Chapter 31
E mily rode to the meadow at Huxley the next afternoon because she could not bear letting her sister and mother fuss over her one more time. Frances’s hopefulness had become its own ache. Sybella’s honesty, though cleaner, still pressed at bruises she could not keep touching.
Even the walls of the house had begun to feel too small for grief. So she took a horse, chose the path without speaking to anyone, and came to the quiet stretch near the edge of the estate, where the grass opened wide and the world finally stopped asking anything of her.
His place.
It was the only place she could think of at the end of the day. Now she sat at the edge of that same meadow and stared across it with her hands clasped too tightly in her lap.
“I hate you for being everywhere,” she muttered.
The horse behind her snorted, and she almost laughed.
For the next half hour, she sat on the soft grass, letting her mind absorb the chirping of the birds and the smell of the bright afternoon air all around her. The view helped take her mind off the issue, but only for a while.
And for now, a while was all the respite she needed.
Then, she heard another horse, and her spine went rigid. She turned before she was ready and saw Adam riding toward her.
What the ? —
He dismounted before he reached her fully and came the last steps on foot. He looked as though he had ridden hard and slept badly, which was only fair. His coat was dusty from the road, and his hair disheveled.
“Adam?” she called, rising to her feet.
“You are here.”
“What in God’s name are you doing here?”
He stopped a few feet away and exhaled. “I have been to Salbury. Your sister told me she didn’t know where you went, but then she said you mentioned this place yesterday. I thought I would come here first before going to the village.”
Emily blinked. “The villag—Has something happened?”
“Yes,” he responded, his voice quiet. “I was wrong.”
Emily rose to her feet. “What?”
“I hurt you.”
She took a step closer, unsure of what to do with her hands. “Well… yes.”
He took that without flinching. “I know.”
“Do you?” she scoffed. “Because you have known many things before and still found ways to wound me.”
His jaw tightened. “You are right.”
She folded her arms. “Why are you here?”
Adam exhaled and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I have come to ask you not to leave me.”
Her breath caught, but she did not let him see what his words did to her. “What are you talking about? You already let me leave.”
“I know.” His voice roughened. “I thought I was protecting you. I see now what I was really doing.”
“Adam, what is going on?” she asked, the confusion in her voice growing. “What changed? Why are you here today?”
She watched closely as he stuck his hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a piece of folded paper.
“I found this last night,” he said. “It is from my father. Written on the day of the carriage accident.”
Emily’s face changed. So did the air between them.
“He confessed,” Adam revealed. “He admitted he pushed my mother down the stairs. He admitted that he lied and called it an accident, and that he orchestrated the carriage crash that killed him and his second wife.”
Emily stared at the letter in his hand, then back at him.
“He wrote it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“And you believe it.”
“I do.” He took one step closer. “Emily, all this time I thought my fear was caution. I thought if I kept stepping back, if I kept denying myself what I wanted, I was proving I would never become him. But he acted on his violence. He chose it, and I have spent a long time trying to do the opposite so blindly that I turned fear into virtue.”
She looked at him for a long moment. “That explains what happened to you, but it does not erase what you did to me.”
“I know.” His answer came at once. “And I am not asking you to erase it.”
“Then what are you asking?”
He swallowed. “The chance to earn what I should have given you before.”
Emily shook her head. “You kept calling it protection. You kept making me pay for terrors that belonged to another man.”
“Yes,” he acknowledged. “I did. I kept choosing fear over you. I thought distance was sacrifice. But it was cowardice dressed as something noble.” He took another step toward her. “I see that now.”
Her throat ached.
For some reason, the meadow had gone very still around them. Even the wind seemed to have hushed.
“How can I trust you?” she rasped.
The question landed between them with the full weight of everything before it.
Adam did not rush to answer. He looked at her as if he understood exactly what the words cost.
“You cannot,” he responded, his voice clearer than anything. “But know that I’ll do everything in my power to be the best husband you could ever wish for.”
Emily closed her eyes for a moment. There it was, all she had ever wanted from him. Commitment.
When she opened her eyes again, he was still there, waiting patiently.
“You are very late,” she said softly.
“I know.”
“You hurt me terribly.”
“I know that too.”
She looked at him, at the man who had nearly ruined them through fear and had finally come without shelter, without excuse, and with the truth in his hand.
“You’re the only husband I’ve ever wished for,” she admitted. “Do you know that? I do not wish to be with anyone else. Anyone but you.”
She could see the words break something inside him.
He did not move at first, and neither did she. However, the distance between them had turned into something much more powerful.
Adam closed the gap between them and stood before her, his heartbeat loud enough for her to hear. She stood before him anyway, and a part of her wondered what would come next. Would it be more speech and confessions, or would he just?—
He didn’t let her finish the thought, for he pulled her close and kissed her as if he had been given back something he had no right to expect.
For one breath, he only held her face between his hands and let his mouth rest against hers with a stunned tenderness. The meadow, the wind, the horses shifting somewhere behind them—all of it faded under the simple fact that Emily had stayed. She had heard him and had decided not to turn away.
When she lifted her hands to his shoulders and kissed him back, something deep in his chest gave way.
“Emily,” he murmured against her mouth.
She smiled, though her eyes were wet. “I am here.”
He kissed her again, slower this time. Her mouth was soft under his, warm and alive and willing. She leaned into him and let him touch her without bracing for retreat.
His hands slid down to her waist. He drew her closer until there was no air left between them, and when she made that small sound in her throat, half breath and half need, the kiss deepened of its own accord. Her fingers slid into his hair, and she kissed him with growing hunger.
“I thought I had lost you,” he murmured when they both pulled back to gasp for air.
“Well, you nearly did,” she said.
“I know. I am never doing that again.”
She brushed his cheek with the backs of her fingers. “Do not make me regret this.”
“I won’t.”
She searched his face one second longer, then nodded.
Adam gathered her against him and kissed her again, this time with all the passion he had been holding back for months, and she answered him just as fiercely.
The kiss broke, but neither of them pulled apart.
His hands were on her waist, and her fingers were still in his hair as they remained standing in the open meadow, with the grass around them and the wind moving low through it.
At that moment, Emily felt the last of her hesitation dissolve. She reached for the buttons on his coat.
He watched her do it with an expression that made her fingers tremble. She worked through the tremors anyway, pushed the coat from his shoulders, and felt him shrug it off without looking away from her face.
His cravat followed, and his hands found the laces at her back and untied them with considerably more patience than she could bear. The fabric loosened slowly until she felt the afternoon air kiss her spine.
He laid his coat on the grass and lowered her onto it.
The ground was soft beneath them, and he covered her, his weight braced on his forearms and his eyes fixed on her face. He kissed her throat, the curve of her shoulder, the swell of her breasts, and she pulled at his shirt with both hands until he helped her remove it.
She pressed her palms flat against his chest and felt his heartbeat as he settled between her thighs. A gasp escaped her lips as she felt his length against her.
“You know, I have always imagined my first time would be on, you know, a proper bed.”
Adam laughed at the words, the white in his eyes gleaming.
“We could go to?—”
“No. I am quite fine right here,” Emily responded, her voice sharp. “It is perfect.”
Adam nodded. “It is.”
He pressed his forehead against hers for a moment, just breathing, and she tilted her hips up in response because waiting was no longer something she had the patience for.
Then he pushed forward slowly.
The stretch pulled a low sound from her that she felt no need to contain. He went still, checking her face, and she dug her nails into his back. He moved again, deeper this time, and her head tipped back against the coat.
Her eyes closed, and she let herself simply feel .
Soon, he set a most pleasurable pace. Each thrust was deep and measured, and she felt every single one.
“Emily.” Her name came out rough and low against her temple.
She turned her face into his jaw. “Do not stop.”
His pace quickened by degrees, and she felt it in her whole body.
Everything.
The rhythm of him, the heat of his skin against hers, the shift of his weight with each movement. She wrapped her legs around him and felt the answering rumble in his chest.
A wave of sharp satisfaction cut through the pleasure.
She tightened her legs around him. He groaned into her hair, the sound rough and unguarded, and his hips drove forward with more force.
“Adam,” she moaned and felt him shudder.
She raked her fingers down his back, and he made a sound that was not quite her name and not quite anything else either. At that moment, the pleasure began climbing with a speed she could not slow.
“You can let go,” he said roughly. “Just stay with me.”
She held on as his breathing stuttered. Soon, climax crashed over her in a long, rolling wave.
She pressed her face into his neck and gripped him so hard as it swept her fully, then she heard him follow seconds later with a rough, broken sound against her hair, his whole body shuddering against hers.
For the next minute, only silence permeated the air between them.
The birds still chirped, and the smell of grass still filled Emily’s nostrils.
This time, however, the meaning behind them had changed.
This time, she felt more hopeful that a new beginning awaited her.
The kind where she could appreciate all the little things nature and her life had to offer.
Her hand moved lazily over his shoulder and down his back. Adam kissed her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth, unable to stop touching her now that every touch felt clean.
At last, she let out a slow, unsteady breath. “You have ruined me.”
He looked down at her. The line was half-tease, half sleepy truth, and the warmth in it nearly made him laugh from sheer relief.
“Do not worry. You shall be properly fixed,” he quipped.
“How noble of you.”
“I will cancel the annulment,” he said. “Or I will marry you all over again if I must.”
Emily’s eyes softened. “You sound very determined.”
“I am.” He brushed her hair back from her face. “I have been a fool once. I do not intend to make a profession of it.”
She smiled, and the sight of it after so much grief hit him with quiet force.
“I love you,” she breathed.
Adam closed his eyes for a brief second, letting the words strike all the way through him. When he opened them again, he sounded more certain than ever.
“I love you . God help me, Emily, I think I have loved you from the start. I was simply too frightened to deserve it.”
She touched his mouth with two fingers. “Then stop talking about deserving and start talking about keeping me.”
He caught her hand and kissed her palm. “Gladly.”
She shifted beneath him, content now, radiant in a way she was certain he would carry to his grave.
“What happens next?” she asked.
He smiled and bent to kiss her once more, slow and full of the future he could finally imagine without dread.
“This,” he replied, “for as long as you’ll have me.”
“And after that?”
He rested his forehead against hers, a smile playing on his lips.
“After that, I will marry you all over again… Duchess .”