Chapter 21
T he dinner made Adam sit precisely where he did not wish to—near enough to Emily to feel every second of it and far enough that none of it could be honestly relieved.
The arrangement looked innocent to anyone else. A long, polished table, candles lifted in silver, flowers kept low enough not to obstruct the sightlines of civilized people, and guests placed according to the usual laws of comfort, rank, and hostess strategy.
Adam sat with one gentleman to his right and an older married lady to his left.
Emily sat almost directly across from him.
She was angled close enough that if she turned in conversation, he would see the line of her cheek and the twitch in her lips before the room ever noticed the joke she was about to make.
He couldn’t explain it, but something about that seemed rather cruel. It was like having to face the one thing he had been trying to ignore all this time and doing it in one sitting. Here she was, just a few yards before him, and he was unable to look anywhere else.
He did not need to seek her out. She came to him, whether he wished for it or not.
Her voice drifted across the small spread of candlelight with infuriating ease, and he could hear the exact tone she used with Marina, the different shade she used with Frances, the little warmth she gave to older guests that made them brighten like women twenty years younger.
If she laughed, he heard that too. If she lowered her voice, he found himself leaning closer before he caught the impulse and forced himself still.
He could not look often. That was another part of the torment. One glance might pass. Two, perhaps. Anything beyond that, and someone would begin to read him properly.
So he spent the first course pretending he was not seated one place away with the full sound of his wife in his ears and the exact memory of her body far too alive in his mind.
It worsened when the servants began passing dishes.
A footman offered asparagus from the left, and Adam reached to take some just as Emily extended her hand toward the same dish from the other side.
Their fingers did not touch, but they came near enough that he saw her pale knuckles and the slight shift of her wrist as she withdrew to let him take the serving spoon first.
The lack of contact was almost worse than contact would have been.
He took what he wanted, passed the dish on, and sat back with the absurd awareness that one more inch and his hand would have brushed hers in full view of half the county.
The thought lingered through fish, through wine, through some gentleman to his right explaining something he simply could not care about.
Maybe he should.
He strained his ears a bit more and tried to listen.
“… we do that a few more times, and we might just have a miracle in our hands. The soil in this part of the county is fresher than anything London has to offer.”
Adam cleared his throat. “I see.”
The man looked over at him. “Quite exciting, is it not?”
Adam nodded. “Very.”
At that moment, a napkin fell off the edge of the table. Emily reached down to rescue it at the same moment he bent to pick up a fallen fork near the cloth. This time, the back of her fingers met his hand for one brief second beneath the table.
No one saw, and the contact lasted no longer than a spark and carried more force than any open invitation could have.
Adam straightened so quickly that the older lady beside him looked at him with mild concern. “Too warm, Your Grace?”
“Not at all, Mrs.…”
“Ashcroft.”
He nodded and gave her a weak smile in response.
Under the table, however, the awareness only worsened. The knowledge that Emily’s body existed just beyond the orderly drop of linen, close enough to torment him and yet too far for him to reach, made him feel even more raw.
By the second course, she had become the center of the room.
That did not help him at all.
Emily was not behaving badly. Adam would almost have preferred it if she were. At least, his state might have found some honorable footing. Instead, she was simply what she always was when she forgot to guard herself—bright in the right places and graceful just as ever, without needing to force it.
It was the very thing that drew him to her in the first place.
He watched as a gentleman further down leaned in to catch her answer on some point of music.
An older lady asked her opinion on tomorrow’s ball arrangements and looked delighted by the response.
Even the host, who had spent the first course discussing local tenants with Dominic, turned his head when Emily spoke and smiled as if the whole table had improved by her being at it.
Adam noticed every one of them.
Every man who looked a fraction too long. Every pause after she answered. Every turn of another guest’s attention toward her that should have been directed elsewhere.
She was not flirting. That would have simply been desperate. She was simply irresistible, and he had to sit there in the shape of a quiet husband while something much rougher kept tightening beneath his ribs.
When Dominic asked him whether the pheasant was overdone, Adam responded as softly as he could, “No.”
A moment later, he realized Dominic had asked whether he meant to join the gentlemen for cards after dinner.
Dominic arched an eyebrow. “Is everything all right, Huxley? You have seemed quite off all day. Perhaps you need time to rest?”
Adam cut into the pheasant. “Well, I think you seem intrusive.”
Dominic’s mouth twitched. That was all. It was enough to tell Adam the change in him had become visible.
He tried to recover himself after that. He even managed a few proper answers, one to Frances about the journey.
All of this, however, did not make the dinner progress quickly enough. It felt almost prolonged by design. One course ended, and another came. Servants moved in and out with seamless precision, and glasses were refilled.
The topics shifted and returned, and someone laughed at the far end of the table. Another guest asked Emily about London music. Frances corrected Sir Peter on the proper treatment of a late rose cutting.
The evening dragged as if this were not a form of punishment built specifically to keep Adam fixed in place while his wife sat near enough to undo him.
By the final course, his frustration had become clearer than anything. He wanted Emily.
The truth of it sat in him, hot and humiliating and impossible to deny. He wanted her mouth, her hands, the sound she made when her restraint snapped, her body writhing beneath silk while everyone around them pretended supper was about food and flowers and plans for the next day.
When at last the ladies rose, it should have felt like a reprieve.
It did not.
Emily disappeared from the table and took with her the only point toward which his whole body had been leaning for the better part of two hours.
Adam rose with the others and followed the slow tide toward the drawing room.
He had survived the table, but it had not calmed him.
He needed a break. Time by himself to process everything and find a way to relax.
He needed to calm himself, and the only way to do that was to leave.