Chapter 25
T he next morning came bright and orderly, which made Adam hate it at once.
The party around him did not pause, no matter how hard he wanted it to, just because his marriage had cracked in private. The breakfast had been laid out as usual, and the servants moved through the corridors with the same polished rhythm as yesterday.
He watched as the guests spoke of the weather, horses, archery, and whether the lawns were dry enough for proper sport. He had dressed and gone downstairs with the taste of last night still in his mouth.
Emily was already there.
She stood near the breakfast room doors with Marina and Leonora, smiling at something one of them had said. She wore pale blue this morning, simple enough for daylight and soft enough to make him remember her on the bedsheets with painful clarity.
He slowed his pace without meaning to.
She looked at him. Only for a second. Then she turned to answer one of the older ladies with a name he couldn’t be bothered to remember, accepted some light remark with perfect composure, and moved on with the others before he had even reached the room.
That was how the day began, and he saw the pattern before the first hour had ended.
Emily was avoiding him.
She was doing it so well that only the man being avoided would have noticed. She never fled or looked flustered. She simply belonged to company every time he tried to find an opening.
When guests drifted toward the lawns for archery, she went with Frances and the younger ladies. When older guests settled under the shade for talk and observation, she stopped there just long enough to be claimed by them.
He watched as she moved through the party with such grace that anyone watching would have said the Duchess of Huxley was having a charming day.
Adam knew better.
At the lawn, the targets had been set at varying distances, and the morning air carried the easy cheer of people happy to compete over something harmless.
The gentlemen offered opinions no one wanted, and the ladies laughed at their poor aim with more kindness than accuracy deserved.
Frances, who approached every contest as though the Lord above had arranged it for her satisfaction, drew a bow with severe concentration and loosed an arrow that landed close enough to the center to elicit a round of applause she accepted as her due.
Emily clapped for her mother and cleared her throat before speaking, “You have been waiting all morning to look pleased with yourself.”
Frances lowered the bow. “All my life, darling.”
The laugh that followed should have sounded light to him. Instead, it landed like another door shut in his face.
Adam stood beside Jasper with a bow in his hand and watched Emily accept one from Marina.
She drew, adjusted, and let go. The arrow hit the closest line to the target, and a gentleman two places down praised her aim.
Emily thanked him with as much politeness as she could muster and turned immediately to Leonora, who had started complaining that archery was a ridiculous pastime designed to reveal feminine weakness and masculine vanity in the same hour.
He could not find one moment to draw near her that did not also place him under six pairs of eyes.
Jasper noticed first, from the way he gripped the bow in his hands.“Stop holding that bow as if it has offended your ancestors, Huxley.”
Adam did not look at him. “Then perhaps you should take it from me before I do it permanent harm.”
Jasper grinned. “This is about your wife.”
Adam sighed. “Everything seems to be about my wife.”
“Well, Huxley,” Jasper drawled, “that is usually how wives work.”
Adam shot him a look sharp enough to coax a laugh from Dominic, who had just joined them.
He followed Adam’s gaze to Emily and went still. “She looks happy enough.”
“She is polite,” Adam said.
“Ah.” Dominic folded his arms. “That has always been Emily.”
Adam turned to him. “I see.”
“I know my sister.” Dominic’s voice remained easy, though his eyes did not. “She only remains that calm when she has decided someone is not worth the trouble of dramatics. Perhaps she is simply tired of the country house.”
That hit harder than it should have.
Emily handed her bow to a waiting footman and moved away with the other ladies toward the terrace doors, where the morning was already giving way to the next phase of the day.
Adam watched her go and felt with growing certainty that Dominic had made him understand exactly what was going on. She was not angry in the usual way, as anger at a person still meant care. This felt colder. She was withdrawing the effort itself.
Inside, the house was reorganized for the midday entertainments, and cards began to appear in the drawing room.
A smaller group gathered for charades in the morning room. Someone asked for music and was refused by three women in succession before Marina agreed, on the condition that no one speak through it.
Emily moved through it all with maddening smoothness.
At the whist table, she took a place beside an older lady whose hearing failed selectively and therefore required every partner to lean close and repeat the rules, as if introducing them for the first time.
Adam had sat close to her the previous day, and the twenty-something minutes he spent with her felt like an eternity.
Adam, entering a moment too late, found the only remaining seat three chairs away and on the wrong side of a fern.
He sat through one round in silence, answered a question from his partner too late, and looked up just in time to see Emily smile at something Lady Lake had said.
He tried once to catch her eye, but she looked past him to Sybella.
Later, he positioned himself by the door just as the game ended and the guests shifted. Emily moved in his direction, with Marina and one of the older ladies at her side.
Before he could open his mouth, Frances called across the room,“Emily, do come here a moment and tell me if this arrangement of teams is fair or if Peter is cheating again.”
Emily turned at once. “Sir Peter is always cheating.”
Sir Peter, sprawled in an armchair with all the discontent of a man dragged into diversion against his will, raised his head. “Your Grace, I am only adapting.”
“Like a parasite ,” Frances answered.
The people in the room laughed as Emily once again went to her mother. Adam stood uselessly by the door.
By luncheon, the whole thing had become unbearable. He was not imagining it. Emily flowed around him with deliberate, polished certainty. She chose sisters, friends, older ladies, anyone and everyone except him, and she did it so cleanly that no one else could have called it avoidance.
Only he knew he was being shut out.
Dominic cornered him just after the last of the guests began moving toward the dining room. “What is going on?”
Adam kept his expression neutral. “What are you talking about?”
Dominic gave him a hard look. “Do not insult me. You are clearly fighting with her.”
“There is no fight.”
Dominic let that sit for one second. “Well, perhaps she is fighting with you. I do not care. It looks wrong.”
Adam said nothing, and from the look on Dominic’s face, he knew his silence was answer enough.
Dominic lowered his voice. “Then settle it here.”
Adam looked at him with nothing but confusion.
“You do not want people carrying stories out of this house when they leave. Guests talk. Servants talk. If something is off between you and my sister, fix it before this party breaks.”
The warning landed perhaps a bit harder than necessary.
The house was too full of people, too full of eyes, too full of little pauses and glances that could easily harden into gossip once placed in a carriage and sent home.
Adam gave the smallest nod, as it was all the answer he had. Dominic gave him a soft pat on the shoulder before turning around to leave.
After luncheon, Emily moved toward Marina and Leonora with the same calm intent she had worn all day. Adam stepped into her path before she reached them, and his hand closed gently around her arm.
She stopped and looked at his hand, then at him. “Adam. What are you doing?”
“This will only take a minute.”
He did not wait for her agreement. He turned and led her toward the corridor, toward the stairs, toward the suite where there would be no audience left to hide either of them.
Emily stepped into the suite and turned to face him. “Then say what you mean quickly.”
He shut the door behind them. The click sounded too final.
“Why are you ignoring me?” he asked.
She looked at him with maddening calm. “I do not know what you are talking about.”
“You do.”
“I have spoken to you.”
“In company,” he pointed out. “With ten other people between us.”
“That is still speech.”
He stared at her. She had spent the whole day gliding around him with perfect manners and not one private word. The memory of it still burned.
“Emily,” he sighed. “Please.”
The word cost him. She heard that at once. He saw it in the slight shift in her expression, the one flicker of softness before she pulled it back.
“You asked for a minute,” she said. “You have it.”
“That is all I have had since the morning.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Then perhaps you should have said what you meant last night.”
The room went still.
Adam took one step toward her. “Do not do this.”
“Do what?”
“This.” He gestured between them. “This cold little distance. If Gilbert were here, he would see it.”
She let out a breath that might have been a laugh in another room. “Then perhaps Gilbert is more perceptive than you.”
That broke the last of his resolve.
He crossed the remaining distance and caught her by the waist. She gasped, and he kissed her before either of them could say another word. For one brief second, she stood rigid in his arms. Then she kissed him back, and the force of it went straight through him.