After the Wedding

by Courtney Milan

  He flipped through the parish account book instead.

  She had thought he was handsome the moment she met him, but now, now that she knew his moods, now that she could read the intense concentration as he scanned down the pages…

  Now, her whole being swayed toward him. That firm set of his eyebrows, the press of his lips…

  Part of her wanted their quest to be hopeless.

  But it was no longer just conscience. There was another part of her, something that had always been there. A part of her that had yearned and wanted and desired, year after year.

  I want to be loved.

  Not just picked as a default. Not just accepted as fate.

  She wanted to be loved. She wanted him to devote that intense concentration to her not because he had no choice, but because she’d earned it.

  I want to be loved.

  It was no longer enough to win for the sake of her conscience. Now, it felt almost imperative—that she should prove it to herself. That he should care for her by choice, not by necessity.

  I want to be loved by him, Camilla thought.

  His finger halted on the page, tapping. “Here,” he said. “This is where the entry ought to have been. But there is very distinctly nothing in the parish accounts.”

  “That’s good. But…have you checked? Perhaps he recorded it earlier? Or later?”

  “Did he often do so?”

  Camilla shook her head. “I don’t think so. But—we can compare.” The second book—the book of Rector Miles’s private accounts—was taken out.

  There it was—a thousand pounds entered into the ledger. Income from investment, it read.

  “But Mrs. Martin gave two thousand pounds.”

  “Lassiter must have received half. Somehow. But… There’s no record. At least not here.”

  “Well, then.” He exhaled. “We have them. Proof of wrongdoing. Mrs. Martin can prove she gave the rector money; we can prove they never sent that money on to the church or used it for its intended purpose. And Miss…”

  “Shackleton,” Kitty provided.

  “Miss Shackleton,” Adrian said, “I must ask you—did Bishop Lassiter speak to you about this scheme? Did he threaten you?”

  “No.”

  “Ah.” Adrian shut his eyes.

  “Is it enough?”

  Still, Adrian hesitated.

  Her mind raced through the possibilities. She’d read the reports after all.

  “It might be enough if all we needed was to prove facts for our annulment.” She knew how it worked, unfortunately. “It would be enough if facts were enough. There is motive. There is explanation. There are witnesses.”

  “But.” He gave her a sad smile.

  “But.” She shut her eyes. “But facts are what people believe them to be. And with nobody powerful on our side, the truth will not be enough. Your uncle…”

  “My uncle,” Adrian said, “wants Bishop Lassiter. And all of this points to Miles alone.”

  “You don’t think your uncle will help anyway?”

  He looked over at her. “I want to,” he said slowly. “I want to think he will lend his voice. But…”

  She watched him.

  “But,” he said, “I’ve known him too long. I suspect he won’t.”

  Another silence fell. Camilla bit her lip and considered. She was technically Lady Camilla. Judith had no desire to see her, but… Maybe, if Camilla asked nicely?

  “They must have corresponded,” Camilla said. “The bishop arrived on almost no notice.”

  “If they did, it was not in my presence.”

  Camilla shut her eyes and thought about that morning again. She could see it, plain as day. She’d been harried, running around. They’d had no notice of the bishop’s arrival, not until lunchtime. Her memory was good; she returned to it now, trying to recall any helpful detail.

  There had been someone at the door. Camilla had run through Rector Miles’s office in haste. She had had so much to do, and…

  Right. She could see the fireplace in his office, the gray ash that she’d had to clean out, mixed with little curling bits of paper… It had all gone in the dust bin.

  Damn.

  “They must have corresponded,” Camilla said, her nose twitching. “But he burned the correspondence. After eighteen months of cleaning, I know what a burned telegram looks like.”

  Adrian lifted his head. “What sort of correspondence did you say it was?”

  “A telegram. Several, I would imagine. He burned them. I had to clean out the fireplace; I would know.”

  He was staring at her, his eyes broad and wide.

  “Drat.” Camilla squeezed her eyes shut. “Drat, drat, drat. We’re so close. There has to be something.”

  “You said it was a telegram?”

  She turned to him. “Why?”

  “Oh my God.” Adrian didn’t stand. He didn’t move an inch. Still, that broad smile took over his face. “There’s still a chance, then.” And then, in his regular voice, he spoke. “Mrs. Beasley,” he said, “are you listening?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  It took Mrs. Beasley approximately five seconds after being hailed to appear, tea-tray in both her hands. “Well, dearies,” she said brightly, “who would like some tea?”

  “Um.” Camilla looked at Kitty, then back at Adrian. “I’ve got some questions, I think, about a telegram that might or might not have been sent through your office.”

  “Oh, I heard you the whole time.” Mrs. Beasley smiled and set the tea-tray down. “All the more reason to serve tea.” She began pouring the brown liquid into cups. “Never gossip on a dry throat. It doesn’t turn out well.”

  “So were telegrams sent between Lassiter and Miles?” Adrian cut in.

  Mrs. Beasley brandished the sugar tongs. “One lump or two?”

  “One, but—”

  “You know how I am,” Mrs. Beasley said. “Gossip only goes in, not out. I could never tell you what another person sent via telegram. That would violate a sacred trust reposed in me, and I’m not the sort to do that.”

  “But—then—”

  “I would never speak of the telegrams I sent or received,” Mrs. Beasley said, adding sugar diligently to a cup and handing it to Kitty, “but I would love to tell you about the procedures of the telegraph office.”

  “Ah.” Adrian nodded and took his own cup of tea. Camilla wondered what procedures she meant, and how it would help. But Adrian seemed almost comfortable.

  “How long do you keep the telegrams that are sent?” he asked.

  “I don’t keep them. I send them on.”

  “No. I mean, when someone fills out a form, or when you’re taking notes on a telegram that comes for someone in the area. How long do you keep those notes?”

  Mrs. Beasley tilted her head and looked at Adrian. A little smile played over her face. “Well, dearie. You know I’m supposed to burn them all at the end of every day.”

  “But in reality?”

  “Well.” Mrs. Beasley shrugged. “Every day is quite often, you know. In reality, I sometimes take a little longer.”

  Camilla felt her heart thump. “How much longer?”

  “Ah.” A flicker of a smile passed over the woman’s face. “Well. It may have been…a bit since my last burning.”

  “A week? Two weeks?”

  “Oh, less than that,” Mrs. Beasley said. “Three days. But… How shall I say this? Operating a teletype machine is not interesting work, Miss Winters. Sometimes, we keep things around for our own amusement.”

  “Do we?”

  “I could never show them to anyone, you understand,” Mrs. Beasley said kindly, “but they’re all in the attic, organized by date. And speaking of the office—my husband has finished his time there, and he’ll be expecting me to take my turn there for a few hours while he heads to the pub.”

  “Is that so?”

  By way of an answer, Mrs. Beasley withdrew a keyring from her pocket. “It is locked, the attic, but th
is…” She fished one key out from the lot and jiggled it. “This, that’ll undo the attic door. I would never let these keys out of my sight.” She set them on the table. “Never, at least not on purpose. But I am old-ish and forgetful-ish.” She smiled brilliantly. “What a shame. I’ve misplaced them. Do let me know if you see them.”

  * * *

  Kitty offered to help, but the attic wasn’t large, and in any event, Camilla knew what it was like to walk away from a place of employment with nothing but a valise.

  “Send your sister a telegram,” Adrian told her. “And tell us what you’d need. I’m sure we can find a position where you can have your daughter with you. If I can’t think of something in my family’s holdings, I’ll find somewhere else.”

  It took Camilla and Adrian several hours to sort through the sheaves of paper in the attic. There had been hundreds of telegrams exchanged over the years; few of them were relevant. They retreated downstairs with a stack of papers.

  “Here,” Camilla said. “This one—what do you think?”

  TO: LASSITER

  ANOTHER PACKAGE HAS ARRIVED

  DISPOSAL IN THE USUAL MANNER

  Adrian read it. “I have actually seen quite a few of those. And here’s this—the date seems right.”

  TO: MILES

  PACKAGE RECEIVED

  MY THANKS FOR ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL DISPOSITION

  A few more minutes found this:

  TO: LASSITER

  AN ISSUE HAS ARISEN IN RE PRIOR PACKAGE.

  ORIGINAL OWNER IS RAISING A FUSS

  ASKING FOR PACKAGE WHEREABOUTS

  ADVICE IS NECESSARY

  CANNOT COMMIT MORE TO TELEGRAM

  Camilla stopped. “This is the day before you arrived.”

  “It is.”

  “This is it. I know it’s not perfect, but… This shows they were working together, yes? And that they had an agenda that they could not discuss in public.”

  “I think it is enough,” Adrian said slowly. “Given the dates, Lassiter’s arrival, the fact that they discussed Mrs. Martin in your presence…it might be enough.” Adrian tapped his finger against the page. “And these are the last telegrams we have. But for this. It’s the one sending for a special license. No surprise there.”

  Camilla took the form.

  It was hard to see her future written out in India ink like that. Lassiter had made the request, issuing the order with all the authority of his position.

  NEED EMERGENCY SPECIAL LICENSE.

  The details followed. To think so much had changed since the Wednesday weeks ago when this has all transpired…

  Except.

  Camilla pushed the page forward. “Adrian, this telegram was sent on a Tuesday.”

  “Yes?”

  Her voice shook. “Look at the date. He requested a special license the day before we were put in the bedchamber together.”

  He blinked, then looked up at her. “So he did. And that’s our story—it all fits together now. Rector Miles receives his package—two thousand pounds. He pockets half, and shares the remainder with the bishop who is helping him cover the crime.”

  “Yes.”

  “The bishop comes to consult on the matter. I start asking questions about the rector’s household, and the two of them get wind of this and decide to discredit me. But Lassiter sends for a special license the day before their scheme goes into operation—and that pins the blame squarely on him.”

  “Yes,” Camilla agreed again.

  And then, across the room, Kitty, who had been sitting and reading said, “No.”

  They turned as one.

  “No?”

  Kitty smoothed her skirts and looked away. “When the rector approached me, he said it was about Camilla. That she’d done something wrong and he couldn’t prove it, so he needed to catch her in the act. The only thing he said about you, Mr. Hunter, was that you were nobody.”

  Camilla felt a strange sensation—an almost dizziness. “Me? But—that had to be an excuse, of course. What would I—”

  “You knew about Mrs. Martin,” Adrian said. “You’re the one who told me.”

  She had, technically. She’d overheard it, and remembered—even if they hadn’t mentioned the words. “But—who would I have told? I don’t know anyone. I’m nobody.”

  “No,” Adrian said. “You’re not.”

  “Maybe not in the general sense of things,” Camilla said, “but to the rest of the world—”

  “No.” Adrian said, and Camilla felt her chest contract as she remembered. “No, even then you’re not. You’re the daughter of the Earl of Linney.”

  She felt sick. “And Bishop Lassiter asked me about my sister. But she doesn’t want anything to do with me. I know she doesn’t. Why would that matter?”

  “Do you know that they want nothing to do with you?”

  “Of course I do. Judith said—she said—” She had said, years and years ago. And she hadn’t written, and Camilla had taken all the hope she could not contain and pushed it into the future—hoping, hoping, hoping, and never looking back.

  Adrian looked at her. “Do you know?” he asked once more.

  Yes. Of course Camilla knew it. She knew it, knew it the way she knew everything she had told herself over and over at night, knew it the way she knew that it was likely hopeless to love, knew it the way that she knew that she’d do it anyway. She knew that nobody wanted her, that nobody remembered her, that nobody cared about her. She knew she’d hope for it forever.

  She knew it with a heart that had been bruised too often, with hopes that she’d held onto and lost too many times. She knew it with every fiber of her being.

  She just didn’t know it with her head any longer.

  “No,” she whispered. “I don’t know.”

  Her finger reached out and touched the dark letters asking for a special license—and pulled her hand away, feeling stung.

  “It makes a sort of sense,” he said. “I should have considered it the moment you told me. They didn’t know who I was. It wasn’t me they were trying to discredit. It was you all along.”

  “Oh, God.” She inhaled. “Of course. It’s all my fault. I should have known.”

  “Camilla.” His hand pressed against hers, warm and comforting. Her heart was beating fast and impossibly loud in her ears. “It was not your fault. It was never your fault. It was always theirs.”

  She bowed her head.

  “And we’ve won,” he told her. “Look at this. They thought they could make you into nobody, and they couldn’t. We’re going to bring them to justice—you and I together.”

  She inhaled. She didn’t know what to think, what to say. Look forward, she thought, don’t look back, don’t look back, don’t look back.

  If she looked back and they didn’t want her, it would hurt too much. Even for her.

  It was too much to comprehend.

  “Not me.” She shut her eyes and turned her palm over so that their fingertips could glide against each other. His breath hissed out. “Us,” she told him. “It has always been us.” She was saying too much; she wasn’t saying enough. “From the moment when you stopped me in the road and told me Miles and Lassiter were our enemies,” she confessed. “From the moment I chose to believe you without proof.”

  He leaned into her. “Camilla,” he whispered.

  She held her breath, hoping. The heat of his body warmed hers. His arm, not quite around her waist, braced her in place. His breath whispered against her ear. But Kitty sat half a room away, and hope was all they could do.

  She tilted her head and looked up at him.

  He smiled at her. Oh, God, that smile. She could feel it break across her like sunlight. She had never felt so precious, so wanted.

  His hand twitched at his side, but it did not come up to brush her cheek. She felt it only in her imagination—the brush of his hand, like the caress of his gaze, stroking her.

  All the want she couldn’t let herself feel rose up in her. All this time, she’d
hoped and hoped and hoped.

  Maybe it wasn’t all the hope that had been the problem. Maybe it was that she had not let herself hope enough.

  Adrian’s smile felt almost sad.

  “I could not have been more lucky in my choice of women to not be married to,” he said.

  And maybe she could hope for more with him, too.

  Her heart wasn’t breaking. It was too full to break. She wanted him, and he wanted a choice, and she wanted to be chosen. It hurt, the best kind of pain, this holding back. But this prickle of hope, of sheer desire… It was nothing to the sea of loneliness and want she’d swum in for too long. To know that she might be loved, that she might be respected? To know that her family might want her?

  It was more than she’d had in years, and still, now that she gave free rein to her hope, she hoped for more.

  She had not come this far, holding onto all this hope for this long, just to give it up. She wanted him, too. She wanted him to choose her, freely. She wanted it all, and her entire being ached with the wanting.

  And so she just nodded.

  “It’s the same for me,” she whispered. “Not being lawfully wed to you has been a singular honor.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Weeks ago, standing in the road with the bad taste of the marriage still in his mouth, Adrian would have been delighted to know that this moment would come—that he would be sitting on a train with the woman he had been forcibly wed to, his satchel packed with affidavits and accounts. They were ready to annul the legal flimflammery that bound them together.

  The problem was that it was only the legal flimflammery that bound them together. When they were finished… What then?

  Camilla sat looking out the window. She’d taken off her gloves, but held them still. She did not seem to notice that she was turning them around over and over again, as if she could direct all her nerves into the cloth.

  “Have you thought of trying to find your family afterward?” he finally asked. “I know you haven’t wanted to speak of them. But they’re still there.”

  “I don’t know.” She blinked, looking at her gloves, then set them aside. “Nothing’s changed. Judith didn’t write to me. And maybe she’s changed her mind—I suppose there’s no reason to imagine she’s tracked my whereabouts all these years—but if I go to her and she throws me out…” Camilla trailed off, shaking her head.