Page 141 of The Marriage Method

A shiver went through Nell as she recalled the way he’d looked at them. She nestled closer to Miles. “For a moment I thought he might leap straight for us,” she confessed. “He was so angry.”

Miles’s arm tightened around her. “He wouldn’t have hurt you. I wouldn’t have let him. Lady Belwood wouldn’t have either, come to that. Did you mark how she positioned herself?”

Nell had marked it. Lady Belwood had stood on Nell’s side, not on the side of the gentry, protecting Nell the only way she’d known how, by demanding an elegant carriage for her and prompt passage home. Nell had been oddly touched by the gesture. “She did seem rather solicitous of my welfare, didn’t she?”

“A welcome change, given what’s passed.”

Nell wasn’t concerned with the past at the moment. It was the future that troubled her. “Indeed,” she said as the carriage continued over the well-rutted stretch of road that led to the platform halt at Moor Cross. “But what about Amstead, Miles? If he does manage to foist all of the blame on Innes and Mrs. Pritchard—”

“It won’t matter.”

She felt a flicker of doubt. Despite the accusations against him, Lord Amstead was still a gentleman of wealth and title. And well-to-do men were notorious for getting away with things. “You’re that certain he’ll be held to account for his crimes?”

“If not by the law,” Miles said, “then certainly in the court of public opinion.”

Nell drew back. Searching her husband’s eyes, she saw the same peculiar gleam of journalistic intensity she’d observed in his office the first time they’d met. “You don’t mean what I think you mean?”

“I do.” He framed her face with his hands. His voice deepened with resolve. “This is the story that’s going to restore the Courant’s fortunes. All I have to do is write it.” Bending his head, his mouth captured hers. “Let’s go home, sweetheart.”

Her pulse fluttered wildly. “So you can begin your article?” she asked against his lips.

“The article can keep for another day or two,” Miles said. He smiled. “You and I have our own story to attend to.”

Nell beamed up at him. “A love story,” she said. And she kissed him back with all her heart.

Epilogue

One month later…

“A fine meal, Mrs. Quincey, and a welcome, if somewhat belated, introduction to your home,” Reverend Pettiman said as Nell escorted him into the gaslit hall.

Miles followed, with Lady Summers on his arm. A stately widow in beaded gray silk, she was one of the Academy’s chief benefactresses.

She and the reverend were the last of the dinner guests to take their leave. The others had already departed into the night.

Nell signaled for Mrs. Bright to fetch the stragglers’ things, all the while maintaining the same demure but gracious smile she’d been wearing since the evening had commenced. She refused to let it falter, no matter that her face was aching from the strain of it. Tonight had been too important to let her pride take precedence. It was her and Miles’s first dinner party as husband and wife. Not only had Pettiman and Lady Summers been in attendance, but several of Miles’s colleagues from the Courant, too.

It had been a delicate juggling act, presiding over such a gathering. Nell had been fretting over it for weeks, planning the event down to its very last detail. Now it was over, she owned to a distinct feeling of success. Not one of them could accuse her of having failed in her duty as hostess. She’d wined and dined the lot of them, deferring to Miles through the whole of it like the modest, obedient—yet still elegant—society wife she was purporting to be.

“My husband and I have been honored by your presence,” she said to Reverend Pettiman. “My only regret is that it’s taken so long to set your mind at ease.”

Mrs. Bright approached with the reverend’s hat and overcoat.

“Indeed,” Pettiman said as the housekeeper assisted him into his things. “However, given what I’d witnessed, and the sinful inclinations of many females, you will agree that my concerns were amply justified.”

Nell most assuredly did not agree. She limped forward, urging her guests to the door. The full skirts of her velvet dinner dress rustled softly over her petticoats and crinoline. “I trust we can put it behind us now, for the sake of the charity school.”

“Quite so, quite so.” Pettiman’s florid cheeks were redder than usual—a result of the many glasses of wine he’d imbibed at dinner. It had been an expensive vintage, and one he hadn’t refrained from enjoying to the fullest. “Marriage and family are a cure for every ill. As I told Miss Corvus when last we met, ‘Miss Trewlove may have strayed from the path, but she appears to have found her way back to it again through the sanctity of matrimony. We must let her be an example to the girls.’ ”

“My wife is an example to all women,” Miles said gallantly, coming to join them.

Nell’s smile curved with genuine warmth as she met her husband’s eyes. He was strikingly handsome in his black dinner suit, with its cream silk waistcoat and matching cravat. She’d delighted in looking at him this evening, and in listening to him as he’d talked with the other newspapermen.

He’d been in his element. So knowledgeable. So confident. And very much in the good graces of the paper’s senior editors and advertisers since writing his shocking series of articles on Baron Amstead. Following publication of the first installment, the Courant’s circulation had nearly doubled.

As for Amstead, after a protracted investigation, he had only this week been arrested and charged with murder and conspiracy. It was largely owing to the public outcry from the articles, and to the dogged efforts of Inspector Garrick. According to him, there was every reason to believe that the baron would be brought to trial.

“Mrs. Quincey is certainly an exemplary hostess,” Lady Summers agreed. She permitted Mrs. Bright to assist her with her cloak. “If this evening’s entertainment was an illustration of how expertly she ran her classroom, I cannot wonder that Miss Corvus was so grieved to lose her.”