He wasn’t sure if his lips found hers first, or if hers found his.
God. Oh, God. He couldn’t think; he couldn’t let himself. If he thought, this couldn’t happen, and it had to happen. He could not have let himself stop, not for a thousand rational arguments. The gentle pressure of her mouth on his felt like a promise. Her lips whispered against his, wiping away his concerns one by one.
It will all work out. You have nothing to fear from me. We are in this together.
He had thought at first that he could simply get the annulment and walk away, unchanged. Then she’d worked her way inside him, with her smiles and her impulses and her strength. Now she was fire itself, and he wanted to be burned.
Her lips stroked his in tiny little kisses—almost chaste, despite the heat in them. His other hand slipped around her waist, bracketing her in place.
He felt full, so full. His mouth devoured hers, and she opened another inch to him, blooming in the incandescent heat of his kiss. Her lips burned him, and oh, he desired. He wanted more—her on top of him, not sitting to the side; her opening to him fully, not this chaste embrace.
But he couldn’t take anything else, not after what had been done to her. All he could do was stand here and wait, wait for her to give.
Their lips touched briefly, parted for a second, then came back together in a symphony of perfection. It was too much. He wanted her too much. He wanted to take hold of her and pull her down onto his lap. He wanted to lick her lips and slide his tongue inside, if she’d let him. He wanted to take her upstairs to his bed, no questions asked, not a moment of hesitation, and damn the fact that it would doom any chance of annulling the marriage.
He wanted her and nothing but her, her forever.
She brought one hand up tentatively, setting her fingers against the fabric of his shirt. For one moment, she didn’t move; then, ever so slightly, she stroked downward, sending a spiral of electric want through his nerves. Her hand slid down his ribs, a delicate brush against his flesh. I want you. I care for you. I see you.
He let out a gasp, and encouraged, she shifted her hand farther down, letting it catch on the waistband of his trousers.
Yes, he thought wildly. Yes. Don’t stop. Don’t—
She pulled away first. Her eyes were suspiciously bright; she jumped to her feet, leaving him feeling cold and alone.
“Oh, look at that!” She did her best to come up with a smile. “It worked, I can’t believe it worked! You knew it was an act, and still I fooled you!”
It took a moment for reality to set in. Right. They’d been play-acting. He almost reached for her; his protest almost came out. What was that he felt?
Disappointment? Surely he could not be disappointed. He’d been on the verge of letting go of the entirety of his future; he should be delighted that she had called a halt to the endeavor.
He was not delighted. He wanted to keep her.
It felt so selfish, so desperate, so wrong. He wanted to keep her, and he couldn’t.
He put his head in his hands. Truth, eh? He’d never been good at lying.
“Cam,” he muttered. “I wasn’t acting.”
He could hear her stillness, the lack of motion. He could almost envision the look on her face.
She let out a long, slow breath, and when she spoke, her voice was low. “I know. I’m sorry; that was cruel of me. I thought you would come to your senses at any moment, and figured…it would hurt less if I did it first?”
He lifted his head and their eyes met. Hers were dark and…no, not unreadable. She was watching him with an intensity that he understood all too well. She’d looked at him that way often enough.
“And what,” he said slowly, “if I didn’t want to come to my senses?”
She folded her arms and looked away. “Then it would hurt even more when you finally did.”
Oh, Cam. Brave Cam, clever Cam, vastly unloved Cam. Cam who chased stars and deserved to wear her dreams like a crown. He wanted to punch the entire world for what it had done to her. She should not have felt that way.
She should not have been right.
He stood and took a step toward her.
“Please.” She sniffed. “We shouldn’t.”
“I won’t,” he promised. “Not that. But would it hurt so much if I gave you a hug?”
“Yes.” Her voice cracked. “But it will hurt more if you don’t.”
He wrapped her in his arms and held on as tightly as he could. It was just for now, but he wanted to enfold her in all the comfort he could send. And she burrowed into him, melting as if she were meant to be molded to him. Her chest shook, just a little, and when he brushed her cheek, there was a little wetness to it.
God. How long had it been since someone touched her in affection?
He realized he’d asked the question aloud when she answered.
“It feels as if I’ve been nine years starving.”
He stroked her hair. This was unfair, so unfair, most of all to her. “And here you are—not allowed to eat.”
She shook her head. “I’m allowed, but I’ll pay the price. If we let ourselves do any more, we will be married. In truth.”
It was madness to think they should contemplate that possibility. He didn’t want it. If he gave in like this…what if he regretted it later?
What he said was this: “Am I so horrible, then?”
She looked up at him. “You know you’re not. Of course you’re not. But you told me so yourself. You don’t want a wife who will choose you because you’re not ‘so horrible’ and she felt she didn’t have a choice. You want…” She inhaled. “You want a long, slow falling in love.” She said those words precisely, as if she’d memorized what he’d told her those weeks ago. “A partnership, built over time. Certainty and sureness. You want a choice, and you want to be chosen. You don’t want this—not like this.”
“Cam.”
She looked up at him. She reached out and slowly, slowly touched his cheek. “Adrian. I like you well enough that I promise I am going to give that to you. Don’t give it up, not like this.”
He exhaled.
She pulled herself from his embrace and wrapped her own arms about herself. “Tell me about your parents again. What you said the last time… It was lovely. I want to hear it again.”
I need to hear it again, he heard, and so do you.
He nodded. He sat back down, because if he didn’t, he might reach for her once more. His hands made fists on the arms of the chair, as if holding onto it would somehow substitute for her. “My mother married young, once. She never speaks of that. After her first husband died and left her a wealthy widow, she defied her family to join the abolitionist movement. She devoted her fortune to the cause. Worked with my father for years. My parents fell in love slowly and surely.”
“That sounds lovely.”
“They were comrades-in-arms before they were ever married.”
Cam had become his comrade. His ally in truth, not just in name. Even now, she protected him. She was the one who was reminding him what he wanted, no matter what it cost her.
He trailed off, searching for the right words.
“You’re right,” he finally said, “I want a choice.” He looked up at her. “And I want you to have one, too. You’ve had so little of it; I want whoever ends up loving you to know that you could have had anyone in the world, and you chose him. I want him to think that he has had a gift bestowed upon him, not that he was sentenced to your company by circumstance. You deserve better than this.”
Funny, how she’d faced everything that happened to her in the rector’s household with nothing but resolve, but this could bring tears to her eyes.
“You deserve to have no doubts,” he told her. “You deserve to believe that you were wanted above all others.”
His heart hurt in his chest.
“You deserve everything I want,” he told her. “You deserve a partner, a comrade-in-arms, a slow falling in love. You don’t deserve to be stuck with
a man simply because he’s got a hankering for his own pleasure.”
“Is that what you’re after?”
He didn’t answer. He’d made a set of plates for her—partially, at least. It wasn’t as if he could hide the fact that he had some finer feelings.
“We can’t give each other anything else,” she said quietly. “But I can give you that. If that’s what you want—if you want a slow falling in love, if you want joy, if you want not to be stuck with a woman simply because she’ll do and you’ve a hankering for pleasure—then I will make sure you have it.”
His throat almost closed.
“I’m sorry for what I did earlier.” She gave him a firm nod. “Teasing you, when we were practicing. I will not let myself forget. We have too many enemies in this world to be at odds with each other on the question of how we feel.”
“And what if we decide we want to choose each other?”
She didn’t speak for a long time. She bit her lip. She looked away.
“I’ve been alone a long time,” she finally said. “I’ve wanted someone. Anyone. Rector Miles made me believe that when I told myself I would be loved, it was a legion of devils driving me into sin. He told me the tiny voice of doubt I always heard was my sole hold on righteousness.” Her voice shook. “But I refuse. I cannot believe it is evil to hope somebody will love me someday.”
“Cam.”
“I never needed that person to be a husband. I imagined being a faithful companion to an elderly woman. A bright spot in the day of a shopkeeper. And yes, sometimes a wife.” She looked over at him. “I don’t have to be your wife, Adrian. But can I be your friend? No matter what, even after all this is over? It would be more than I have ever had.”
There was nothing for it. He stood. He walked to her again. His arms came around her once more, this time in friendship. His head leaned against hers.
“Yes,” he said. “Please. I think we could both use a friend.”
Chapter Seventeen
Camilla lay alone in her bed that night, knowing that she should sleep. Tomorrow they would embark on a long journey. If they were successful, Adrian would disappear from her life.
In her heart, she knew she was susceptible to praise. That she was practically starved for affection. Even the offer of a scrap of goodwill would have had her heart in a tangle. But he’d given her a veritable feast. Actual respect? Friendship? Encouragement? Eight plates of tigers?
Of course she had fallen in love with him. It didn’t mean anything—she would have fallen in love with anyone who gave her as much.
No matter how much her brain told her this, her heart still hurt.
Part of her wanted to go back to their time together in that room. To that moment when he’d looked at her and he’d desired her, when their lips had come together in heat and fire. She wanted to throw her inconvenient sense of right and wrong in the dustbin.
She didn’t want her stupid conscience. She just wanted his hands on her.
It would take so little to get it back and if she did, she could have him forever. All she had to do was stand. Go down the corridor to his room at the end of the hall. If she were to show up in nothing but a nightgown…
If they consummated this thing between them, there would be no annulment.
She put her hands over her face.
God. She was a horrible person to even think such a grasping, calculating thing. To trap another person for the rest of their lives?
That wasn’t love. She knew it wasn’t love.
Still, she shut her eyes and let her imagination run wild.
She didn’t want to trap him. She’d spent enough time with people who didn’t like her; she could hardly hope to spend the rest of her life with someone who felt the same. She couldn’t even find joy in imagining it.
Her breath hissed out.
But what if he wanted you?
What if he was in his room, thinking the things she was thinking? What if he was thinking not of his imminent freedom, but of his loss? What if he decided he wanted her?
He might stand up in his night things. She didn’t know what he wore to bed, but her imagination stuttered, and she imagined…nothing. Nothing at all. He’d feel the way she did. He’d find a robe, or perhaps a spare sheet, for modesty’s sake.
She shut her eyes, thinking of what he’d look in the moonlight, his skin showing like midnight through almost translucent bedsheets.
He’d stand. Pace his room, thinking of what to do. He’d make his decision after an hour of deliberation—that he didn’t want an annulment, that he wanted her instead.
Adrian did not strike her as the sort of person to put off acting on decisions, once they were made. He’d take off down the hall. He would tap lightly on her door.
She would never tell him no, not in a million years. He’d tell her that he had chosen, that he didn’t want to be without her.
And Camilla would reach out and pull the ends of that sheet—in her imagination, it was a strip of almost sheer gossamer—from his grasp.
They’d kiss the way they had wanted to kiss tonight—skin to skin, his hands holding her in place as if she were precious, as if he didn’t want to let go.
She could imagine him trailing kisses down her neck. She could imagine herself giving in. The heat of his breath against her throat; the slide of his body against hers. His hardness.
She wasn’t a virgin. She knew what would happen. She wanted it to happen; she wanted it rather desperately.
Her hands slipped between her thighs. It wasn’t helping matters at all to think this way about him, to touch herself and imagine his fingers instead of her own, to bite back her own response.
She had told him that she wanted to earn love, not steal it. She had hoped he would see through her words, to understand that she wanted his adoration, his attention. She wanted it now.
It was madness to do what she was doing—imagining him pressing on top of her, his lips finding hers. She did it anyway. She shivered as she imagined him inside her, thick and hot, his hands tangled in her hair. She thought of him whispering that he wanted her, only her, for the rest of their lives. It was madness to feel this kind of desire, something that was so deep, her fingers could not palpate it.
She wanted him to want her. It was madness to wonder if he was in his room, feeling the things she did—that flutter of desire deep in her abdomen, flames fanning with every brush of her own fingers.
In her imagination, she could have him. She could dig her nails into his back, encouraging him to take everything from her and give it back.
It was too easy to imagine their joining. Too easy, and yet so impossible, when it was just her lonely hands bringing out her own response.
Even the orgasm that came felt imperfect. Unfulfilling. She could hear her own breath panting out in the night, the only sound present in the stillness.
She shut her eyes.
God, she was such a fool. He was asleep. He was grateful she’d called a halt to their activities earlier.
She wasn’t going to have his love. She’d take his gratitude, and it would be…
Not enough. It would never be enough.
She stood, washing herself off, wiping away the stupid tears that insisted on coming now that she was alone, demonstrably alone. Her skin felt hungry, almost desperately so, for another person’s touch. That tiny taste earlier had only whetted her appetite.
Camilla exhaled slowly and nodded at the darkness in front of her.
So be it. She’d built fantasies in her imagination before, and she’d survived the wreckage of them, when they crashed against the unforgiving shoals of reality. She was good at that—surviving the inevitable destruction of her hopes. She would do it again.
In the corridor, a board squeaked.
She straightened, turning. Her heart beat double time. It was him. He was coming. He was here; he cared. She waited, breathless, time drawing out until hope fell into discouragement.
There was nothing. She let out a l
ong breath. That creak was merely the sort of sound that a house made at night.
She’d always been good at reconstructing shattered hopes. She did it now, building the truth out of the ruins of her desire.
He didn’t love her. She had survived not being loved this long; she would survive it longer.
He didn’t love her, but he did like her, and it was more than she’d been given in ages. He liked her, and he wanted well for her. It wasn’t enough—not forever—but that?
That would be enough for now. For giving her that much, she would give him anything he wanted. The thing he wanted was for her to shatter her own heart, true, but her heart had been broken before. Now she knew the truth of heartbreak—that morning would come, and she would stand up and move on.
She stared at the ceiling, listening to the faint ticking of the clock in the hallway until all sense of sound finally dissolved into the nothingness of sleep.
* * *
The train ride east to Surrey, then down to Lackwich, was one of awkward silences. Every time Camilla thought of how brazen she’d been the night before—seating herself on the arm of his chair, leaning in, practically taunting him until she was unsure of who had actually closed the gap between them—
She felt herself coloring.
He hadn’t said anything about their tryst that morning. He’d only looked at her, and the way he’d looked… She had to hold herself back from hoping.
She had no space for hope, no space for worry, not when she had this final duty to perform.
He did not say anything as he had the telegram sent. He did not say anything as he walked with her halfway down the all-too-familiar road. He stopped a half-mile out, with the house where she had spent eighteen months on the horizon.
Don’t look back, she thought, but she finally could.
Her hands felt cold. He reached out and took hold of them. “Camilla,” he said.
It was a friendly gesture, she reminded herself, because they were friends. It was a gesture of comfort and…and maybe a little more, but Camilla had been desired before, and she wouldn’t let it change what she had to do.