She drew in a long breath, then nodded once. “Very well, Mr. Fairfax. Let us be scandalous on our own terms, for once.”
Relief flashed across his face so quickly it made her chest ache. He did not reach for her, not yet, but his shoulders eased as though some enormous weight had lifted. “I will have a carriage prepared at the side entrance. Bring only what you need. We can send for the rest once we are settled. And Jillian…”
“Yes?”
His voice dropped. “Thank you.”
She almost laughed at the absurdity of it. “You are thanking me for agreeing to marry you in secret and flee the house at dawn?”
“I am thanking you,” he said, “for trusting me enough to do so.”
Chapter
Fourteen
York in winter was a city of hard outlines softened by frost. The old stones of the Minster loomed above the crooked streets, their towering Gothic lines etched against a sky the color of pale pewter. The journey had been cold and blessedly uneventful, the roads passable despite the previous day’s snow. They had spoken little at first, both of them wrapped in their own thoughts, but as the miles passed and Fairhaven receded behind them, the air in the carriage had shifted from taut to quietly companionable.
Jillian watched the town appear through the carriage window with a strange, floating sense of unreality. She had ridden to York before under her parents’ supervision, with a chaperone, with her sister. Never like this, never with only a man beside her and the knowledge of exactly what they meant to do waiting ahead.
They had stopped briefly at a respectable inn to wash the dust from their faces and to secure a private parlour, which Miles used as a base while he disappeared to see about the license. Jillian, left with hot tea and too much time to think, perched near the fire with her hands wrapped around the cup. She imagined the household discovering their empty chambers,the chaos that must be unfolding, Beatrice exclaiming that the spirits had at last triumphed while Helena tried to reassure Henry that murder had not been committed.
It was mildly comforting to picture it.
Miles returned after what felt like an eternity but could not have been more than an hour. There was a faint flush along his cheekbones from the cold and the effort of walking briskly across town. “It is arranged,” he said, shrugging out of his coat. “We have the license and an appointment at the church has been secured. We are expected at St. Michael’s within the hour.”
Her throat tightened. “So soon.”
“If you require more time,” he began, but she cut him off with a quick shake of her head.
“No. If I think too long, I may talk myself out of it. Best to do it while my courage holds…. Oh that sounds terribly unflattering to you and I do not mean it thusly!” She cried out. “I… am not very good at being impulsive, I fear. Or free spirited or even very much fun. I’ve been a terrible stick in the mud from our first meeting onward.”
Miles smiled at that. “A stick in the mud which I poked, prodded and agitated quite willingly. I resented the notion that people assumed we would make a match simply because my cousin and your sister had done so. Everyone looked at us and thought “oh, they make sense together”.”
“Until they saw us together,” she said. “And we sparred like pugilists.”
“We did,” he concurred. “Why do you think we were so determined to maintain our animosity? Because I have a theory…. It was easier to stay in your bad graces than to risk ever falling from your good ones.”
Jillian’s head whipped toward him. “I think I understand precisely what you mean by that.”
He smiled then, a real smile, small but genuine, and the warmth of it settled around her like another layer of clothing. “Then et us be courageous.”
The churchitself was not grand by York’s standards, but it had a cheerful, orderly air that reassured her more than any echoing magnificence might have. The vicar, kind and middle-aged, had the discreet gravity of a man accustomed to unusual circumstances. Two witnesses were procured with minimal fuss—a sober clerk and a matronly woman from a nearby shop—and then Jillian found herself standing beside Miles in the chilly nave, her gloved hand resting in his as the words of the service wrapped around them.
The solemnity of it struck her harder than she had anticipated. For all the haste of their decision, the vows themselves were old and weighty, spoken by countless couples before them, binding not through spectacle but through simple promise. When Miles repeated his part, his voice steady and low, something in her steadied as well. When her turn came, she spoke clearly, surprising herself with the firmness of her tone. Her fingers did not tremble when he slid the ring onto her hand.
In that moment, she was no longer simply Lady Jillian Hale.
She was his wife.
The enormity of it rippled through her in slow, expanding circles.
Afterward, the vicar offered a few words about Providence working through unexpected means, and the clerk bowed politely, and the matron smiled in a way that suggested she had always approved of couples taking matters firmly into their own hands. It was all over in less than half an hour. Papers weresigned. Names inscribed. The license that had hung like a threat now lay folded neatly in Miles’s pocket as a shield.
When they emerged back into the pale light, the city seemed somehow altered, though she knew it was unchanged. The sounds of cart wheels on cobblestones, the distant cry of a vendor, the caw of a bird high above—all of it wrapped around them as they stood at the top of the church steps. Miles turned to her, his gaze searching her face.
“Are you well, Mrs. Fairfax?” he asked, the title both tentative and reverent.
She drew in a shaky breath that was part laugh, part wonder. “I shall grow used to it, I think.”
