“And what if one went astray into your pretty little breast?”
“Better me than them.”
“No one,” he managed to say despite a clenching jaw, “should be injured.”
“Then make sure every single person in Bristol knows what dangers will lurk here on Christmas Eve. Make sure the intruder knows there is to be no repetition of last year’s kindnesses.”
Bloody hell. He had no choices here. The intruder might argue with her, explain his reasons, his plans. But Sir Nicholas? He wouldn’t care if the intruder was caught, would only care to keep Miss Dean and her charges safe. He’d embrace her request. Even though the intruder had spent the last six months making toys of silver for the foundlings—women in fashionable dresses and knights with swinging swords. The heat of the child’s hand could warm the intricate figures into movable life. Each toy made with an alchemist’s understanding of the material being shaped. Each toy a discovery of magic. Each toy an apology for loss.
He had no choices here.
He nodded and stepped away from her, the rush of winter settling between them. “Consider it done.”
2
SMACKS OF DESPERATION
Jane remained on the path as Sir Nicholas stepped off it, answering the children’s demands to join them in a game with a hearty laugh. When Sir Nicholas lifted a little girl into the air and swung her around, Jane’s belly took flight, too. The man had a way about him, an ease with children, a gentleness that burned into something sharper, hotter when those children were out of earshot, and he walked close to her.
They’d often walked close in the last year. She’d found in him a supporter, a champion when Mr. Jameson would not listen to a woman, and a friend. She admired him.
He set little Mary on the dry grass, bending at the waist, his greatcoat draping across his backside. She admiredthattoo.
“Staring again,” Mrs. Tottle said. “Don’t blame you.” The widow sat on a stone bench beneath a tree a short ways from the path. Her hands were folded inside a warm muff, and her silver-shot black curls had been parted in the middle to loop backward beneath her bonnet.
Jane sat next to her. The stone bench was cold and hard. Nothing like a bit of discomfort to focus her mind. Not thefirst time she’d found herself staring. Making comparisons. Wondering…
It had been so dark that night, and the intruder had been so well disguised, his body so big, swallowing the shadows. She’d not heard his voice well, either, low and raspy. He’d seemed a figment of the imagination, not blood and bone like the jolly Sir Nicholas. That man could be the intruder, but he wasn’t. The intruder had seemed a god, an impossible being, bigger than Sir Nicholas with a heavy air of magic about him. No doubt he was a transcendent, titled and glamoured to appear other than he was; he must have glamoured the silver toys to seem like they shifted shapes.
Sir Nicholas was a mere man, a good one, though, and certainly good looking in the most mischievous sort of way. He ran a hand through his auburn hair, his blue eyes like cloudless winter skies. The corners of those eyes were crinkled. He smiled so very much, his joy so very true. He was broad and lean and well muscled, as most alchemists were. Cocky. Nothing supernatural about him. He was a man of the earth and those precious metals found there, not of ephemeral shades and illusions.
Yet… perhaps he could save her just as well. Her brother’s most recent letter had come as a blow, left her feeling lifeless and desperate. He was closing the hospital in the new year, expelling the children into the cold winter. He’d said nothing about what would become of them.
He had mentioned her future, though—marriage. Last year he’d tried to match her with his titled friends, and none of them had been willing to wed a bastard. This year he’d dipped into the working class. He planned to offer her to alchemists, men willing to overlook her birth and pay large sums of money to join a duke’s family. Marriages between the two groups were rare but becoming less so. As the ruling class found themselves short ofblunt, they’d begun to turn to the brutes not afraid to get their hands dirty in order to earn it.
She didn’t want to marry a man she didn’t know. Alchemists, especially, were terribly secretive, clannish. She knew little about them except that their studies allowed them to control metal. They were a bit like magical blacksmiths… weren’t they?
She’d not dared to ask Sir Nicholas. After the scandal his friends the Grants had suffered, she didn’t want to invite his downfall by asking for his secrets.
There was something else she could ask him, though. She shivered. If she must marry an alchemist, why not one of her own choosing? Sir Nicholas had been excellent help finding the children new positions and homes. Perhaps he could help her, too.
“Mrs. Tottle… I am considering… Well, what would you think if I—” She swallowed. Difficult to state her plan outside of the safety of her own brain.
“Spit it out, woman.” Mrs. Tottle slapped Jane’s knee. “Spit it out!”
Jane closed her eyes and spit it out. “I’m thinking of asking Sir Nicholas to consider a marriage of convenience. With me.”
“Aaaahh. The wind blows in that direction. I’m not surprised.” Mrs. Tottle chuckled. “You’re doing it even now, Jane.”
“Hm? What am I doing?”
“Staring at Sir Nicholas’s backside.”
What she could see of it beneath the greatcoat. “I would never!” Do not stare at men’s arses was rule number one, essentially, of being a proper lady. Well, be born on the right side of the blanket was rule number one. She’d broken that one without trying. But the rule about arse staring she could abide by.
“I knew long ago,” Mrs. Tottle said, “you particularly enjoyed that man’s arse.”
“I’m not staring. And even if I was, I would not confine myself to his posterior alone.” A lie. The truth. A little of both. “All men have rather excellent posteriors. Comes from all the riding.” And she’s inspected many to see if she recognized any one of them. Unfortunately, backsides were quite difficult to identify.
