Page 70 of A Modest Independence

Tom’s brows knit into a troubled frown. “Jenny…” He sounded as though he was going to object. And yet his arms tightened around her, holding her against his chest, so close she could feel the rapid drumbeat of his heart.

She curved her hand around his neck and tugged him down to her. He didn’t resist. Indeed, he readily obliged her, dipping his chin until his brow came to rest gently against hers. Jenny stretched up to meet his mouth.

Her lips brushed his. And then again, searching, seeking, until he angled his head and their mouths fused together in a kiss so perfect it nearly brought tears to her eyes.

She twined both arms around his neck. And she kissed him and kissed him. Warm, soft kisses with the slightest taste of desperation in them. Kisses that promised him she would never forget him, even if he was resolved to forget her.

When at last their lips parted, Jenny didn’t pull away from him. She buried her face in his neck, holding him as fiercely as he held her in return.

Only a few weeks ago, she’d have quailed at such intimacy. An unmarried lady didn’t embrace an unmarried gentleman. She certainly didn’t kiss him or caress his face.

But an unmarried lady didn’t travel alone with an unmarried gentleman, either. She didn’t share a private railway compartment with him or dine in his hotel room. She didn’t allow him to enter her cabin on board a steamship and tend her while she was ill. And she certainly didn’t permit him to see her in her underclothes.

The rules were there for a reason. They were meant to keep young ladies safe from harm. To protect their reputations and preserve their virtue. But the rules, such that they were, didn’t seem to apply anymore. She and Tom had, effectively, been alone together since they stepped on the train to Dover. At each stage of their journey their familiarity had increased. They’d broken the rules one by one. All of them, in quick succession.

Well. Not quite all of them.

There were some rules Jenny wouldn’t break, no matter the temptation. Because if she did, there would be no going back. She’d be trapped as surely as Tom would be. Sentenced to a life together that neither of them wanted.

He pressed a kiss to her hair. “What’s all this about?”

“I don’t know.” She tried to laugh, but couldn’t. “Pangs of longing, I suppose.”

His hand moved on her back, his voice a rough murmur against her ear. “For what, precisely?”

He didn’t need to ask. He already knew. What he wanted was reassurance. Jenny understood because it was the same thing she wanted. A kiss. An embrace. A soft word telling her that it was all going to be all right.

“For you, Tom. For you.”

S.S. Bentinck

Suez to Calcutta

March, 1860

They’d spent too much time alone together, that was the problem. All those evenings walking together on the decks of the Valetta and the Indus. All those hours spent in a private compartment on the train from Alexandria to Suez. It hadn’t gone unremarked. Jenny had endured too many years as a lady’s companion not to recognize the knowing looks.

It wasn’t full-blown ostracism. Not yet. But as she and Tom settled into life on the P & O steamship Bentinck, it became clear that the veneer of their simply crafted fiction had worn thin.

Mrs. Plank and her daughters had boarded the Bentinck in Port Suez along with Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle and their niece. Jenny recognized other passengers as well, most of them unmarried ladies in the company of their parents or other relations. They were going to India to find eligible husbands. The last thing any of them wanted was to be tainted by scandal.

“I’m fast becoming a pariah,” Jenny said as Mira helped her to dress for dinner. It was their third night on the Bentinck,and though Jenny had had no recurrence of the illness she’d suffered on the Valetta, she was heartily sick of the sea. It had little to do with the motion of the ship and everything to do with its passengers. “If we were in London, they’d have already cut my acquaintance.”

Mira tightened the laces of Jenny’s corset. “Because of Mr. Finchley?”

Jenny pressed a hand to her abdomen, beginning to feel a little lightheaded. “It’s not underserved. I’ve been incredibly foolish over him.”

“He’s a good man.” Mira gave one last tug to Jenny’s corset laces before knotting them tight. “He saved Ahmad.”

“I know.” Jenny exhaled an uneven breath. “Good heavens, does it need to be so snug?”

“For your gown, madam.”

Mira had mended Jenny’s dinner dress after it had been torn during the journey across Egypt. In the process, she’d taken it in, creating a more fashionable—and far more unforgiving—silhouette.

Jenny hadn’t had the heart to criticize her. Not when Mira had such an uncommon talent with the needle. Still… “I’ve never laced it this tightly before myself.”

“It’s the fashion.”