Chapter 7 #2
Emily rose to her feet at once. She was smaller than most boys would have been, and even beneath the awful coat, there was too much grace in her movements and too much life in her face for the disguise to hold for more than five minutes.
Several men had already begun glancing over with idle curiosity.
Adam grabbed her elbow. “Outside.”
She tried to pull free. “I can walk without being dragged.”
“Lady Emily, please.”
“We are getting married. Calling me Emily will not start another scandal.”
“Let us go!”
He steered her through the room and out before further notice could fasten properly on them. The night air struck cooler than before.
Adam stopped near his horse, partly hidden from the street.
“Well?” he prompted. “You wanted to think. Here you are. Explain.”
Emily tugged off the hat and held it at her side. Her hair, crammed badly under it, had begun to loosen around her face. The sight of it did nothing to improve his temper.
“The day was unbearable.”
“That does not answer the question.”
“It answers it perfectly.” Her voice sharpened. “Every room I enter contains somebody’s opinion of me. I wanted somewhere no one would ask what I was feeling or decide for me.”
He looked at her. She stood under the dim light in a ruined disguise, with tiredness at the edges of her face and stubbornness holding the rest together. She had not come for mischief. Or, not only for mischief.
“I thought,” she continued, her voice quieter, “that perhaps if I sat where men sit, and drank what men drink, and breathed for half an hour without being watched as though I were some poor dramatic creature marching toward sacrifice, I might remember how to think plainly.”
Adam’s grip loosened on the irritation he had been carrying.
At dinner, Harriet had spoken of cakes and babies as if the future was already settled into soft little shapes. Emily, it seemed, had spent the same day under a different kind of assault, no less constant for being polite.
He said nothing for a moment.
Emily looked away first.“I know how it appears.”
“Yes,” he said. “You look ridiculous.”
That earned him the smallest huff from her, almost a laugh but not quite. She put the hat back on as they walked close to her carriage the carriage step and smoothed her hair with one hand.
“Do not worry, I shall not embarrass you when I become your wife.”
He felt her words settle under his skin with dangerous precision. She had already begun speaking of the marriage as real, as a fact she meant to survive with as much dignity as she could hold.
“You’d better not.”
Her mouth tightened. “There you are. For one moment, I nearly forgot myself.”
“And what would that have changed?”
She stepped close. Too close.
“Well, I like to think,” she said, “that it would have changed the part where you keep speaking as though I am a duty you mean to carry out correctly.”
Adam’s hand tightened on the carriage door behind him. “You are speaking in a London street dressed like a boy. Do not provoke me further.”
Her eyes lifted to his. “Or what?”
“You are quite the adamant woman, are you not?”
Emily shrugged. “You are not getting married to a piece of stone. I have opinions, and I was not raised to keep them to myself all the time.”
Adam narrowed his eyes, now trying to hide the smirk threatening to escape. “Really?”
Emily nodded. “Really.”
He shook his head.
He saw it again, the stubborn lift of her chin and the hard set of her mouth. The impossible fact that she kept meeting him straight on when every instinct in him screamed for distance.
He should have stepped back. That would have been the most responsible thing to do. And yet, for some reason, he did not.
The space between them became unbearable with shocking speed, and Adam saw the moment she felt it too. Her breathing quickened, and her hand tightened once around her skirt.
Oh great.
He couldn’t bear staring at her face anymore, and before he could stop himself, he closed the gap between them and crushed his lips to hers.
The kiss wasn’t gentle at first. He caught her by the waist and pulled her even closer to him, the last of his restraint falling away.
The carriage behind them blocked half the street, and the night sky hid enough.
Her body was warm against his despite the cool air, and the taste of her drove every sensible thought from his head at once.
He kissed her harder.
Emily made a sound against his mouth that nearly made him fall apart. Her hand found his coat, then his shoulder, holding on as though the kiss had struck her off balance, too. His grip on her waist tightened, and he felt the dip of it through the bad disguise.
Adam had kissed women before, but he had never felt anything like this. One more second, and he would have had her against the carriage, hat fallen and her lips parted under his. But he didn’t.
He couldn’t.
Instead, he tore himself away, the effort leaving him to breathe hard.
Emily looked at him with flushed cheeks, parted lips, and enough astonishment on her face to tell him that she had felt the same violence in it. That should have pleased him. It only made leaving harder.
He stepped back at once and turned to his driver. “Take Lady Emily home.”
The man blinked once, wisely asked nothing, and moved to obey.
Emily found her voice first. “And you?”
“I am walking.”
It was the only chance he had of recovering any part of himself before dawn.
She looked as though she meant to ask something more dangerous, but he cut her off before she could. “I’ll see you in one week, at our wedding, Emily.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, almost like the way he’d said her name sounded strange.He felt it too, but he said nothing about it. Instead, he helped her into the carriage and leaned in, his voice just low enough for her to hear.
“I expect you to be on your best behavior by then.”