Page 72 of The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

“I did.” She crossed the room and opened a small cabinet that sat against the wall between the two windows.

“What are you looking for?”

“This.” She held up a large china bowl. “There’s a protocol, you may not know, for the way in which a bridegroom in Halab approaches his bride.”

“Is there? Tell me.” He took the bowl from her. And she saw in his gaze that at last his resistance was melting. If his eyes did not yet have the dancing lights she liked so well, at least the shadows were fading.

“First, he removes her shoes and bathes her feet.”

“Ah.” He went right to work then, taking the bowl from her and placing it on the hearth, and leading her to one of the chairs and seating her. He was a man of action, after all. He stood before her and shrugged out of his greatcoat, which he draped over her cloak. He stripped off his jacket, undid his cravat, and rolled up his sleeves. Then he knelt and lifted her skirts and folded them back over her knees.

He sat back on his heels and ran his warm palms up her stocking-clad legs. He let his hands drift down again to her ankles and rested his head in her lap. She touched his hair, tangling her fingers in the dark silky strands.

When he lifted his head, his eyes had darkened again with what she recognized as desire. She knew it because she felt it, too.

He bent and concentrated on unlacing and removing her slippers. Then he reached up under her skirts along her thighs for the garters that held her stockings in place. He released them and rolled first one and then the other of her stockings down her legs, baring them to his gaze. He kissed each of her scraped knees.

The kettle whistled, and he rose to pull it off the hob and fill the bowl. With a cup from the cabinet he added cold water from the bucket to the steaming bowl. He found a pair of towels, one to lay under the bowl, and one he draped over his shoulder.

“Should I have jasmine petals to perfume the water?”

“Not required.”

He lifted each foot into the warm bath and cupped the water in his hands to pour over her legs, sliding his hands along her slick, wet skin. Jane’s eyes drifted shut as the sensation of his hands on her feet warmed her everywhere.

He surged up, leaning forward on the chair arms, kissing her. She reached up to draw him closer, and he pulled her to her feet. Her skirts dropped into the bowl of water, and he lifted her up, his arms around her back, the kiss unbroken, until he swung her around away from the bowl of cooling water, and set her down on the carpet by the hearth. She lay her head against his chest, feeling the rough rhythm of his breathing and beating of his heart. He kissed the top of her head.

“My love, we are wearing entirely too many clothes, for a bride and her groom. Do wish me to leave and give you a moment alone?”

She shook her head. “I wish you to help me with my fastenings and stays.” It was time for her to give him his gift. She turned her back and smiled over her shoulder to encourage him.

* * * *

Hazelwood’s hands closed and unclosed at her side. He undid the first of the tiny buttons up her back so that the closure of her dress gaped. His fingers felt suddenly clumsy, but he kept going, until he’d exposed the crossed laces of her stays. Her corset was plain, but far from the ugly one she’d been wearing that first day in the bank. He kissed her back between her shoulder blades. He wanted her hair down.

She reached up, as if she read his thoughts, and began to pull the pins from her hair.

He undid the laces at her waist and spread the sides of her corset when it crackled. She dropped her hands to her side and shook her hair loose and turned to smile at him over her shoulder.

“Your gift?” His fingers made contact with the edge of a folded piece of paper, sticking out of her corset casing. “This bit of paper?” He managed to take hold of the paper between his thumb and forefinger and gave a tug. “The map?”

“Yes.” He felt her sigh of relief. “I took it from the back of the painting my first night with my cousins.”

A few more tugs, and he had the map in his hand. He turned her to face him. He had a confession to make. “I thought Malikov would take you from me. I could not let him do it whatever the cost.”

“I know.” She reached up and put her hand to his lips to silence him. Then she smiled and shrugged, and the light gown fell to the floor.

She turned to face him then. He took his time unveiling her person the way he’d first imagined when he’d been set to spy on her. Laces gave and silk slipped away until she stood straight and sure, facing him in her own shining skin as boldly as she’d faced danger. With a knowing smile she reached for him in turn. Speechlessly, she worked at buttons and closures, undoing his wedding finery as she had undone all his disguises. He let her look, and touch with trembling fingers, laughing away the layers between them. As he stepped free of the last of his garments, the frank wonder in her eyes made him new, a second self, not the idealistic youth whose honor and reputation he had squandered, but the man he’d become by loving her and being loved.

“You like what you see?” he asked.

She nodded, sliding a hand down his chest, her palm coming to rest flat against his belly. “But then,” she said, “I’ve known for some time that I would.”

He laughed for sheer joy and took her by the hand and led her to the bed he’d never thought to enter, his marriage bed. And though he felt the wonder of it, he was at heart a cheeky fellow, and so, once he had her in his bed, he did not hesitate to kiss and touch and rouse and stir until his love took his face in her hands, looking up at him, damp and disheveled and breathing as unevenly as he was, and said, “Get on with it, love.” And he did.

Stumbles and missteps are an inevitable consequence of taking one’s place in a new circle of acquaintance. The Husband Hunter cannot say or do exactly what she ought to say or do on every occasion. The very qualities of spirit, curiosity, and independence that are so much a part of any young person’s charm are apt to betray her into conduct that may produce unpleasant reflections. The blush that stains her cheek in such moments of self-scrutiny will recall her to a sense of what she ought to be doing. Should any actions of hers lead to a persistent sense of discomfort, or to a sense that some amends must be made, she should seek the counsel of a wise mentor.

—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

Epilogue

The proper church wedding was over. Her viscount had married another. Twice. They had come down the aisle together sharing a look of joy so bright that Miranda had put her gloved hands over her mouth to keep from crying out. No one saw. Now she was alone, or almost alone.

Above her in the choir loft the organist rustled papers, putting away his music, by the sound of it. The white-haired sexton called up to him to remind him of a coming concert, then he, too, shuffled off toward the little office at the side of the sanctuary. No one noted her.

She had chosen to sit in the very back pew of the church for the ceremony. The people there seemed to know one another, but they had made room for her, and nodded and smiled. Miranda had worn her best fir-trimmed cloak and the pale blue silk bonnet that always made gentlemen notice her eyes and turn their heads her way. The back bench group included two gentlemen and four ladies, two of whom appeared to be twins, and one of them quite young and pretty. They had been among the last to leave the church, standing in the corner, talking and laughing, and trading books, even the men. The pretty girl was especially pleased to receive a book. And her pleasure had given Miranda an idea. She had thought to confess to someone what she had done, but now she knew she never would. Instead she would make a sacrifice. That sacrifice would be her atonement for the wrong she had done.

The club was closed. No one blamed her. No one knew what she had done, but it was her fault. If she had delivered the note to Jane Fawkener, the woman would not have been abducted from the ball and Lord Hazelwood would not have gotten himself arrested and the club would not have been shut down. It was true that the spy Malikov had been unmasked, and that Clive Walhouse had fled England, but the club remained closed, nevertheless.

Now there would be no more spies coming to be fitted and measured in the back room of her father’s shop. Her father would return to the counter, and she would return to their rooms, doing for him, cooking and cleaning and mending for him. She would not have her time in the shop to tell her mother’s story to gentlemen customers. She had listened as her father sighed over the story of where all the fine lords had gone. Only big old Mr. Goldsworthy was left to rattle around in the empty club. Lord Blackstone had gone with his wife into the country for the birth of their child. Captain Clare had moved into an inn on the south edge of town, and Nate Wilde had gone to live with his grand friends.

If there was one good thing that came out of the whole trouble, it was that. Nate Wilde could not come strolling through the back of the shop to tell her how wrong she’d been to love Lord Hazelwood. He could not remind her that he’d been right all along that she had set her sights too high. Nate Wilde must never know what she had done or how she felt. She would hold her head as high as ever.

She would forget fine lords with laughing eyes. There were other gentlemen in London, and she would judge better now. She opened her bag and drew out the little book, The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London. It had failed her. She laid it on the bench for some other girl to find, a girl with better luck than Miranda Kirby.