When his mouth found the curve of her neck, her knees sagged. She clung to him as he surged against her.
His fingers tangled in her hair, loosing the pins Agnes had placed so carefully this morning. Some of them pinged to the floor. Evelyn glanced down at them, half-dazed. They’d fallen into the corner at the edge of the fireplace, alongside a folded piece of white paper. It had Ahmad’s name written on it in black ink.
“What’s that?” she asked.
He continued kissing her.
She clutched at his cravat. “It looks like a note.”
At last he stilled. Raising his head from her neck, he followed her gaze.
A long moment passed before he eased away from her.
Evelyn stayed pressed to the wall, afraid to move. She had the sense that they’d been on the precipice of some further intimacy. She wasn’t entirely ignorant of the act. But she certainly hadn’t planned to indulge in it before marriage.
And she realized, suddenly, how little planning had to do with it.
When one was in the arms of a man, feeling hot and trembly and longing for him so much, all one wanted was more and more and more.
It was all she had wanted.
Distance helped to cool her wild yearnings, but not by much.
Ahmad knelt to retrieve the note. “It must have blown from the mantel when I opened the door.”
Evelyn put on her spectacles. “Is it from Mira?”
“It is.” He scanned the message inside. His expression hardened into an implacable mask.
Evelyn had never seen him look so forbidding. “What is it? Has something happened?”
“She and Becky have gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Back to where we lived before. To the East End. To see a friend, Mira says. They left at nine.” He turned to Evelyn, all traces of passion gone from his face. “They should have been back by now.”
Evelyn stood from the wall. There was nothing like a crisis to bring one back to reality. She went to him. “What will you do?”
“Go after them.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No,” he said. “That place . . . I don’t want you anywhere near there. I’m putting you in a cab and sending you home.”
He looked so terribly bleak. So resolved to face everything on his own. Her heart swelled for him, even as her will rose up to challenge his.
“Indeed, you are not.” She reached to cup his cheek, looking steadily into his eyes. There was reassurance in her touch. And something more, too. Something between them, as yet unexpressed. “I’m coming with you.”
He said nothing. Didn’t speak. Didn’t move. How long had he been alone in the world? Feeling as if he must forge his way himself, without an ally to stand at his side?
She wanted to be that for him. She wanted them to face the future together. And if they must first face his past, then so be it.
He gazed down at her. And he seemed to see it. The way she felt for him. It wasn’t some weak, ladylike infatuation. It was strong, just like she was. Strong and true and willing to risk anything.
When next he spoke, he didn’t argue. “Very well.”
Thirty
The hired hackney coach ricocheted through the streets of London at a perilous pace. It was a converted brougham, the coat of arms of its prior owner still vaguely visible on the nearside door beneath layers of fading paint. Ahmad had promised the driver an extra half crown to get them to Commercial Road double quick. He hadn’t accounted for how uncomfortable the speed would be. Evelyn was pressed tight to his side, from shoulder to knee, jostling against him as the vehicle clattered and bounced over every crack and pothole.
She handed him back the note after reading it. “Mira doesn’t mention Mrs. Pritchard’s.”
“She didn’t have to.” Ahmad thrust the folded note into a pocket of his waistcoat. He knew of only two places Mira might have gone—either to Becky’s lodgings or to Mrs. Pritchard’s establishment. Given recent events, it was the latter that seemed more likely. “She’s talked about writing to friends there,” he said. “She knows I don’t approve of her visiting them. When we left two years ago . . .”
“Becky told me there was some kind of dustup.”
“That’s one way of putting it.” Leaning back in the seat of the hansom cab, he raked a hand through his hair.
“She said you broke a man’s shoulder. A baronet who’d been violent with her.”
He grimaced. “Did she.”
“Is it true?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” It was one of the rare occasions Ahmad had lost his temper. And to disastrous effect. “He roughed her up. Blacked her eye and knocked out one of her teeth. She was only a girl, fresh up from the country. And he was drunk. Belligerent and unrepentant. I hauled him out into the alley and tossed him against a wall.”
“Oh dear.”
“He broke his shoulder. Which was no less than he deserved.”
“Becky said you saved her life.”
He exhaled. “I don’t know. Probably. But I didn’t have to injure the man to such a degree in order to do it.”
“He didn’t take it well, I gather.”
“No, he did not. Nor did Mrs. Pritchard.” Ahmad recalled the weeks that followed. Weeks during which there was a very real possibility that he might be hanged or transported, leaving Mira all alone to fend for herself. “The baronet wanted me prosecuted, which I was. Luckily, it didn’t come to anything. Mr. Finchley used to take on cases like mine. Matters of conscience, he called them. Once he took up my cause, there was no question of my being transported.”
“Is that how you came to work for him?” she asked.
He nodded. “After Mrs. Pritchard gave me the sack, Finchley offered Mira and me positions with Miss Holloway—his future wife. She was going to India for several months and needed a manservant and maid.”
“Thank God for that,” Evelyn murmured.
Ahmad had been thankful. For a time, following his dismissal from Mrs. Pritchard’s, he hadn’t known what he would do with himself.
“Were you glad to see India again?” she asked.
“It was an experience. I hadn’t been back since I was fifteen. Long before the uprising.”
“I’ve been reading about the uprising,” she said.
He frowned. “Why?”