“Do it all.”
He set his hands on her hips and came up off his knees until he was over her. “Don’t you worry, my lady Camilla. I will.” His fingers whispered up her sides. He leaned down, and his mouth caught her nipple.
She made a choking sound.
“Ah, you like that.” He licked around her areola, then gave her a determined suck. Her eyes fluttered shut again. She’d been on the brink of desperation when he’d stopped before; he drove her back to that brink now, desperate and needing. Wanting him. Wanting all of him.
And then she had it. A pressure—welcome, at this point needed—between her thighs. Pushing. Her body opened to him. He entered her slowly, masterfully. She felt herself stretching around him. She needed him so much.
He wasn’t holding back any longer. It was too late for an annulment now. It was too late to say no, and she never wanted to do it.
Now they were one.
He let out a sigh. She opened her eyes again to see him watching her tenderly. Perfectly.
He had chosen her. She would never stop grinning. He had chosen this, between them and nobody else, for ever and ever, for the rest of their days. She gave everything up to him.
He moved inside her. There was a delicious feel where they joined. She could drown in the sensation of his hands moving on her, of her body accepting his, over and over. The sound of their bodies made delightful music.
His mouth found hers once more. The sweetness she’d tasted before mixed with her own musk. His kiss lingered and possessed. His thrusts turned harder. Faster. He claimed her all over, and she gave herself up to him.
All of her.
She let go all at once, in a spill of perfection. She felt her body squeezing, catching fire…
And he did, too. She could feel the heat of him. His hands clenched into her hips. He let out a noise, a perfect little growl, as he came.
“Adrian.” She ran her fingers along his brow. It was damp with exertion. She looked up at him. “Adrian, sweetheart.”
“Camilla.” His eyes met hers. “God, I have wanted to do that for an age.”
“And now we can.”
They lay in each other’s arms. His hand stroked down her hair. It felt almost like perfection.
It took a moment to remember. “Your brother came by.”
He shut his eyes. “Oh, God. Grayson. He is going to be an absolute wretch. I have no idea what to tell him.”
“He had—of all things—a letter from my sister and brother. They…” She smiled shyly. “They asked us to visit? And—” It occurred to her suddenly, and another jolt of happiness raced through her. “They’ve met Grayson, and they want us to visit?”
“That’s lovely.” He stroked his hand down the side of her face. A flicker of a smile touched his lips again. “Family is lovely. Even if Grayson is a wretch.”
She smiled back. “So. Do I get to meet this uncle of yours while we’re here?”
He tensed beside her. “Camilla.”
Just that one word and the doubts she had thought banished rose to the surface of her consciousness, like goldfish rising in a pond to be fed.
She was imagining things. She was so used to unhappiness that she could not let herself believe…
But no. She wasn’t imagining it. Adrian had pulled away. Just an inch, but it was there between them.
“Do you not want me to meet your family?”
He sat. Put his hands over his eyes. “Family.” The word sounded so bitter. How could he be so bitter about a word like that at a time like this? “I won’t call him that anymore. I asked him for one thing. One thing. And I was fed…that astonishing pack of self-serving lies.”
Camilla felt her whole body go cold. “What happened?”
He scowled up at the ceiling. “It’s too late, he said. We waited too long. If his colleagues find out that his own nephew posed as a valet, it will make him seem underhanded. He can’t stick his neck out for me, no. Not even after all that I’ve done. And I should be happy that you are not a complete wretch.”
Oh.
It was all she could think at first. Her happiness felt cold and out of place.
Oh. Oh. Of course he hadn’t chosen her.
He turned to her. “Oh—no, Camilla. I didn’t mean it like that. The one thing he was right about was that I am unstintingly lucky that it was you I was tied to. I went for a long walk afterwards. I didn’t know what to think; I felt numb all over. The only thing that made it bearable was knowing that it was you. I promise you, the thought of you was like a ray of light amidst all the darkness.”
He hadn’t chosen her.
“I’m not upset about you at all. It’s about him. About my own expectations.” His voice shifted—higher, more quavering—as if he were imitating his uncle. “‘My dear boy, it’s better than someone like you could have expected.’ I’m such a damned idiot.”
It wasn’t about her at all. This last hour, when he’d brought her to bed? It hadn’t been about her.
She ought to have burst into tears at that. It hurt enough. But she’d cried too much today already.
Camilla shrank back. She didn’t want her mind to work, but it did. It was working all too well. “He…was not willing to assist you in obtaining an annulment?” She should have asked outright, but she had been so happy that she hadn’t questioned.
“No. Grayson was right.” Adrian turned around. “And I’ll have to tell him so. I’ve come to realize that I doubt my uncle actually thinks of me as a blood relationship. I’m a convenient tool, and his only surprise is that I expected him to care about me in return for the care I gave him. Tools shouldn’t ask for a response.”
She shouldn’t focus on what this meant for herself. He’d just had his heart ripped out. He’d lost something—something enormous—and she knew she should comfort him. She had promised to make him happy, after all.
Nonetheless, the next quavering words out of her mouth were these: “You didn’t choose me?” She had thought…
After how he’d held her. After what he’d said on the train. After everything that had just happened…
Camilla was all too good at inventing encouragement; she’d done it often enough.
She was sure that if she went through it all, she could find all the ways she had misstepped, the ways that she had imagined appreciation where there was none.
She had invented it all, a tale of love and forever out of lustful looks and a weeks-long friendship. She’d put her heart on her sleeve once again. She’d imagined that he would choose her, that he’d want her.
She’d prepared to have her heart shredded. She hadn’t prepared for this—to have it taken from her, treated with gentleness, and then burnt to a crisp in a blast furnace.
Adrian turned to her. The harsh, unforgiving lines of his face melted. “Oh, Cam.” He came to sit next to her. His arm went around her. “I won’t lie to you. No, I didn’t choose you. But you have been everything to me these last weeks. I didn’t choose you, but I do choose this: I choose to make the most of what we have.”
Before she’d come to know Adrian, she would have accepted that. Second best was still a form of best, after all.
But she hadn’t just wanted him to want her. She wanted everything he had painted in that idyllic picture weeks ago, when he’d told her why he wanted an annulment. She wanted a slow falling in love. She wanted a merging of friendship and adoration. She wanted a promise of mutual joy. She thought she had found it.
He hadn’t found any of that with her. She would always be his forced bride. She would always know that they were joined with a pistol and a deception first, and his uncle’s betrayal second. She would never know what it was like to be chosen.
She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Adrian. I’m so sorry.”
She was. For both of them, she was sorry.
He brushed his lips against her forehead. “Don’t be sorry,” he said lightly. “We’ll make do. We’re remarkably good at that.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Camilla made herself retain her composure through the dinner and the bath that followed. She made herself laugh when he said something funny; she reminded him to contact his brother, and she nodded when he sighed and promised to do it in the morning. She made herself act as if her heart was still intact.
He joined her in bed that night. She would have given him anything, but he just held her tightly, the clench of his muscles saying all the things he did not speak aloud.
He hadn’t chosen her.
She felt the moment when he drifted off to sleep, his arm around her loosening.
The lamps were out. She was in his arms. All she had to do was forget what she knew, forget what she wanted, and this could be her everything.
He held her for comfort, and it was comforting. He was the farthest thing from a monster; Adrian had suffered a horrific blow delivered by a man who ought to have cared about his welfare.
He’d brushed it off as best as he could, but…
She knew what he had done for his uncle. He didn’t deserve this.
And yet, that also meant…
It meant, quite simply, that he didn’t deserve to be saddled with her. That he deserved the choice he wanted.
Once, she might have thought that in sorrow. But with his arm around her, in the dark of the night, it felt like simple, rational truth.
He’d wanted a choice. He’d wanted a slow falling in love. He’d wanted a family and joy. Instead, he’d found betrayal and tears. No matter how Camilla valued herself, she could not take that away. She would always be inextricably tied with his uncle’s treachery.
And she? Gently, she pulled his arm off her. She turned to face the wall.
She hadn’t said it to him. The fact that his uncle’s betrayal hurt her, too, was not something he needed to grapple with at the moment.
But it had wounded her deeply.
He didn’t deserve to be saddled with her, and she didn’t deserve to be a saddle. She deserved to know that the man she spent the rest of her life with wanted her. Valued her. Believed in her. She deserved a choice, and a family, and joy, and a slow falling in love…
If she did nothing, he wouldn’t have that. Neither would she.
She slipped out from under the covers. Her feet found the cold planks beneath.
She’d always paced when she thought, and she did it now, hopping around the parts of the floor that squeaked under her passage so as not to wake him.
One turn of the room, and her mind was boiling.
She didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve to spend the rest of her life wondering if he was regretting her at the moment. When they argued—and she was sure they’d find cause to disagree, as all people did—she deserved to know that he would strive to listen because he wanted her above all others. Not because he needed to.
She did not deserve to wonder if he was envisioning someone else or if he mourned the woman he had not had the chance to choose.
She didn’t deserve a lifetime of not knowing.
A second turn about the room. She watched his slumbering form, a dark lump under the blankets. One arm was poised over the empty shell of covers she’d left on the bed, as if he were still trying to comfort her, even in his sleep.
Camilla gave her head a shake. She was being dreadfully unfair. Adrian wouldn’t do that to her. He’d never let her know that he had doubts. He wasn’t the sort to hold her worries over her head.
But she would wonder. As much as she would tell herself not to, she would.
She made a third circuit. There were worse things than a marriage where she wondered, were there not? He wouldn’t beat her. They had a firm friendship and a physical rapport. She loved him, and she had no doubt he would deserve that love every day of her life.
She had almost completed her fourth circle of the room, had almost convinced herself that she would grow used to this new reality. Her feet had warmed with her exertion. She loved him; was that not enough?
What did it matter, when there was nothing to be done about it? It would be enough. It had to be.
But deep inside her, Camilla had always had a dream. She had spent so long wanting someone to love her. She’d wanted to be chosen, to be wanted. She’d made bargains walking back from the store in the snow—“please, if she will just love me, I’ll never complain about anything again.”
She was no longer the woman who made desperate bargains for distant dreams.
She didn’t deserve to be loved as second place. She deserved to be loved without reservation or condition.
She deserved more. He deserved more. And just because the thing she wanted was impossible…
That didn’t mean she needed to give up hope.
She stopped walking. She stared straight ahead, thinking. They would have to get an annulment. They’d consummated the marriage, true, but she’d never been a virgin in the first place, and she’d read the reports. Others had lied about the matter; why couldn’t she?
She wanted a choice.
She imagined the world where she had that choice. In order to get there, she would have to obtain an annulment. An annulment in this circumstance meant power, and power meant…
She had not thought of the letter from Theresa, not since Adrian returned.
Judith missed her.
Judith wanted her.
Judith was married to a marquess and living in Mayfair. Maybe, once she heard the whole story, she’d reject Camilla as unfit.
But even if Judith wanted nothing to do with Camilla, that too was useful. She could make a fuss until Judith gave in.
Camilla exhaled.
Camilla didn’t need anyone to love her—she’d done without it long enough that she knew she could make do. Hope had given rise to certainty—someday, some way, she would have it.
Camilla needed someone powerful.
She had someone powerful.
She crept out of the room before she even quite knew what she was thinking, down the stairs, and found paper and a pen in an office on the ground floor.
My dear Adrian, she wrote.
I refuse to accept the outcome that we have been given. I refuse to accept that we have no choice.
I am going to get our choice back by the means available to us. You can find me at my sister’s, if you wish; your brother will have the direction.
Your friendship has been the greatest gift that I could have known. I hope that even after we are separated, we are able to continue our acquaintance.
If I had been given the chance to choose your friendship from the start, I would choose you again—and again—and again. I would choose everything about you except the one thing I have been given, which is a you who did not choose me.
Yours, most truly,
Cam
She couldn’t find the blotting paper in the dark—not without upending the desk drawer and risking detection. Instead, she watched the extra ink bead, then dissipate into dark, spidery stains on her letter. She sat at the desk and watched the letter, making excuse after excuse why she should forget this all.
She sat thinking until the clock struck four in the morning.
There would be an early train to London; there was no more time to delay. She knew what she wanted; she just had to go get it before she lost her nerve. Camilla found her cloak on the hook in the wardrobe by the hall. She still had some coins left from the money he had once given her in her pocket.
But now, now that she was pulling the fabric about her, now that she had written the letter, now…
She didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay here, to pretend that she’d never had the idea. She wanted to choose him in truth. She loved him; she didn’t want to leave.
Her eyes stung.
But no. There were things she wanted more.
Her chin went up. It was time to go, before he awoke. Before she lost her nerve.
She slipped out the front door, closing it gently behind her.
The moment her feet touched the c
old cobblestones, she realized her mistake—in her haste, she’d left her shoes behind.
Or maybe, perhaps, she hadn’t truly forgotten.
Maybe she’d wanted to go back. Maybe she’d left them behind as a sign of cowardice, forcing herself to let go of a choice she knew she had to make.
Camilla was not going to be a coward.
Her chin went in the air, and she took another step forward. Thousands went without shoes every day. She could make do.
Another step, and another, and with every step, the cold bit into the soles of her feet.
It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. She’d be in London by morning, and she didn’t need shoes for what she was going to do.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The speed of modern transport meant that it was just past seven in the morning, with the sun already beating down oppressively overhead, when Camilla arrived in London. The price of the ticket had taken most of her reserve funds; what remained was not enough to hire transportation of any stripe to the Mayfair direction given in Theresa’s letter.
Or, for that matter, to purchase a pair of shoes.
She’d walked only to the train station, and then off the train—not so far to go, even without shoes, she had thought. A mere half-mile. She’d walked a hundred times that with shoes that were falling apart. Her feet almost never got cold; how bad could it be?
It turned out that even the least successful shoe was a vast improvement over pavement on bare skin.
After quick consultation with three people—one of whom refused to speak to her, with a pointed sniff at her bare feet, and one of whom propositioned her rather than answer her questions—she finally was told how best to proceed to her sister’s home.
It was several miles more.
Her bare feet didn’t draw quite as much attention in the near vicinity of Paddington. Still, she made the acquaintance of every sharp stone between Paddington Station and Mayfair. None of it hurt as much as the deep, bruising ache in her heart. He hadn’t chosen her.
The further she went, the more her feet hurt, and the more people glanced down and then up, a sneer on their faces. She really didn’t belong here. She wanted nothing more than to stop, to sit down, to give her soles the rest they screamed to have.