A groan, low and annoyed. “Then what will half an hour more matter? Let the poor man have his nap.”
She was surly upon waking, then. It seemed an important thing for a man to know. Especially one who would soon be married to her. “You have got to be home before sunrise,” he said. “And I…I have got to arrange a meeting with the Archbishop.” As soon as possible. Today, even.
Understanding at last that he was not simply going to allow her to fall back to sleep, Grace dragged herself upright, her tousled hair cascading over her shoulders. “Fine,” she groused. “I need my—oh,” she said as she spotted her clothing piled beside her. “Efficient of you.”
“I’ve got the hairpins, too,” he said as she climbed out of bed, delightfully naked. Her loosed hair concealed her breasts, but wasn’t quite long enough to hide the soft curve of her belly, the voluptuous arches of her hips.
“And my tuppence?” she asked cheekily as she twitched her chemise over her head and reached for her petticoats and stays.
“Don’t press your luck.”
A flash of annoyance from those vivid green eyes as she smoothed out her petticoats and tightened the laces of her stays. “I earned it!”
“I suppose you did.” But he wasn’t about to go scrounging about on the floor for a tuppence coin she didn’t need and which another man had tucked between her breasts to begin with. “How is it that you ended up serving drinks here?” he asked as he watched her don her dress, tugging it into place. As it had been meant to be worn, it was very nearly modest, but for the fact that she had entirely too much bosom to fit comfortably within the bodice.
“The tavern was particularly busy this evening,” she said. “Iasked the barkeep for a position, and offered to work this evening without pay to prove my worth. No one would turn down an extra set of hands they don’t have to pay for.”
Clever. “And if that hadn’t worked?”
“I would have served drinks anyway. What serving staff they have got are overworked; so long as the food and drink are delivered, it wasn’t terribly likely anyone would care by whom.” She settled back onto the bed with her shoes and stockings. Those lovely calves gleamed golden in the lamplight. “Probably,” she said, “the serving maids would only assume another of their number had done it. Who in their right mind would work for free?”
She would, apparently, if there were something to be gained by it.
“And how did you get here to begin with?”
“The usual way,” she said as she wiggled her toes into a stocking and rolled it up her leg. “I took a hack.”
A hack. She had taken a damnedhack. ToWhitechapel. Henry pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose and breathed deeply. “Surely your sisters wouldn’t have allowed you to leave the house.”
“They don’tallowme to do anything,” she said as she slipped on her shoes. “I’m four and twenty; I make my own decisions. Of course they would have tried to dissuade me—”
“Anyone of sense would have done.”
“So I admit that I did sneak out, in order to avoid an argument. We hadn’t an engagement this evening, which was quite convenient. I simply pleaded a headache after dinner and then made my way out of the house when my sisters were putting the children to bed.”
“And you can get back in? Do you have your—” What had she called it? A jemmy?
Grace rolled her eyes. “Henry, I live there. I have got a key.”
Oh. Of course she had.
“My pins, please.” She held out her hand and he dropped the pins into it. “What business have you got with the Archbishop?” she asked as she began raking her fingers through the tangle of her hair to put it in some semblance of order before she wound it up.
“Obtaining a special license.” While he still had the right to apply for one, before scandal and shame made it a veritable impossibility.
“A—” Her fingers froze in the process of pinning her hair in place. “A special license?” she repeated, as if the words hadn’t quite made sense.
He allowed himself a grim nod.
“Amarriagelicense?” she squeaked.
“What other sort of license would I obtain from the Archbishop?”
Those vibrant green eyes raked his face, her shoulders slumping as she finished pinning up her hair, her hands falling into her lap. “This is not the sort of decision to be undertaken lightly,” she said. “It merits discussion first.”
What was there to discuss? He had compromised her. Thoroughly. More than once. “There is nothing to discuss. I own up to my mistakes, and—”
She shot up from the bed so quickly that it startled him. Her shoulders stiffened. Her hands flexed at her sides. “I am not a mistake,” she said, in a furious little voice.
