Chapter Seventeen
July 20th, 1812
Exeter, Devonshire
To Nell’s relief, Mordecai Black didn’t act the lover at breakfast. He was friendly and polite, not amorous. He didn’t mention their kisses, but memory of those intimacies hummed in the air between them. He had kissed her and she had kissed him, and it had been the most exhilarating experience of her life. She had felt alive in a way she hadn’t realized was possible, as if she’d sleepwalked for twenty-three years and only been truly awake for that half hour on the sofa.
She understood now why Sophia had run off with her soldier. Who wouldn’t run off with a man who made one feel like that? Who wouldn’t choose ruin over respectability, if that was ruin?
After breakfast, Nell gave him the sketch and the names of the midwives in the Wes
