Page 25 of The Marriage Method

“Mr. Quincey,” Nell said. “This is a surprise.”

“Is it?” Miles returned with no trace of humor. “Then you must not have been listening to anything I said to you when last we met.”

She stopped at the gates. “If you’ve brought news of Reverend Pettiman—”

“I couldn’t find him,” he cut in brusquely. “He must have left town immediately. It scarcely matters anymore.”

“No, as a matter of fact, it doesn’t. So, if you’ve come to pick a quarrel with me—”

“I shouldn’t have had to come at all. If you’d done as I asked you and waited—”

“I never agreed to wait for you.”

“No. But you might have—” He broke off, his heavy black brows notching in a scowl. “Must this conversation take place with a gate between us?”

Nell cast a wary glance back toward the manor house. She half expected to find Miss Corvus peering out her tower window. There was little that took place at the Academy that its redoubtable headmistress didn’t know about.

“I can’t permit you to enter the school,” Nell said.

“Can’t or won’t?” Miles asked.

“Both.”

“Very well. Then come out and join me.”

Nell chewed her lower lip. Her leg was feeling stronger, but she doubted it was equal to bearing her weight on the stones for a prolonged period of conversation. Not to mention the fact that the jarvey would be right there, listening from his perch to everything she and Miles said.

Coming to a sudden decision, she produced the iron key and unlocked the gates. She opened them just wide enough to admit him. “We can talk in the garden,” she said curtly. “There’s a bench there, far enough removed from the house.”

Commanding the jarvey to wait for him, Miles entered the grounds. He stood in grim silence as Nell locked the gates behind him. “You’re without your cane,” he observed as he accompanied her back up the drive.

She led him to the right, across the damp grass, to the small patch of wilderness that stood in the shadow of the tower. “I don’t always use it.”

“Why not if you need it?” he asked.

“I prefer not to rely on it too heavily when I’m at home.” She gestured to the curved stone bench beneath the old oak tree.

Miles remained standing. He looked up at the weathered edifice of the school. “Home,” he said doubtfully.

Nell sat down. Just because he wouldn’t avail himself of a seat didn’t mean she must be uncomfortable. She arranged her skirts about her, vaguely registering that her hands were trembling.

Miss Corvus was to blame—and Miles, too. All that talk about Nell marrying him. It added a palpable tension to their encounter. She could scarce be near him without unsettling thoughts creeping into her head about what it might be like to be his wife. To take his name. Live in his house. And…all the rest of it.

Nell pushed the troublesome images out of her mind. “It has been,” she said. “For as long as I can remember.”

“It’s quieter than I’d expected.”

“You anticipated chaos?”

“I anticipated children.”

“The girls are at breakfast. After that, they’ll disperse to their classes. Reading, writing, arithmetic. And so forth.”

“And so forth,” Miles repeated. “Naturally.”

Nell tensed as his too-perceptive gaze drifted over the house and the grounds. He may have come here to see her, but he couldn’t help himself, could he? He wanted to crack open the secrets of the Academy. To tie up the final threads of his exposé on Lord Compton, sating his journalistic curiosity about Elizabeth Wingard and all the rest of it.

And now Nell had let him into the gates.