Lady Gone Wicked (Wicked Secrets)(41)

Abingdon grimaced.

“I cannot cut my hair, Mother,” he said reasonably. “How will the congregation tell the bride and groom apart from our attendants?”

Adelaide shared a look with Alice, and they both burst into peals of laughter. Two sets of identical twins standing before the archbishop had all the makings of a Shakespearean comedy.

“Imagine if the archbishop tried to marry me to Nick, or Nate to you,” Alice said, still laughing. “Or—” She broke off hastily, clearly not wanting to call out the last ridiculous coupling by name.

Or Nick and Adelaide.

“Ask Wessex to stand up with you,” Nick said evenly. “No one will mistake you for the duke, no matter how your hair looks.”

“I don’t want Wessex. I want my brother,” Abingdon said.

“Don’t be absurd. Everyone wants a duke.”

Adelaide looked sharply at Nick, who was studying the assortment of biscuits as though choosing was the only thing of import. But she sensed the hurt beneath his veneer of indifference.

Abingdon’s lips pressed into a thin line. “If you don’t wish to—”

“Oh, look! I think I see a—a fish!” Alice jumped to her feet. “Let’s go see.”

Abingdon peered at her as though she had gone mad, but stood willingly enough and brushed the grass from his breeches. “As you wish.”

Adelaide waited until Alice had dragged her fiancé several feet away before turning to Nick with a reproachful look. “Do you truly not care to stand up with Abingdon?”

Nick looked mildly surprised. “Should I? Wessex is just as good—nay, better. They have been friends these past ten years that Nate and I have not spoken.”

“But he is your brother!” she protested.

“And he will continue to be so after the wedding, whether I stand beside him or not. It makes no difference.”

She thought it made a good deal of difference. She pursed her lips. “Only because you insist upon indifference. It does not have to be like this between you. You could be brothers—true brothers.”

“Why do you blame me?” He studied her for a moment, giving her the disconcerting feeling that he was reading her mind, then let his breath out in a slow exhale. “I have told you how it was, Adelaide. And yet you take his side.”

“Hush, Nick.” She glanced quickly to where their relatives sat paying them absolutely no mind. “I am not taking anyone’s side.”

Which wasn’t true. She was sympathetic to Abingdon’s obvious guilt, but that sympathy paled in comparison to what she felt for Nick. What a terrible burden he had been forced to carry! He had been an innocent child, and yet the weight of his family’s suspicion had rested on his shoulders as heavily as outright guilt. She wanted to scream and cry and bash all their heads together, from the very first Earl of Wintham to the heir apparent. They all needed some sense knocked into them, every last one of them, for ever thinking that Nick could be capable of that.

She touched his hand. “I do not blame you. I only think that—perhaps—you do not form proper emotional attachments.”

“He is my brother—my twin brother. We are attached by birth and will remain attached until we die, whether I wish it or no.”

“You recognize the relationship exists with your head, but you do not feel it with your heart. And not just about your brother. You have often told me that love is not necessary or even wanted in a marriage.” She turned once more to the selection of sandwiches, lest he mistake her heated face as evidence that she had hoped for more from him. Such as a proper emotional attachment.

He spread his hands in a baffled gesture. “I don’t understand.”

“No, I suppose you don’t.”

“But what would you have me do?” he persisted. “I am a dog they sent away. Should I now return and beg for scraps of love? If there is no attachment of the heart, as you say, it is because they made it so.”

He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees and his chin on his fists. Adelaide watched silently. There were so few moments when his mask dropped and the real Nick was revealed. She didn’t want to startle him away again.

Her lips tingled to soothe that crease between his brows with a kiss. He must have been so desperately lonely and frightened. “Poor child,” she said softly.

“So much sympathy for the child, and yet you care nothing for the man.” He gave her an aggrieved look.

She would have laughed if she didn’t ache so much for him. “I care very much for the man. But I think the man is still in many ways that little boy who was sent away. You want to be loved, but you can never believe it’s real, even when it’s right in front of you. Which is why I feel obligated to point out that Abingdon is doing his best to love you, and you ought to let him.”

Nick looked at her intently. “Would that make you happy? If I forgave him and stood with him at their wedding?”

She flushed and glanced away. He ought not to look at her so, as if his entire reason for being depended upon her answer. “I think it will make you happy,” she said. “And your happiness would make me happy.”

He cocked his head consideringly. “Are you happy now?”

Was she?

She shouldn’t be. She did not deserve to be happy. But there were moments, here and there, when something startled her to laughter or made her smile. There were moments when she was immensely relieved to be home with Alice again, despite everything, and that was very similar to happiness. And just now she had a lovely apple tart in her hand. It was hard not to be happy when one bit into a delicious tart.