Chapter 16 #2
For a heartbeat, she stood frozen. Then she made a sound, part surrender, part challenge, and her arms came up around his neck, fingers tangling in his hair as she kissed him back with equal fervor.
The world narrowed to this moment, this connection, the slide of lips and tongues and the tiny sounds she made that drove him to absolute distraction.
He pressed closer, needing to feel her against him, needing to prove that this thing between them was real and vital and worth any amount of scandal.
Her body yielded and demanded in equal measure, soft curves and fierce response, and he thought he might go mad from the contradictions of her.
His brilliant, impossible, infuriating Eveline who could translate dead languages but couldn't see the simple truth of how desperately he loved her.
The kiss deepened, became something almost violent in its intensity.
His hands found her waist, spanning it easily through the modest fabric of her dress, and he lifted her slightly, pressing her more firmly against the wall.
She gasped into his mouth, her fingers tightening in his hair, and he swallowed the sound like a man dying of thirst.
This was what lay beneath their careful distances and formal addresses; this wild, ungovernable need that made mockery of social conventions and carefully laid plans. This was why he couldn't stay away, why every resolution to be sensible crumbled the moment she entered a room. This was...
She wrenched herself away so suddenly he nearly stumbled, her hands coming up to push against his chest with surprising strength. They stood there, both breathing hard, and Adrian watched her try to rebuild her composure like someone stacking cards in a windstorm.
"This," she said, her voice shaking despite visible effort to steady it, "is exactly the problem. This is why I have to leave."
"Eveline..."
"No." She bent to gather her fallen portfolio, papers scattering across the landing in her haste.
"Don't you see? We can't think clearly when we're together.
One touch and I forget every sensible resolution.
One kiss and I'm ready to throw away whatever remains of my reputation.
You make me reckless, Adrian, and I cannot afford recklessness. "
He knelt to help her gather the scattered papers, his hands still not quite steady.
Translation samples, he saw Ovid and Catullus and Theocritus, all rendered in her neat hand with marginal notes that showed the depth of her scholarship.
Without quite planning to, he palmed several of the folded sheets, slipping them into his coat pocket while she focused on retying the portfolio's ribbon.
"Then think as you will," he said quietly, rising and offering his hand to help her up. She ignored it, standing on her own with that stubborn independence that both maddened and enchanted him. "But I am not done. Whatever you might believe about my lack of planning, I am not done."
"Your Grace..."
"Adrian," he corrected. "In private, at least, let me be Adrian."
She looked at him then, really looked, and he saw beneath her careful control to the exhaustion and hurt and terrible hope she was trying so hard to hide.
"Adrian," she whispered, and the sound of his name in her voice was almost his undoing.
"Please. Let me go. Let me find some measure of peace in obscurity. "
"I can't." The admission was torn from somewhere deep in his chest. "Heaven help me, I can't. The thought of you in Manchester, wasting your brilliance on ungrateful children, dying by degrees in some merchant's household...I can't bear it."
"Then offer me an alternative," she challenged, her chin lifting again in that gesture he'd come to love and dread in equal measure.
"Not grand gestures or stolen kisses or public displays that only deepen my ruin.
Offer me something real, something that acknowledges who I am rather than who you think I should be. "
He wanted to speak then, wanted to pour out every plan and hope and dream he'd been harboring.
But the words tangled on his tongue, too large and unwieldy for the narrow stairwell with Harriet undoubtedly listening from the parlor below.
This wasn't the place for declarations, not with her dressed for interview, not with the shadow of Manchester hanging between them like a sword.
"Go to your interview," he said finally. "Meet your merchant family and their Latin-deficient daughters. But know this; I am not finished. I will never be finished when it comes to you."
She studied his face for a long moment, and he wondered what she saw there. The duke who'd failed her? The man who'd kissed her senseless against a wall? Or something else entirely, something that gave her pause despite her determination to leave?
"I have to go," she said finally. "They're expecting me at eleven, and it won't do to be late. Even fallen women must maintain some standards."
She descended the stairs without looking back, her spine straight and her step steady despite everything.
Adrian remained on the landing, listening to the murmur of voices below as Harriet presumably offered last-minute encouragement or warnings.
The front door opened and closed with decisive finality, and still he stood there, feeling the echo of her presence like a physical ache.
Slowly, he drew the purloined translation samples from his pocket.
Her handwriting covered the pages in neat rows, Latin giving way to English with marginal notes that showed her thought process, the careful decisions that went into each word choice.
At the bottom of one page, she'd written a personal observation:
"N.B. - Ovid understands that love transforms not just the lover but the very language of love. Each word must carry both meaning and music. How does one translate feeling itself?"
Adrian folded the papers carefully and returned them to his pocket.
She was wrong about him having no plan. He'd been formulating one since the moment she'd refused his proposal, refining it with each sleepless night in his library.
But she was right that he'd been going about things wrong, trying to force his protection on her rather than offering what she truly needed.
He descended the stairs to find Harriet waiting in the small parlor, her expression a mixture of sympathy and censure that suggested she'd heard enough to draw her own conclusions.
"I suppose you're proud of yourself," she said without preamble. "Kissing her senseless just when she'd managed to gather her courage for this interview."
"Is that what I did?"
"Among other things." Harriet studied him with those sharp eyes that missed nothing. "She's right, you know. Gestures like that won't save this situation. She needs more than dramatic declarations and stolen moments in stairwells."
"I know." Adrian moved to the window, watching the street below as if he might catch one last glimpse of Eveline's determined figure. "That's why I took these." He showed her the translation samples briefly before returning them to his pocket.
Harriet's eyebrows rose. "You stole her work?"
"Borrowed," he corrected. "I have... plans for them."
"Plans." She said the word as though it might bite. "Your last plan resulted in her complete social ruin."
"My last plan was no plan at all," Adrian admitted. "This time will be different."
"Why should I believe that?"
He turned from the window to face her fully. "Because this time, I'm not trying to save her. I'm trying to prove she doesn't need saving, not from me, not from society, not from anyone. She wants to be valued for her mind, her work, her worth beyond the scandal. I intend to ensure that happens."
Harriet was quiet for a long moment, clearly weighing his words against his past actions. "And if she accepts the Manchester position?"
"Then I'll have to work quickly." He moved toward the door, then paused. "Tell me, Miss Fairweather. Do you think she loves me?"
The question hung in the air between them, too honest for comfortable social discourse. Harriet sighed, and in that sound was all the frustration of a friend who'd watched two people circle each other like wary combatants rather than potential lovers.
"She loves you to distraction," she said finally.
"Which is precisely why she's trying so hard to leave.
You terrify her, Your Grace. Not because of your power or position, but because of how thoroughly you could destroy her if she let you close enough.
She's already lost her reputation for you.
She can't afford to lose herself as well. "
Adrian absorbed this like a blow, though part of him was thrilled to hear Eveline's feelings confirmed. "I won't destroy her."
"Won't you?" Harriet's gaze was steady, challenging. "Can you honestly say you know how to love her without trying to possess her? How to support her work without overshadowing it? How to be a partner rather than a protector?"
The questions stung because they struck at fears he'd barely acknowledged. Could he do those things? Could Adrian Blackburn, Duke of Everleigh, raised to command and control, learn to love as an equal rather than a superior?
"I can learn," he said finally.
"Then I suggest you learn quickly." Harriet moved past him to open the door, a clear dismissal. "The Manchester coach leaves in three days.”