Really, once he was asleep, he slept like the dead. She crossed to the bed once more and commenced shaking him like a dog with a rat. “Nye! Will Nye! Wake up this instant!” She was forced to bawl in his ear when nothing else made an impression.
His eyes flickered open at last. “Mina,” he murmured thickly. “Get back into bed.”
“I most certainly will not! There’s a bunch of ruffians in the courtyard below, demanding your immediate presence!”
His eyes which had been drifting shut again, re-opened. “The yard?” He struggled up onto one elbow. “What?”
Mina darted to the chair to gather up his discarded clothes. “They need you below.”
“Time is it?” Nye slurred, rubbing at his eyes. He drew his knees up and moved sluggishly to a seated position.
“An ungodly hour! It’s half-past two in the morning,” Mina hissed at him. “Your confederates seem to have no consideration for anyone but themselves!”
“Half-past two?” he repeated, seeming dumbstruck for a moment, then he swore under his breath and flung back the covers. She darted forward with his clothes and dumped them on the bed next to him. “Get back under the covers,” he told her as he stood up to dress. Mina hesitated, wanting to say something about the nefarious business he was clearly caught up in. As though guessing what was on her mind, he turned and scowled at her. “I won’t tell you twice,” he warned.
Mina bristled, but decided discretion was the better part of valor. She clambered back into the bed and turned her back to him as he pulled on his clothes, muttering under his breath ill-naturedly the whole while. When he stomped from the room taking the candle with him, she rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. Well, that was that then. Her suspicions had not been the result of an overactive imagination. Her husband was in league with a smuggler’s gang.
She wrestled with the problem for the next hour and a half, waiting for him to return. Finally, she dropped off to sleep and when she woke again at seven, she was still alone in the bed. For some reason, that fact filled her with annoyance. So, he thought only to share a bed with her when he wanted that did, he? She seethed as she pulled on her clothes.
Embarrassingly, almost every item of clothing now made her think of Nye. Her corset made her remember he thought it too confining, her stockings too plain, her garters basic and unadorned. Dragging her hair back to pin at her nape, she stared at herself in the mirror. She was no dancing girl she thought bitterly. But she was a wife now. The tenderness between her legs reminded her that there could no longer be any question of annulment. Yesterday’s romp in the sheets had put paid to that. She was in truth and fact married to an out-and-out scoundrel and a lawbreaker.
She pinned her father’s watch chain to her bodice with an ugly cameo brooch that had belonged to her paternal grandmother. Apparently, it depicted her great grandfather’s profile. He had a Roman nose and a jutting chin and Mina only ever wore it when she was in a bad mood. She slipped the watch into the concealed pocket at her waist and surveyed the result. There, the very picture of respectability, she told herself in her dull black gown. For some reason she did not derive from that the satisfaction which she felt she ought.
She found Edna in the kitchen, who took one look at her and pulled out a chair for her at the kitchen table and poured her a cup of tea without once mentioning taking it in the parlor.
“Look like you’re in need of a strong cup of tea, Mrs Nye,” she said dourly.
“I am Edna,” Mina agreed. “But I’ll just take a quick wash in the scullery first.” She slipped through and gave herself a hurried wash. She’d need a bath later too, she thought with a grimace. “Church tomorrow,” she observed, raising her voice so Edna could hear her in the kitchen. “And when we get back, I shall help you with the Sunday lunches again.” She was surprised when Edna didn’t answer, and refastening her cuffs, she walked back through to the kitchen. “Edna?”
To her surprise, Nye was dominating the kitchen with his presence, leaning against the sink, a confrontational gleam in his eye. She started almost guiltily on sight of him, but quickly recovered herself, walking over to the kitchen table to take her seat there.
Edna sent her a pinched look of alarm, but Mina hastened to give her a bright smile of reassurance. “Nye and I have come to a new agreement about my duties,” she said in a pointed tone, then raised her cup to her lips and took a sip of slightly stewed tea. Setting it down again, she raised her eyes to find Nye’s narrowed at her.
“This morning,” she added firmly in a voice that carried. “I mean to scrub that bathroom upstairs until it’s gleaming. Then when I am done, I shall take a bath.”
Edna gulped the last of her tea, as though she could not get away from the tense atmosphere fast enough. “Yes, Mrs. Nye,” she said uncertainly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to stripping them beds.”
Mina nodded. “I have some laundry of my own to do this afternoon,” she said absently, thinking of her abused nightgown and the bedsheet with its telling smear of blood. She didn’t want anyone else’s hands scrubbing those clean.
At Edna’s hasty withdrawal, Nye walked over to the table. He stopped beside her and waited there until she lifted her eyes to meet his again.
“Seems I’ve forgotten the terms of our ‘agreement,’” he bit out. “Maybe you should remind me of them.”
“Very well,” she said determinedly. “Now our marriage stands proven both in terms of deed and fact, I shall pick up any household duties I see fit.”
He hissed out a breath. “Is that so?”
“It is,” she said, raising her teacup to her lips again.
His gaze flickered a moment, then he shrugged. “Seems fair,” he said, immediately setting her on her guard.
“It does?” Her eyes darted to his suspiciously.
He nodded again thoughtfully. “You can lord it over household matters,” he said generously. “As I mean to be master where it counts most.”
“And where’s that?” Mina asked doggedly, though she already had a dim suspicion which direction he was heading in his thinking.
“In my bed,” he said richly.
“Your bed?” Mina huffed. “I don’t even know where that is.”
He snorted. “You’ve slept in it since our wedding night.”
Her mouth dropped open. “That’s your bedroom?”
He looked amused. “Who else’s?”
“But…” Her mind spun. “The bed didn’t even have any sheets on it!”
He shrugged again. “I told you, I don’t sleep.”
She gave a derisive snort. “For someone who doesn’t sleep, I’ve never met anyone harder to rouse from slumber than you, Will Nye!”
Annoyingly, as soon as the words had left her mouth, she felt herself blush hotly, remembering the last time she had called him Will. The only time he had bade her call him it. Setting her cup down, she pushed the saucer away and made to stand. His hand on her shoulder prevented her.
“Stay there a minute,” he growled. “Unless you want me to drag you into the scullery.”
“The scullery?”