m already ruined—or at least tarnished—because of Sophia, and I’ve decided that if I’m going to be damned, I want it to be because of something I’ve actually done.”
It wasn’t quite true—she’d thought about it, but not decided upon it—but her voice held a convincing note of conviction. Nell lifted her chin slightly and tried to look bold and devil-may-care, even though she was neither of those things.
There was a long moment of silence while Black digested her words. His expression told her he found them unpalatable. “You’ll be my mistress, but not my wife?” he said finally.
The knot in Nell’s stomach clenched tightly again. “Yes.”
“Why?”
Nell flushed. She found herself unable to look him in the eye. “Because I like you,” she said, directing her gaze to a button on his waistcoat. “But I don’t wish to marry you.”
“Because you think I’m dictatorial?”
She nodded, and glanced at his face.
Black’s jaw clenched. His nostrils flared. He looked angry and offended in equal measure.
“I think you’re a very good man,” Nell said. “You’re kind and generous and honorable, but you’re used to having your own way, and if we were to marry I think we’d argue.”
Black considered her words for several seconds, and then unlocked his jaw. “Perhaps we wouldn’t argue. Perhaps we’d discuss things. Perhaps we’d compromise.”
Nell ceded this with a nod. “Or perhaps we’d grow discontented with one another. Perhaps we’d come to regret our marriage.”
His lips compressed. Muscles bunched in his jaw.
“We’re both strong-minded, Mr. Black. We both like to make our own decisions.”
“For heaven’s sake!” he burst out. “Who do you think I am? I’m not like your father! I don’t want to put you in a cage. I want to set you free.”
Nell’s throat constricted. He truly means it.
She looked down at her plate, shaken, and listened to Black’s words ring in her ears—and for a moment the yearning to accept what he offered was so intense that she almost changed her mind. And then she thought, But marriage is forever—and what if it doesn’t work? What if we grow to hate each other?
She raised her gaze to his face. “Right now I am free.” Her voice was apologetic. “And I wish to remain that way.”
Black’s jaw clenched again.
“I’m sorry,” Nell said. “I do like you very much.”
“But not enough to marry.”
“I like you too much to marry you.”
He frowned at her.
“I like you too much to marry you,” Nell said again. “Because I think I’d make you unhappy.” And then she repeated her shocking offer, the one that would stop his nightly proposals: “I’ll be your mistress if you’ll have me, but not your wife.”
Black stared at her for almost a full minute, while her heart beat high in her throat and she grew tense with fear that she’d misjudged him. “No,” he said finally. “I won’t ruin you.”
Nell exhaled in shaky relief. Her tension melted away. Gratitude welled in her chest. She almost smiled at him. Thank you. “You’re a good man, Mordecai Black.” She reached across the table and touched his clenched hand lightly with her fingertips, and felt a pang of sorrow. I’m sorry I can’t give you what you want. Then she pushed back her chair and stood. “Good night.”