Page 55 of The Marriage Method

He paused to examine it. He had a vague idea of how a sampler should look. It was usually the alphabet, wasn’t it, with A commencing sensibly to Zed? And numbers, as well, stitched in logical order? But there was nothing terribly orderly about Nell’s version. Both the letters and numbers were out of sequence, some of them appearing more than once. And embroidered behind it all, a stone house and garden that bore a suspicious resemblance to Miss Corvus’s Academy.

Miles lifted his gaze to Nell’s. “Something for the Academy?”

She shrugged one shoulder with studied nonchalance. “An exemplar, merely.”

“What does it mean? These numbers and letters, and this raven?” The small black bird was perched atop the gray-thread tower, a single stitch of white on its wing.

“What should it mean?” Nell asked in return. “It’s for instructional purposes, that’s all. I taught sewing classes at the school—did I not mention it?”

Miles sensed she wasn’t being entirely honest with him. Not lying precisely, but keeping her secrets close. Or rather, the Academy’s secrets.

It was the latter he’d been determined to uncover at the start of this. But now, as he frowned down at his wife of less than four-and-twenty hours, he felt the disconcerting desire to learn her secrets, too. To find out who she truly was, and what she truly wanted. To discover the things that would make her smile her dimpled smile. That would make her happy with him.

An impossible impulse.

Nothing would make her happy with him. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to be anywhere but at her blasted charity school.

But here she was just the same.

Her face was tilted up to him, her rolled coiffure shimmering like fairest gold in the sunlight that filtered through his office window. A strand had come loose to curve about her cheek—the same rogue curl that Miles had observed working free on previous occasions. Without thinking, he reached to tuck it back behind her ear. It was silky soft under his fingers just as he’d imagined it would be.

Nell went still under his touch. She took a tremulous breath. “Miles,” she began. “About last night…”

The door opened again before she could finish.

Higgins popped his head in. “Mr. Quincey?”

Miles turned on his assistant. It took everything within him to keep from biting the man’s head off. “What is it this time, Higgins?” he asked tightly.

Higgins gulped. “I’m sorry, sir, but…there’s a police inspector to see you.”

14

“Does no one at this paper know how to knock?” Nell inquired after Mr. Higgins had departed to fetch the policeman. She was quite impressed with how polite and disinterested the question sounded given the fact that the entirety of her insides were still trembling from Miles’s unexpected touch.

He ran a hand through his thick black hair, looking markedly out of humor. “We’ve no time for social niceties here. News breaks quickly.”

“It’s for efficiency, then?”

“That’s the idea.”

“It doesn’t seem very efficient to me, given what occurred when last I was here. Had Mr. Higgins stopped to knock, I’d still be employed as deputy headmistress at Miss Corvus’s Academy, and you and I—”

“We wouldn’t be married,” Miles finished for her. “Quite.”

“Something you might wish to take into consideration for the future.”

“There’s little point in it now that we’re wed. You can scarcely ruin me twice.”

Nell’s lips twitched. But she wouldn’t allow herself to smile. Her loss of position was no joking matter. “You may be surprised what I’m capable of, sir, given adequate incentive.”

A glimmer of wry humor flickered in Miles’s dark eyes. “I believe you capable of anything, ma’am.”

The door opened again. Higgins entered in company with a tall, sober-faced blond man in a Melton wool suit. “Inspector Garrick, sir,” Higgins introduced the man.

The inspector inclined his head. His close-trimmed beard and mustache added years to his face, but his blue eyes—though weary—were young. He couldn’t be that much older than Miles. “Mr. Quincey. Ma’am.”

“That will be all, Higgins,” Miles said.