Chapter Text
The clear, pure light of morning fills the room when she wakes next. He stands at the open window, surveying the day. She stirs, and he turns with alacrity. She pulls up the sheets to cover herself, obeying the impulse of modesty. Which must mean that...
“Oh.” He looks away. “I will...” He rubs his hand over his forehead. “I’ll send a maid to help you dress.”
“Thank you,” she answers quietly but steadily.
He crosses the room without looking back at her. She clutches the sheet to her collarbone until the door is firmly closed behind him.
She explores the state of her hair with fingers weakened by long exertion. It seems tangled beyond repair; the maid will have a hard time of it, unless she can spare a mobcap and frock for Rey to wear. She is going away anyway, penniless and ruined—it hardly matters whether she looks like a lady.
Two maids enter, and one busies herself with throwing open all the windows while the other examines the state of Rey’s hair and person.
“I’ll ready you a bath, shall I, milady,” she adjudges tactfully, and Rey agrees with a blush and a nod.
The tub is deep and wide—specially made with Lord Solo’s dimensions in mind, perhaps. She settles in with a slight wince of soreness of her back and rear that she had never noticed while its cause was underway. One of the maids sets to scrubbing her limbs while the other wets a comb and attacks the bird’s nest of tangles on her head. In the light of day, Rey finds fingertip-shaped bruises on her thighs, but the maids make no remark except perhaps for some silent eyebrow-based communication that passes between the two of them, which Rey can hardly fault them for. She makes it through the bathing process with her dignity intact only because she refuses to surrender it.
They dry her and bundle her through an adjoining door which she had not noted before, but when she arrives in the next room she hesitates. It is a bedchamber nearly as big as the one she just left, but hung with drapes the color of dusky roses, and papered in a pink that speaks eloquently of daintiness, fragility, femininity.
The bedchamber of Lord Solo’s mother, and what will be the bedchamber of his wife.
It is silent, still, immaculately furnished, but with the whisper of old dust long undisturbed. Rey hardly dares to breathe for fear of disturbing the quietude. She submits to the ministrations of the maids, and so caught up is she in examining the room that it takes her a great deal longer than it should to notice that the day dress in which they are attiring her is one of her own.
“Oh!” she exclaims in surprise. “How did you get this?”
The maids hesitate, but the bolder one decides to answer. “Your guardian’s footman left off all your clothes, I believe, milady.”
Of course. Plutt was all too ready to be rid of her before she was so publicly ruined; he must be doubly so now. It makes things easier, in fact, since she will not need to return to his house before she leaves for the country.
She sits at the vanity as one of the maids twists and curls her hair into a style altogether respectable. Between the decency of her hair and the modesty of her dress, Rey could almost trick herself into the momentary belief that the face staring back from the mirror at hers was not that of a woman who spent the last five days in a man’s bed. Strange how simple ruination was, how easily she fell—toppled off the narrow perch of propriety into an ocean of flesh and moans and mindless kisses. The blood rises to her cheeks as she considers it, and she quickly looks away, down to the polished vanity surface on which rests the silver-backed brushes and jewel-encrusted combs waiting to be used, or more likely content to sit idle for decades more.
The maid pushes in a final pin and clears her throat quietly. “Will there be anything else, milady?”
“No.” Rey looks up quickly. “Thank you. That is...might I have the trunk? With my clothes?”
The maids exchange swift glances. “Lord Solo is waiting for you in the drawing room, milady.”
“Oh no, I do not— that is...” She sighs inwardly and resigns herself to a brief farewell. “Very well.”
“I can show you the way, milady, if you’ll follow me.”
If she were not following in the maid’s footsteps, Rey could take the time to examine the portraits that line the hall: generations of Solos waiting in haughty expectation for the current marquis to sire more descendants to take their place on the walls. She shivers as they clear the gantlet of eyes and reach the stairs, and this is the first time she’s descended them sedately, and fully clothed. The hall below is unremarkable except for its grandeur, and in point of fact, in this house anything other than grandeur would be remarkable. Their two sets of footsteps echo across the marble of the grand entryway, and when they finally reach the drawing room door, Rey has the impression of having undergone a substantial journey. The maid opens the door for her, and as Rey enters the room, Lord Solo turns from where he stands by the window.
A manservant or two must have been engaged in the same pursuits as the maids, because he is washed and brushed and dressed to immaculate perfection, having completed his toilette in one of the guest rooms, she assumes, since she was monopolizing his bath.
He moves stiffly to stand by a chair abutting a chaise longue and says, with a slight bow, “Good morning, Miss Niima.”
“You do not—” She collects herself and folds her hands in front of herself. “You don’t need to stand on ceremony with me, Lord Solo. Under the circumstances, I think it rather useless.”
“I do not consider courtesy to be useless.”
“Your attitude in that regard has undergone some change, then, since the ball.”
“I would say there have been several changes since the ball, Miss Niima.”
She blushes and knits her fingers together. “I would think a gentleman would make as little allusion to them as possible.”
He clears his throat. “I did not mean to... Will you sit?”
She hesitates, and he senses it.
“Just for five minutes. Then you can leave, if you wish.”
She frowns, vacillating between options, but finally sniffs her acquiescence and settles down onto the nearest chair, at a distance of some feet from him.
He waits until she is seated before lowering himself stiffly into his own chair. To any observer, they would appear to be nodding acquaintances.
He clears his throat. “Where will you go?”
“Before Plutt summoned me to town, I was staying in the country. I spent a great deal of pleasant time with a schoolmistress there. She promised that I could come stay there, if I wish, and teach.”
He shifts in his chair. “And who would your pupils be?”
She smiles. “No one of consequence. Children of shopkeepers, farmers—anyone who wishes to scrape together some education.”
“You would be compensated appropriately?”
Rey laughs. “Hardly. My pay will be my room and board, and whatever else the schoolmistress happens to have to spare. My compensation will rather be my independence.”
“You might marry.” His Adam’s apple betrays the strength of his gulp.
“I won’t,” she answers quickly. “I’ve only just told you of my resolution to be independent.”
“Your plans are admirable.” He crosses his legs, then uncrosses them again. “But—forgive me—they were made before certain...developments. Will this schoolmistress be so ready to bring you on when she learns of your designation?”
No, is the immediate and honest answer that springs to Rey’s mind. Despite their personal affection, she could not afford to compromise the reputation of her school by employing an unattached omega. Rey would not ask her to. She raises her eyes to him before realizing that they’ve filled with tears. “Oh.”
“Miss Niima,” he says, springing to his feet and coming to her side, “I did not intend to upset you.” He crouches down beside her, kneeling awkwardly on one knee, but she gets up, walking away to compose herself without his eyes on her. She takes several deep breaths, mastering herself, before she turns back around. He stands penitent beside the chair she vacated.
“I did not intend to upset you,” he repeats helplessly.
“You did not,” she replies, wringing her trembling hands into submission. “I just hadn’t thought of that, yet. I hadn’t considered.”
“I know that there have been many things these several days that you would wish undone, or unsaid. But I wish you to know: no part of what has happened between us has diminished my very great esteem for you. And I will do everything in my power to...help you, in whatever way you allow.”
“Isn’t it funny?” She gasps as the enormity of her ruination descends heavy on her heart. “Nothing has changed for you. You are still Lord Solo, and you could give another ball tonight and the whole ton would come. And I... I am entirely ruined. There is nothing left for me. Nowhere I can go.”
“That is not true.” His eyes are wild, flashing with something she cannot name, and if she could smell she guesses some strong emotion would be apparent. “It’s not true, that nothing has changed for me. Everything has changed. And you...” He draws a deep breath. “I will do anything for you.”
She shakes her head hopelessly and spreads her hands wide in surrender to her confusion. “I do not understand.”
He adjusts his cravat and tugs at his lapels. “I am not asking you out of duty. I wish you to know that. I do have the very strongest duty toward you, but that is not why I am asking. It is because I esteem you. And care for you. Miss Niima. I care for you...beyond measure.”
“What?” Her brow furrows in confusion. “What are you asking?”
“Oh.” He approaches her, but seems to think better of it and stops partway. “I am asking you to be my wife.”
The shock hits her distantly, first, but then compresses her chest. She reels. Her hand flies to her chest. She shakes her head to try to clear it, but her brain seems to be filled with a buzzing that admits no ordered thought. “Your wife,” she repeats faintly.
“Yes. Marry me, Miss Niima.”
Her head begins shaking before she realizes it, or perhaps it had never paused. “No. I can’t. No.”
“There is no reason why you can’t.”
“There are a hundred reasons why I can’t.” She barks an incredulous laugh and gestures around the room. “Look where we are! Look around, at your ancestral home! And look at me!”
“I am looking at you.” He takes a step toward her. His gaze burns. “If I had my wish, I would never stop.”
“I—” she gropes for words. “I’m an omega! I’m the daughter of a dead, impoverished gentleman, and you have I don’t even know how many thousands of pounds a year, and I would hardly merit your notice even if I had no designation, but I am an omega. No vicar in the country would marry us. You would be cast off from good society. You would be stripped of your title. You would lose—” she gestures around “—all this.”
“I’m counting on it.” He’s smiling. Why is he smiling? “Once I’m not Lord Solo anymore, will you finally call me Benjamin?”
“What?”
“You’ve slept much more than I have over the past five days, so I’ve had plenty of time to think. And then to plan. And everything fits together. I renounce the title. I have my mother’s dowry—it’s not tied to the estate. If I’d had a sister, it would’ve been her portion, but as it is, it’s mine, free and clear. We can go wherever you like, start over. We can travel. Have you been to the continent? I’ll take you anywhere. We can live in a villa in Greece, by the sea. We can do...”—he heaves a breathy gasp at the enormity of the potential—“...anything. Only marry me.”
The earth is unsteady beneath her feet. She grasps for something solid, and her hand lands on top of the pianoforte. “You cannot possibly be in earnest.”
He smiles gently. “Why not?”
“You would not give all of this up. Your place in society.”
“Ah, yes. Because everything you know about me has evidenced my passionate fondness for society.” He’s still smiling.
“Your— your family’s legacy.”
“It will be in much better and far less indifferent hands.”
“You have a younger brother?”
“No. A second cousin. To whom I will gladly turn over the keys to this mausoleum and never give him, or it, a second thought as long as I live, except to rejoice at being free of it all.”
She clutches the pianoforte’s lid. “I don’t understand. To listen to you, I could almost believe you’re in earnest.”
He exclaims, “I can smell your trepidation, but you cannot smell my sincerity.”
“Then tell me.” She squares her shoulders to face him, head on. “If I could, what would I smell?”
“Besides the sincerity? I don’t know, in truth.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know if love can be smelled.”
Her chest expands, to fit what she does not know, but it warms her from the inside. Not the nagging heat of frustrated need, but something steady. True.
“There’s a piece I didn’t tell you, and I should have, I’m certain, as soon as I realized. But you were so confused and angry and frightened, and you thought everything I told you that first evening was overwhelming, and it was. If I’d told you the other part too, I don’t know how horrified you would have been, and I didn’t know how to say it. In all my idle thoughts about what it would be like, it never occurred to me that I would have to tell you—that you wouldn’t smell it. Because when you meet your mate, she smells it too, and she knows. And none of the books prepared me for...how incredibly frustrating you were, and how much you disliked me, and how you were nothing like the omegas the scientists described. Because you’re angry, and prickly, and entirely maddening, and they never could’ve written you. You aren’t meant to be anything as stark as words on a page; you’re meant to be held and worshipped and loved, if you’ll let me.” His shoulders relax, as if relieved of a lifetime’s worth of tension. “So let me, Miss Niima. Rey. Be my wife, so I can love you.”
“Oh.” Tears cloud her eyes, but still she makes her way to him unerringly. She lays a tentative hand on his chest, and he clasps his larger one over it. She tilts her head up to him pleadingly. “I didn’t know.”
“Are you disappointed?”
She laughs and sniffles. “That you’re my mate?”
He nods.
She looks down at his chest, at the way his hand rests warm and strong on hers. “Not entirely.” She smiles impishly and looks back up at him.
“I think that might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Miss Niima.”
She laughs through tears. “You’re truly willing to give this all up? To— marry me?”
“‘Willing’ implies some possibility of reluctance, or resignation. Would you ask someone if he’s willing to be happy?”
“No.” She traces the tip of her finger along his cheek. “I don’t suppose I would.”
He leans forward and touches his forehead to hers. He inhales deeply. “How is it that I want to be standing at an altar with you this instant, and I want just as much to be in bed with you?”
“Ah,” she teases, scrunching up her nose. “I should’ve known! You just want to marry me so you can keep doing the act with me.”
He grins rakishly. “Well, I could suspect the same of you, my love, with your voracity.”
She pretends to pout. “You’re no gentleman!”
“No.” He’s deathly serious, suddenly. “I’m only a man.”
She smiles softly, and in her eyes are an invitation. He slowly bends down to meet it, and just before his lips meet hers, she whispers, “That’s even better.”