The Look of Love

by Kelly, Julia

  Her gaze dropped to her hands, which lay folded in her lap. “I don’t know how to do anything but pretend not to hear all of them and ignore them as they watch me.”

  “Then marry me.”

  She looked up, half expecting him to burst out into laughter at tricking her, but his expression was earnest.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “Mrs. Sullivan’s right. You need the protection of a husband or you risk your reputation being irreparably damaged, perhaps not today but at some point in the future. If there’s anything I can do to stop that from happening, I have to do it.”

  She shook her head. “It’s impossible.”

  And it was. It was unfathomable that they could go in an instant from being friends to fiancés when there’d never been an ounce of interest on either side.

  They’d known each other for too long. She’d been sixteen when they’d met, and he twenty-one. He took her work seriously, asking her in great detail about her sketches and the small works she carved in marble. From his spot in the corner of her studio, he’d managed to outlast every single one of her teachers. By the time she’d debuted in society at eighteen she hadn’t been able to imagine a life without him, and he’d become her escort to balls and dinners, always ready with a dance, a joke, or a hand of whist.

  Wasn’t that what he was offering her now? A life lived together full of that same friendship and respect? Teasing and support? Comfort and caring?

  But still, this was Gavin. Her friend. Not her lover.

  “It would never work,” she said with a shake of her head.

  “Why not? Marriages have been built on less. I could be marrying you to acquire an ox and three bushels of corn.”

  “I don’t have an ox,” she grumbled.

  “What a shame. I’m in need of one.”

  She shot him a look. When a grin split his face, she couldn’t help smiling too.

  She knew she should stop them both before this could go further, but Mrs. Sullivan was right. Without a husband, she’d lose everything in one fell swoop. Gavin needed to make her Mrs. Barrett.

  Mrs. Barrett. After all these years of friendship, it was incredible to think it could be her new name. But it wouldn’t just be her name that changed. She’d be living with Gavin. As his wife. With that came expectations, ones that were certain to change the very nature of their relationship.

  That was what scared her more than anything.

  “There’d have to be rules,” she blurted out.

  He cocked his head and she stuck her hands beneath her legs, fighting the urge to fidget under his scrutiny.

  “What sort of rules?” he asked. A slow, amused grin slid across his face.

  “You know,” she said, her voice high and rushed. “Rules.”

  “You’ve never been very good at rules.”

  “Gavin, be serious. We’re talking about getting married,” she said.

  “I am taking this seriously,” he said as he hitched his knee up and rested his arm on it. He was the perfect picture of a gentleman at ease. Ina could have strangled him for it.

  “You’re not. If we botch this marriage, it won’t just be a bad marriage. It’ll ruin our friendship too,” she said.

  His fingers stopped tapping out a rhythm against his leg. “I know.” He sighed. “You’re right—it’s best to know the rules of the game before we play it. Lay out your guidelines.”

  She chewed on her lip. Where to even start? There were so many things a couple should discuss before an engagement, yet they wouldn’t have the luxury of time. The only advantage they had was that they knew each other better than anyone else knew them.

  “I don’t want to leave Edinburgh,” she said. There. That was an easy place to start.

  “Ever?” he asked.

  “To travel, yes,” she conceded, “but I don’t wish to live anywhere else. I’ve no desire to lease a house in London or build in the country. I don’t care about house parties and the season.”

  He let out a breath. “Given that I don’t have the funds to take a house suitable for married life in any city, let alone a London season, that’s a condition I can readily agree upon. We’ll be at the mercy of your father’s marriage settlement.”

  She knew speaking of money irked him. Gavin was brilliant, but while modest recognition had come with the publication of his book, the money hadn’t followed. If she’d had any sway, she’d have battered down the door of every journal and publishing house in London to get them to print his work.

  “Wherever we live, we’ll decide on it together,” she said. “It’ll be our house here in Edinburgh.”

  “I promise you, I’ve no desire to return to England,” he said.

  “Even to your family home?” she asked.

  His smile was back. “There’s no place for me at Oak Park Manor. Not with the years my father’s spent grooming Richard to inherit.”

  The mention of his older brother tugged at her curiosity. He spoke of his family so rarely, she hardly thought of him as having a family. But now was not the time to probe for more information. They had an engagement to negotiate.

  “I also think we should agree to both continue our work,” she said.

  “That’s easy,” he said. “I’ll never stand in the way of what you love.”

  She swallowed. Now for the hard part.

  “And what of the particulars?”

  His brows shot up. “Particulars?”

  “Yes,” she said, waving her hand helplessly in front of her. All she was managing to do was churn awkwardness through the air.

  “What particulars would those be?” he asked.

  “We’d live together.”

  “Yes?”

  “And we’d share a home . . .” She let her words trail off.

  “And?”

  Her eyes narrowed as a fierce blush rushed to her cheeks.

  “You’re the most wretched man. Are you really going to make me spell this out for you?”

  “Given how amusing it is to watch you try, yes,” he said.

  “Will we share a bed?”

  The words came out in a rush, and she had to fight the urge to squirm in her seat as he gazed at her.

  “I thought young ladies weren’t supposed to be aware of such things,” he said after a moment.

  She rolled her eyes. “Didn’t you just say I’m not very good at rules?”

  He conceded with a tilt of his head.

  “Before we discuss that matter, there’s one thing I wish to know,” he said. “Is there anyone you’d rather be married to?”

  “No,” she said immediately.

  “Anyone you love?” he pushed. “Because if there is, I don’t want to be the man who stands in your way.”

  “There’s no one,” she said.

  After a pause she asked, “And you?”

  She should know this, and yet they’d never spoken of any of the ladies who threw him sly glances as he walked across a ballroom. The subject just hadn’t come up, almost as though Gavin was oblivious to them.

  Then again, not wanting to delve into her proposals, she hadn’t exactly forced the issue.

  “My opportunity for love came and went a long time ago,” he said. “It’s in the past.”

  Her curiosity was piqued. He’d never spoken of a past love before and she wanted badly to pry, but his guarded expression told her now was not the time.

  “Then both of us enter into this with a clear conscience,” she said.

  “And that’s the way it should stay,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “No dalliances. No affairs.”

  “No dalliances. No affairs,” she repeated. Sex. Intimacy. Passion. The three things society forbade unmarried ladies to engage in would be the three things she’d have to give up when they exchanged
vows.

  He looked straight at the ceiling, avoiding her eyes. “I know what that’s asking of you. You deserve a full life in every way.”

  “I can’t miss what I don’t know,” she said with a shrug.

  “What of children?” he asked.

  She scrunched up her brow in thought. Choosing her words carefully, she said, “As I never thought I would marry, I never thought I’d have children. It isn’t as though it’s necessary. There’s no entailed property to hand down to a first son or anything ghastly like that. Unless you want to have them, of course,” she added quickly.

  “That would rather negate the decision not to sleep together, wouldn’t it?” he asked.

  She pursed her lips and waited for him to answer for his part.

  “I’ll be guided by you,” he said. “If you don’t want children, we won’t have children.”

  It wasn’t a real answer. He hadn’t come down on one side of the issue or the other, but instead deferred to what she wanted. Perhaps she should’ve been happy he wasn’t demanding the thing she couldn’t deliver, but something about it made her uncomfortable. This might be a marriage of convenience, but his opinion mattered too.

  “You’re sure?” she asked.

  His laugh was almost bitter. “Of course not. Are you sure about anything this evening?”

  “No,” she said quietly. This evening had gone from mundane to disastrous in the space of minutes. She wished that she could take a step back or even slow time a little to allow her to catch her breath, but wishes like that were foolish. They had to handle the situation they found themselves in right now.

  A long, awkward silence stretched between them. Finally he lifted his head and held her gaze. “Then I suppose it’s settled.”

  “Actually, there’s one more matter to take care of,” she said.

  Careful of her elaborate skirts, she slid to the floor as best she could. Surrounded by a mountain of silk, she took up his hand in hers, schooled her face into an earnest expression, and asked, “Gavin Barrett, would you take my hand in marriage?”

  He snorted a laugh. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Chapter Four

  “WHAT THE HELL happened tonight?” Gavin asked his empty hansom cab as it rumbled away from Mrs. Sullivan’s.

  What had promised to be an utterly ordinary evening had turned completely on its head, and now he was engaged to be married. To Ina. His Ina.

  “I’m marrying Ina,” he murmured as the cab jolted and clattered along the cobblestones of Cumberland Street before making a left on Howe Street and rounding the Royal Circus. He was far too wound up to go home to his bachelor rooms on St. Giles Street. Instead, he was headed for a large stone building where he knew at least two of the city’s hard-working citizens would still be awake.

  When the hansom pulled up in front of the offices of the Lothian Herald-Times on High Street, Gavin paid the driver and leapt down. He let himself into the building, for he knew that knocking would do no good. The giant steam-powered presses were going with such speed that the din could be heard out on the street.

  Crossing the entryway of the newspaper office, Gavin nodded to one of the press operators who’d come out of the print room for a cigarette. With a hand on the smooth banister, he ascended the three flights of stairs to the office of the owner and editor in chief, Jonathan Moray.

  Just as he’d expected, Gavin found his friend leaning over a mocked-up broadsheet, jacket cast aside and sleeves rolled up to expose his forearms. A pencil stuck behind Moray’s ear looked dangerously close to falling from its perch.

  Next to him stood Eva Wilis, the paper’s managing editor, with whom Moray shared the office.

  “You can’t cut that graf, Moray,” she said, pointing to a section of print as her glasses slipped down her long, straight nose. “That’s the very heart of the story.”

  “If I don’t cut it, I’m left with a widowed line at the bottom of this column. If I do cut it, the story’s no good anymore. What would you have me do?” asked Moray, glancing up at Eva and catching sight of Gavin for the first time. “What do you say, Barrett?”

  Gavin pushed off the doorframe from where he’d been watching his friends. “That you’d do well to listen to the best editor in Britain. You did hire her, after all.”

  Moray grunted, managing to catch the pencil as it slipped off his ear before it clattered to the newspaper-strewn table. “I should have known you’d side with her.”

  “Because I’m right,” said Eva, shooting him a dirty look before smiling at Gavin. “What was it tonight? A supper? A salon?”

  “A salon,” he said, dropping into a chair opposite the desk and picking up a discarded page. He pointed to an illustration depicting a man and woman strolling in Princes Street Gardens. “This etching is rather good.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” said Eva, peering at the paper.

  “We’ve commissioned Michael Russell to do a series for us,” said Moray, replacing his errant pencil.

  “Lana Russell’s husband?” he asked. “I didn’t realize he did etchings.”

  “He’s an artist with rent to pay just like the rest of us. He’ll do whatever brings money in,” said Moray.

  Eva rolled her eyes heavenward. “Ignore him. His mood will vastly improve when the front page is done.”

  Moray pointed at the huge iron clock hanging on his wall. “It’s nearly two o’clock and we haven’t printed it. This is the third time this week.”

  “And whose fault is that?” Eva asked.

  Moray just grunted.

  “One of the presses broke down earlier,” Eva told Gavin. “By the time it was running again, Moray had dismantled the entire front page with that pencil of his. Now he’s determined to reset it.”

  “You don’t have to stay,” said Moray. “Go home to Catriona.”

  “I’d just drive her to distraction pacing around until the paper landed on my doorstep, and I’d rather have you annoyed with me than her,” said Eva.

  Eva and Catriona styled themselves as widows who shared the financial burden of a home. Few people understood what Moray and Gavin knew: that the two women were in their eyes, if not the law’s, a married couple. They hid it from all but their closest friends, knowing they could weather rumor but wouldn’t survive if anyone could prove the real nature of their relationship, and Gavin and Moray both protected that secret with a familial fierceness.

  “What brings you here?” asked Moray as he crossed something out and scribbled in the margins.

  “A strange night,” Gavin said.

  His friend looked up, the sharp curiosity of a journalist clear in his eyes. “How strange?”

  “This is not for print.” One always had to be sure to make that explicitly clear when speaking to Moray, for while the man was most involved in the Lothian Herald-Times, he also owned the wildly popular scandal sheet the New Town Tattler. Moray had expressed more than once how vital it was to keep the Tattler well supplied with tidbits about Edinburgh’s elite.

  With crossed arms, Moray leaned back in his chair. “Fine.”

  “What our friend means to say is, ‘I’m concerned that something has happened and you’re involved. Please tell me so that I may be of assistance in any way possible,’ ” said Eva.

  “He knows that already. Why waste my breath?” asked Moray.

  “Why indeed?” said Eva.

  “There was an incident at Mrs. Sullivan’s home this evening,” he said, easing into his news as gently as he could.

  Gavin didn’t miss the way Eva’s hand twitched toward a scrap of paper and pen lying nearby. Once a reporter, always a reporter.

  “Ina was nearly compromised,” he said.

  “What?” Eva asked at the same time Moray asked, “What happened?’

  “She came across Sir Kier Gowan in the library and he trie
d to force himself on her,” Gavin said, struggling to calm his breath as he thought about smashing the man against a wall all over again. “He won’t marry Ina to protect her against ruin, so I’m going to.”

  “What?” Moray asked in shock.

  “You’re engaged?” Eva asked. “To Miss Duncan?”

  “I told you sooner or later that girl was going to land you in trouble,” Moray said.

  “Careful,” Gavin warned, his nerves still raw from all that had unfolded that evening.

  Eva’s hand fell heavy on Moray’s shoulder. “Why don’t you go see McLeod about the printing press?”

  “Who cares about printing presses when Gavin’s gone and got himself entrapped? And McLeod already fixed the problem. You said so yourself,” said Moray.

  Eva gritted her teeth and shoved him toward the door. “Check again.”

  Moray looked down at her hand and then back up at Gavin. “Oh. I see. You want some time to give him some womanly advice.”

  “Just go,” she ordered, giving her publisher another shove.

  “Fine, fine,” said Moray, hands up by his head.

  When the door shut, Eva turned on her heel and placed her hands on her hips. Gavin immediately sobered. A stern Eva was not to be trifled with.

  “Tell me you’re entering into this with clear eyes and not just so you can play the hero, Gavin.”

  He tugged at his hair, the pain distracting him from the invisible weight pressing down on his chest.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said.

  “You don’t know.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that life is complicated,” Eva shot back. “Catriona and I live with that every single day.”

  He slumped back in his chair. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Her expression softened. “I know you are.”

  “Ina needs me,” he said. “What sort of friend would I be if I left her on her own now?”

  “One who might want to choose his own life.”

  “When she doesn’t get to make her own choice?” He shook his head. “I won’t make her go through all that on her own.”