A Bride for the Prizefighter - Alice Coldbreath Page 0,94

of cardboard.

The first she took to be of a father and son with their identical flinty glares and stiff studio poses in their Sunday suits. Their expression though was the only likeness between them. The man was of a solid square build with a big square jaw, close-cropped hair, and sideburns which Mina judged to be of a sandy light brown color although it was always hard to tell in the black and white of photographs. The boy she knew immediately to be William Nye. He was a tall handsome boy of about eleven years, but much darker than the man whose hand rested on his shoulder, with hair that curled at his nape and brow and straight eyebrows that looked almost black. Was this Nye with the man who raised him and gave him his name? Mina turned over the photograph but found no writing to tell her if she had guessed correctly, only the studio’s stamp.

Picking up the second photograph, she saw the features she already knew from the inn’s sign The Merry Harlot. This one had two words printed on the reverse. Ellen Nye. The artist who painted it must have used this photograph for reference, she thought, flipping it back over to look at the tumbled curls and the bonny face of the fourth viscount’s mistress. Thoughtfully she placed both photographs in the top drawer of the bedside cabinet also.

Mina spent the next twenty minutes hanging up or folding Nye’s clothes for the drawers, setting his razor and comb on the washstand and placing his cufflinks on his bedside table until the only thing left was the pile of clothes for mending. These she scooped up and put in a linen bag for later. There, she thought, surveying the room. Now it was truly occupied by a married couple.

Returning to one of her own drawers, Mina took out Effie’s lace scarf and contemplated it at a moment. She had laundered it ready to return to its former owner, and she raised it now to examine its rather shabby folds. It looked a good deal better now than on the night she had worn it at St Werburgh’s, she thought ruefully. She could not remember now what she had done with the silver sixpence she had been given in the church. Folding it carefully again, she returned it to the drawer and made for the pile of well-thumbed periodicals she kept under the bed. She settled on one with a juicy tale about a stolen ruby necklace and climbed into bed.

The next thing she knew, she had wakened as a shaft of light fell across her face from an oil lantern coming through the door. She made out Nye’s face as he shut the door behind him and came softly to his side of the bed where he was quick to extinguish the lamp and start undressing.

“What time is it?” Mina asked, rolling on her side to face him.

“Late,” he answered, climbing into the bed. “Why are you still awake?”

“I wasn’t,” she assured him and without conscious thought, found herself shifting closer to him in the dark. He expelled a noisy breath and for a moment she thought he wouldn’t take her up on her unspoken invitation, then his hands were at her waist and she was hauled up against him.

“Am I forgiven, then?” he said against her brow.

“What was I angry about?” She had genuinely forgotten by this point.

“My being a damned jealous brute.”

“Oh that.” It seemed ages ago. “It depends on whether you accept my word or Reuben’s on what transpired.”

His hands stroked over her buttocks and hips. “Yours,” he said raspily. “Mind, I still don’t trust that Carswell bastard.” She almost heard him scowl.

“Do you smoke a pipe?” she asked suddenly and felt his forehead furrow in a frown.

“A pipe? No, do I smell of pipe-smoke?”

“No, but I sorted through your trunk and you own so many.”

He gave a short laugh. “Already? You don’t let the grass grow, do you?”

“I was always urged never to put off till tomorrow what could be done today.”

She felt him nod and shift back against the pillow. “The pipes aren’t mine. They were my father’s.”

Mina hesitated. “And by that you mean...?”

“The man who raised me,” he said quickly with an edge to his voice. “Jacob Nye.”

“Was he the one in that photograph with you as a boy?” she asked quietly.

“Yes.”

Mina remained quiet a moment, but he did not expand on this. She thought of the portrait of the