Page 53 of How the Belle Stole Christmas

Jane remained on the path as Sir Nicholas stepped off it, answering the children’s demands to join them in a game with a hearty laugh.

When Sir Nicholas lifted a little girl into the air and swung her around, Jane’s belly took flight, too.

The man had a way about him, an ease with children, a gentleness that burned into something sharper, hotter when those children were out of earshot, and he walked close to her.

They’d often walked close in the last year. She’d found in him a supporter, a champion when Mr. Jameson would not listen to a woman, and a friend. She admired him.

He set little Mary on the dry grass, bending at the waist, his greatcoat draping across his backside. She admired that too.

“Staring again,” Mrs. Tottle said. “Don’t blame you.” The widow sat on a stone bench beneath a tree a short ways from the path. Her hands were folded inside a warm muff, and her silver-shot black curls had been parted in the middle to loop backward beneath her bonnet.

Jane sat next to her. The stone bench was cold and hard. Nothing like a bit of discomfort to focus her mind. Not the first time she’d found herself staring. Making comparisons. Wondering…

It had been so dark that night, and the intruder had been so well disguised, his body so big, swallowing the shadows.

She’d not heard his voice well, either, low and raspy.

He’d seemed a figment of the imagination, not blood and bone like the jolly Sir Nicholas.

That man could be the intruder, but he wasn’t.

The intruder had seemed a god, an impossible being, bigger than Sir Nicholas with a heavy air of magic about him.

No doubt he was a transcendent, titled and glamoured to appear other than he was; he must have glamoured the silver toys to seem like they shifted shapes.

Sir Nicholas was a mere man, a good one, though, and certainly good looking in the most mischievous sort of way.

He ran a hand through his auburn hair, his blue eyes like cloudless winter skies.

The corners of those eyes were crinkled.

He smiled so very much, his joy so very true.

He was broad and lean and well muscled, as most alchemists were.

Cocky. Nothing supernatural about him. He was a man of the earth and those precious metals found there, not of ephemeral shades and illusions.

Yet… perhaps he could save her just as well. Her brother’s most recent letter had come as a blow, left her feeling lifeless and desperate. He was closing the hospital in the new year, expelling the children into the cold winter. He’d said nothing about what would become of them.

He had mentioned her future, though—marriage.

Last year he’d tried to match her with his titled friends, and none of them had been willing to wed a bastard.

This year he’d dipped into the working class.

He planned to offer her to alchemists, men willing to overlook her birth and pay large sums of money to join a duke’s family.

Marriages between the two groups were rare but becoming less so.

As the ruling class found themselves short of blunt, they’d begun to turn to the brutes not afraid to get their hands dirty in order to earn it.

She didn’t want to marry a man she didn’t know. Alchemists, especially, were terribly secretive, clannish. She knew little about them except that their studies allowed them to control metal. They were a bit like magical blacksmiths… weren’t they?

She’d not dared to ask Sir Nicholas. After the scandal his friends the Grants had suffered, she didn’t want to invite his downfall by asking for his secrets.

There was something else she could ask him, though. She shivered. If she must marry an alchemist, why not one of her own choosing? Sir Nicholas had been excellent help finding the children new positions and homes. Perhaps he could help her, too.

“Mrs. Tottle… I am considering… Well, what would you think if I—” She swallowed. Difficult to state her plan outside of the safety of her own brain.

“Spit it out, woman.” Mrs. Tottle slapped Jane’s knee. “Spit it out!”

Jane closed her eyes and spit it out. “I’m thinking of asking Sir Nicholas to consider a marriage of convenience. With me.”

“Aaaahh. The wind blows in that direction. I’m not surprised.” Mrs. Tottle chuckled. “You’re doing it even now, Jane.”

“Hm? What am I doing?”

“Staring at Sir Nicholas’s backside.”

What she could see of it beneath the greatcoat.

“I would never!” Do not stare at men’s arses was rule number one, essentially, of being a proper lady.

Well, be born on the right side of the blanket was rule number one.

She’d broken that one without trying. But the rule about arse staring she could abide by.

“I knew long ago,” Mrs. Tottle said, “you particularly enjoyed that man’s arse.”

“I’m not staring. And even if I was, I would not confine myself to his posterior alone.

” A lie. The truth. A little of both. “All men have rather excellent posteriors. Comes from all the riding.” And she’d inspected many to see if she recognized any one of them.

Unfortunately, backsides were quite difficult to identify.

“You’d like to ride Sir Nicholas, then.”

“Mrs. Tottle!”

“Fine, fine. I suppose you wish to return to discussing the marriage of convenience?”

“Please.”

“It’s a sound idea. He’s a sound sort of fellow. He seems to like you. He’s unmarried. Does he show signs of an imminent proposal?”

She suspected his seeming openness was a mask.

Alchemists were a secretive lot, and he would be no different.

“He might desire it. There’s no telling with men like him.

Not likely to give away his hand.” But sometimes she thought…

in the flirtatious sparkle of his eye… “Perhaps he’s waiting for the right moment.

” More likely the right woman, an alchemist’s daughter who knew his world, shared it.

She didn’t have time to wait for some hint, though.

“I was thinking I might put the idea into his head.”

“Not a bad idea. What is stopping you?”

Too many obstacles to enumerate. She was a nobody.

Without the prestige of a proper birth, without family to love her, without magical ability to smooth her way in society.

She was powerless, and even though Sir Nicholas was no transcendent, he had power.

More than her. He was a man like none she’d ever met.

Strong and flirtatious, handsome and happy but with a vein of seriousness like steel running through him.

She scooted closer to the widow and lowered her voice.

“Women like me possess little power to control the directions of our lives.” And one way to survive that lack of control, as her stepmother had taught her, was to know who had power over your future and do as they asked you to.

When her father had told her to forget her mother’s name, she’d never spoken it again.

When her brother told her she must marry one of his cronies, she’d nodded and glued her mouth shut.

She’d at least known the fellows he’d offered her hand to.

Not that they’d wanted her. There was a certain strength in being biddable. “I cannot simply propose to him.”

Mrs. Tottle shrugged. “A rare thing for a woman to propose to a man. Smacks of desperation.”

Which was exactly what Jane was.

“Are you enamored of him?”

She found him compelling. She trusted him. Admired his mind and his body. “Convenience is not built on love. It’s built on stability to forge a clear future.”

“Hmm. Stability. A future.” Mrs. Tottle ran her knuckles back and forth across her neck, looking up into the tree branches. “Two things women like us cannot easily grasp on our own.”

Oh God, she understood, and a damn of emotion broke inside Jane.

Words rushed forth like flood waters. “My brother determines where I live, how I live. If I do not take control of my own life, I may lose everything on a whim. I have no power over even my own life.” All women were powerless.

Transcendent magic would not flow through their veins, and none became alchemists.

Some tried their hands at potions, found success there, but any power that gave them was quickly banned by parliament, its uses curtailed, and its efficacy limited.

London contained but a single potions shop, owned by a woman who’d appeared with the sunrise one morning.

Jane’s father had been wary of her, and Jane’s brother outright loathed her, theirs the two dominant male reactions.

But the mysterious woman managed to expand her business without breaking the law, so she remained, a steadfast and explosive presence in the capital.

Jane admired her, longed to be like her—a woman who took power for herself, making her way by her own wits.

“I am no Lady Guinevere,” Jane whispered.

Mrs. Tottle blinked. “Would you like to be? I know a potion or two. I could teach you. Many a woman makes her own way with a quality love-potion or skin-clearing elixir.”

“No.” Too dangerous. Too risky. She was no potion mistress. She was no one. “Marriage seems the best route to safety for me.”

“But marriage guarantees nothing. My Berty died, and I had to scramble to find a way of living without him. But your Sir Nicholas is young and hardy. I say propose to the man. Don’t suggest—do!”

She shook her head, feeling hollow. “I will simply let him know that should he find himself in want of a wife, I would not be averse to filling the position.”

“Terribly romantic.”

“I cannot afford romance.”

“Neither can I.” Said with a sigh. “And yet I’d seize it if it came my way. Steal it without regret.” Mrs. Tottle reached up and flicked a crisp brown leaf, her gaze slipping between the skeletal branches to the white sky beyond.

“Not me.” Otherwise, she’d search for the intruder. Again. Even though an entire year of searching had proven fruitless.