Lady Gone Wicked (Wicked Secrets)(62)

“Even marrying me?” he asked.

She lost all power to speak at that, whether from rage or— No, it was definitely rage. He eyed her warily. Her face had gone from white to red. He braced for the explosion.

But her words were quiet, even as they devastated him. “You are cruel.”

He was vaguely aware of Miss Sherwood murmuring something about James as she hastily exited the room, but his focus remained centered on the small lady in front of him who seemed determined to bring him to his knees.

“Let me explain, please.” He reached for her, but she dodged, moving swiftly to her left. He followed, maneuvering his body between her and the door. She watched him with those eyes that always saw right to the depths of his soul. “Stop running from me, Adelaide.”

“Stop chasing me.” She took a step backward and bumped into a table. She gave a sharp cry as the corner connected with the back of her thigh.

He stopped. His hands clenched into fists as he restrained them from reaching for her. “Can we not be reasonable? Sit down. I promise I will not sit too close, and we will discuss it calmly. Please, angel.”

There was a fraught edge in his tone that belied the rational words. He was no more calm than she was. Her gaze darted about the room, searching desperately for an escape, and then she made a mad dash for the door. He caught her about the waist, halting her.

“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked.

Instantly he released her, leaping back as though she was made of fire. “Adelaide,” he pleaded.

Her chin trembled. He prayed she wouldn’t cry. His nerves were already frayed to pieces from the events of the past week—an odd experience for a man who had made a living as a spy. His nerves were usually quite solid. But he could not bear her tears, especially not when he was the cause.

But she rallied, thank God.

“I do not know what game you are playing at, Nick.” She clasped her hands in front of her and held his gaze steadfastly. “But I will not marry a man who despises me. It would drain all my joy, day after day, to live with such a burden. And I…I am my worst self when I am with you. In time, I would come to loathe myself quite as much as you loathe me already.”

He stared at her, shocked to his very core. She thought he despised her? Worse, she despised herself? “You can’t mean that.”

“I do mean it. I am disobedient, lustful, wicked.” She buried her face in her hands. “I am so very wicked, Nick. I can’t bear it.”

His chest tightened, and he would have wrapped her in his arms had he believed she would allow his touch.

“Then I don’t see how the rest of us can be expected to, either.” His boots tapped against the floorboards as he crossed the room to the desk. He opened the drawer and thumbed through the papers, searching. “How can any of us bear our own wickedness, Adelaide, if you cannot bear yours?”

She lowered her hands. “You don’t understand. I—I crave you, Nick. It feels like I am starving, and the only thing that slakes my hunger is your touch. If I marry you, I will never be free of it. I will never be free of this…this lust.” A hot flush swept over her cheeks.

He paused in his search and looked at her over his shoulder. “Dear God, I hope not,” he said fervently.

She wrung her hands. “Oh, you don’t understand!” she cried despairingly.

“No, I suppose I don’t.” He rubbed his chin. “Even if you spend every night enjoying my mouth on your breast and my cock between your legs—and I truly hope you will—what of it? Will you be less of a sister to Alice, less of a daughter, less of a friend? Will you suddenly go about kicking servants and small dogs?”

She laughed in spite of herself, and her heart broke free of its tethers. “No.”

“At your most wicked—which is, I am happy to hear, when you are with me—you still have more goodness in you than anyone in all of England. It does not bode well for humanity, I must say.” He turned back to his papers. Ah, here it was. He shut the drawer and moved toward her in slow, measured steps. “I won’t touch you. I only want to give you this.”

She took the paper he offered her. “‘Requirements for Adelaide’s Husband’?” she asked, bemused. Her eyes skimmed the page until she came to the last word. She raised her gaze to his. “Worthy?” she whispered.

“When I wrote that, you had disobeyed your parents, had lustful relations with me—although I fail to see that as anything other than wonderful—and allowed everyone to believe you were dead. I knew the worst of you, but I had not yet learned the best of you. And still I knew I was not worthy of you.”

The paper crinkled as her hands clenched. “I abandoned my son.”

“You did as you had to. You left him, yes, but you did not abandon him. You saved him from whatever horrific fate awaited him at the nunnery. You crossed the Channel with him in your belly and kept him safe. He never knew a day without love, and that is all because of you.”

Her eyes closed briefly as she swallowed hard, and then she opened them again, pinning him with a fierce glare. “You said you did not want my love. That my love was not good enough.”

He winced. “I ought to be horsewhipped for such hypocrisy. It was I who did not understand how to love. You, however, have a rather large capacity for loving,” he said. “It’s a bit baffling. Like the Shakespeare poem we discussed. ‘Love does not alter when it alteration finds.’ Yours is not a blind way of loving. When someone you love disappoints you, or you discover their faults, your love doesn’t lessen. It simply expands to include all the ugly pieces.” He gave her a crooked smile. “I have so many ugly pieces, Adelaide.”