Page 113 of A Devilish Element
“Go. You should rest,” Eliza encouraged. “Shall you need my help?”
Despite her sore palms, Jane shook her head. “I think I’d like a few minutes alone in which to collect myself, and this dress is easy enough to unpin.”
Eliza pulled her into a quick embrace, then released her and watched her up the stairs. Jem was lingering by the solitary suit of mail when she finally turned away from the stairs.
“Will you join Doctor Bell and Sir Cyril?” she asked.
Jem shook his head. “I’ve had more than my fill of adventures for one night, and I’ve no desire to be tugged into a conversation over either body. I think I might follow in Lady Linfield’s footsteps and see if I can catch forty winks before anyone asks me to relate what has happened. What about you, Eliza? Do you intend to go down and make sure that facts are being presented as you wish them?”
A part of her was certainly being tugged in that direction, but another was eager for a soft pillow and the respite offered by an eiderdown. “I should give Jane a few moments,” she said, committing to neither. Of course, there were other beds in other rooms she might avail herself of, but that would feel like an imposition, even though Jane would never scold her for it. Besides, she wasn’t certain she wanted to close her eyes, for she was sure to tumble headlong in memories of the balcony tipping beneath her feet and the ground rushing fast towards her. It was a wonder that she’d survived. Jem would probably be able to show her the mechanics of it. How her trajectory accounted for the fact she’d survived bruised but unbroken whereas Mrs Honeyfield had met with an undignified end, but she wasn’t ready to relive it yet.
“I might pen a letter.” It would help untangle her thoughts to have to pin them fast to the page, and it would entertain her sisters to hear of her adventures. Although, she would omit certain factors, and definitely miss seeing their reactions as they read. Would they believe it? She was sure she would not if she were presented with such an account. They would wince and laugh and clap their hands in delight though over the many twists and turns, and Maria would claim to have known from the start who was responsible. Her other sisters would nod, but not believe her, while Frederick would insist on voicing that fact, and then a squabble would break out and little Leesa would join in the tableau, her toddler voice out screeching them all.
All at once, she was dismally homesick for the familiar comforts of Bluebell Lane and her kin. Their warmth, their presence, and their fierce love for one another.
“Goodnight, then,” Jem bowed his head to her, then took to the stairs. “Eliza?” He paused part way up, one hand clasped to his side, reminding her of his injury. None of them had survived the evening unscathed.
“Good night,” she returned, allowing him to nod and depart.
She stood for some minutes looking at the step where he’d been, feeling like a piece had been cut from her reality, a certain sliver that was vitally important, and with that realisation she knew precisely where she wanted to be. It was not with Jane, or her family, nor with Bell in his basement surgery, but next to the man she loved. The man who had been there when she’d needed him to be. Who wasn’t perfect in any way, but who was perhaps perfect for her.
She ran up the stairs and straight to his room. Nor did she wait after she wrapped her knuckles against the door, but brazenly barrelled right in. He stood stripped to his skin on top, candlelight painting bronze shadows over his creamy skin. A large section of his abdomen was bandaged, and he was as bruised and scraped as she knew herself to be, but he was also undeniable lovely, and she loved him.
“Eliza! Whatever’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” She laughed, moving the bottle of brandy that lay on his quilt to the bedside table. “It’ll make the bed awful lumpy,” she said by way of explanation.
“I don’t… What are you doing here?”
She shrugged. “I just realised where I wanted to be, and it wasn’t home, or with Jane. It wasn’t even down in Bell’s surgery or buried in the pages of a scientific treatise. It’s with you. I love you too, Jem. I still don’t know that I want to get married, but I do love you, and I want… I want at least this night.”
“Just this one?” He’d found a smile too now, of the quick nervous variety as if he didn’t quite dare believe in what he was hearing yet.
“Oh, I don’t know. Shall we see what tomorrow brings? I mean, boggarts might assault us, or one of us might discover we’re actually the heir to a far-flung realm…or I might discover you snore most horrifically and decide that Joshua Rushdale is by far a better prospect.” She imitated a potential such sound.
“I do, exactly like that, and he definitely is.”
But Joshua was also not gazing at her like she was a queen among maids, nor had he ever made her heart leap in quite the same way, or hinted he was prepared to hike across the globe with her, or stargaze, or mix noxious gases in a makeshift laboratory or recite mathematical equations to her in a husky tone that made her toes curl.
He was, more importantly, not here, and semi-naked, and he’d never made her heart leap in the way that Jem did when he leaned in close, and the scent of him caught in her nostrils, and his touch washed heat through her skin. He’d never fingered her until her heart felt like it would explode or pushed her to spend over his face.
“I’m glad to see you’re considering it properly.”
“Oh, I am,” she agreed. “Perhaps we could convince him into being part of a triumvirate, like the Marquis of Pennerley and—”
“You know it’s only speculated that he and Viscount Marlinscar—”
“Fie, I know the Marchioness. She and my sister Caroline exchange letters practically every other day. There are definitely three of them in that relationship. So, perhaps—”
“You’ll recall Joshua shot the Marquis in the leg,” Jem said.
“I do,” she said, “But he could hardly let it go in front of such an audience, and he really was protesting to the fact he’d been flaunting her as his mistress and planted a penny in her pudding. It wouldn’t be at all like that between us. We’d cajole him with iron filings and axle grease and belching pufferoos.”
“I don’t know what one of those is.”
“Oh,” she waved with her uninjured arm and hand. “Nor do I, I just thought of the word, but we could invent it together, or you could with Joshua, while I—”
“Dissect corpses, birth babies, and cure the morbid sore throat.”
