Chapter 18 #2
He fixed his clothes and crossed back to the basin and bent over it, scooping cold water against his face and holding it there, both palms pressed hard against his cheeks.
He stayed like that for longer than necessary.
Then he straightened, adjusted his coat, and looked at the glass. The man looking back appeared composed.
It would have to suffice.
He opened the door and walked back out into the hallway. He felt relieved but still anxious, if anything.
Outwardly, he was composed, another gentleman navigating an afternoon at a country house with proper manners and no visible disorder. Inside, a part of him desperately prayed that his mind was clear enough to face the day without having to think too hard about it.
He was more alert now, and he felt ready to tackle whatever he needed to face. Even if it included Emily.
That was why he recognized the broken-nose gentleman the instant he came through the doorway.
Him .
The same man he had punched the night he met Emily for the first time.
The man’s nose had healed well enough to look intact at a distance, though Adam knew where to look.
A faint skew in the line of it remained, just enough to remind him that something had happened.
He was dressed carefully, smiled easily, and moved with the kind of polished assurance that seemed to say old things had passed and they were ready to forget all about what must have or what did not happen.
Adam hated him more for that than he had in the garden.
This was society’s preferred vice—vulgarity scrubbed and buttoned into acceptability, a man who had once spoken of Emily like something to be used now walking among respectable company as if a neat coat and a practiced bow had restored him.
Jasper, still near enough to be an annoyance, followed Adam’s gaze and made a low sound that might have been interest or warning.
Dominic saw it a second later.
“Well,” Jasper murmured, “there is a face one would not miss. Redwick looks worse for the wear.”
Redwick. So that was his name. Adam only nodded and said nothing.
The gentleman was already moving through the room with the grace of a man determined to prove he belonged in it.
He paused for the host and then spoke to an older lady near the fire.
He bowed to someone’s aunt. Every gesture sat just a shade too smooth on him, each one a conscious act of obvious self-revision.
It seemed almost like he was screaming, I have changed, accept me, to everyone willing to hear him.
Adam watched him and felt his own stillness grow dangerous.
Dominic’s voice came out rather quiet beside him. “If you are considering homicide in the drawing room, Huxley, I would advise that you reconsider.”
Jasper added, “And if you do not intend to do that, at least wait until the second course. The afternoon is still young.”
Adam ignored them both.
Across the room, Emily stood with Marina and Leonora, the light from the windows catching her gown and turning every man within seeing distance into a fool.
Or was it just him?
She had one hand resting lightly on the back of a chair while Marina laughed at something, and she herself smiled in that open, unguarded way that made male attention gather before it even meant to.
He looked around at the men and wondered if she drew their attention now because of their marriage. Before he could finish thinking about it, he noticed that the broken-nose gentleman angled toward them.
Adam watched closely as he approached like any other gentleman—making his way through company, protected by all the little manners that gave women no clean way to object without causing greater trouble for themselves.
He felt every rule in the room close around him like a trap.
Emily could hardly cause a scene because a man bowed too low or smiled too politely. A man like that counted on exactly this: the very fact that civility gave him cover and a woman’s dignity required her to bear more than she should.
The gentleman reached them.
From where Adam stood, he could not hear every word. But he saw enough.
The man bowed. Emily answered as she must. Properly.Then the fool said something with a smooth expression and an ease that suggested apology or some equally offensive variation of it. Emily’s posture stiffened by only a degree.
Adam’s hands clenched at his sides as the gentleman extended his hand. They clenched even harder when Emily gave hers.Then the man bent and kissed it.
The sound left Adam before he knew he had made it. Dominic turned to him at once, and Jasper’s head snapped around with far more interest than decency.
For one hideous instant, Adam stood in the center of the room, knowing exactly what they had heard and exactly what it meant. The thing he had been trying to keep confined to looks, silence, and private strain was no longer private. He had given it voice amid company like some jealous animal.
This wasn’t him.He never got jealous.And if he did, he never let it show.
So where was this coming from?
Dominic’s expression changed first. Surprise, then comprehension, then something dangerously close to satisfaction.
Jasper did not bother hiding his understanding at all.
“Ah,” he said softly.
Adam could have denied it. He could have said the sound was disgust, anger, a memory of an old offense, and nothing more specific than that. None of them would have believed him, least of all himself.
Across the room, the gentleman straightened from Emily’s hand, his face arranged in sheer elegance.
Marina looked as though she would happily kick him into the shrubbery if afforded one minute and no witnesses.
Leonora’s politeness had gone brittle. Emily herself remained composed enough that only a man watching her as hard as Adam was would have seen the chill beneath it.
Lady Lake’s voice cut pleasantly through the room before the moment could harden further. Ladies were wanted in the gardens. The roses were at their best in this light. Someone must come admire the late bloom near the west path before the shadows took it.
The broken-nose gentleman turned with the rest, and Adam watched as he fell into step with the little stream of women moving toward the open doors.
Adam saw Emily go with them, his skin crawling.
Dominic opened his mouth, perhaps to speak, perhaps to tease, perhaps to warn. Adam did not wait to hear which. Jasper looked delighted enough to be intolerable.
Adam set down his glass without once looking away from the doors.
No chance in hell.
Jealousy, protectiveness, desire—all of it had fused into one hard, unmanageable certainty in him at this point.
When the ladies disappeared toward the gardens with the gentleman among them, Adam followed.