Chapter 24
“I owe you an apology, and I would rather you let me finish it before deciding whether to throw me out.”
Adelaide looked up from the correspondence spread across the small writing desk beside her bedroom window. Morning sunlight fell in broad rectangles across the carpet while a mild breeze stirred the curtains beside her.
Beyond the glass, gardeners moved through the lower beds as though the previous evening had not ended with her husband questioning her honor in a darkened corridor and then standing there looking as though she had struck him when she answered.
Eric remained just inside the doorway, though he had knocked… several times, in fact.
The first had gone unanswered because Adelaide had known precisely who stood outside. The second she had ignored from principle. At the third, she had finally called for him to enter, though she had remained seated and made no effort to soften the reception.
Now he stood before her without the cold restraint of the previous evening.
His coat was properly fastened and his cravat immaculate, but there was something decidedly less composed about the man wearing them.
He had not slept well. Adelaide knew it from the faint shadows beneath his eyes and the tired set of his mouth.
She set down her pen. “You have already begun badly.”
His brow furrowed. “How?”
“You have assumed I am going to throw you out.”
“After last night, I thought it prudent to prepare for the possibility.”
“I considered it.”
“I suspected you might.”
She folded her hands in her lap. “Well?”
Eric drew a breath and crossed farther into the room, though he stopped several feet from her rather than taking the chair opposite the desk. “What I said to you last night was unworthy of you.”
Adelaide’s fingers tightened together.
“And of me,” he added. “Or at least of the man I had hoped I was becoming.”
That was harder to dismiss, but Eric continued without waiting for encouragement. “You told me what Theodore was to you. More than once. I believed you when you said it, and I still followed you from that dining room and behaved as though Loretta’s insinuation mattered more than your word.”
Adelaide’s gaze returned to him. “It wasn’t Loretta who made you believe it… so why did you?”
“I didn’t.”
The answer came so plainly that she frowned. “You accused me of being careless with boundaries.”
“I know.”
“And yet you claim you did not believe her?”
“I believed something considerably more humiliating.”
She waited.
Eric looked down briefly, rubbing his thumb along the edge of one cuff before he caught himself and dropped his hand. “I was jealous.”
Adelaide had known it already, of course.
She had known it during the assembly when he marched across the green and claimed her for a dance.
She had known it when Theodore interrupted them in the paddock and Eric’s entire body went rigid beside her.
She had certainly known it in the corridor last night.
Still, hearing him admit it without disguise changed something. “Of Theodore…”
“Yes.”
“Who, I have already told you, considers me a sister.”
“I am painfully aware of how ridiculous it is.”
Her brows rose expecting him to continue.
“I spoke with him.” Eric winced. “Rather… he questioned me, quite effectively.”
Despite herself, the corner of Adelaide’s mouth moved. “I imagine he enjoyed that.”
“Not nearly enough to satisfy him.”
“He can be surprisingly restrained.”
“I learned several things about Mr. Holbrook last night. Among them that he is considerably wiser than I had given him credit for, irritatingly perceptive, and apparently would rather marry me than you.”
Adelaide stared at him, then laughter escaped before she could prevent it. “He actually said that?”
“Quite plainly,” Eric said, and his mouth twitched.
“Oh, that is dreadful.”
“I thought so.”
“He will never be permitted to forget it.”
“I was hoping you would say that.”
Her laughter faded, but some of the tightness in the room went with it. Eric did not attempt to use the opening to move nearer. “I am sorry,” he said again. “Not because Theodore explained your relationship to me. I should never have required his explanation. You had already given me yours.”
Adelaide looked down at her hands. “You hurt me.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
“No.” His voice softened. “Perhaps I don’t. But I know that I made you defend your character to your own husband when you had done nothing requiring defense.”
She swallowed.
“I promised you respect, and last night, the moment fear became inconvenient, I behaved as though that promise were mine to suspend.”
Her eyes lifted sharply, and Eric gave a small, humorless laugh. “Theodore helped me understand that as well.”
“I should thank him.”
“I would prefer you didn’t encourage him.”
There was enough of the Eric she knew in that answer to almost make her smile again. Instead of agreeing, she leaned into it. “What were you afraid of?”
She saw the way his shoulders settled and in the brief silence that followed. For weeks, Eric had answered difficult questions by retreating behind carefully placed ideals of duty, practicality, and respect. None of them would serve him now.
“You.”
Adelaide blinked. “Me?”
“Losing you.”
The room seemed suddenly too quiet. Eric finally crossed the remaining distance, but instead of approaching her directly, he took the chair opposite the desk and sat.
It placed them nearly eye to eye. “I spent five years arranging my life so there was nothing left in it that could be taken from me.”
She didn’t interrupt.
“I convinced myself that was wisdom. That if I did not marry, did not have children, did not allow anyone too close, I could never again be responsible for surviving someone I loved.”
His gaze dropped briefly toward the correspondence between them. “Then your father wrote.”
“Papa has always had dreadful timing.”
A faint smile appeared. “I thought so at first.”
“And now?”
“Now I think he may have saved me.” The words struck somewhere Adelaide had not prepared to defend. Eric looked at her then, without humor or reserve. “You came into my study without knocking, and you insulted my personality before you even knew who I was.”
“I questioned its existence.”
“An important distinction.”
“I thought so.”
“You argued with me in the street. You informed me that my authority had limitations before you had even acquired the misfortune of becoming my wife. You brought a child and a lady’s maid into a house that had forgotten how to contain anything except silence, and within weeks I somehow had lessons taking place in the morning room, people laughing at breakfast, and half my horses expecting apples whenever they see a woman with red hair. ”
Adelaide’s throat tightened. “You make me sound terribly disruptive.”
“You are.”
“Then it is I who should apologize.”
“Please don’t.” The way his answer came immediately made her feel just slightly lightheaded. And then, Eric leaned forward, resting his forearms lightly against his knees… which only intensified the sensation. “I thought our bargain would protect us.”
“So did I.”
“I offered you friendship because I believed it was all I could safely give.”
Adelaide’s heart had begun beating much too quickly. “And now?”
He held her gaze. “Now I think it was cowardice.”
She breathed in slowly. “Eric…”
“No. Please.”
He shook his head once. “If I stop now, I will find another reason not to finish.”
Adelaide went still.
“I nearly kissed you in the paddock.” A laugh escaped him then, quiet and astonished, as though he could not quite believe the conversation had carried them there.
Adelaide smiled despite herself, and he looked at her for so long that the smile gradually disappeared. The air between them had changed. There was no arrangement now, only a man sitting before his wife with every practiced defense stripped away.
Eric rose, but Adelaide remained rooted to her seat as she watched him round the corner of the desk slowly, giving her every opportunity to move if she wished, but she didn’t. When he stopped before her, the distance between them was scarcely more than it had been in the paddock.
Eric reached for her hand. His fingers closed around hers carefully. “I spent last night trying to decide how one apologizes for accusing the woman he trusts most of being untrustworthy.”
Adelaide’s breath caught. “I don’t know that there is a proper method.”
“I suspected as much.”
“You could begin by never doing it again.”
“I intend to.”
“That would help.”
His thumb moved once over her knuckles. “And then there is the other matter.”
“What other matter?”
“The one I’ve avoided saying because once I say it, I cannot pretend it isn’t true.” His tone had changed halfway through his sentence, and Adelaide’s heart stumbled as he looked directly into her eyes. “I love you.”
Adelaide stared at him. She had, admittedly, imagined some grand moment in which she would know precisely how to answer. Instead, every thought she possessed disappeared.
Eric smiled faintly. “You look alarmed.”
“I am not alarmed.”
“Well, you’ve stopped breathing—”
“I am attempting to recover.”
That made him laugh, and Adelaide tightened her fingers around his.
“I only need one moment because I—”
A hard knock struck the door, and both of them froze as if they had been caught. Adelaide closed her eyes.
No… not Theodore again…
Eric actually looked offended by the sound when suddenly it came again. “Your Grace?”
Atlas. Adelaide opened her eyes. “Surely a duke and duchess can have just one moment uninterrupted.”
Eric stared toward the door with an expression that would have frightened a lesser man. “What?”
Atlas’s voice came through more urgently. “Eric, I need you.”
The warmth vanished from Eric’s expression by degrees. He released Adelaide’s hand reluctantly and crossed to the door. Atlas stood beyond it, travel coat already in place and a folded paper clenched in one hand. Whatever easy humor normally occupied his face was gone.
“Forgive me.”
Eric’s irritation remained visible. “This had better concern the Crown.”