After the Wedding (The Worth Saga #2)(31)

“I’m not sure where you’re leading right now.” Mr. Hunter rubbed his head.

“I have spent the entire day being told that I was an idiot for believing one word of your cockamamie story.”

He didn’t scream at her for doubting him.

He exhaled slowly. “You’re right. From your point of view, it makes not one lick of sense. What can I say or do to convince you?”

She lifted her head. “There’s no need.” Her eyes bored into him. “I told you, I have spent the entire day in contemplation. I will receive no references from the rector. I have almost nothing. Honest labor in places where I will not be disturbed will be nigh impossible to come by. Rationally, intelligently, I have come to the conclusion that my best hope for continued prosperity is to become a prostitute.”

His eyes widened. “That’s—that’s—”

“That’s logic,” she told him. “That’s the cold hard truth I have had to face while you have been off doing whatever you have been doing. I have no idea how to be a proper prostitute, mind. I don’t mean the trading money for favors part—that, I assume, is simple enough. But I have enough experience to know that prostitution is a business like any other business. There are ways to do it well and ways to do it badly. I haven’t even the option to take an apprenticeship. But I’m not stupid. I imagine I could figure it out. Eventually.”

She had rendered him dumbfounded.

“There.” She stood up and offered him her hand. “There is nothing you need say to convince me of your story. I believe you, even though it’s idiocy to do so. I believe you because you were kind. I believe you because you did come back. I believe you because holding onto my hopes, however irrational they are, is better than the alternative, which is horrid. You don’t need to convince me. Just—please. Don’t disappoint me.”

He looked into her eyes, and very slowly, he smiled. “You’re a bit of a tiger, aren’t you?”

It was her turn to blink at him in confusion. “A what?”

“A tiger,” he said. “Large-ish cat? Orange and black stripes? Occasionally eats people?”

Nobody had ever called Camilla a tiger before. Likely nobody had ever thought it. She stared at him a moment before shaking her head.

“I’m really not,” she said slowly. “I only knew what to say just now because I had an entire day to plan it out.”

“There, you see?” He dusted his hands together. “That settles it. Tigers are planners.”

“What do you know about tigers anyway?”

“Well, I know you now,” he said unhelpfully.

Well. Then. She wasn’t going to hurt her head trying to figure that out. “Enough about me. Tell me about your uncle and the…telegram malfunction that delayed you, or whatever it was.”

Mr. Hunter rolled his eyes. She didn’t think he was rolling them at her this time.

“You did say he’d be able to help us with an annulment, didn’t you? Were you wrong?”

He licked his lips and looked off into the distance. “You…are not the only one here who tries to see the best in people, it turns out.”

“Ah. He disappointed you, then.”

His eyes shivered shut. “A little. It’s…not the first time he’s done it. I really shouldn’t be surprised. Grayson—my older brother—he says I’m too trusting. But…”

“But?”

“But my uncle does need my help,” Mr. Hunter said. “And—I’ve thought it over—if we are to annul our marriage, we’ll have to offer some reason why Lassiter and Miles, two men of the church, acted as they did. My uncle is not wrong to insist that I find proof of Lassiter’s wrongdoing. I just don’t know how to get it.”

“Oh.” Camilla found herself smiling. “How sad. If only you knew someone who had spent eighteen months in Miles’s household. If only you had talked to her this morning.”

He looked at her. “Do you know something?”

She bit her lip. “I know someone who might know something. There’s only one small problem.”

“What’s that?”

“We’ll need to stay somewhere in the vicinity while we ask questions,” Camilla said. “It’s late. And I would vastly prefer not to stay one more night in a place where I am expected to start the exciting profession of walking the streets at any minute.”

He just looked at her for a moment before nodding. “I can find somewhere in town for me—there’s a rooming house there. For you…this may sound odd, but I know just the place for you.”



* * *



“Here, here, sit down,” said Mrs. Beasley. Camilla had met the woman a few times before, when she’d been sent to the telegraph office in town, but they’d never said much to one another—certainly not enough for the woman to be bustling about and fetching her tea. “Poor dear. You’ve been through quite the ordeal, haven’t you? I’m sorry I haven’t much better to offer than a space in the back.”

Camilla and Adrian had been ushered in and seated at a table near the mantel, in a room that appeared to be composed almost entirely of doilies. Doilies on the wall. Doilies under the plates. Doilies hanging off the table. Little decorative doilies had been bound together into pink covers that adorned the poker, shovel, and tongs that stood by the fireplace. The room was a veritable museum to the doily.