She watched him silently, intently, her unguarded beauty piercing his heart. “Are you finished?” he asked gently. She nodded. He sat up, kneeling next to her on the bed, and took her hands in his. “You asked me once why I waited. What I was waiting for. Do you remember?” Another nod. “I was waiting for you.” Tears gathered in her eyes. He had to swallow hard before he could continue. “I was waiting for someone to tell me—to show me—that perfection wasn’t the point, that intellect without heart is empty, that all the standards, rules, and moral codes in the world don’t mean anything without love. I thought you betrayed me with Biedermeier. But no, Biedermeier has nothing to do with any of this. We both betrayed ourselves. We were trying to live without our hearts—you by indulging your appetites, me by denying mine.” He raised her hands to his lips and kissed her palms, one after the other. “Do you see?”
His heart pounded. This was his moment. He’d taken a risk, and it was time to see if it would pay off.
Catharine was startled when James sprang off the bed, interrupting what had seemed like a moment of reckoning. He seized his discarded waistcoat and rummaged around in a pocket. She felt her cheeks flush. Though they’d been intimate, she’d never seen him completely naked, fully unguarded. He was the most remarkable specimen, with broad shoulders narrowing to a slender waist and back muscles rippling as he bent over. Then, as suddenly as he’d leaped off the bed, he was back, kneeling before her, one hand held out in offering. There, on his palm, was her ruby.
She inhaled sharply, her hands flying to her throat. It was her ruby…except not. The red stone was unmistakable. But instead of hanging from a chain, it had been reset into a gold bracelet. Even more remarkable, it nestled next to a deep green emerald. Her favorite stone.
“I know you said you can’t wear emeralds because they don’t go with rubies.”
Speechless, she shook her head. It should have been true that a ruby and an emerald weren’t meant to go together, but amazingly, the two stones complemented each other. The deep red and green seemed of a piece.
“But I think these particular stones suit each other rather well.” He held out the bracelet, searching her face, eyes questioning. For the first time this evening, she saw a hint of uncertainty on his face. The confident hunter who had ravished her against the wall was still there, but overlaid with a more vulnerable version of himself.
She held out her wrist. “Yes, I believe they suit perfectly.”
He rewarded her with the slow curl of a smile, as unexpected as that first time in the drawing room at Madame Cherie’s the night they met.
“I thought I had lost it,” she said, holding out her arm.
“I found it on the street the night he took you.”
“How did you ever have the stone reset so quickly?” she asked as he fastened the bracelet.
“Blackstone. We did it in Birmingham, before we left.” He wagged his brows. “It turns out that it’s sometimes convenient to have friends who are simultaneously peers of the realm and intimidating as hell.” He patted the bracelet and then let his hand trail up her arm. “I thought a bracelet might be preferable to another necklace. Well, let’s just say a bracelet was my preference. All the better to keep this”—he traced the hollow between her collarbones—“accessible.” He let his fingers fall away and replaced them with his lips, whispering against her skin, “You’ll have to marry me, you know.”
In the end, she could not disagree. But she needed to throw up the last few objections. She needed to hear him brush them aside. “I’m ruined.”
“Perhaps, but I was never part of society, so your fall does not signify in my eyes.”
“But it does matter. Doors will close to me now.”
“You’re also about to start a school for pauper children. That, alone, I imagine, would have the effect of closing certain doors. So, really, what better test of loyalty is there? Wouldn’t you rather know who your real friends are? Mrs. Watson, I wager, will not give you the cut.”
She cocked her head, considering. He was right. Whatever else happened, she was determined to make the school a success. Both Daisy and Robert could be counted on to help. “Yes. In fact, I hadn’t thought of them, but I’m sure they can be relied on to board a few of the children until we find a permanent building. And if your Mr. Phillips can find places for the rest, we’ll be off to a good start.”
“Aha!”
“But there’s also the matter of the servants.”
His smile was intimate, knowing. “Whatever can you mean?”
She rolled her eyes. “Whoever was at the door had to have heard us.”
He dropped an almost chaste kiss on her cheek. “All the more reason you can’t refuse me. You have to let me make an honest woman of you.”
She couldn’t hide her grin. “You’re very wicked, especially for such an innocent gentleman. What about Grace and Jude?”
He traced a lazy circle on her shoulder. “What about them, love?”
“They’ll need a home, positive influences.”
He grabbed one of her hands, and his warm fingers threaded through her smaller ones. “You know what children need? What’s best for them?”
“What?”
“Stability. Certainty. And nothing signifies stability and certainty like the holy bonds of matrimony.”
“Now you’re funning me! Stop it.”
He heaved a sigh, signifying the end of their verbal sparring. Reaching out to stroke the red and green stones in her bracelet, he said, “Yes, I’m teasing, but only because I believe you haven’t been teased enough.” He tapped the green stone. “Because I love you.” He tapped the red. “I love everything about you, everything that brought you to me. Everything.”
He understood—truly understood. He’d torn down every wall. There was nothing left to do but to whisper, “I love you, too. I love everything about you. Everything that brought you to me.”
“Is that a yes?”
Oh, how she wanted it to be. “There’s one more thing.”
He rolled his eyes. “Out with it.”
“I don’t know if I can have children.” Seeing him open his mouth, she rushed ahead, needing to get the words out. “After that initial pregnancy, I never conceived with Charles. You’re younger than I. You’ll want to have children.”
“Catharine, love, you don’t think we have enough children? There’s about to be twenty of them downstairs every day.”
“Don’t forget Alfie! You’re always forgetting to count him!”
He smiled and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “Twenty-one,” he said, then pressed his forehead against hers. “If God sees fit to give us a child, I shall be very happy. But, really, it’s of little consequence.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because I want you, first and foremost. More than anything. Just you.” He grinned. “And, anyway, it will be awfully fun trying to have a child. That’s a task I could apply my energies to. I have more than a few years to make up for.”
She lifted her lips and pressed them against his.
“Is that a yes?”
“Well, it has to be, doesn’t it? What else are we going to tell Jude and Grace?” She closed her eyes and pressed the back of one hand to her forehead. “And the servants! My God! How they’ll talk!”
“Not for long. They’ll have a wedding breakfast to prepare. Blackstone will be here the day after tomorrow.”
“Blackstone! What has he to do with this?”
“He’ll be back in town, and he’s promised to get us a special license.”
The audacity of him! Of both of them! “Well, isn’t that fine?” she said, willing her cheeks to stop blushing.
“He had a list. I merely added an item to it.”
“Before we even left Birmingham? You were that sure I would accept your offer?”
He dipped his head. When he raised it again, the hunter was back, green eyes gleaming as brightly as her new emerald. “I think perhaps we’v
e done enough talking for now. Don’t you?”
If she’d been able to, she would have agreed, but her husband-to-be didn’t wait for an answer.
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Author’s Note
Most people associate the major reform movements of the nineteenth century with the Victorians. Certainly we can credit the Victorians with huge progress on a number of fronts. But many of these movements did have their roots in the Regency, or even earlier. For example, in 1796, Sir Thomas Bernard founded the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor. Sound familiar? Of course, this is the inspiration for James’s group. I learned a great deal about the early roots of reform movements from Social Reform in England, 1780-1880, by John Roach.
The gun industry in Birmingham was, in a broad sense, very much as I describe it. Production was ramping up dramatically in the years of the Napoleonic Wars. Proofing of guns in the time of this novel was still voluntary and was a service offered by a few of the major manufacturers—they proved their own and those of others, and their stamp of approval meant something in the industry. (And, as an aside, they literally stamped the guns with a mark. Later, the official proof marks were sometimes forged.) The military wouldn’t buy unproved guns, and it was the major market for them. At the time, the only official proof house was in London, though the vast majority of small arms were manufactured in Birmingham.
In 1813 Parliament really did consider a bill that would have required all gunmakers to stamp their guns with their names and addresses. The Birmingham makers were opposed and sent men to lobby against the bill. It failed, and instead the government set up an official proof house in Birmingham and made proving mandatory. (The Birmingham crowd had long been annoyed that lots of guns were “made” and proved in London from parts entirely manufactured in Birmingham.) There was some opposition in Birmingham, but most felt that having an official proof house gave their industry legitimacy.
I have taken some liberties in service of the story. The journey by mail coach from London to Birmingham took eighteen hours. It’s not very realistic for Biedermeier to make the trip as frequently as he does, but I simply needed him to.
Men who assembled the finished guns were called setters-up. The industry was very decentralized, and it would have been unusual for them to also manufacture a part, like Herr Biedermeier did. But I needed him to be in control of the barrels of his guns, so that he’d have an opportunity to sabotage them.
The gun industry did employ boys to run parts around town. Because parts were made by all sorts of craftsmen, and because they were proved at various steps along the way, a lot of to-ing and fro-ing went into the manufacture of a gun. There was some concern at the time that these boys were carrying loads too heavy for them. But beyond that, I couldn’t find evidence of entrenched child labor practices in the gun trade. This is probably because the trade was so decentralized, and because much of it was so highly skilled. The abuses that characterized the cotton milling industry, for example, don’t seem to have been present in the gun trade. But it’s also true that child labor was not in itself considered controversial, so unless abuses were rampant, we might not expect to find much discussion of the practice.
How do I rationalize my creative interpretations of fact? Bad guys don’t behave rationally or well. They can do crazy things like rush off to London every other week, make unlikely business decisions, and employ children.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to: Franzeca Drouin for help with period facts and flavor. The University of Toronto interlibrary loan department for managing to get obscure antique books about gun manufacturing. Chris Szego for her ability to see what was wrong and explain it to me in a way that turned on light bulbs. Marit Grunstra for reading an early draft and offering smart commentary. Sandy Owens, Erika Obricht, and Audra North for reading drafts, dispensing pep talks, and generally being awesome. Courtney Miller-Callihan for just about everything. Alethea Spiridon for inheriting me with such good cheer.
About the Author
Jenny Holiday started writing at age nine when her fourth grade teacher gave her a notebook and told her to start writing stories. That first batch featured mass murderers on the loose, alien invasions, and hauntings. From then on, she was always writing, often in her diary, where she liked to decorate declarations of existential angst with nail polish teardrops. Later, she channeled her penchant for scribbling into a more useful format, picking up a PhD in geography and then working in PR. Eventually, she figured out that happy endings were more fun than alien invasions. You can follow her on twitter at @jennyholi or visit her on the web at jennyholiday.com.
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