“Will it be the same people?” she asked suddenly.
“What?”
“The same people as last time,” she elaborated. “You know.”
“I really don’t.”
She could hear the frown in his voice. “The same people who bore witness,” she said. “That night in the church.” She thought she heard his breathing hitch before it levelled out again.
The shoulder under her cheek lurched in what she guessed was a shrug. “Some of them, maybe,” he agreed.
“Oh.” Even to her own ears, she sounded a little put-out.
“Does that bother you?” The words sounded like they were dragged from him.
Mina didn’t want to answer. Unbidden, the memories of that awful night flooded into her mind’s eye. She felt scalded and raw. “I don’t want to see any of them,” she admitted, her throat closing on the words. She felt his head turn sharply.
“Why? You have nothing to reproach yourself with.”
“I looked a fool,” she mumbled against his shoulder.
“No more than I,” he said, but that wasn’t true, Mina thought despairingly. Every one of his friends had seen the utter contempt he had for her. He had marched right out of the church and left her there and they had all followed him, laughing and carousing. She screwed her eyes shut and to her surprise felt his arms close tight around her, hauling her practically on top of him. “You don’t have to see any of them,” he said tersely. “You’re to stay out of their sight. Understood?” She nodded. It was what she wanted after all. For once their feelings on a subject agreed. “Good,” he said throatily. “Now go to sleep.”
And funnily enough, she did.
*
Mina woke late and reached for her father’s pocket watch on the side table, saw it was eight o’clock already. She felt the familiar constraint of Nye’s arm slung around her waist and looked back over her shoulder to find him fast asleep. Again, she wondered at his insistence that he ‘never slept’ and struggled to extricate herself. His arm tightened, hauling her back against him.
“Nye! We’ve overslept!” she protested. He slung a leg heavily across hers. “Nye! Really! You’re impossible.”
He made a grumbling sound against her neck. “It’s eight o’clock,” she told him loudly and felt his eyelashes flutter against her skin. “Did you hear what I said?” With an exclamation of annoyance, Mina started squirming and wriggling, only to find herself abruptly rolled beneath him. “Nye!” she squealed in alarm.
He reared back at that and blinked down at her, looking confused.
“Let me up!” she huffed. “It’s gone eight in the morning.”
Nye ran a hand down his face and groaned. “It can’t be.”
“Well, it is. You fell asleep again!”
Grudgingly, he rolled his weight off her to let her up. Mina scrambled out of bed and started gathering slamming drawers and gathering her outfit together. Nye slowly propped himself up on one elbow to watch her.
“Aren’t you going to get up?” she asked pointedly.
“All in good time,” he answered, shoving her pillow behind him and lolling back against it. His eyes followed her with lazy appreciation.
Mina lowered her handful of underclothing with a glower. “I’m not putting on a show here,” she huffed. “I can hardly dress with an audience!”
“That act would never make it on the music hall,” Nye pointed out reasonably. “They’d want to see you take them off, not put them on.”
Only by supreme strength of will did Mina stop herself from bristling like an old schoolmarm. “I wouldn’t know about that,” she said loftily. “I’ve never been to the music hall.”
He gave a slow smile. “You don’t say.”
This talk of music halls made her think of the covered screens she had used previously, which were decorated with flyers and advertisements for similar acts. “If we’re to share this bedroom, I could do with some screens,” she mused. “Maybe I should bring those ones up from the scullery.”
“That tatty old thing,” Nye objected. “It’s not fit for anything but the rubbish tip.”
“Someone clearly went to a lot of trouble to paste those advertisements all over it,” she pointed out. “Who made it?”
He was silent a moment. “My mother,” he said finally. She waited a moment, but nothing more was forthcoming.
“Oh, well, I expect it could be restored with some work.”
He made a rude noise. “It’s hardly worth the bother.”
Mina pulled her drawers on underneath her billowing nightgown. “Maybe I should strip it down and re-decorate it with your news clippings,” she said, then wondered why she was provoking him. He clearly hadn’t wanted her to see those articles. She shot an uneasy look at him, wondering if she had gone too far.
Nye’s eyes glinted at her, despite his relaxed pose. “Well, this is unexpected. Are you teasing me, Mina?”
For some reason, her face filled with hot color. “No,” she burst out vehemently.
“It sounded like you were.”
Was she? Mina shifted from one foot to another. “I just—spoke without thinking, that’s all.”
“Maybe you should do that more often.”
She bit her lip and tied the drawstring at her waist. “Now you’re teasing me,” she said flatly. He didn’t answer but when she sat on the edge of the bed to pull on her stockings, she felt his arms close about her from behind.
“I was in earnest,” he said gruffly, then nuzzled his face to her neck. Mina gasped feeling the rasp of his stubble up and down her sensitive skin. “Don’t be so starchy.” Before she could make any reply to that, he released her with a kiss to her pulse point and ringing slap to her backside that was hard enough for her
