“God help us,” her husband cut in. “Let the lad be.”
“He’ll make a fine father, is all.”
“Thank you,” Nick said, to forestall Malloy’s defense. But as he applied himself to his food again, his appetite felt peaky.
He’d never given much thought to marriage. Maybe one day, when he was old and gray—maybe then, he’d imagined, he might think about siring a few brats of his own. But he wouldn’t do it until he knew, in his bones, that his children would never want for anything. Catherine Everleigh had said it herself: never enough money. He was an Irish bastard in a world of English, and it would take more than two dozen buildings, a minor fortune, to feel ready to bring a child into the world. He’d need . . . he couldn’t imagine what he’d need to feel that safe, that certain of the future. A fortress, maybe. A kingdom of his own. But sure and certain, he wouldn’t bring a child into the world until he’d found it.
That contract Catherine had sent over to him, it had spoken of offspring. He’d read through it, sounded it out, syllable by halting syllable. After a period of five years, this contract will be dissolved through a petition for divorce on the grounds of Mr. O’Shea’s adultery and desertion, per the requirements stipulated by the law. Or, should both parties freely consent, the marriage will continue, the parties undertaking to produce heirs, of which two will be deemed sufficient . . .
Such dry language, to frame such fearsome risks. Fortunes could change in an instant. Two kids? In these parts, two was just the start. Illness, bad water, a moment’s carelessness on a rickety stair . . . and then, if you managed to pull ’em through the early years, you took an injury at work or in the street, a carriage cutting too close, a moment’s bad luck. Arm broken, you couldn’t earn. Then what happened? Nick had seen too many wives, too many widows, starving so their kids could eat. And he was a man with his fair share of enemies, more likely than most to make a widow of his wife.
He’d never wish that fate on any woman. He’d seen it happen to his own mother. Had Da not died, forcing her into desperate measures to earn a coin, she might never have gotten mixed up with Bell. She might be alive right now, sitting at this table beside him.
He exhaled, pushing away that bleak thought. No point in such comparisons, anyway. A woman like Catherine Everleigh wouldn’t be helpless when widowed. She had a company of her own, money of her own, and she belonged to a world where danger was always ten streets away. In her part of town, folks went strolling in the evenings to celebrate fine weather. They didn’t need to fear the shadows.
“Where’s your mind, lad?” Malloy had lowered his fork. “Is it the board meeting that troubles you?”
Peggy looked between them, then turned her back, a pointed announcement that she wouldn’t eavesdrop.
Johnson drew his chair closer. “You sure you can’t get another vote?” he asked Malloy.
Malloy was the Whitechapel man on the Board of Works. “I’ve kissed more English arses than a Scotsman after the ’45,” he snapped. “Not another vote to be squeezed or shat out of them.”
“Then it’s time to start knocking heads,” Johnson said.
Nick thought of Catherine Everleigh, standing in the balcony at Diamonds. He’d no interest in being some rich woman’s secret, or in making a marriage in which he would forever fight for the upper hand. He wouldn’t tolerate disrespect; he’d worked too hard to endure condescension.
But what came to his mind now wasn’t her sneer—though God knew she wielded it handily enough. Instead, he thought of her expression as she’d studied the gaming floor. She’d not looked dazzled, as women usually did when they realized his wealth. Instead, she’d asked how much he owed for it. Nothing, he’d told her.
Then she’d looked impressed.
A businesswoman, she called herself. Not a lady, after all. And when it came to business, she’d looked to him with respect.
He was madder than a hatter, no doubt of it. But had it not been for a wild gamble or two, he’d be dead now, or half starved, or drunk in a gutter, rather than presiding over this table, with the respect of every man in the parish—or fear, depending.
And so he cleared his throat and stabbed his fork through a potato, for his appetite had suddenly come roaring back. “Good news, lads,” he said. “Seems I’ve got the last vote, after all.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Nick’s betrothed arrived promptly at half past five on a wet Thursday afternoon. As he unlocked the door, Nick spied her shaking a fist at the cabman, then staring after the hack with an expression of outrage before she seemed to recall herself. With a start, she hurried toward the door.
He pulled it open. She stepped inside, looking sharply around the deserted lobby. “Nobody’s about?”
“Had the registrar send home his staff,” Nick said. “What was the trouble with the cabman?”
“The rogue thought to overcharge me.” She thrust a package at him, the brown wrapping mottled by rain, and smartly untied the knot at her neck. The cloak fell away, revealing a gown of black bombazine, without even a ribbon for trimming.
He made some noise, no doubt, for her violet eyes cut toward his as she folded the cloak over her arm. “What amuses you?”
“Who died?” he asked.
She looked down at herself. “Oh. My father. I wore this to his funeral.”
He regretted asking.
She thrust out her black-gloved hands, demanding back her package. “What is this?” he asked as he handed it over. Felt soft, like cloth.
“Something for later. Do you have the license?” she asked as she stripped off her gloves.
She wouldn’t make a comfortable wife. Each word she spoke fell like a pearl from her lips, cold and round and perfectly smooth, while all the while she watched him with eyes as sharp as knives.
He pulled the license from his pocket. She seized it for inspection. “It looks real.”
“Doesn’t it?” he said agreeably.
She looked up at him, suspicion narrowing her gaze. Her brows were a shade darker than her hair, winging at a dramatic angle, like birds in flight. They lent her a look of natural authority, which she no doubt relied upon when bossing the toffs who patronized her auction rooms. “This is no joke, Mr. O’Shea. If you’re not certain of the authenticity of this paper—”
“It’s a real license,” he said. “And I paid a handsome penny to acquire it, from a man who knows better than to cross me. I think you’ll find it in order.”
“I had better,” she muttered. But she took the time to read through it anyway, standing in the rainy light shed from the fanlight over the entry.
Her skin fascinated him. It looked smooth as cream, no sign of smallpox or any of the other countless ailments that had swept through his youth like the regular plague. How could a woman look so newborn?
The paper crackled where she gripped it. She was trying to hide her nerves, he realized. Good to know she had some. Certainly there was nothing womanish about her. She put hard work into diminishing her beauty. Held herself like a weapon, her shoulders braced at a rigid straight angle, her jaw set. Her hands, which once or twice he had seen drifting like poetry through the air, more often stayed locked together at her waist. That perfect mouth, with the dimpled pockets on either side, rarely smiled, while her pointed little chin tilted at an angle better suited to brawlers.
She broke the mold, she did. Then, he was guessing, she strewed the jagged shards in her wake, the better to ward off the nobs who dogged after her, panting.
She handed back the license. “It looks of a piece,” she said, with an edge of surprise that lent the acknowledgment the faint whiff of an insult. “Are you certain you trust the superintendent registrar’s discretion?”
“I own him,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “This is England, Mr. O’Shea. You do not own anybody, I am happy to say.”
He laughed. “Bless you, child. You’re like a wee toddler let loose in the big, bad world.”
His c
ondescension was an easy way to make her stiffen and scowl. A fine trick, for otherwise he found himself thinking that her mouth wanted smiles, and her sweet little body was wasted, without a man’s hands to attend to it. Her very aloofness might be considered a taunt and a challenge—even to him, who practiced restraint as a matter of policy.
But it would take an even greater pervert than he to be lusting after a woman who looked likely to box his ears.
He decided to keep her rattled, for his own sake. “Aye,” he said, “you’re as tender as a spring lamb, no doubt.”
“We will agree to disagree on the degree of my naïveté,” she said coldly. What a talent she had for talking in rhymes! “However, if this man of yours breathes so much as a word of this marriage, it will all be for naught.”
She thought him thicker than a board. “Also, two and two is four,” he said. “Tell me what I don’t know.”
“I imagine that would take several lifetimes. But how gratifying that you have a grasp of basic arithmetic, at least.”
“Oh, I’m a hand at counting. Why, it’s only the high numbers that trouble me. Gets tricky after fifty.”
She blinked very rapidly. God and his saints, she thought he meant it. He offered her another grin. Let her stew in her preconceptions.
“Well, we might as well get on with it,” she said at last, and turned for the stairs.
He lagged a pace behind, not saint enough to resist a free look. Her gown would have suited a widow, but short of sackcloth, she’d not find a way to disguise her curves. Built slim through the waist and arms, and heavy through the bottom—praise God, was there any finer form for a woman? The full swell of her hips would have drawn hoots at a music hall.
She glanced over her shoulder and realized where he was staring. Her face turned pink; she lifted her skirts and walked faster.
He grinned and caught up. “What’s got you so red?”
“I do hope,” she said in a muffled voice, “that you understood that contract you signed. What happens after this ceremony will be a singular event.”
“For five years,” he said. “Who knows? Perhaps we’ll forgo that divorce.”
She snorted. “If pigs fly. But at least you paid attention.”
“Only to the good parts.” At her poisonous look, he laughed. “’Twas twenty-eight pages long,” he said. Her solicitors had drawn it up for another man—the viscount who had ended up eloping with Nick’s niece. Most of the terms had focused on preserving Catherine’s liberty to work. “I’m amazed that Palmer signed it.” Nick could admire a woman determined to sweat for her living. But toffs tended to like their women soft and useless.
Good luck to Palmer, if he was hoping the same of Nick’s niece!
“The viscount had no objections,” she said. “That match, precisely like this one, was designed to be a marriage of convenience.”
Funny term, that. You only heard toffs use it. “Marriage of convenience,” he said. “That’s likely. Never heard of a marriage that remained convenient for long.”
As she reached the landing, she paused to wait for him. “I take it that you’re a cynic in matters of love.”
“In every matter, sweetheart.”
“Good. So am I.”
“Why, we’re a perfect match, then.”
She stared at him, evidently unsure what to make of his dry tone. Meanwhile, Johnson and Malloy came around the corner. “Got Whitby in his office,” Johnson said. He nodded to Catherine. “Miss.”
With a brief nod, she swept past the two men, who had come to serve as witnesses today.
Nick followed slowly, wondering how long it would take her to realize she’d no idea where to go.
It took ten paces for her to turn back. In such small moments, lessons were taught. “You passed it,” he said pleasantly. “Second door on the right.”
Even from this distance, he could see how her jaw squared. She strode back toward them, yanking open the door to Whitby’s office with such force that the inset windowpane shuddered.
As she disappeared inside, Malloy muttered, “There’s a temper. Sure she ain’t Irish?”
Nick laughed. “She’d open her veins to prove otherwise, I expect, if she heard you wondering.”
Whitby popped out and waved them forward. He was a scrawny sack of a man, with a bulging belly and spindly legs, and a sandy crown of hair that had thinned at the center, no doubt thanks to his nervous habit of tugging on it.
They crowded into the small office. Whitby shut the door with an air of transparent relief. “As you see, Mr. O’Shea, I had the building cleared and closed. I have also obtained a separate register book, which I will keep under lock and key in my own residence. I hope that satisfies your conditions.”
“That’s what I paid for,” Nick said easily. No use in pretending Whitby was doing him a favor; otherwise, the man might try to collect on it, rather than contenting himself with the bribe.
“Yes, indeed. Well . . . without preliminaries, then.” Mr. Whitby crossed to stand behind his desk. “If the bride and groom will stand next to each other, with the witnesses flanking.”
Nick stepped up. In the dry heat of the office, he caught scent, for the first time, of his intended’s perfume—something faint and not at all flowery. Dark, with notes of exotic spice, like a man’s cologne.
That didn’t surprise him as much as the fact that she had dabbed it on for this occasion. It reminded him suddenly of his own idiotic impulse earlier.
Well, what the hell. He unbuttoned his jacket, ignoring the faint startled noise from the woman beside him.
“I understand,” Whitby was saying, “that the bride is of the Anglican tradition, and the groom—”
“No religion,” Catherine cut in. “I do not believe it is required in a register office. Nor, I think, is one meant to undress here, Mr. O’Shea.”
Nick pulled out the small bouquet. It had looked better an hour ago. He thrust it toward Catherine. She gave him an amazed look, then laid her package on the ground and took the flowers between thumb and forefinger, with all the eagerness of a woman accepting a rodent.
“Thank you,” she said, and set the bouquet atop the registrar’s desk, where several browning petals promptly detached, showering onto the floor. “Mr. Whitby, if you will get to the point.”
“Yes, yes.” Whitby placed a pair of spectacles on his uptilted nose, then retrieved a small, leather-bound book with gilt edging. “In such cases, there is a nondenominational ceremony we might—”
“Just cut to the questions,” Nick said. “We haven’t got all day.”
Whitby cast him, and then Catherine, a wondering look. “If you’re certain . . .”
“I certainly have better things to do,” Catherine said crisply.
“Well, then.” Whitby laid down the volume. “Join hands, if you please.”
“Must we?” asked Catherine.
Whitby stiffened, as though his spine had suddenly grown. “If this is to be a legitimate marriage—”
“Oh, very well.” She turned toward Nick, her magnificent eyes fixing on a space two inches to the right of his ear. She thrust out her hands, palms downward, her fingers braced into boardlike stiffness.
As he took hold of them, a queer surprise jolted through him. Her hands were much smaller than he would have guessed. Much warmer, too. The skin on the backs of her hands was soft and smooth beneath the unthinking stroke of his thumbs. Her fingers flexed slightly within his, a reflex of surprise, and by his own reflex, he steadied them.
Her moist little palms . . .
“You’ve got calluses,” he said.
A tide of color washed through her cheeks. “Yes,” she said in a rough voice, almost angry. “I work, you see.”
In the periphery of his vision, he caught sight of the marveling look exchanged by Johnson and Malloy. But it felt wrong to join in their mockery. Evidently some hidden shred of reverence had survived in him. This might be a sham marriage, but in the eyes of God and state,
it would be as true in the particulars as any other.
“Fine thing for a woman to work,” he said. “Just thought you would have used gloves, is all.”
She met his eyes at last, and her pale brows drew together briefly, as though she were hunting for some buried meaning in his words.
He stared back at her. God’s truth, but her eyes were the shade of lavender stalks, a pure, true, uncorrupted color. A weird feeling filled him, a presentiment of some kind, borne of the contrast between her callused palms and the deceptively fragile, fair beauty of her face.
He didn’t know this woman in the least. No matter that he’d casually watched her for years, and spent more than one lonely night in his bed, his hand on his cock, thinking of her. Distance hadn’t shown him the true shade of her eyes, or the state of her palms. But mere seconds, up close, had proved that he knew no category to describe her.
He didn’t like this feeling. Wasn’t wise to strike a bargain with an unknown quantity.
“Mr. O’Shea,” said Whitby, “do you take this woman to be your wife?”
He hadn’t guessed that he would feel discomfort in this moment. Man’s laws weren’t sacred. But as he replied, the words felt weightier than they needed to be: “I do.”
“Miss Everleigh, do you—”
“Yes.” She pulled her hands free. “I believe that will serve, Mr. Whitby. Unless you will charge extra for the lack of ceremony.”
“Forgot something,” Nick said, and caught her by the waist. Her eyes flew wide as she realized his intention, but he stopped her protest with his mouth.
Her hands closed on his upper arms; her fingers, as stiff as steel pins, dug into his biceps, trying to force him off her. But he wouldn’t be hurried. His wedding, after all. He kissed those soft, warm lips with deliberate leisure before setting her away from him.
She stared, eyes huge, her breath rasping in her throat. Then, with a strangled sound, she turned on her heel for the door.
“Wait!” Whitby slanted Nick an apologetic look before shoving forward the register book, which was indeed fresh and new, as he’d promised. “I will need your signatures first.”