Mina spent the next twenty minutes hanging up or folding Nye’s clothes for the drawers, setting his razor and comb on the washstand and placing his cufflinks on his bedside table until the only thing left was the pile of clothes for mending. These she scooped up and put in a linen bag for later. There, she thought, surveying the room. Now it was truly occupied by a married couple.
Returning to one of her own drawers, Mina took out Effie’s lace scarf and contemplated it at a moment. She had laundered it ready to return to its former owner, and she raised it now to examine its rather shabby folds. It looked a good deal better now than on the night she had worn it at St Werburgh’s, she thought ruefully. She could not remember now what she had done with the silver sixpence she had been given in the church. Folding it carefully again, she returned it to the drawer and made for the pile of well-thumbed periodicals she kept under the bed. She settled on one with a juicy tale about a stolen ruby necklace and climbed into bed.
The next thing she knew, she had wakened as a shaft of light fell across her face from an oil lantern coming through the door. She made out Nye’s face as he shut the door behind him and came softly to his side of the bed where he was quick to extinguish the lamp and start undressing.
“What time is it?” Mina asked, rolling on her side to face him.
“Late,” he answered, climbing into the bed. “Why are you still awake?”
“I wasn’t,” she assured him and without conscious thought, found herself shifting closer to him in the dark. He expelled a noisy breath and for a moment she thought he wouldn’t take her up on her unspoken invitation, then his hands were at her waist and she was hauled up against him.
“Am I forgiven, then?” he said against her brow.
“What was I angry about?” She had genuinely forgotten by this point.
“My being a damned jealous brute.”
“Oh that.” It seemed ages ago. “It depends on whether you accept my word or Reuben’s on what transpired.”
His hands stroked over her buttocks and hips. “Yours,” he said raspily. “Mind, I still don’t trust that Carswell bastard.” She almost heard him scowl.
“Do you smoke a pipe?” she asked suddenly and felt his forehead furrow in a frown.
“A pipe? No, do I smell of pipe-smoke?”
“No, but I sorted through your trunk and you own so many.”
He gave a short laugh. “Already? You don’t let the grass grow, do you?”
“I was always urged never to put off till tomorrow what could be done today.”
She felt him nod and shift back against the pillow. “The pipes aren’t mine. They were my father’s.”
Mina hesitated. “And by that you mean...?”
“The man who raised me,” he said quickly with an edge to his voice. “Jacob Nye.”
“Was he the one in that photograph with you as a boy?” she asked quietly.
“Yes.”
Mina remained quiet a moment, but he did not expand on this. She thought of the portrait of the fourth viscount that she had seen, who looked so like him. “Were you close to your… to Jacob Nye, I mean.”
He did not answer at once. “Yes,” he said. “He taught me everything I know. Except boxing.”
“And who taught you that?” she asked curiously.
“An old groom we had taught me the basics. Samuel Teague his name was.” Nye rolled onto his back and propped an arm under his head, the other he kept firmly wrapped about Mina. “When I was nineteen, I went to Exeter to box. I wanted to do it professionally.”
“What happened?” She felt his shoulder shrug under her ear.
“I went without Jacob’s blessing. He wanted me here.”
“What about your mother?”
“She died the summer I was fifteen.”
“Oh,” she said softly. “And then?”
“I trained, I fought, I won a few cups. I made some money.” He was silent a moment. “Then, after a few years my father’s health started failing, he wrote to me and I came home.”
“So, how long did you end up living in Exeter?”
“Some five years all told.”
Mina considered this a moment, staring up at the ceiling. It was somehow easier to ask Nye these things in the dark. “How long is it since Jacob died?”
“Some three years last Christmas.”
“Did you know the fourth Viscount?” she asked tentatively.
He gave a short laugh. “Know him? No. He had my mother march me out for his inspection a few times until I reached the age when I could refuse.”
“How old was that?”
“Ten years or so.”
She fell silent at that, imagining him as the boy from the photograph. “And you never saw him again after that?”
“I never said that.” He paused. “He used to follow my fights. I saw him in the crowd a fair few times. He even came and shook my hand after one of my more famous bouts. Though we met as strangers, I recognized him alright.”
“For him, it must have been like looking at a younger version of himself,” Mina mused. “The likeness is extraordinarily strong. Have you never seen his portrait at Vance Park?”
“No,” he said without rancor. “There’s nothing for me there.” He was silent a moment. “He dictated a letter to me from his deathbed, saying he was proud of me and meant Vance House to be mine.”
“Vance House?” Surely, she remembered that being mentioned before. “Was that not…?”
“Aye,” he agreed gruffly, cutting off her words. “The property was never signed over to me at the time. The old lord had never formalized his intent. Landed gentry don’t like to break up their estates,” he said dryly. “It goes against the grain. Vance House lies on the eastern border of Vance Park in its own ten acres or so.”
“That much?” She hesitated. “It must be a sizeable property.”
“Aye, it’s a handsome house. Queen Anne with access to its own private cove. An old couple, the Tavistocks are tenants at present. It generates a goodly rent.” He was quiet a moment. “Faris finally made it over to me when we wed.”
She nodded. “I thought I recognized the name.”
He grunted. “I thought you might. I’ll show it to you sometime. We might retire there, one day.”
“It sounds vastly respectable.”
He turned his head sharply. “You almost sound disapproving. You’ll be telling me next you like being a publican’s wife.”
“Why should I not?” She imagined living in a beautiful house with a servant and no neighbors that would ever deign to call. Suddenly, it occurred to her that part of her own parents’ relative social isolation could have been due to her mother’s divorce and their own craving for respectability. “It’s interesting living in an inn,” she returned evasively. “Something always seems to be happening.”
“The likes of Sir Matthew Carswell and his wife could call on you at Vance House,” he pointed out, his tone rather brooding.
“I should not want them to,” Mina retorted. “Even if they did.” She wondered again if Nye was right about Sir Matthew’s intention to marry his ward. If so, she could now understand why Cecily had run off with the first beaux who had shown any interest in her.