because he didn’t have anything to lose. “I can’t marry,” he said, trying to make his voice as firm and unyielding as he could. “I know it’s the logical solution to my predicament, but it’s out of the question.” He felt almost sick with the knowledge that he was going against her wishes. She had been kind: she bought him clothes and took him to the oculist for spectacles and now she would tell him that he had to do as she said for his own good. There was a part of him that expected his father or a nurse or tutor to materialize and lock him away until he was ready to be compliant.
She looked at him for another long moment and then poured him some tea. “Have it your way. I suppose I can get you a post as a secretary.”
Martin blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Secretary. You can read and write, can you not? Despite ignoring my letters for years and years?”
“Yes, of course, but—” He didn’t know how to say that he had expected her to fight him, to persuade him.
“Don’t tell me you look down your nose at work.”
“No! I just didn’t expect you to listen to me.”
Aunt Bermondsey regarded him curiously. “There are other ways you could make a living. Being a secretary is the most obvious, if only because certain men would feel extremely important if they had a titled secretary. But you could also get a post in the Home Office. Nothing too taxing.”
He spent a moment imagining this future in which he could earn a living. It was a fantasy—he would be sacked from any post after his first bout of illness, and any work in London or another city was out of the question. But even the theoretical possibility of being able to pay his own way made him feel . . . valuable, maybe, in a way he hadn’t conceived of. Then he gritted his teeth and returned to reality.
“I’m afraid, ma’am, that my health won’t permit me to hold a regular post, nor to stay in town.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I was under the impression that you were doing better.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever recover,” he said. It was the first time he had said it aloud to anyone but Will. “But some days are better than others.”
She was silent for a moment. “Tell me what I can do for you.”
“I would like to be able to pay my own way,” Martin said. “I don’t want to be a drain on my friend.” No, that wasn’t quite right. “I don’t want to need my friend. I want to be able to pay for whatever care I need the next time I fall ill. I don’t want the people who care for me to worry that I’ll repeat the events of last autumn.” He didn’t say that in an ideal world he’d like to be able to care for Will if he needed it; that seemed both unlikely and private, an impossible thought to hide safely away.
“I would not call these ambitions overly optimistic.”
“It is when you haven’t two farthings to rub together.”
She furrowed her brow. “There has to be something you could do. To hear my friends talk, young men seem to be forever getting posts and taking work that their relations consider beneath them—surely not all of them require a man to live in London.”
“I expect the young men your friends know all have skills that I do not. My education consisted of reading too many novels and little else. I read and write French, and a little German.”
“I’d offer you money—”
“I’d refuse it.”
“I’d offer you money,” she repeated, “but I haven’t any. I have my pin money and Lord Bermondsey pays my bills,” she went on, “but I haven’t any money of my own. However, if you fall on hard times, understand that I wish to help you. At the risk of trading in maudlin sympathy, it’s the very least your mother might have expected of me.”
“My mother died when you were in leading strings and you never laid eyes on me until last year, so you needn’t pretend it was my mother’s dying wish that you look after me.”
“You’ll permit me to decide what and who I care about, thank you,” she said. “And you’ll allow for the possibility that I’ve become fond of you in your own right. My point is that if you fell on hard times, my pin money is not insubstantial. Twenty