The train started moving, and with it, the hiss of the steam engines and the screech of the gears filled the car. It provided a little cover for their conversation.
“No?” He leaned forward an inch. “Who do you want?”
Her cheeks pinked a little, but she looked out the window. “I have no intention of becoming an object of curiosity in polite society. They’d let me go to a few of their balls and they would gawk at me and ask me if I had really been married and if the marriage had really been annulled and what I had been doing beforehand.” Camilla shrugged. “They would want me to feel ashamed of where I have been, and I have had a lifetime’s worth of shame. I don’t want to marry a man who will forgive me for what I have done. I want someone who will treasure me for it. You know what I want.”
“You want to be chosen,” he said in a low voice. “You want someone who thinks of all the women in the world and decides that he wants you above any other. You want a long, slow falling in love.”
Her eyes fluttered up to his. Her cheeks were rosy, and the way she looked at him made him want to take her in his arms, and damn the other passenger.
“A point of clarification,” Adrian asked. “Precisely how long a falling in love were you hoping for? My parents took three years. As for me, that sounds rather excessive.”
She colored further. “I should like to reach our destination, at a minimum. Any time before then would be too fast.”
“I see.”
“Longer than that, I suppose, is up for debate.” She grinned at him. “But I’ve spent this entire time talking of myself. Tell me about you. What did your brother think? Have you started producing the plates for the exhibition? When is the exhibition, and would you mind horribly if I came?”
God, he had missed talking to her. He had missed hearing her voice; he had missed seeing the glow in her eyes as she drank in his every word. He’d missed the way she laughed and the way she looked at him and the way she reached out at one point and tried to remove a piece of fluff from his lapel, and the way his whole body responded to that touch of her finger on fabric.
He had missed everything about her.
“I didn’t ask before. Why Somerset?”
She looked down. “Well, since we couldn’t talk to one another before the annulment, I decided to put my time while I was waiting to good use. You know how I felt about looking back.”
He nodded.
“I’ve been looking back,” she confessed. “I went to visit Mrs. Marsdell—the woman who taught me to crochet. She was dead. I left flowers on her grave. I visited my uncle; he apologized, believe it or not, and I had the pleasure of seeing him very embarrassed. He had no idea what was going to happen, but that is no excuse for what he did. I visited his cousin, who was terrible. I went up to see Kitty; she’s settling quite well into her new position, and she’s so happy to have her daughter with her that I cried for her. I thought it would…help, perhaps? If I saw everyone who had once mattered to me.”
He knew he should ask if it had helped in truth. Still, some dark impulse made him ask this instead: “Did you visit James?”
Somehow, the idea of her talking to the footman who had promised to love her and left her to the care of Rector Miles made him feel just a little angry.
Her lip quirked up. “No,” she said simply. “Not him. He didn’t deserve me, and when I thought back over that time… There was nothing I wanted to look back for. But I did go to see Larissa.” Her eyes dropped. “I mentioned her to you once. We were particular friends. Or at least I thought we were. I always did wonder what had happened to her, after her parents separated us. She’s… Um, how shall I say this?” She glanced across the car at the other occupant.
Camilla had mentioned that she had practiced kissing with Larissa.
“We were both very young,” Camilla said. “But she has apparently taken Mrs. Martin’s path.”
“She’s found a sweet young thing?”
“Someone a little older than her, actually. We hugged and she said she was sorry I was sent off, but that without me, she might never have realized that…”
“That like Mrs. Martin, she had no use for men?”
“Are you shocked?”
“Someday, I will tell you about my great-great-uncles. And… Never mind; I’ll let her tell you herself. Who are we here to meet, then?”
She cast him a coquettish glance. “Can’t you guess?”
He really couldn’t.
“I’m going back and revisiting everywhere I ever stayed,” Camilla said. “Everyone I wanted to love. Who do you think is left?”
He wracked his brain, trying to remember. He had absolutely no idea.
She had arranged to have a hired cart waiting for them at the station. The day was beautiful—just a few fluffy white clouds under a bright, sunny sky. He took the reins when she offered, and she pointed down the dry dirt road leading south. “That way, please.”
They drove out of town.
There were no houses in the direction she had pointed them. Maybe there was a hamlet over the next rolling hill; maybe their destination lay ten miles distant.
After half an hour, she stopped the cart and opened the massive bag she had complained about earlier. She produced a bottle of soda water and some meat pasties. “Here,” she said.
“You want to stop here for a rest?”
“I want to stop here because it’s our destination.”
Adrian looked around. He looked up, at the blue sun-kissed sky, and around them, at the landscape. There was a small copse of trees and the sound of a running brook. The grasses were green and the last late flowers made a riot of color.
“Here?” he asked dubiously. “Who are we visiting here?”
“Adrian,” she said. “Isn’t it obvious who I’m visiting here?”
“No. Not at all.”
She gathered up her bag and stepped down from the carriage. “Don’t be silly. It’s you.”
Oh. Oh. “And we couldn’t have visited in London?”
“We could have,” she said, “but this is prettier, and I have fewer sisters present.” She winked at him. “In fact, there’s nobody present here at all, and what my sisters don’t know won’t shock them.”
After that, there was nothing to do but tie the horses to a nearby sapling and follow her into the field. Little insects flew up underfoot as they walked.
He reached out and took her hand, entwining it in his. “I never got to do this,” he said. “Not at any point when we were together. We were always so intent on holding ourselves out as not married.”
She did not pull away. She just smiled. “And how do you like it?”
“I like it very well. I find myself never wanting to let go.”
Another shy look over her shoulder. “Adrian. You know you don’t have to.”
“I do, Camilla.” He looked at her. “I’m afraid to tell you—but I do. I have to let go now. I had a long talk with Grayson. He urged me to find a way to be happy for myself, and the thing that would make me most happy right now is if I let go.”
The look on her face—the way her eyes widened, the way her lips parted just a little bit—made him almost regret relinquishing her hand. Almost. But he did. He pulled away from her.
“You see,” he said softly, “if I do not let go of your hand, I cannot reach into my pocket—my tailor, by the way, is kind in the matter of pockets—and take out…” He found what he had been searching for, and made a fist around it, and held his arm out. “This.”
He opened his hand.
Her eyes widened even further.
“I didn’t think you would want something ostentatious,” he said. “And it turns out, I know some excellent artists who are skilled in enamel work. I asked them to put together a design while we were waiting for the annulment.”
She did not move to take the ring from him. “Adrian.” Her voice shook. “Is that an enamel tiger?”
“Yes,” he said, “and I hope you’ll forgive the few s
mall stones, but I wanted to make sure that our tiger was crowned in the sparkliest of dreams.”
“I love it.” She looked up at him. “Is it intended for me?”
“Give me back your hand. No, without the glove.”
She smiled, baring her hand. He slid the ring on her finger, gold and radiant for all to see. Her eyes shone.
“Camilla,” he said, “I love you. I love you more than any other woman in the world, and I want you by my side for decades and decades. I choose you above everyone else. Will you please make me the happiest of men by giving me your hand in marriage?”
Her eyes sparkled. “That was so good,” she said. “That was the best marriage proposal I’ve ever received.”
“Oh, you’ve received a lot of them, have you?”
“Yes,” she said. “Last time you had to marry me, you said ‘no.’ This was a thousand times better.”
Adrian shook his head. “Will you please answer me?”
“Well, you said you wanted a long, slow falling in love. Getting a bit impatient, aren’t you?”
He couldn’t help himself. He laughed. Then he took a step toward her and wrapped her in his arms.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes, yes. I love you. I love you. I want you, and only you. I want you forever.”
And then he was kissing her, laughing and holding her, with the sun all around them.
* * *
“I’m sorry it has taken so long.”
Theresa stood beside Judith in the solicitor’s office. They had been ushered into a side room and asked to wait. The room they were in was lined with books, books, books, and more books. Oddly, however, it smelled nothing like the General Register Office had smelled. That had stunk of must and ink. This was a slightly more pleasant smell—old paper and tea.
“I didn’t mean to make you wait several weeks to see the letters—such as they are—but between Camilla’s hearings and everything else…”
“Of course,” Theresa said. “You’ve been busy. And I’ve enjoyed going about the country with Camilla by train. We’ve been to ever so many places. I get to pretend that I’m a lady while I’m doing it.”
“Theresa, you are a lady.” Judith said this with a smile and a shake of her head. “I do wish you’d believe it.”
Let them call you whatever they want, the dowager marchioness had told Theresa. Just keep the truth in your head, and you don’t need to tell them they’re wrong.
“I suppose,” Theresa answered dubiously.
For some reason, this just made Judith look all the more determined. “Whatever it takes, Tee. I’ll give you whatever you need until you can finally believe it.”
Someday, Theresa suspected she and her sister were going to have a giant row—larger than their usual, regular-sized rows—about the whole lady thing. Not today.
The door opened behind them, and an errand boy entered with a folder in hand. “Here they are, my ladies.”
My ladies again.
But it didn’t matter what the errand boy called her, if he gave her what she wanted. The folder he handed over was exceptionally thin.
Theresa eyed it askance. “Anthony has been gone for almost a decade, and that’s all his correspondence?”
Judith just rolled her eyes. “Nobody will ever accuse our brother of being an avid letter-writer. I did tell you they were letters—such as they are. I’ll leave you to them, then.”
Letters, such as they are turned out to be a good description of her elder brother’s terse missives. The first could be summarized as, “hope you are all well, I’m not dead yet,” spread over four sentences with a handful of connecting words.
The second was a little better. He made stupid excuses for his inattention to his family, and said unbelievable things about love. Ha. If he really loved them as much as he claimed, he would write more. Still, Theresa immediately recognized the part Judith had feared would set her off.
When she’s old enough to understand, tell Tee-spoon that I send her all my love, as does Pri.
Theresa stopped reading, her heart giving a sudden twinge. Priya was the name of Theresa’s imaginary sister.
When Theresa was a child, and her father had first been convicted of treason, she remembered throwing tantrums that had scared even her with their ferocity, demanding that her sister—not Judith, not Camilla, but her other sister—appear.
They had scared her at every moment up until this one. She remembered believing with every fiber in her being that she had actually had a sister named Priya.
It had taken her years to be convinced that no such person had ever existed. That her memories were fallible, stupid things. That she’d invented a sibling to pass time on a boring voyage, and then convinced herself that she did exist out of sheer obstinacy.
Judith had needed to show her their family Bible with marriage lines and birth dates and everything. Finally, at the age of eight, Theresa had accepted that it had all been in her imagination.
Looking at those words on the page—seeing Anthony write the name out like that—was a blow. Anthony was no doubt an idiot about a great many things, but he would know that his fifteen-year-old sister wouldn’t want to play a game remembering an imaginary sister. Anthony communicated nothing at all in these stupid letters. No pleasantries. No information. Just excuses. And still he’d mentioned Pri.
There was only one possible explanation. He wasn’t telling her about an imaginary sister.
At fifteen, Theresa understood something she had missed at eight. A family Bible, with marriage lines and birth dates, was not proof that her father had not sired another child. Marriage had nothing to do with that.
She read the line again.
…send her all my love, as does Pri.
Judith must have assumed that Anthony was humoring Tee’s long-ago imagination. God, for all that Judith was older, she was in many, many ways so incredibly naïve.
For the first time in ten years, Tee realized the truth. She had been lied to. Not on purpose, not by Judith, no—but she had been lied to. For almost a decade, she had been told that her memory was false. That her mind was dangerous. That she had constructed a fable and believed it, and that she needed to be wary of every last thought that she had, lest they lead her astray.
Her father had been in India. Theresa could fill in the explanation that Judith had missed. Her father had had a mistress—of course he had—and his mistress had a daughter, because that was what happened. That daughter had, for some reason, been on the journey that the three-year-old Theresa had embarked upon.
Theresa had been allowed to meet her because she had been deemed too young to understand the truth. And when she had come back and cried about her missing sister, everyone who knew the truth had lied to her. Her father. Anthony.
They were all liars.
Theresa read the line once more. …As does Pri. Oh, that hurt, to hear that Pri was sending Theresa love. Her sister remembered her. She hadn’t spent all this time believing Theresa was a figment of her imagination.
It was one thing to discover that her father and brother had betrayed their country. It was another to discover that he’d betrayed her. He had allowed her to believe her mind was her enemy her entire life.
Anger came first—anger at Anthony, then at Judith, then at herself, for those years when she’d believed that something was wrong with her. Anger hit her like a wave, so powerful that she almost screamed with the heat of it.
Disgust followed. She was disgusted with her father. She was disgusted with Anthony. She was disgusted with the entirety of England, a country that wanted her to be a lady, when being a lady meant closing her eyes to what was happening around her.
Finally, there came one last emotion—a memory that she’d never quite been able to push away. That feeling that someone loved her. Someone understood her. She had a sister who knew her and had loved her. She had a sister who knew what it was like to never grow up to be a lady. She had a sister who had been abandoned by the family in a
more dramatic and painful way than Camilla.
Theresa was the only one who would care that she existed.
Judith was right. Theresa had grown up. She’d grown out of her tantrums. She’d gained nothing from the ugly rage that she’d indulged in as a child.
Theresa had a sister who needed finding, and Theresa was good at finding sisters.
Now, all she needed was a plan.
Ten minutes later, Judith returned to the room. “What did you think?”
Theresa smiled. She wasn’t a lady, but she had learned to play one. Now, with possibilities boiling in her mind, pretense had become necessary.
“He really is the worst correspondent,” Theresa said dryly.
They laughed together, and Judith didn’t realize.
Theresa could wait as long as necessary. All she had to do was hide the fact that she was done with England. She was utterly done.
* * *
Adrian returned with Camilla to her sister’s home just before dusk. Camilla conducted Adrian to a parlor, then disappeared for a moment as she sent for her entire family to join them.
Adrian couldn’t help but be nervous. Of all the ridiculous situations to find himself in. But Camilla came back, drifting to stand by him, and she introduced him to her family, one by one, as they entered.
Lady Ashford was the last to enter the room. She looked at Adrian in confusion, then at Camilla, beaming by his side.
“What is going on?” she asked.
“I have delightful news,” Camilla said, all smiles. “Mr. Adrian Hunter asked me to marry him—and I said yes.”
Lady Ashford blinked. She looked at the two of them once more. Adrian reached out and took hold of Camilla’s hand.
“Oh, for the love of goslings,” she said. “We spent weeks on the annulment. Why?”