Chapter 4
A dam’s knuckles connected with the man’s jaw, and pain splintered up his arm. Though Adam imagined it was nowhere near the pain the other man felt.
The man staggered backward with a choked cry, both hands flying up too late to save himself. Blood spilled at once between his fingers, dark in the garden light. He swore, stumbled again, and looked at Adam with a dazed outrage.
“What the devil did you do that for?”
Adam did not answer immediately. He flexed his hand once, more out of habit than pain, then cleared his throat and returned his gaze to Lady Emily. “The best way to break someone’s nose, if you need to.”
The gentleman made another strangled sound, half fury and half disbelief.
Adam had already turned away from him. “Are you all right?”
Emily stood where he had left her, her fan lying on the gravel, her face still flushed with anger and insult and whatever else the scene had forced through her too quickly.
He had expected shock. Perhaps even fear. Most women of his acquaintance would have recoiled at least a step from a man who had just struck another hard enough to send him reeling.
She looked at him instead. Then she exhaled and spoke, with a breath that almost sounded like laughter, “Thank you. I will keep your advice in mind.”
The line should have been ridiculous. Instead, it sank into Adam with enough warmth to unsettle him afresh.
She was grateful.Worse, she was still herself.
The gentleman behind him muttered something foul through bloodied hands, and Adam found he no longer cared what it was. Lady Emily, on the other hand, took one step closer. The movement was small, and it shifted the air between them entirely.
He saw her glance at his hand before he thought to hide it. The skin over his knuckles had split slightly, but it was nothing worth noticing. He had done worse to himself on far less worthy occasions.
She didn’t budge. Instead, she reached for his fist. He felt the contact from shoulder to spine.
Her hand was warm, and her hold was gentle, as if she had already forgotten what his hand had just done and thought only of the bruise blooming across his skin.
Her thumb moved over his knuckles with such absent care that he went completely still.
“You got hurt because of me, though.”
It took him a second too long to answer.
“It is nothing.”
That was the correct response. The only possible one. It was also a lie in more ways than one.
The ache in his hand did not matter. Her touch did. The feel of her fingers around his fist, the softness of her voice after what he had interrupted, the fact that she looked at him as if violence on her behalf had not made him monstrous.
All of it mattered far too much.
She seemed to notice the change in her voice then and drew a breath, embarrassment flickering across her face. “Of course, silly me. You have been to war.”
He did not let her have that escape.
“I would punch that man even if I were a sheltered boy my whole life. No one should speak to you that way.”
The words came out low and blunt, and he watched them land in her face and saw something shift there, something quieter than surprise and far more dangerous.
Behind them, the gentleman was still cursing and trying to recover his dignity. Adam kept his eyes on Lady Emily.
She looked down for the briefest instant, then back at him. “I am used to it.”
The admission struck him harder than the fight had.
Used to it.
Used to men speaking of her that way. Used to swallowing the insult, carrying it, and stepping back into herself as if such treatment were ordinary and expected.
Something in him hardened at once. She should not have to. Nobody should get used to such treatment.
For the first time that evening, a wave of softness settled into him, and against his sense of caution, he lifted his free hand and touched her chin.
He felt her lips part and her breath catch as his fingers settled beneath her jaw with care that felt wholly at odds with the anger still coursing through him.
“Lady Emily.” His voice was low, much lower than he had intended.
He tilted her face up until she had no choice but to meet his eyes. He saw the anger still alive in her and the hurt she had tried to carry lightly and failed to hide from him now. He also saw the dangerous trust in the fact that she let him stand this close after everything.
Something about this situation made him overly aware of everything. The night air on his skin. The faint music from the ballroom. The brush of her fingers still resting on his hand. The warmth of her mouth only inches from his own.
For a minute, they all felt secondary. All he could think of was her eyes. The bright flecks in them, the way her soft skin felt against his fingers. The way he imagined what her lips would?—
“Emily!”
Adam dropped his hand at once, and they both turned in the direction of the voice.
The Dowager Duchess of Salbury came toward them with speed and alarm in every line of her face. Her skirt was gathered in one hand, and the dim lamplight caught the edge of her expression. Her gaze moved from Lady Emily to Adam to the gentleman still bent over and bleeding into his hands.
“What on earth has happened?” she demanded. “And why is that man bleeding?”
Silence pressed through the air.
She widened her stance and glared at her daughter. “Emily, what are you doing out here alone with two gentlemen?”
The gentleman straightened enough to speak, blood on his lips and fury in his eyes. “I fell.”
“No, he did not. He was mean to me!” Lady Emily exclaimed.
The Dowager Duchess turned to her at once, and Adam watched the outrage on Lady Emily’s face sharpen again.
The gentleman opened his mouth as though to protest.
Adam looked at him. “The man got what he deserved,” he said, each word clipped and cold. “But he will not say a word that could ruin Lady Emily.”
For a minute, the gentleman only stared, like the pain had stopped him from speaking altogether.
Adam glared even harder at him. “You will not, will you?”
The gentleman went still under his gaze, then he gave a stiff, furious shake of the head.
Adam nodded. “Good.”
Then, he bowed to the Dowager Duchess and Lady Emily and left without another word.
He walked back toward the lights of the house with his hand aching, his heart still pounding, and the feel of Lady Emily’s fingers around his knuckles lodged so deeply in him that distance did nothing to lessen it.
The next morning, he stood before the looking glass in his room, with a clean shirt open at the throat and a razor in hand.
The bruise across his knuckles had darkened, and he noticed it only because he could not look at his hand without feeling the light press of Emily’s thumb on the swollen skin again.
“You got hurt because of me, though.”
The words had sounded personal enough to reach him long after the garden had fallen away. He had slept poorly and woken no better.
By rights, the morning should have cleared the whole thing. A ball, a fool, an insult, a punch, a lady’s gratitude. Simple enough.
It was far from simple, and that right there was the trouble.
He finished dressing in a worse temper than usual and stepped out into the corridor. A footman looked up too quickly and then away with suspicious speed. Another footman carried a tray past him with a folded paper laid neatly beside the coffee service, though Adam had not asked for one.
He stopped. “What is that?”
The footman hesitated only a fraction. “The morning scandal sheet, Your Grace.”
Adam’s mouth hardened. “Why is it outside my room?”
The footman’s gaze dropped. “I thought you might wish to see it, Your Grace.”
That answer was respectful enough. It still confirmed what Adam needed to be confirmed. There was only one reason why the morning scandal sheet would be delivered to him and not placed on the breakfast table.
The business in the garden had escaped the garden.
Of course it had.
There had been a bleeding man brought back into a ballroom, and there had been servants, guests, and enough careless eyes to turn any private disturbance into public property before the candles had burned halfway down.
He took the paper without opening it and went to breakfast.
Harriet was already sitting at the table in a blue morning dress, with one ribbon half undone and her spoon in hand. Her attention was fixed on Theodore, who had the expression of a boy pleased with forbidden knowledge.
The moment Adam entered, Harriet’s face lit up.
“Good morning, Brother.”
Mrs. Fenwick, who was standing behind the child, tapped her on the shoulder gently. “You have to say, Your Grace .”
A smirk settled on Adam’s face. “I am certain we can let this one slide, Mrs. Fenwick.”
The older woman looked up and gave a slight bow. “As you wish, Your Grace.”
He nodded and moved closer to his chair.
“Are you going to marry, as the papers said, and are you going to make lots of babies?” Harriet called out, making him stop dead in his tracks.
For one incredible second, he simply stared at her. Then he cleared his throat and spoke as gently as he could. “How on earth are you reading the papers?”
Harriet looked offended by the question. “I am not. Theodore read it to me.”
Adam’s gaze moved at once to his brother.
Theodore, to his credit, had the decency to look only partly smug. He held up a folded copy of the scandal sheet from beside his plate, as if presenting evidence in a trial. “It seemed informative .”
“It is idiotic, is what it is,” Adam grunted.
Harriet, untroubled by his tone, continued with bright interest, “If you do, can you make sure one of them is a girl, so we can play together?”
Adam dragged a hand over his face.
No, no, no. This is not happening.
Across from him, Theodore bit down on what was very nearly a smile. Adam saw it and decided at once that adolescence was a poorly designed stage of human life.
“You,” he said to Theodore, taking his seat, “you may begin reading novels in the library and stop bothering with scandal sheets.”
Theodore handed over the paper without argument, which alone made Adam suspicious. “It is not my fault they printed it.”
Harriet leaned forward. “Will you make a baby girl?”
“Eat your breakfast, Harriet.”
She obeyed cheerfully, which somehow made the conversation worse.
Adam unfolded the sheet.
The article was written just the way he had expected. Polished and poisonous. Who would read it otherwise?
It mentioned that the Duke of Huxley had been seen in a heated confrontation in the gardens of Salbury House, that another gentleman left the scene bloodied, and that Lady Emily Bolt had been discovered there under circumstances lively enough to excite immediate comment.
The author further wondered whether such marked attention, followed by such vigorous defense, might soon produce a more formal understanding.
Formal understanding, my foot!
He read it once. Then again, seeing how the facts had been watered down until all context was gone. There was no mention of how Lady Emily had been insulted or what danger she had faced before he had come to her rescue.
Harriet’s voice cut through his thoughts and brought him back to the table.
“I think weddings are very nice,” she said around a mouthful of toast. “And if there are babies, they ought to come visit us.”
“Harriet,” Theodore hissed.
“What? They should.”
Adam lowered the paper. The absurdity of the conversation might have been funny if it had not exposed the true shape of the problem.
The matter had already crossed from ballroom gossip into print. It had entered his breakfast room. It sat in Theodore’s hands and Harriet’s imagination. By noon, it would be all over London, dressed in ten new versions and repeated by people who had not been within twenty feet of the garden.
His first reaction had been irritation, then embarrassment.
Now, what he felt was worry. Lady Emily’s name stood beside his in public.
Nobody would care that the gentleman deserved worse than a broken nose.
They would only say that a lady had been alone in the dark with two men, and that one of them had bloodied the other for her.
Harriet looked up at him. “Are you angry?”
Adam folded the paper once more, carefully this time. “No.”
Frankly, anger would have been easier. What sat in him now was speculation.
He could not leave the matter to dissolve on its own. He knew too well how these things worked. A gentleman might survive these things at the end of the day, but a lady… a lady bore the stain much longer.
Lady Emily would bear it longer.
He disliked the thought of marriage at once, but then he had always done so. He had always hated what marriage meant, especially in his father’s hands. He had always been well aware of what kind of ruin could be hidden inside it. Yet it seemed to be the only solution to this growing problem.
A marriage of convenience.
He looked down at the scandal sheet again and saw over the black type Emily’s face in the garden, flushed with anger, then softened by concern as she took his bruised hand in her own.
Marriage might very well be the only answer.