still wore his boots! She deserved better, and surely even he had more finesse than that!
And slowly he became aware of the rattling of carriages, yells from the street, servants exchanging a word in the hallway, footsteps pounding overhead.
“Bloody hell,” he said.
Her eyes opened, a mesmerizing amber-green.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“It’s the middle of the day.”
“Oh. I forgot.” Her soft laugh stirred as she lay and listened to the noises of the world they had left. Her face fell. “Oh no,” she said. “I made noise. What noise did I make? I forgot. How could I forget? What if they heard? What if they know that we…Oh.”
She was so adorable, as she tried reconciling her public self with her private self, and he was inordinately pleased with himself for finding this part of her. Grinning, he pulled out of her and off her, let her legs fall. He stroked her hair, kissed her. He picked up her scent on his fingers and his body stirred again.
“We’re married,” he reminded her. “It’s all quite proper.”
“Proper!” she repeated. “Oh you fiend!”
She slapped him lightly, so he kissed her, long and slow, and reveled in the way she kissed him back.
“That was rather inelegant,” he said. “I should have made love to you properly last night.”
“Yes.”
“I wanted to. I…”
He had no words and she did not push him. “That was not like our wedding night,” she said instead. “I worried but it was…lovely.”
He said nothing. There was no point wondering if anything might ever have been different.
From somewhere came a laugh, that laugh, and a singsong call of “Mother Cassandra!” and another voice, Newell perhaps, moving the speaker along.
“Oh heavens,” Cassandra said. “I completely forgot she was here.”
And he felt proud of himself for that, at least.
They helped each other tidy up and dress. Cassandra went through the motions, and was grateful to have motions to go through. How comforting to have something sensible and practical to do. The world felt strange, yet normal. Her body felt unfamiliar, yet natural. And to dress with a man felt completely new and ages old.
Yet somewhere amid this new familiarity, awkwardness sprouted and grew.
The letters, of course.
They still sat on the table, taking up too much room. She picked them up and held them out.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I already knew you loved her.”
He took the letters, considered them. “It wasn’t a love match, but we were friends.” He glanced up. “I wrote these to her after she died. I missed her.”
His dark eyes were tinged with anguish, an old sorrow, a new anger, and she belatedly grasped the full horror of their theft.
“And they stole them! I swear, Joshua, if you don’t shoot them, I will.”
He brushed a finger over her cheek. “Don’t bother. They’re not worth it. We’ll finish them easily enough.”
She had made a royal mess of his cravat, and he went to the mirror to retie it without seeking her help, so she did not offer it. Instead, she watched him peering at his reflection as though tying his cravat was the only thing on his mind. How curious people were: that they could experience something like that—that lovemaking that made the world splinter and dance—and then settle into domestic routines as though nothing at all had passed.
Although she was not sure what had passed. Certainly, she did not know what happened next. The world outside that door was demanding her attention and she wanted to be alone.
“How did you meet her? Rachel.”
“Her father was John Watkins, who owned the manufactories where your father found me a job as an errand boy,” he said, looping the cloth efficiently around his neck. “I worked my way up, and by the time I was nineteen, I was a senior clerk and Watkins was grooming me to take over. He had no succession plan because Rachel was his only child, and she was twenty-seven and unwed, and until me he had not found anyone suitable. She wanted to manage the business but Watkins didn’t take her seriously, and she felt the men who courted her didn’t either. She offered to marry me if I let her run the factories with me.”
“And did you? Let her run them?”
“I’d have been a fool not to. She excelled at it, knew every inch of the business. Watkins never realized how much she had to offer. Even when we were doing well, he thought it was all me.” He finished up the imperfect knot, patted it, and shrugged. “It