Chapter 24
A dam’s mouth was still on hers when he walked her backward toward the bed.
Emily clutched at his shoulders and kissed him harder. There was no caution left in either of them. The house, the guests, the long, miserable weeks of half-started moments—all of it had finally fallen away.
Adam’s hands roved over her with shaking purpose, and when he broke from her mouth to press kisses along her throat, she let out a breath that sounded far too much like relief.
“Adam.”
He stopped at once, looked up at her, and the look on his face sent heat straight through her.
“Say it again,” he demanded. “Just like that.”
Emily groaned. “Adam.”
He made a rough sound, half laugh and half groan, and kissed her again as if hearing his own name on her lips had undone the last piece of whatever control he had brought into the room. His hand slid over her waist, then higher, then back down with utter certainty.
Emily wanted him to see all of it. She wanted him to know that she was here with him fully, that this was no accident of jealousy or temper or wine or late-night restlessness. She was choosing him. He was choosing her.
He lowered her onto the bed and followed her, his body covering hers. When he touched her again, more intimately now, she caught her breath and clutched at the sheets.
“Look at me,” he coaxed.
She looked at him.
He looked back at her with his weight braced on one arm beside her head and his breathing ragged.
Emily had been looked at before, but she had never been looked at like that. Like the looking itself was something he had been rationing.
She reached up and touched his jaw, and he pressed his face into her hand for one brief second, eyes closing. Then, he kissed her palm and moved down her throat, and she stopped thinking.
His mouth worked slowly over her collarbone, the swell of her breasts, the soft skin below it, and his hands pushed the fabric away with patience that made her breathing unsteady.
She felt the cool air of the room and then the warmth of his hands replacing it, and she arched slightly into his touch without meaning to.
“Adam…”
“I know,” he murmured against her skin.
His hand slid down the flat of her stomach, over her hip, and she felt the warmth of it settle on the inside of her thigh.
Her breath caught, but he didn’t stop. He moved as carefully as he could, reading her, and when his fingers found the heat between her legs, she made a sound that startled even her.
He did not stop.
He worked her carefully and with full attention, every shift of her hips noted and answered, and she felt the pleasure build with a slowness she couldn’t bear. Her hand moved without thought to his trousers, and she felt him at once.
He was hard and straining against the fabric in a way that made her heart flutter. When her fingers closed around the shape of him, he made a sound low in his throat that she felt more than heard. She squeezed him, and his hips bucked.
“Emily.” His breath came out ragged against her cheek.
She squeezed him again anyway, and he groaned, his forehead dropping to hers for one unsteady moment. Then, his hand closed firmly over hers and pulled it away.
“No.” The word came out hoarse. “Not yet.”
She looked up at him. His jaw was set, and his eyes were dark. He looked like a man exercising the last of something he had very little of left.
He held her gaze and moved down her body.
His mouth found the inside of her knee first, and she felt the warmth of it travel the full length of her before he had gone anywhere. By the time he reached her thigh, she was panting. Her hand found his hair, not pushing him away.
When his mouth finally found her, a low moan she had tried to suppress escaped her lips.Her fingers tightened in his hair, and her back arched as she pressed her other hand flat against the mattress.
“Adam!”
The pleasure crested fast after that, building quickly with no room left in it and no way to slow it down. He inserted his finger inside her, curled it, and the pressure crashed through her body. She clutched the sheets and let it move through her, her breathing ragged and her body shaking.
For a moment, the room was very quiet.
Adam rose and then collapsed beside her, his hand settling on her waist. For a while afterward, as Adam gently put the blanket over her, neither of them spoke.
Emily lay warm and shaking beneath the blanket, Adam’s hand still resting on her waist as though he had not yet remembered they were meant to be careful with each other.
The silence should have felt awkward. However, for some reason, it did not. It felt full and real. It felt like the beginning of the life she had wanted from him all along.
She turned her face toward his. “We could be this happy every day.”
He looked down at her, and she saw the exact moment he understood she meant more than the bed, more than desire, more than the private sweetness of his hand still resting on her.
She did not let herself hesitate.
“I know you do not need an heir. I know you’re trying to protect me, but I could make you happy if you let me. And you could make me happy too.”
The words hung between them. Emily held his gaze and made herself stay still beneath it.
He swallowed once. “By loving you?”
There it was. He had heard her. He had understood every word.
Her throat tightened, but she answered steadily. “By letting me love you.”
She had never spoken more plainly in her life. There was nowhere left to hide now. She had given him the truth of it all. The only thing left was for him to respond.
Hopefully reciprocate.
Adam’s hand tightened once on her waist. His expression changed in a way she hated even before he spoke. The softness that had made him reachable began slipping away, and something older, sadder, more stubborn took its place.
“I am sorry.”
The words hit harder than anger would have.
Emily stared at him. “You still resist it?”
He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them again. “Emily…”
“That was not what I asked.”
He pushed himself up on one elbow as if to reach for her, as if his touch might soften what his answer had already done. It only made the hurt clearer.
He understood . He wanted her. He had just held her as though she mattered. Yet here he was again, drawing back from the one thing that would let any of it live outside this room.
She sat up too quickly, pulling the sheet around herself.
“Emily,” he said again, sharper now. “Wait.”
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and reached for her cloak. Her hands shook as she wrapped it around herself, and she hated that he might see it.
He rose behind her. “Do not leave like this.”
She turned, grief and anger colliding so hard she could barely keep her voice level. “I need a break.”
His face tightened. “For how long?”
“I do not know.” She tied the cloak with clumsy fingers. “Long enough to breathe, perhaps?”
He moved as though to stop her, then checked himself. That hurt too.
Emily went to the door, opened it, and stepped out before she could change her mind. The cooler night air in the corridor hit her at once, and she stood in it for one suspended second with the memory of his hands still warm on her skin and the certainty settling in all over again.
Even now, after the intimacy they had shared, Adam was still resisting what was supposed to be a moment of growth for both.
Emily walked until the air stopped feeling like it belonged to that room. The corridor gave way to the quieter edge of the house, then to the terrace steps, then to the path that led toward the lake.
The night had settled properly now, and the gardens were dark except where the house cast a little light across the gravel and the first stretch of grass. Beyond that, the lake looked like a dull body of silver in the background.
She drew her cloak tighter and kept walking, her feet skidding across the ground with intense rage and frustration. She needed time alone to process the disappointment. She needed to focus. To know how to?—
Wait, what was that?
She heard movement before she fully saw the figure by the shore.
“Mama?”
Frances turned at once. “Emily?”
Emily stopped a few feet away and stared at her. “What on earth are you doing out here?”
Frances looked back toward the water with solemn offense. “Peter told me there was a marlin in the lake.”
For one stunned second, Emily could only blink. Then, a laugh burst out of her. It came too fast and too hard, all the strain of the night cracking under it. She pressed a hand to her mouth and shook her head.
“I think that man has deceived you, Mama.”
Frances groaned and folded her arms. “That devious snake.”
The laughter eased something in Emily’s chest. Not the hurt though, because that remained. However, the tightness around her loosened enough for breath to return cleanly.
Frances studied her more closely. “Why are you out here so late?”
Emily looked over the black water. “I needed a walk. To feel the weather.”
“Liar.”
Emily smiled faintly. “I did not know daughters were to be so rudely received in moonlight.”
“You are not being received. You are being examined.” Frances stepped nearer. “Are you sure all is well?”
“Yes.” Frances waited, refusing to speak, until Emily let out a breath. “Mostly. It is Adam.”
Frances nodded, as if her daughter did not need to say anymore. She understood what Emily was going through rather perfectly.
“Soldiers often have reservations,” she said gently. “Marriage can make a man awkward in ways war never taught him to be.”
Emily gave a tired laugh. “I wish that were the only problem.”
Frances’s face softened at once. “Ah.”
She said nothing else for a moment, which Emily loved her for. No fuss. No immediate probing. Only presence. That felt like her mother and yet did not.
Then, Frances tilted her head. “I have taught you too much for that answer to pass.”
Emily looked down and nodded. “You have.”
Frances touched her arm once. “Then I shall not demand more than you wish to give.”
“Thank you.”
They stood side by side near the lake after that, saying little for a while. The silence between them felt easier than silence had any right to. A bird moved somewhere in the reeds, and the house behind them glowed in long warm bands from the lower windows.
Emily could still feel the ache of the room she had left, the bed, the softness after pleasure, the impossible cruelty of Adam’s apology. Yet here, with her mother beside her and the lake doing nothing more dramatic than reflecting darkness, the pain stopped being the only thing in the world.
Frances, having wisely abandoned the marlin question, began to gossip in a low voice about the guests.
“Lady Winter will absolutely cheat at cards before the week is over.”
Emily shook her head. “She does not know how not to.”
“And Lady Lake’s sister is in love with her own voice.”
She smiled. “That is unfair.”
“Oh, you tell me that now.”
She leaned lightly against her mother’s shoulder for one brief second, then straightened again. “Poor Sir Peter.”
“Oh, Peter survives everything. He has built his character out of irritation.”
That coaxed another quiet laugh from her.
By the time they turned back toward the house, Emily felt steadier. She had not unloaded the entirety of her marriage onto her mother, and that had been the right choice. Some things were too raw to survive being spoken aloud before they had hardened into words.
They reached the terrace steps, and Frances squeezed her hand once before stepping through the brighter doors that led to the older ladies’ corridor.
Emily stayed back one breath longer before following.
Adam had not moved much since she left.
At some point, he had sat down, and at some other point, he had stood again. The temperature in the room had changed only by degrees as a candle had guttered lower and the fire had settled. The sheet still lay disturbed where she had risen from it, though.
“I could make you happy if you let me. And you could make me happy too.”
He went to the fireplace and braced one hand on the mantel.
The words would not leave him, nor would the look on her face when she said them. He closed his eyes.
He had called after her. That much counted for something only to him.
He had wanted her to stay. He had not wanted the room emptied of her.
He had not wanted the look on her face when she realized that even after all of this, after the bed and the tenderness and his own name on her lips, he still could not step into the one truth that would make any of it mean peace instead of fracture.
If she had stayed, what then?
The question was merciless because he knew the answer.
He would have wanted her. Held her. Touched her again.
Perhaps even loved her in all the ways he already did not know how to survive.
What he would not have given her was the safety she was asking of him.
The future. The children who might come.
He had been happy with her. He knew that now. Whitechapel had proved it. The household had proved it. Tonight had proved it beyond doubt.
He remained by the fire anyway, with the room full of her absence and the knowledge settling into him with punishing clarity.
What stood at the center of his marriage now was no longer confusion. It was no longer even fear.
It was resistance.
And if he wasn’t careful, it would break his marriage apart.