"I don't know. My watch has run down. Pearl, would you please stop fluttering about? We have matters to discuss."
"Matters?" She flung a desperate glance at him and went on picking up petticoats from the pile on the floor. "Oh dear. Sounds dreadfully serious."
"It is." This was the problem with a failure to take anything seriously. When one was serious, no one believed it.
He took the petticoats away from her and piled them on the bed, then he caught both her hands in his before she could find something else to pick up. One would think she feared what he might say to her. "Pearl."
He was going to bollocks this up. He knew he was. Down on one knee. That was the proper way to do it.
"Pearl. My dear." He looked up into her astonished, half-fearful face. She'd turned aside, as if trying to evade a blow. Why, for God's sake? Surely she knew what the kneeling meant. What if that was why she cringed? No way to know but to get through it.
"Pearl, would you do me the very great honor of becoming my wife?" He put on his very best hopeful, pleading face, trying to look as sincere as possible. His wasn't a face made for sincerity, but he did his best.
"Why?"
That took him aback. "What kind of answer is that?" he asked, nettled. "You're supposed to say yes, or no. Not why, for God's sake!"
She nettled up in turn. "If I can't ask why-if you won't give me an answer, then I'll have to say-"
"Don't." He knew what she would say. They'd only been together a month, but he knew that petite frame was mostly filled with stubbornness. "Why is fine. I'll tell you why."
His knee began to hurt. Besides, it was only the proposal that required kneeling, wasn't it? Arguing her into it didn't. Grey got to his feet, using the need for her assistance as an excuse to keep her hands in his. He could tell she wanted free, but he was afraid if he let go, he'd never capture her again.
"Well?" she demanded when he was standing. She shook her hands free and propped them on her hips. "Why do you want to marry me?"
"Because I do." He needed more time. Time when she wasn't flouncing naked under a delightful flannel wrapper, distracting him. He had reasons. They were just blastedly difficult to articulate at the moment.
Her eyes narrowed, and she darted past him to pounce on the drawers he'd left lying on the coverlet. He should have put them on, should have realized Pearl would turn the evidence into a weapon against him rather than the other way around. Though he couldn't quite see how.
"Is this the reason?" She shook his undergarment at him.
"My drawers?" Grey arched an eyebrow, trying to take back the advantage. How had he lost it? "Or the evidence of your formerly virgin status?"
"Pfff-" She waved a dismissive hand. "What of it? It was mine to give away. Now I have. It means nothing."
"It means everything." Grey wasn't shouting.
"It means nothing," Pearl shouted back. " Reputation means everything, and I lost that long ago, when Papa and I had to go live on Half Moon Yard. Everyone knows where I found you, that I'd been living there. Actually losing it meant nothing, because nobody believed I had it to begin with. Not even you."
That knocked him awry, like a slap to the face. "You're right," he said quietly. "To my everlasting shame. You are correct that I did not believe it possible, that you could still be innocent. But you are wrong that it means nothing. It meant something to me."
He took back his balance, caught that sizzling glare from her, and looked behind it, or tried. "How was it possible?"
She shrugged dismissively, but Grey refused to be dismissed. He saw beneath her uncaring facade, because he had his own. He saw the tender places she protected, and it sobered him to realize she would let him see. "Tell me. Please."
"I was sixteen when Mama and George died," she said with another shrug. "That threw everything into an uproar. Stephen and Martin fell ill, but they didn't die until the next year, when the typhoid came. I had barely begun to notice boys, to flirt, and then-" Her shoulders shifted. Not quite a shrug.
"Your world fell apart," Grey said, gently as he could.
"Something like that." She looked away, blinked back tears.
Grey wanted to hold her, but he didn't dare. Not until they had everything sorted. Because if he held her, he would kiss her, and if he kissed her-They might not go beyond that, since Pearl could well be of a different mind now, but he feared taking the chance. He wanted this settled.
"What about later," he asked. "After you moved into Half Moon Yard?"
"Papa lost everything so quickly. He simply-" She gave a deep despairing sigh. "He never recovered from Mama's death. The heart, the will to live-it died with her. He didn't care. The boys did their best but-"
She spoke quickly, brightly. "Scarlet fever took Mama and George, and nearly made off with Stephen and Martin as well. I was away at finishing school, which is why it didn't get me. But it left the boys weak. Frail. So when the typhoid came-"
Grey led her to the chair at the dressing table and set her on it, then knelt at her side, chafing her cold hands.
"We were in London by then. We'd left Portsmouth to bring the boys to London doctors in hopes of treatment. But nothing helped. Papa's business went all to pieces when Stephen and Martin died. Our house in Portsmouth was seized by creditors and everything sold. When we moved to Half Moon Yard, Papa told me to dress as a boy. Because I'm small, you see. I would be safer that way. He did care."
But not enough. Not enough to keep her out of Whitechapel altogether. Not enough to find her a husband to protect her. Grey wanted to shake the man. "What happened to your father? You said he had died, did you not?"
Pearl nodded. "He drank himself to death. I thought it would take longer, but-just more than a year and a half. Apparently when someone is truly determined . . ."
"So your disguise and your magic kept you a virgin?"
She gave another of her careless shrugs. "That, and the fact that I never met anyone I fancied enough to share my secret with." She eyed him sharply and pulled her hand from his. "I told you I was female because of the magic. Not because I fancied you."
He smiled, one of the teasing smiles that had worked wonders with women over the years. Those not related to him. "But you do fancy me, don't you, Pearl? Just a little?"
This shrug was one-sided. Her shoulders had to be tiring. "Don't be ridiculous," she said. "You know you are the most beautiful man in all of London. Half the world fancies you."
He blinked at her, startled at first, then quite pleased. She thought he was beautiful. She'd never said so. But then she wouldn't. She made it her life's mission to keep him from getting a swelled head. She had told him that. Often.
"Yes," he said, thinking over what she'd actually said. "But do you fancy me? You might think me-" He cleared his throat, unable to easily say it. Men were not beautiful. But if she thought so- "Might think me, well, beautiful. But it does not of necessity follow that you fancy me. Do you?"
She looked down at her hands fidgeting with the tie belt of her wrapper. "Yes," she said, so quietly he had to lean closer to hear. "Unfortunately, I do."
"But it's not unfortunate at all." Grey wanted to jump to his feet and caper about the room. He couldn't think why. "If you fancy me, and I fancy you-which I do not, I desire you beyond all rationality-but don't you see that it will make our marriage all the more pleasant?"
She turned a sour expression upon him.
"It is part of the ‘why' you asked me," Grey said quickly, before she could throw up more barricades. "Because I do desire you. Madly. Passionately. Constantly. But I will not treat you with anything less than honor and respect.
"As your magic-master, it would be my place to insist upon marriage under these circumstances with any other man. Simply because I am also the person who has stolen the prize does not make it any less my place. You may have no reputation, Pearl, but you do have honor. And you have my respect. Will you force me to blacken my honor by refusing me?"
"I thought you'd blackened your honor quite nicely all on your own," Pearl retorted, her voice thick with emotion. Please God, not with tears. He would buckle under the assault of tears.
He stood, feeling the need to make his case more forcefully. "My reputation, not my honor.
"Reputation is what others think about you, and you are right, I do not give a good goddamn-begging your pardon-for that. But honor is what I know of myself. It is the line I will not cross. One thing that upholds my honor is that I will not cause harm to those weaker than myself. I will protect those who cannot protect themselves."
He held up a hand to forestall Pearl's arguments. "I know, my dearest Pearl, that you are fully capable of protecting yourself-of protecting me, in many ways. You are a strong woman and a powerful magician. A magician who is still learning her magic. And a woman alone in the world. It is unfortunate that the world is a place where a woman needs protection, but it is most definitely such a place.