Chapter 16
A dam had gotten ready too early, and from the look of things around him, he knew it.
The front doors stood mostly quiet in the morning light, and he, fully dressed and gloved, had already taken up his place near the foot of the staircase, as if punctuality alone had planted him there.
It had not. He was waiting for Emily.
The knowledge did not sit well with him.
For half a minute, he tried to change it into something more respectable. A husband should be prepared. A husband should be downstairs before his wife. A husband should not leave half a house party cooling its heels because he had lost track of time.
All true. But none of it changed the simple fact that he had been listening for her steps long before there was any reason to do so.
“You are early.”
He turned.
Theodore stood in the archway, with his hands in his pockets and a new steadiness in him that still caught Adam off guard when it appeared.
He was not yet at ease. He might never be at ease in the manner of boys who had been allowed a simpler childhood. But something had shifted in him since Whitechapel. There was now less suspicion in his eyes and more willingness to speak.
Whatever Emily had done to bring him home had worked, and for that, Adam would forever be indebted to her.
Theodore folded his arms as if waiting for him to answer.
Adam gave the only answer possible. “Am I?”
“Yes.”
Theodore stepped into the hall. “I wanted to say something before everyone else started talking.”
Adam waited.
The boy’s eyes flicked briefly toward the staircase and then back to him, as if to acknowledge that whatever he had come to say would be said in the middle of exactly the thing they were both pretending not to notice.
“I was wrong at first,” he began. “About Emily.”
Adam kept his face still, though the words landed harder than they should have.
Theodore continued plainly now, “I thought she’d be like other people—polite until something better came along. Or kind until she had children of her own, and Harriet and I became a burden.”
That word did something unpleasant to the air.
The boy lifted one shoulder in a shrug too mature for his age. “I told Uncle Roger that. Or rather, I told him I was wrong. I said she’d care for Harriet and me even if she had children of her own.”
Adam looked at him then, really looked at him, and saw what it had cost Theodore to say it aloud.
Trust was no easy currency for him, and it was clear from the way he spoke.
For him to have said that, especially after mentioning it to their uncle, meant that he believed in their marriage. Perhaps even more than Adam himself.
“You told him that?”
“Yes.”
Something like gratitude surged through Adam, tangled up with shame and relief so tightly he could not have separated one from the other if he tried.
Theodore glanced away. “Maybe you should stop avoiding her.”
Adam exhaled through his nose. “I’m not.”
Theodore raised an eyebrow, almost as if to say, Are you trying to convince yourself or me?
“I’m accompanying her to a house party, aren’t I?”
The moment the line left his mouth, he heard how thin it sounded. Theodore heard it too. That much was plain in the set of his mouth before he answered.
“Maybe you should stop… stopping yourself from caring, then.”
The hesitation in his voice should have made the words easier to dismiss. It did the opposite. It made the truth in them hit with more force because Adam had no answer ready for that. None he could respect anyway.
Theodore continued, his voice growing quieter with each word, “You are nothing like him, Brother.”
The last word struck clean through him.
Brother .
Adam didn’t know whether Theodore had ever called him that before. He had mostly stuck to Your Grace and had always said it in a disdainful tone.
This wasn’t that. Theodore said it and then, perhaps realizing he had, looked down at the floor for a second too long.
Adam felt the ground shift under him in a way far less visible and far more dangerous than desire.
Trust.
That was the trouble. The boy trusted him enough now to use the word. Enough to offer it without flinching.
Before Adam could say anything that might ruin the moment, footsteps sounded above them. He looked up, and his eyes landed on Emily, who stood at the top of the staircase.
Whatever softness Theodore’s words had opened in him was drowned at once by a wholly different kind of trouble. She had chosen the gown deliberately. Adam knew it at once.
Nothing in her held innocence. The sharp blue color deepened the warmth of her skin, and the fit was modest enough to survive any drawing room and precise enough to leave him painfully aware of the figure beneath it.
Her hair had been arranged with care that looked effortless from a distance and devastating from where he stood.
Why was it that all he could imagine was what she looked like beneath that bright gown? What she felt like beneath it? What part of her body he could touch to make her shudder?
She had dressed to be looked at, and worse, to make him know she knew it. Then, she began to descend.
Adam had barely absorbed Theodore’s trust, barely recovered the use of his own lungs, and already desire was roaring within him with humiliating force.
By the time she reached the bottom step, he felt stripped of every useful defense.
Emily met his gaze and said, “Duke.”
Adam cleared his throat and sketched a brief bow. Now he needed to rely on his military instincts to keep himself still.
“Duchess.”
Emily nodded. “I am ready.”
The words were ordinary. Nothing on her face was.
Before Adam could answer, Harriet came hurrying into the hall with Gilbert in her arms and immediate disaster in her expression.
“He is going to miss Emily,” she announced.
Gilbert, held like a tragic infant, sneezed.
Emily bent at once, and Harriet took that as encouragement. “I think he should go with you, or else he will be lonely. And if he is lonely, he may stop eating, and then he will die, and it will be our fault.”
Emily laughed, while Adam rolled his eyes.
“He is not attending a house party,” Theodore said.
Harriet ignored him. “Look at him. He is already miserable.”
Gilbert looked deeply indifferent.
Adam stood beside Emily while Harriet pleaded her case with growing urgency, and the whole ridiculous interruption made the moment worse rather than better. He could not move away without making a scene. Emily could not speak freely with Harriet clutching the dog between them.
They were trapped together in the warm, absurd, domestic middle of the hall.
They were also close enough that Adam could feel the faint rustle of her dress when she shifted and catch the scent of her hair every time Harriet lifted Gilbert higher for inspection.
Emily had to know how he felt. That was clear in the brief look she shot him over Harriet’s bent head, cool on the surface and lit underneath by full awareness.
At last, Mrs. Fenwick appeared and relieved Harriet of both the dog and the panic. The child was soothed, the terrier spared, and the hall cleared just enough for departure to become possible at last.
Adam drew one breath that did nothing useful. They had not even reached the carriage, and already he was too aware of his wife to breathe normally.
Oh, Lord, help me.
Emily exhaled as she settled into the carriage. The morning air felt gentle and harsh all at once, and for a brief minute, she couldn’t decide which felt more appropriate. Adam climbed in behind her, and the door shut behind them.
For some reason, the sound of the door closing seemed to make the space smaller.
Emily settled opposite him, with her hands folded in her lap and the hem of her dress arranged with the same calm precision she had worn all morning. Outside, the wheels rolled over the drive and then onto the road beyond the gates.
Then, the house fell away, and the domesticity they had faced that morning disappeared behind them until only the carriage remained.
Emily had thought privacy might bring relief.
It did the opposite.
Adam looked out the window, as if the trees along the drive had suddenly become a matter of importance. Emily looked at him instead.
He did not turn to her. The carriage rounded a corner, and gravel gave way to dirt. The shift under the wheels felt like the beginning of something none of them had prepared to survive.
Eventually, Adam cleared his throat. “The roads should hold if the weather does.”
The statement was so painfully ordinary that Emily almost laughed.
“Yes,” she said. “Unless Mama has frightened the clouds into ceremony too.”
That earned her a glance. It was so brief and immediate that it was gone before she could register it.
“Well, something tells me she will frighten some people into preparation one way or another.”
Emily let her mouth curve. “If she does, it would have to be the gardeners.”
Adam turned to look at her properly. “The gardeners?”
Emily nodded. “Yes. Mama does not take the plant competition of this house party lightly. It is a huge event, and she always goes all out for it.”
Adam nodded. “I see.”
Emily swallowed. “Best believe the competition will be managed as if the Kingdom depends on it.”
He laughed. “I have no doubt.”
The conversation should have made the tension between them more bearable, but it did not. They were speaking of roads and flowerpots with the strained care of two people discussing a battlefield map.
Emily then looked out the window on her side, if only to keep from staring at him like a lovesick fool. The fields gave way to clustered houses, then opened again as the morning light lay pale over everything.
The world outside had the decency to look calm. At least now she had something to look at that wasn’t the curve of his neck or his jawline.
Or his lips.
For the love of God, Emily, take your eyes off his lips.
Adam cleared his throat at that moment, and her eyes snapped down. “Harriet expects the event to contain cake.”
“She expects every event to contain cake.”
“She may not be wrong.”
Another glance, this one longer. It brushed over her face and then moved away again. Emily noticed all of them.
That was the trouble. She noticed every stolen look, every pause before he spoke, every useless shift of his hand against the seat as if being still had become harder for him since she came down the stairs.
It was clear to her that he was fighting himself in the carriage as he had fought himself in the ballroom, the study, and at that pub in Whitechapel.
She had no intention of rescuing him from that.
“Do you imagine my mother has arranged rooms by military principle?” she asked.
Adam’s gaze flicked back to her. “I very much doubt that my time in the army would have any effect on your mother’s plans. If anything, she probably arranged the rooms the same way she always did.”
Emily let the silence after that breathe for half a beat too long before answering, “Then we ought to be afraid.”
“ You ought to be prepared.”
The word settled between them with greater weight than it should have. Prepared for guests, perhaps. Prepared for floral excess. Prepared for Frances in full command of a country gathering.
Prepared for rooms, too.
Emily knew it. So did he.
She folded her hands neatly in her lap because he had just looked at them. The motion was small.
What did he mean, she should be prepared?
“For the house party?” she asked.
He smirked. “For your mother.”
“I was raised by her. I have natural defenses.”
An emotion crossed his face, so close to warmth that it irritated her on principle. He had spent too long making warmth feel like a privilege she must earn by accident.
“She will test them anyway,” he said.
Emily narrowed her eyes at him. “And you?”
The question was simple enough on its surface. Was he prepared for Frances? Was he prepared for guests and country house rituals? Was he prepared for the plant competition and the endless meals and the fixed social choreography of a gathering where everyone watched everyone else?
Adam held her gaze for one hard second. “I generally prefer to know the terrain.”
Emily let that sit there. Let him hear, if he wished, how poor an answer it was to the question she had asked.
Outside, the carriage passed a small village and then turned onto the longer road that led to the country house. The motion threw them fractionally closer, and Emily felt the shift in the space before it happened.
Adam steadied himself with one hand on his seat. His glove brushed her skirt, before he drew away. He looked at her again.
This time, she did not pretend not to see it. She let her eyes meet his and held them long enough for the moment to become impossible to mistake.
“Emily, I…”
She kept her eyes on him.
Then, he swallowed hard and looked away.
Emily turned back to the window because victory, however small, needed no display.
What passed between them now was not flirtation in any bright or easy sense. It was sharper than that. She had learned too much about him for mere flirtation. What she could do instead was refuse the old pattern in which he felt, touched, withdrew, and left her to make the silence bearable.
If he wanted silence, he could sit in it fully aware that she knew what lived underneath it.
By the time the carriage slowed, Emily was wound tight. The wheels crunched over the last stretch of the drive.
Adam straightened. She did the same. Neither spoke.
When the carriage finally drew to a stop before the country house, and a footman moved to open the door, the relief she had thought arrival might bring failed to come.
Nothing had grown easier.
If anything, the journey had only made the tension between them even thicker.