Page 95 of The Marriage Method
This time, he didn’t wait for her to press her lips to his. He closed the remaining distance between them and pressed his to hers. A firm, claiming kiss, as brief as it was decisive.
“Now that’s settled,” he said gruffly.
A faint blush stained Nell’s face, but her tired eyes were still shining. “Yes,” she agreed.
Affection tugged at his heart. His mouth tilted in a lopsided smile. He felt like grinning. Drawing back, he handed her a section of orange. She popped it into her mouth.
He took one of the sections for himself, the two of them eating in companionable silence. It occurred to him that this was what lovers did, breakfasted together in bed in a state of comfortable dishabille. But she wasn’t his lover. She was his wife.
And more.
Somewhere between the moment he’d entered his office to find her sitting there, black-veiled and mysterious, and this moment now, the two of them had become friends. Intimate friends. He would pull down the moon for her if she asked him to.
But she never would, would she? Not when she was convinced she could pull it down for herself.
The fact both annoyed him and made him admire her all the more.
“I have something you can do to occupy your time while you’re on the mend,” he said.
She wiped her sticky hand on a cloth napkin from the tray. “Besides sewing? Or leaving the house? Or doing anything else remotely interesting?”
“Quite.” Miles rose from the bed. Once again, he disappeared through the connecting door and into his bedroom. He promptly returned with the armful of documents he’d brought home from the office on Friday. “Cowgill’s old columns,” he explained in answer to her questioning look. “Along with his notebooks, and some articles Higgins pulled about the Fawn-Purvis family. I’ve gone through them once in a cursory fashion, but…”
Nell sat up taller in bed. “You’d like me to go through them again?”
“If your aching head will permit it.”
Beaming at him, she held out her left hand. “You may leave them with me.”
24
Nell couldn’t recall when she’d ever been so spoiled and looked after in her life. Miles tended to her all day, by turns doting and dictatorial. He brought her trays of food, ice for her shoulder, and hot bricks and water bottles to ease the ache in her hip and leg. He might even have overseen her bath that evening if she had permitted it.
Which she hadn’t, of course.
She wasn’t ready for that level of intimacy.
Instead, Gladys and Mrs. Bright assisted Nell, helping her bathe and dressing her in a fresh nightgown, and brushing out her hair.
“The master has been beside himself,” Mrs. Bright was emboldened to remark as she plaited Nell’s tresses. “He stayed up all night in that chair by your bed.”
“Did he?” Nell asked, surprised. She hadn’t known that. She’d assumed he’d retired after she’d fallen asleep.
“I couldn’t move him,” the housekeeper said. “He was that concerned about you. And he’s been no easier today. Downstairs at dawn, pacing and growling, and sending out for all sorts to tempt you.”
Of that, Nell was aware. Fresh bouquets of gardenias adorned her bedchamber, a box of cream-filled Swiss chocolates had appeared on her luncheon tray, and at dinner, Miles had surprised her with the first volume of Mr. Trollope’s new novel, Can You Forgive Her?—a book Nell had offhandedly admitted to desiring to read, and one that wasn’t due to be published for another week.
“But how?” she’d asked Miles in amazement. “It isn’t out until September.”
Miles had shrugged, as if he hadn’t just given her something as precious as a diamond. “I know one of the editors at Trollope’s publisher, Chapman & Hall. He owed me a favor.”
Nell’s insides warmed to recall it. “He’s a dear,” she said to Mrs. Bright.
Gladys giggled as she made up the bed.
Mrs. Bright shot a repressive look at her. “That’s enough.”
Nell smiled slightly. She didn’t imagine anyone had ever called the stern Miles Quincey a dear before. Not in the servants’ hearing. She didn’t wonder that the young maid was entertained by it. “He’s worrying quite unnecessarily,” she said.
