“God help you if you sayspinster,” she quipped. “For I will not be merciful.”
No, she wasn’t a spinster, she was just—Charity. She defied categorization. She was as she was, and there was no one else in the world like her. “You will have to tell me your price, eventually, you know,” he said.
“I will,” she said as she turned away. Her voice had a strange distance to it, as if the prospect had become a chore she did not relish. “Of course I will. When I have decided upon one.”
∞∞∞
The days had seemed to lengthen lately, the time between dawn and dusk stretching without cease for more hours than they had any right to, given that it was now November, and the daylight hours ought to be at their shortest.
It was only her perception of time that had caught her out, Charity knew—but still it did not stop her from sighing over the endless tedium of her days and waiting with bated breath for night to fall once again. She had found herself going through the motions of a social life, filling those endless empty hours with teas and visits and good-natured ribbings from those women whom she had come to call friends, but somehow…somehow she had come to the realization that her days did not feel as if they had ever truly begun until night had fallen. Until she was once more climbing into a hack to be spirited across London to Anthony’s residence.
She had woken too early this morning, roused to consciousness not by the horror of another nightmare, but by the ache between her thighs which had gone too long unrelieved. An ache that would persist, she thought glumly, at least until they had gotten their mistake of a marriage annulled.
But once it had been—once it had been, then perhaps she would take him as her first lover. For a time. Until he had made a new match for himself.Because once he had—
Once he had, he would no longer be hers in any meaningful way.
An oddly wistful sigh drifted from her lungs, too loud in the silence of the bookshop in which she had been browsing, and it earned her a glare of reproof from the aged bookseller behind his desk at the front of the shop, his bushy brows furrowing above the rims of his spectacles.
She had intended to occupy herself in the interminable daylight hours left by searching for offerings more recent than could be found within Anthony’s library to aid in his courtship, and yet she found she had lost the taste for it. It felt that each volume, any volume, might be the one to carry him away from her and toward someone else. Some other duchess who would be suited to the title. Suitable to be a wife instead of a mistress.
Damn it all, she would havesomethingto show for today’s outing. Stretching onto her toes, she reached for a volume upon the highest shelf, swiping for a book which remained stubbornly out of reach.
“Oh, do let me help you with that.” From her right, a hand stretched out to seize the volume, snatching it down from the shelf before Charity could embarrass herself further.
“Thank you,” she said as she turned to receive the book. “I—” Every word backed up in her throat, dying an ignoble death as her savior laid the book into her hands. “Lady Cecily,” she managed to say, in an odd, shrill little voice, stunned to find herself sharing a bookshop with the woman.
“The Sorrows of Rosalie,” Lady Cecily said. “I enjoyed that one. It has a rather poignant melancholia to it, if you care for such a thing.”
Charity curled her hands around the book reflexively. “My lady—”
But Lady Cecily had already turned back to the bookshelf, scanning the topmost row. “There is also a copy ofThe Undying One, which I found most enjoyable as well,” she said. “It was released only last year. Have you read it?” She reached up once again, her more advantageous height allowing her to easily recover the book in question.
“I have not,” Charity said. “My lady, I beg your pardon. You ought not be speaking to me.”
Lady Cecily raised her brows as she turned once more, book in hand. “Whyever not?”
“Because—because I am—” Blast. How did one delicately phrase such things to ladies?
“I know who you are,” Lady Cecily said, with a curioustilt of her head, as if she could not quite comprehend what manner of objection Charity could possibly have. “Miss Nightingale, no?”
“Yes,” Charity said. “But you should not acknowledge me. Forgive me, but you should not even be within this shop.” There were plenty of others which carried volumes more suited to a lady’s tastes—or to what polite society assumed a lady’s tastes ought to be. Whilethisshop—this shop was suited to people like her. The less savory sorts, with the less savory tastes to go along with it. It carried all manner of books, including many which had been railed against for their offenses against the public decency.
“But this shop carries the books I wish to read,” Lady Cecily said reasonably. “And, having achieved that arbitrary age at which I am permitted largely to do as I wish—provided I am appropriately discreet about it—I find that I very much enjoy embracing the freedoms which are available to me.”
But she was going to be a duchess.Anthony’sduchess, once he was free again to marry where he would. She could not be seen to keep company with those who could only harm her reputation.
“I confess,” Lady Cecily said,sotto voce, “to some advance familiarity with you. A cousin of mine, you see, was a patron of yours some years ago. He had an illness, a weakness of the heart—”
Oh. “Mr. Swinton,” Charity said, her hands curling around the book as she cradled it to her chest. “I was…rather fond of him.” A genial man, and a quiet one. But kind and generous, and with a dry wit that had kept her perpetually laughing. She had not loved him, but she had genuinely liked him. And she had missed him, when that weakness of his heart had led him to depart the world too soon.
“He visited me in the countryside often, and he always brought me the most salacious, scandalous tales.” There was the twitch of a smile about her lips that suggested that this had been meant in a complimentary fashion. “So I felt I knew you a little, you see, through him. I think he must have always known that his time on earth would be short, but you brought him much joy while he was here with us.”
“That is kind of you to say,” Charity said. “But truly, my lady—”
“Might I ask a favor of you?” Lady Cecily inquired, and gave a little nod to the bookshelf before which they were standing. “I have a great number of these books already within my library.”
Damn. Well, there went any hope of finding something new for Anthony to bring to her.
