She looked up from the chair in her room, crochet hook in hand. A mirror stood on the wall; she eyed her pink-flushed cheeks. Love hurt, but… Love had shaped her, too.
It would this time as well.
Adrian was going to walk away one day. But if the past were any sort of guide, she wouldn’t leave him empty-handed.
What would she take from him?
If she could choose…
If she could choose anything, it would be that confidence she had seen so often seen on him. Could she learn that? She considered it, and she watched him, wondering where that wellspring of braveness came from.
* * *
It took Camilla five days to make friends—across the span of a hundred years—with Jane Leland, opium drugged heiress and Miss Laney Tabbott.
It had taken her seven to read their accounts so often that she knew what she and Adrian needed for this annulment—proof, absolute proof, indisputable proof.
They didn’t yet have it.
It had taken her ten days to think about going back—about really going back. She pushed the thought away the first time it intruded, then the second. If it had been just her own future at risk, she wasn’t sure she could manage it.
But for Laney Tabbott, for Jane Leland… For the women who had not had a chance for justice, she thought she might be able to try. The men who had hurt them were long gone, but if she did nothing, Bishop Lassiter would one day maybe sit over a question of annulment. Rector Miles would hear from women who had been injured by men on a near-weekly basis. There was no justice for the dead, but there were too many women still living in need of kindness.
For Laney and Jane, Camilla allowed herself to imagine that she had the courage to act. She imagined herself walking into the household. The long-dead women would walk invisibly by her side, present only in her imagination.
The first time Camilla imagined going back, she cried by the riverbank; she didn’t let herself consider it for another two days.
But she could not let them down, not like this. Not anymore.
She returned to the prospect again and again, imagining the words she would say. Imagining the precise turn of her neck. Imagining how someone in the household might respond, and what she would do if they asked her this question or that.
The second time, she didn’t cry. The third, her hands scarcely shook. By the time she had done it fifty times, her determination had become a bonfire.
That evening, three weeks after they’d come to Adrian’s house, she sat with Adrian at dinner one night.
“We’d like to see what you say about designs,” he said. “They’re almost finished.”
“Good.” She looked down at her plate, then over at him. He was watching her with an intensity that prickled the palms of her hands, the soles of her feet.
“Tomorrow morning?” he asked.
“If you wish.” She inhaled, almost afraid to commit herself. But she’d promised herself—and him—and she’d promised Jane and Laney, so she swallowed her worries and moved forward.
“I know what we need to get our annulment,” she told him. “I know how to get it, and I’m prepared to do it.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Centralization, you said.” Theresa’s brother folded his arms and kicked his legs out impatiently from the seat where he had spent the last handful of weeks. “Less time in an office sitting around, you said.” He looked at the heavy volume in front of him. “We’ll do better than the man Christian paid a vast sum to, who does this for a living. Really, Tee?”
Admittedly, their quest had not run as smoothly as Theresa had imagined. In her mind, they would have arrived at the General Register Office on a Monday and discovered what they needed halfway through that afternoon, before they even had a chance to get hungry for tea.
In reality, it had been weeks. Theresa herself would have been bitterly indignant, except she had to pretend serenity for her brother’s sake.
Instead, she sniffed. “Have some patience, Corporal. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Her brother frowned mulishly. “Everyone always says that, but it’s never because someone is complaining about an entire city not being constructed over the space of twenty-four hours! It’s always about something utterly stupid that should not take longer than fifteen seconds. And we asked last night at dinner and it turns out that of course the people who Christian hired did go through the General Register Office. Because they’re not idiots, that’s why. Your assumptions were wrong and you were wrong and I’m tired of sitting here.”
Theresa shot him a quelling look. “How am I supposed to be addressed again?”
A long sigh. “I’m tired of sitting here, sir,” he muttered.
“Well.” It was time to bring out her most fearsome weapon. Theresa fixed her brother with a look. “You are younger than me, after all. And everyone knows men haven’t the patience of women; they never have the chance to develop it. I suppose I have been remiss in not making allowances for your incapacity.”
“That’s—” Benedict bit off his complaint and glared at her. “That’s not fair.”
She waved a hand. “You’re free to go at any time.”
Theresa, on the other hand, was going to sit here and go through these damned records for the rest of her natural life if she needed to. The alternative would be that she would be wrong, and she refused to let that happen.
“Have it your way!” Benedict picked up a book. “I’m staying.”
She shot him another look. “Corporal Benedict.”
He let out a groan. “I’m staying, sir.”
“Your choice not to desert is commendable.” She flipped a page of her record book. “And you’re right—we did find out last night that Judith’s people had looked through the records. That was valuable information; it helps us expand our search, if we must. They were looking for a Camilla Worth. We’re looking for anything abnormal involving something that looks a little like her name. Let’s start by assuming that she’d make only a minimal change. She’s still called Camilla. If I were constructing a false identity, I would use a last name that starts with a W. Or maybe a Y.”
“Right.” Benedict just looked disgusted. “Do you know how many people there are named Camilla in Britain? How are we to pay attention to them all?”
Theresa set down her book, stood, and strode confidently down the hall, not waiting to see if her brother would follow. Luckily, he scampered after her. There was no point being anything other than confident.
“We should finish up the marriage registries today,” she said as he caught up to her. “If we don’t find anything there, we’ll get to look into birth records, and won’t that be a delightful change of pace?”
In all honesty, they should have started there. A child born out of wedlock was the most likely reason why Camilla would have changed her name. She wasn’t about to spring the notion on Benedict’s young, innocent ears unless she had no choice.
After that, there were penal records and death certificates—but those both sounded terrible, and she hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Theresa marched up to the clerk at the marriage records desk as if she were not fifteen years of age. She hoped the hat she was wearing made her look older; it was ugly enough.
“My good man,” she greeted him. That was how the dowager marchioness spoke, and it always seemed to get results.
He straightened and turned to her. “Yes? How can I help you, miss?”
Theresa tilted her head up and attempted to look down her own nose. It didn’t work, because he was a good six inches taller than she was, and also, her nose was somewhat lacking. She felt herself blushing. “I should like to see the marriage registers for 1864 and 1865, if you please. And if you have a folio for recent marriages, we should like to see that.”
“If you could fill out the request form…” He indicated to her right.
“But of course. I should be delighted to.”
“Why are you talking like that?”
Benedict asked loudly. “All stodgy-like? Have you had a stick inserted up your—”
“Shut up,” she responded in a quiet hiss.
A bit of lead pencil, two minutes, and her terrible scratchy handwriting later was all it took to produce the form. The man took it, bowed, and disappeared into the ranks of shelves behind him.
“I’m always amazed,” Benedict whispered at her side, “that they’re willing to give us whatever we ask for just because we fill out some stupid form. Do they have any idea who you are and what you do with things that make you angry?”
Theresa rolled her eyes at him. “Stop being so dramatic. We’re just asking to look at some ruddy pieces of paper. Nobody cares about them, so nobody’s going to make off with them. It’s not as if we’re filing a request to steal the Crown Jewels.”
“Mmm. You’d find a way.”
The man came back with two books under his arm and a sheaf of bound papers.
“Here you are, Miss. You mayn’t take them from the room, of course.”
“Thank you. You’ve been most helpful.”
She and Benedict divided the work between them. Theresa had become almost familiar with the ebb and flow of the reading. The records were divided into books listing name after name after name, alphabetically set forth, with numbers following after that indicating where the full record was kept.
There were no Camilla Worths married in 1865, Theresa found, nor anyone with a last name starting with a W. She tried a few other combinations—Camilla Cassandra, for her middle name, and Camilla Weston, for her mother’s name.