The farewell.
They lay together for long minutes, until their breath was steady again, and the world returned, unable to be refused or ignored, coming with the dawn in great red streaks across the black sky beyond the window.
He pressed a kiss to her hair. “You should sleep.”
She turned away from time and its march, curling into his heat. “I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want it to end. I don’t want you to go. Ever.”
He did not reply, instead wrapping her tight in his arms, holding her until she could no longer feel the place where she ended and he began, where he exhaled and she inhaled.
“I don’t want to sleep,” she repeated, the threat of slumber all around her. “Don’t let me go to sleep. One night isn’t enough.”
“Shh, love,” he said, stroking one wide hand down her back. “I’m here. I’ll keep you safe.”
Tell me you love me, she willed silently, knowing he wouldn’t, but desperately wishing for it anyway.
Wishing that, even if she couldn’t have him, she might have his heart.
Have his heart. As though he could pluck the organ from inside his chest and hand it to her for safekeeping.
Of course, he couldn’t.
Even if it felt as though she’d done that very thing herself.
Even as she knew it wasn’t safe with him.
It couldn’t be.
He waited a long while before he spoke again, until she was asleep. “One night is all there is.”
When she woke, he was gone.
Chapter Seventeen
There are times for experiments that make for blinding, unexpected outcomes, and there are times for those that are directed by the hand of the scientist.
Cross Jasper A great man once told me that there is no such thing as chance. Having come around to his way of thinking, I find that I am no longer willing to leave my work to chance.
Nor my life.
The Scientific Journal of Lady Philippa Marbury
April 2, 1831; three days prior to her wedding
Pippa and Trotula walked the mile to Castleton’s handsome town house on Berkeley Square two days later, as though it were an entirely ordinary occurrence for a woman to arrive on the steps of her fiancé’s home with none but a dog as a chaperone.
She ignored the curious glances cast in her direction outside the house just as she ignored the surprise on the butler’s face when he opened the door and Trotula rushed into the foyer, uninvited, even as Pippa announced herself. Within moments, she and the hound were ensconced in a lovely yellow receiving room.
Moving to the windows, Pippa looked out over the square, considering the proper façades surrounding the perfectly landscaped green, and imagining her life here as the Countess of Castleton. Every one of the houses was occupied by one of the most important members of the aristocracy—Lady Jersey lived next door, for heaven’s sake.
Pippa couldn’t imagine the patroness of Almack’s finding time or inclination to either visit her new neighbor or support Pippa’s odd interests. There was no room for anatomy or horticulture in this massive, manicured home.
Viscountess Tottenham rode by, proud as ever, head high from the thrill of being the mother of one of the most powerful men in Britain, future prime minister who was three days from marrying Olivia, the favorite of the Marbury daughters.
It occurred to Pippa that this room, bright and filled with lavish furnishings, on the most extravagant square in London, was the ideal home for Olivia, and that was lucky, as her sister would soon live this life. Happily.
But there was nothing about this place that made it the ideal home for Pippa.
Nothing about its master that made him the ideal husband for Pippa.
Nothing at all to recommend her to this place.
There was no Cross here.
No, Cross appeared to live in a cluttered office on the main floor of a gaming hell, surrounded by papers and strange turmoil, globes and abacuses and threatening oil paintings and more books than she’d ever known one man to have in a single room. There was barely room to move in Cross’s quarters, and still she somehow felt more comfortable there than here . . .
She’d happily live there with him.
The dog sat and sighed, drawing Pippa’s attention. She stroked behind the hound’s ear and received a gentle wag for her troubles.
She imagined Trotula would live there with him, too.
Except they were not invited.
He’d disappeared from her bed on the night of Pandemonium, after claiming her body and soul and ensuring that she loved him quite desperately. For two days, she’d waited for him to return; for two nights, she’d lain in bed, starting at every noise, sure he’d scale the house once more and come to her. Sure he wouldn’t leave her.
Sure he’d change his mind.
He hadn’t.
Instead, he’d left her to think on her own future. Her own choices. Her own heart.
He’d left her to come to the clear, undeniable realization that she was not the one who required saving.
“Two lovely ladies!” Castleton’s happy utterance interrupted Pippa’s thoughts, and she turned toward her handsome, smiling fiancé as Trotula hurried to him, low to the ground, eager for stroking.
It was difficult to spend any time at all with Castleton without smiling oneself. He was a kind man, and good. Fairly handsome, very wealthy, and titled. An aristocratic mother’s dream. Indeed, there were few things more for which a young woman could ask.
Except for love.
And suddenly, that strange, elusive, indefinable word meant everything. So much more than all the rest.
How had she become such a ninny? She, who had never believed in the emotion . . . who had always thought that the ethereal was less valuable, less real than the factual . . . who had always ignored the sentiment—how was it that she stood here, now, in the receiving room of what was to have been her future home, with the man who was to have been her future husband, thinking of love?