After the Wedding (The Worth Saga #2)(23)

“That’s because I’m not trying to fit in with servants any longer. This is how I sound when I’m around family.”

“Do you alter your speech much?”

“All the time. Most white Englishmen are nervous enough around me. The more familiar I sound, the more comfortable they are, and the less likely they are to have the constables come after me on some pretext. It’s not even something I do on purpose most of the time. I’m just very good at fitting in, in every way that I can.”

Camilla thought of her own speech. It, too, had shifted. Once, she’d had a governess who had drilled her on her vowels, slapping her palm with a ruler when Camilla spoke like—what had she called it? “Like a stable boy,” the woman had said. “Speech makes a lady.” Camilla had eaten it up, believing that if only her vowels were perfect enough, nothing bad could ever happen to her.

But no. She wasn’t going to think of her family and the legacy she’d left behind. That version of Camilla was gone forever.

“That makes sense,” she said instead.

“Let me get right to it, then. My name is Adrian Hunter. My mother was born Elizabeth Laurel Denmore, the daughter of the Duke of Castleford.”

Camilla blinked.

“Which is why,” Mr. Hunter said, straightening in his seat, and shifting something about his face, something so subtle she couldn’t even identify it, “I can also talk like this. Do you see what I mean?”

Like her governess. Like the lady Camilla had once thought she would be. She swallowed and looked up at him. “That’s…very good. Bravo!”

“My mother met my father when she was twenty-five and a widow at a meeting of abolitionists.”

She looked over at him. “Before slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire? That was a while ago.”

“I’m the youngest of…” His smile flickered momentarily; he looked away. “Two. I suppose it doesn’t sound so impressive that way, does it? My father was a speaker for the abolitionist cause. Guess where he was born.”

She swallowed. It felt rude to make assumptions, but he had asked. “Africa?”

“Close. Maine, in the United States of America.”

“I didn’t think the former colonies were close at all to Africa!”

His smile flashed out at her. “Not that close, no. I was just trying to make you feel better.”

The conversation felt like it had the first time they’d met. Despite everything that had happened that day, he was easy to talk to. She found herself smiling in response.

“To make a long story short, when my parents married, her father disowned her entirely. If you’ll believe it, my grandmother suggested she could take my father as a lover, but to marry him would be beyond the pall.”

Camilla thought of her own uncle, shuffling her off to distant relations without a hint of embarrassment. “I’ll believe anything of the gentry, really.”

“After tonight? I should say so. In any event, her brother, my uncle on my mother’s side, is the Bishop of Gainshire. He kept in contact with my mother. He’s always been…shall we say, not entirely opposed to the causes my family cares about? We’ve always held out hope that maybe he’d come around. He asked me for a favor, and I thought…” Mr. Hunter looked up and let out a sigh. “Never mind the reasons, really. I am explaining how I came to be impersonating a valet. My uncle believes that Bishop Lassiter has done something wrong, and he asked me to help determine what it was.”

Camilla’s head hurt trying to follow this story. “I…see.” She might, in a day or so, after she’d slept. But even on this, the longest day of her life, when she wanted nothing more than to retire to bed for a week… It wasn’t the most believable story.

“That brings me to you. You seem like a perfectly nice girl, but I don’t wish to be married to you.”

That hurt not just her head, but somewhere just beneath her breastbone. Camilla bit her lip. It wasn’t that she wanted him to swear his undying love. She wouldn’t have believed him if he had. But it would have been nice if he’d been a little bit less blunt about not wanting her at all. It had been lovely earlier, when he had said he liked her.

“Of course you do not,” she said instead.

“I imagine you don’t wish to be married to me, either.”

What was she to say to that? She wished the whole last day hadn’t happened. She knew what she was—desperate, grasping, wanting, so much that maybe she’d hoped that he’d confess over terrible soup that he’d developed an affection for her, something that could blossom into more if they tended it properly.

What luck, that they’d married at gunpoint, she had perhaps hoped he would say.

God, it sounded stupid even admitting it in her head. And his story—she still didn’t understand it. But of course he hadn’t fallen in love at first sight. That didn’t happen, not except in stories, and Camilla knew she wasn’t any sort of heroine. There was nothing to do but pull her bravado about her like a cloak, and let none of her hurt show.

“I do prefer husbands I’ve known longer than a week.”

He nodded, as if this was the answer he’d wanted. Good. She’d made the right choice.

“So, let us make a pact. I know a little bit about how annulments work.”