Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Adena swallowed. Everything that she had hoped would not come to pass was now a reality.
He did not love her. He did not even seem to like her, he seemed so willing, so happy to never see her again or claim their friendship.
It had all evidently been in her head. What she thought they had shared was just an illusion, a hope, a fantasy.
Now that she had come crashing down to earth, it was not a pleasant experience.
“The tide is almost out,” she said dully.
Her shawl was placed in her lap, and she looked down at it through misty eyes.
“So it is,” said Luke stiffly. “We should be able to get over to the mainland soon. We could wait here for a few more minutes, and then – ”
“No,” Adena said resolutely. “I would like to start now.”
The last thing that she wanted was to spend an extra minute with Luke, the Marquis of Dewsbury, if she did not have to. All this time with him was just painful; every time she looked at him, she remembered being in those arms, kissing that mouth.
“Now?” Luke replied blankly.
She did not reply, but instead rose and started to dust down the sand from her gown.
“Now,” he muttered quietly under his breath, though she caught it quite easily, and the sarcasm in his voice pulled at her heart. Could he not see the pain she was feeling?
For a moment, as Luke rose too, and brushed some dried seaweed from his linen shirt, Adena felt an overwhelming desire to tell him.
Exactly what she would say, she was not quite sure.
There had to be some way of telling him that she had fallen painfully and irrevocably in love with him, without him feeling obliged to propose marriage to her.
Because she could not bear the thought of Luke proposing out of a misplaced sense of duty, or honour. She wanted him to want her – passionately, compulsively, as she did him.
But if she shared even a snippet of this, she knew what the outcome would be. He would propose out of respect to custom, and they would marry, and she would have to spend the rest of her life looking over at a husband who had not really wanted to marry her.
No. She would not be that selfish. She could not stand it. She would be silent, and let him return to society, free and unencumbered.
Though she would never be free of the thought of him again.
“‘Tis this way.”
Luke’s voice broke into her thoughts, and she coloured as though he could sense that he was on her mind. He was indicating the direction which she had taken to search for her shawl.
“Off we go then,” Adena tried to say without a care in the world, half knowing, half hoping that he would hear the quaver in her tones and enquire whether anything was the matter. All she needed was an opening, an excuse…
“I think you mentioned that you were staying with some friends nearby,” Luke asked her formally as they reached the wet sand near the shore and started to walk along it. “Will they be concerned about your welfare?”
Adena sighed. Back to small talk and polite conversation it was, then. It was hard to believe what they had been together for that sparkling night.
“I should think,” she replied cordially. “I imagine there may be a small search party looking for me, but I suppose that as it was just one night, they may assume that I took lodgings in Marshurst instead of returning home.”
They strode on for a few more minutes in silence as they came around a bend, and the mainland came into clearer view – as did a stretch of beach connecting them to it.
Adena’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Ah, there it is!”
Luke laughed quietly. “You were concerned that it would not be?”
“Not at all,” she laughed in return, glorifying in their conversation now that it was returning to something that felt like normal. “It was just – now, that is strange.”
She stopped and stared down at the sand. Luke came to a stop beside her, and stared down uncomprehending at the same patch of sand.
“What are we looking at?”
Adena leaned down, and brushed at the sand with her fingers. It was dry, moving fluidly across her fingers and pooling in her palm.
“‘Tis just sand,” said his voice beside her.
She shook her head. “No, it is dry sand. Completely dry. Bone dry.”
Her heart was racing. It did not make sense.
“What does that matter?” Luke’s voice sounded bored now, and as she stood up, he gave her a relaxed smile. “There is bound to be some dry sand here, the tide never comes up this far.”
Something was nagging at the back of her mind, and Adena could not precisely put her finger on it, but it definitely had something to do with the sand.
“The tide never comes up this far,” she repeated slowly, rubbing her fingers together to feel the dry grains on her skin.
Luke shook his head, and stared out at the small scattering of houses that they could just about make out on the mainland. “No, it only usually makes it up to that line, you can see clearly where the sand goes from dark to light. That is why this place is used to get back – ”
His voice broke off abruptly, and all of a sudden, Adena understood.
“To get back to the mainland,” she said quietly, staring at Luke in amazement. But there was no amazement on his face. There was horror.
“Adena,” he began, but she spoke over him.
“You knew! You knew that there was a place where the tide did not reach, where the sand was still dry, where you could still get across to the mainland!”
He was staring at her, aghast, and Adena could feel fiery anger bubbling up inside her.
“Listen to me – ”
“I will not listen to you!” Adena almost shouted, she was so furious. “You knew that we could have made our way back to shore last night, did you not? You knew that we were not really trapped – Squire’s Isle indeed!”
“That is the local name,” Luke said hurriedly.
Adena made an irritated sound. “So you gave me the correct name for it, do you believe that this suffices? Did it slip your mind to mention that we could also make our way home last evening, too? Did you accidentally forget that we were not marooned on an island?”
His mouth was opening and closing now but no words were coming out of it.
Adena flung back her head and laughed bitterly. She had been so stupid, so stupid! “Is this a trick that you play on all visiting gentlewomen?”
“Trick – no!” Luke shook his head violently and tried to reach for her hands, but she snatched them away. “Adena, listen. I should have told you that we could have walked, but – ”
“Yes, you should!” She did not care for his excuses, did not care that her heart was breaking all over again – to think that she could experience such pain!
“Is this just a joke to you? Do you find it funny to lie to innocent young ladies about how they are trapped all night on an island, just with you?”
She started to walk away from him, determined to put as much distance between him and her as possible, but he walked after her, and his strides were longer.
“Adena, listen, I knew that I should tell you but I was so intrigued by you, so fascinated – ”
But Adena did not want to hear it. “I have heard enough!”
“You must listen to me!” Luke grabbed her arm and tried to twist her around to face him, but she struggled against him. “Please, you must believe me that I had nothing but good intentions for hiding the truth!”
“Like seducing me?” Adena wrenched at her arm but she could not get herself free, and she was hotly aware of how close he was, how strong he was, how quickly he could fold her in his arms and kiss away all her protestations.
And by God, she would let him.
No! He lied to her, manipulated her, allowed her to let her guard down.
“I had no intention of seducing you,” Luke was saying, “quite the opposite!”
She laughed as her arms started to burn with his pressure. “Oh, so now I was not tempting enough for you?”
He stared at her, bewildered. “Which offends you more?”
But his confusion had allowed him to drop his guard, and Adena pulled away her arm, rubbing at it with her other hand.
“Leave me alone,” she said firmly. “If I had just continued to walk around this island, or so I thought it was, I would have found my way home. If you had not stopped me, told me that it was impossible, then I would not have stayed here, with you, to…to…”
Tears were returning once more, but she was not going to let them overwhelm her. She found her footing on the sand, and continued to walk back to the mainland.
But Luke was not going to give up that easily, it seemed. Keeping apace beside her, where there was nothing that she could do to prevent him from following her, he continued to plead with her.
“Yes, I was wrong to allow the deception – but it was too perfect, the first moment that I saw you I knew that I wanted to get to know you, to – to befriend you – ”
Adena let out a bark of a laugh, dark and sarcastic.
“I mean it!” Luke ran a few paces and stopped directly before her, forcing her to stop.
She stared into those grey eyes and tried to quash the rush of love that was rising up in her.
“Adena, I was wrong, I admit it. But as soon as I realised how beautiful you were, how funny you are, how spirited you are…it was impossible for me to let you go without trying to charm you, win you to me.”
“To take advantage of me!”
“To make you love me!”
Adena was breathing heavily, and her arm still hurt, but it was nothing to the pain that was ebbing slowly into her soul as she stared into the face of a man she had thought was good, and kind.
But he was no such thing.
“You mean to tell me,” she said slowly, staring into his eyes and refusing to look away, refusing to let the tears fall. “That you intended to secure my affections? That you acted purposefully to make love to me?”
Luke’s shoulders sagged as though in relief, and he smiled. “Yes.”
The slap across his face rang out across the water, echoing over the sea in all directions.
“You cad,” she said softly. “You have no thoughts for others, only for your own. You do not love me, or anyone, it seems. All you are interested in is yourself. You make me sick.”
Picking up her skirts, Adena ran across the sand, tears now finally falling after such resolute control, back to civilisation.
Luke stared after her in horror. That had not been what he had meant at all – he had just declared his love in the only way that he knew how, and somehow it had gone all wrong.
How was this even possible? Could he have been more direct? Admittedly, the word love had not yet passed his lips – but he had not been raised to show any emotions. Just the few words that he had been managed had been against his nature.
Perhaps he had needed to bare his soul even further to this mysterious and wonderful woman who had strode into his life through the waves, and now was running away from him across the sand.
Luke’s heart ached as he saw the figure grow smaller and smaller into the distance.
Well, he had royally messed that up completely.
What sort of an idiot was he? To be sure, his friends and even a few brothers had come to him for guidance in these matters, and like an idiot, he had given them his advice.
And yet when it had really mattered, when his own heart was on the line, he had been powerless to prevent it from all falling apart.
Luke kicked at some sand and watched it fly out into the wind. He could berate himself for his choice of words all he wanted, of course, but it all came down to one decision: his choice to lie, and conceal the truth of the island.
What would have happened if he had been honest in that moment: would she have stayed for a few hours with him? Probably not.
Would she have permitted him to walk her home? Perhaps, but it would have been a walk of an hour, nothing more.
It was entirely possible that, after he had rescued her from the rising tide, she would have just simply thanked him and gone on her way.
Luke bit his lip, and started to walk heavily along the same way that Adena had done. There was no use thinking about it, he supposed. The fact of the matter was that he had already chosen: there was no way of going back and undoing the stupid mistake that he had already made.
And the consequences were severe. All hope of ever seeing Miss Adena Garland again were at an end, he knew that. If chance should bring him into her company, she would not only ignore him, but certainly cut him off, reject him, leave the party, perhaps.
A flash of memory passed through his mind: the feel of her breast under his hand, the sensation of her body writhing against his.
But they were overpowered by the recollection of her laughter, the way she threw her head back to gaze at the stars, her admission that she found him attractive, the curl of her lips as she had laughed at his inept cooking.
Luke swore under his breath. Only he could find his perfect woman, charm her, delight her, strip her down and make love to her under the stars…and then lose her, all in one day.