He tensed beneath her. After a long pause, he said, “Before I met you. Yes.”
“And now?”
His hand caught her chin, lifting it so their eyes met. The shadows suited him, emphasizing the stark beauty of the bones of his face. “Now I’m married,” he said.
A moment passed. His gaze remained intent, unwavering.
“All right,” she said softly.
The landau lurched to a stop at an intersection. She pulled away from him on the pretext of looking out the window. Under the bright lights of the shops, dozens of pedestrians paraded in Saturday evening finery, the gents’ canes flashing with fake gold plate, aigrette feathers bobbing in the ladies’ long hats.
“I’ll never know half of what she does,” she said to the street scene.
“Katherine?”
“Her, too.”
Slowly he said, “I think you misunderstand the matter of the viscountess. It wasn’t … significant, in any regard.”
She willed herself not to say anything more. But her fears wanted out. “It doesn’t matter, though. I don’t know anything about music, Simon. About how softly a man should touch the keys.” A gulping little laugh spilled out of her. “If he touches the right ones, that’s enough for me.”
“And there are countless things you know that I don’t,” he said readily. “But we can learn from each other, Nell.”
She shook her head. He knew all the right things to say. That was the gift of his charm. This voice in her gut told her that his charm wasn’t empty: he meant what he said.
He meant it right now. But would he always?
She turned back toward him, putting her face into his shirtfront, inhaling the scent of starch, the citrus of his cologne, the smell of his skin. She wanted so much to believe in him. It was an ache in her, this need to believe.
His arms came around her and the feeling of them was beyond a miracle. Here was why God had made arms in the first place. Now she knew.
It came to her that guarding her heart was a fool’s errand. She’d already lost it.
A tapping noise intruded into the silence. She felt his chin brush the top of her head as he looked toward the noise.
She bit her lip. She knew the cause of that tapping. Somebody was hungry outside in the night. “Give him a coin,” she whispered.
His chest vibrated beneath her ear as he spoke. “I’m not carrying any.”
Her eyes came open. The anger leapt up in her so quickly that she knew it had only been waiting for an opportunity. It was easier to be angry than to hope.
She withdrew from him in one jerky movement, grabbing the reticule that she’d discarded on the opposite bench. A lady was meant to carry nothing but a handkerchief, smelling salts, and perhaps a vial of scent. She jammed her hand inside, feeling for the coins Simon had handed over, laughing, when she’d collected on their billiards-game wager. She didn’t meet his eyes as she yanked down the window and thrust out her hand.
The beggar woman had gray hair, a face carved by time and too many cares, a threadbare shawl around her bony shoulders. She reached up with gnarled, shaking fingers that fumbled the coin. As the coach rocked forward, her head dropped out of sight. She had gone onto her knees to recover the best luck the night would bring her.
Nell sank onto the bench where her reticule had rested, putting her opposite Simon, who was staring at her as though startled into some dark revelation.
What he said was: “You carry coin in your purse?”
Aye, and I’ve gone on my knees, too, she thought. I’ve scrambled for a coin tossed by some pretty woman’s hand. Right before she’d taken to thieving, she’d done it. I’ve crawled in the mud and I’ll be damned now if I travel without a coin when I have one.
There were so many things he didn’t know that she’d never tell him. A hundred or more crowded into her mind, suddenly—among them that she had nothing to teach that he’d care to learn. What she knew was how to make a shilling or a pot of soup stretch further. How to use a candle flame to mend a crack in gutta-percha. The best time of day to find a likely bargain at the butcher’s. The safest road home in the dark.
What came out of her mouth was: “I’m not ashamed.”
He leaned forward. “You don’t need to be ashamed,” he said fiercely. “By God, Nell—what cause have you for shame? Katherine Aubyn is a silly, spoiled child. The viscountess is a vapid piece of fluff. Their opinions count for nothing.”
She tried to smile. “I know,” she said. She had the easier part in this marriage: she’d seen both sides of it, now, whereas he’d only ever know his own world. She couldn’t teach him the feel of the mud between her fingers as she’d scrabbled, or the hard strike of the ground against her knees as she’d knelt. He had no way of guessing that even now, after glorious meals in which she filled her belly, the memory of hunger still buzzed deep in her bones.
She didn’t want him to guess. She liked that he didn’t see the weakness and fear in her, that small, cowardly part of her that never felt safe. If he ever managed to see it, he’d look at her differently. And oh, how she liked the way he looked at her now.
“What is it that troubles you?” he asked. Frustration edged his voice, but she didn’t take it amiss: she knew it wasn’t aimed at her.
“I’ll never belong to your world.” She spoke carefully, with all the honesty she could offer. “Even after twenty years, Simon. Or forty.” The memory of hunger would still be inside her. It would prevent her from taking good fortune for granted as he did.
“But nobody belongs to that world, Nell. Nobody feels as if they belong, at any rate. They’re all watching each other—fearful of the laughter coming from across the room, wondering to themselves, are they the target? Are they the joke?”
She bit her lip. He thought she was afraid that she’d be judged by his circles and found lacking. Evidently it had never occurred to him that she feared the lack in herself.
“They don’t feel that way when they’re with you,” she said. “You make them comfortable.”
“Not entirely,” he said. “Never entirely. It’s a world of pretensions, you see—not of substance. No one feels able to be fully himself.”
His words reminded her of a puzzle from this evening. “Is that why you don’t put your name to your music? You let people think it’s somebody else’s because you’re afraid they’ll make a joke of it?”
He frowned. “I’m not afraid,” he said. “I’ve told you, I don’t look for anyone’s approval. Not in those circles.”
“Don’t you think you’re owed some approval? For your music, I mean?”
“Perhaps. It doesn’t signify to me.”
She looked down at her hands. Moments like these, she felt the distance between them most keenly. He spoke of his own indifference as though it were a style he’d chosen, but she knew indifference to be a luxury that only the fortunate few could enjoy. At that moment when she’d dived to her knees for a passing coin, the whim of some glittering woman had been everything in the world to her.
He made an impatient noise and moved off the opposite bench to sit beside her. Taking her face in his hands, gripping hard, he looked at her. “Tell me,” he said.
She swallowed. He was a creature designed expertly to terrify her—not her dreams come to life, but rather the sum and total of everything she’d never even allowed herself to dream. “I can’t explain it.”
“You can,” he said. “If it’s not Katherine … then is it the injustice that troubles you? That beggar woman, I mean? You have the power to change that, now. You realize that, don’t you?”
So earnestly he spoke, trying to untangle her thoughts, to understand her. “That, too,” she whispered. But she was selfish. He was what troubled her most. This ache where my heart should be, she thought. That troubles me.
It was a sweet ache, though. How amazing to recall now that second night she’d known him, and how poorly he’d painted himself as he’d tended to her eye. She’d believed every lie
he’d spoken of himself: a ne’erdo-well with nary a care in the world apart from his pocketbook.
But bad lies had a way of coming quickly unraveled. She lifted her hand to his face, cupping his hard jaw, returning his searching look with one of her own. He was kind and frighteningly clever, quick-witted and funny and—though he’d probably deny it with a gun to his head—sensitive. He did care what others thought. Otherwise he’d never have worked so hard to hide his true face, and his music, from the world.
“You’re a good man,” she said. “Do you know that?”
He mistook her meaning. “You’re right to care,” he said. “It should bother us. And those do-gooders who do nothing—you can teach them differently. As I’ve told you, everything is possible for you now.”
She felt herself smile and then his fingers were tracing that smile. “That’s better,” he whispered.
“It is,” she agreed. She pulled down his head and pressed her lips to his, asking for the taste of his tongue. He gave it to her, pressing her back against the squabs to kiss her in earnest, his hard arms coming around her, scattering her fears like night creatures from light. Teeth, tongue, a dark, sweet assault. His grip was firm, declarative: he had her and so here she would stay.
She slid her hands up through his hair and dug in, hard and harder yet. He made a faint noise of surprise but kissed her even more fiercely. No attempt to loosen her grip or pull away. He wouldn’t yield, wouldn’t give. She loved that about him.
She was the same.
The thought sparkled through her like fireworks lighting a moonless night. Here was their common ground: this obdurate place in each of them, hard and insistent as diamond. Here was the substance to bind them. Cut from the same hard stone, they would be bound together; they would hold each other hard. Katherine hadn’t wanted her but he did; he had married her and would keep her.
She took his tongue deep in her mouth as she reached for her skirts. Inch by inch the foaming silk and lace filled her hands, until her calves and knees were bared. Then she bucked beneath him, knocking him back, clambering over him to sit astride his thighs.
She felt his soft, hot sigh on her throat as she pressed their bodies together. He was tall, broad, light on his feet but so solid in his bones, the muscle of his spread thighs supporting her so easily, his grip on her waist sure and firm. How marvelous to be him; how marvelous to be against him. He felt like the answer to every curiosity she’d ever had, a promise of more surprises to come, always good surprises; he never disappointed her.
She wrapped her arms around him, holding him fast as she moved against him, not letting an inch open between their bodies. Her balance was unnecessary; he had her. He would hold her. The only cause for concentration was this kiss, building like a storm between them. She arched as his fingers dug into her spine; she wanted to slip inside his skin and inhabit this wondrous body of his, to know what it was to move through the world as he did. That old Irish prayer, the road rising to meet you: the world rose to meet him; it clamored for him. There was magic in him and she wanted it.
Her cloak slid from her shoulders, thumped at her feet. His teeth slid down her throat. A little scrap of lace, a fichu, lodged between her breasts; he took it away with his teeth, deliberately, intently. His hands slid down her body, and she grew aware, suddenly, of herself more than of him: with his lips pressed now to the upper curve of her breast, his soft, heated murmur was muffled, too vague to interpret but … worshipful in tone. This man wanted her—she was well worth the wanting.
She laughed softly, exultantly. Her hand between them found the thick length of him, traced his outline through his trousers. Oh, yes, this was where she wanted to be, with her skirts knocked up above her knees and him beneath her, always. She wrestled with the tab, suddenly impatient, wanting all of him, his skin against hers, his cock inside her.
He growled in her ear, the thrust of his hips pressing his erection into the palm of her hand, thin fabric separating them for another infuriating second. And then he was free, springing into her fingers. She guided him into her, slowly sank down onto him, a long breath escaping her at the sensation rippling through her body. He filled her so certainly, as though he’d never known a moment’s doubt of her. His hair brushed against her skin, the strong, hot pull of his mouth on hers now echoing how he penetrated her below.
She closed her thighs around his lean hips, squeezing hard, and moved over him, her nails digging into his muscled shoulders as she rose and fell. Mine, she thought. Mine.
He was hers and she was not letting him go.
In the days that followed, something shifted inside Nell, so she felt as though she walked slightly off-balance. Aslant, the world appeared at new angles to her, revealing all kinds of joys she’d never guessed at.
She spent the mornings abed with Simon. Afternoons they passed reading to each other in the library or walking in the park. They toured the British Museum and debated the paintings. They returned to the house through the mews to avoid the newspaper reporters who’d taken to congregating on the pavement, despite the bobbies’ best attempts to drive them away.
Inside, they rarely took their hands off each other.
In the evenings, Simon played the piano. His music dazzled her, and then, afterward, he translated its mystery into words, explaining to her how music might be a science as well as an art. She came to understand what Lady Swanby had meant by one man’s piano being another man’s pianissimo. She laid her own hands on the keys and laughed as he guided her through simple scales. He kissed her where her neck met her shoulder and told her she had magic in her fingers.
She turned on the bench and drew him down beside her and showed him exactly what sort of magic she could work with her hands.
They dined together. They read side by side before the fire. They acted … domestically, as husband and wife. She spoke to him honestly, and only moments or minutes afterward did she remember, as though part of an irrelevant past, that she might have cause for caution.
But one sunny morning after breakfast, a note arrived that made her realize the fragile foundations of her happiness. Scrawled in Hannah’s unsteady hand, it mysteriously promised some news to do with Michael. Despite mention of her stepbrother, the invitation to visit should have overjoyed her, for she missed Hannah terribly.
The invitation did not overjoy her. It raised a bolt of panic sharp enough to steal her breath.
She looked up, through the bright light of the morning room, at the footman who’d brought the note. He was young, slim, with a smooth, hard face that revealed nothing as he said, “Shall I wait to take my lady’s reply?” But in his pale eyes she saw a shrewd glint that said he’d missed none of it: the broken penmanship; the misspelling of Simon’s direction; the lack of a seal; the cheapness of the thin, brown envelope.
“No,” she said. “That will be all.”
When he left, she followed him into the hallway, the note crumpling in her sweaty palm, bleeding ink across her skin. Five steps down the hall, she realized her intention: she was going in search of a place to burn this note—as though Hannah’s friendship was something sordid, to be denied and rebuffed.
The thought shamed her into stopping. She loved Hannah. She longed to see her. But if she accepted this invitation, Simon would want to go with her. He was so curious to know how she’d grown up. He’d asked a hundred questions about her youth, but she saw only now—in a blinding instant—that she answered him so freely because she knew it would never occur to him to ask the questions she truly dreaded to answer.
She took a long breath. So what if he saw her comfortable in the rookeries? What did she care if he was disgusted? Aye, she’d lived over a pig slop most of her life, with fever in the flat next door nine months out of the twelve. So what? What did she care for his judgments?
But these questions, which once might have stirred a healthy, solid anger, no longer worked to insulate her. She did care. She cared for his opinion more than anything. And once he saw how
it was in Bethnal Green, his imagination would begin to wander down darker, truer paths. Instead of asking about her responsibilities at the factory, he might ask instead, How did you travel safely at night? How did you keep clean without running water?
It was easier to care for a woman when you did not have to imagine her being grabbed and groped by drunkards on the road, or scratching at the pricks of nits and lice.
Once he saw her in Bethnal Green, he’d realize that beneath these fine clothes still breathed the sort of girl a man like him would pass in the street without a backward look, were circumstances different.
She closed her eyes, hating to think such a thing of him. Hating herself, even, for thinking him capable of such small-hearted snobbery.
A sound caught her ears: his voice, coming dimly through a doorway down the hall. The low timbre triggered some dumb reflex that pulled her lips into a smile—and the smile, in turn, acted like a medicine. As her eyes opened, she suddenly could not doubt him.
Let him come with her. She trusted him not to judge her. And once he saw her in Bethnal Green and did not treat her differently for it, then she would have no cause in the world to doubt him.
His voice was coming from the study. She started forward, smoothing out the note, her heart drumming faster. Hannah has some news for me concerning Michael, she would say. No, I’m not sure what it might concern, but I thought to pay a visit. Perhaps, since you’ve seemed curious about the Green, you might wish to come along—
She was lifting her hand to knock when the conversation inside registered.
“—look so very bad,” someone was saying. Not Simon. That was Daughtry’s voice, she thought—the lawyer. “We guessed that Grimston might go to one of the newspapers, so we mustn’t be too surprised.”
Since her appearance at Lady Allenton’s, the newspapers had been full of speculation about Lord Rushden’s new countess. Only this morning, she had discussed with Simon the possibility of giving an interview to a friendly reporter.
“I’m aware of that,” came Simon’s sharp voice. “But the rest of these pieces speak of her fairly. Surely there’s no harm in making a public remark on yellow journalism.”