After the Wedding (The Worth Saga #2)(38)

“If I were a different person,” he said. “I’d be happy to have you for a wife.”

“But.” She said the word for him, yet her eyes watched his with an almost avid hunger.

“But I want what my parents have,” he said simply.

She sighed and dropped her eyes. “It sounded like a lovely story, when you mentioned it earlier. It must have been something like love at first sight.”

“Nothing like that. It took them three years to marry. My mother was an ardent abolitionist, and she said that she worked with my father at events for ages before she realized what was happening. She looked up one day after eighteen months of hearing his lectures and realized that she had slowly, sweetly, fallen in love. She waited another six months for my father to realize the same. They waited another year, just to be sure.”

Miss Winters exhaled. Her eyes squeezed shut.

“That’s what I want,” he told her. “A long, slow falling in love. When I say ‘I do,’ I want to mean it—really mean it, more than I’ve ever meant anything in my life.”

“That’s sweet. Extremely sweet. I hope you have that.” Sorrow—that’s what he was hearing in her voice.

“Miss Winters,” Adrian said. “It’s not sweet. Anyone who wants love should have it. You can hope for the same. Really. Truly. You deserve someone who chooses you. Who you know loves you. Who believes that out of all the women in the world, you are the one who should share the rest of his life.” He paused, thought of Mrs. Martin and what she had said about Larissa, and he added: “Or hers.”

Her lips parted. She looked almost in pain. “You know,” she said, “it is almost self-serving of you to say so.”

“Maybe. But I promise that if you help me get what I want, I will not abandon you to your desperation. Money isn’t a problem for me. We’ll find you a place, a position. Whatever it is you want. And someday, somebody will choose you. For yourself.”

She touched one hand to her head, sitting in silence for a moment. Finally, she looked back at him. “I have spent so many years wanting. Refusing to give up on hope. I didn’t know why it got further and further away with every step. Still, I didn’t give up. I couldn’t.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Good.” Miss Winters looked away. “Thank you for reminding me that I could still hold on, even now.”

The conveyance rattled on. “You know,” Adrian finally said, “you’re the best woman I’ve ever had to marry at gunpoint.”

“Oh? Has it happened often, then?” She smiled slightly.

“Just the once,” he said, “but I have a phenomenal imagination. I’ve considered everyone else in that household, and would you know, since I had to be locked in a bedroom and forced to marry someone, I’m glad that it was you. Just think—it could have been Bishop Lassiter himself.”

She laughed aloud at that.

“That would have made him a bigamist,” he said. “It’s a shame. We would have had proof of his wrongdoing already.”

“Well.” She squared her shoulders. He could almost see her folding up her self-pity like so much laundry. “I suppose in lieu of such an easy solution, we’ll have to do this the hard way. When shall we visit the groundskeeper? Will tomorrow do?”

Adrian thought of Harvil, and his promise to be back for the final china design. He only had a few days before it really would be too late to put in the effort needed.

Maybe he should suggest that they go tonight? It was summer, and the light was still lingering. Still, he thought of the hole in her glove, and the six miles they still had to transverse. He thought of her saying that she was desperate. Maybe…

She made an almost incoherent noise, an unintelligible mumble, and he looked over at her. Her head tilted at an awkward angle; her hair was spilling from its messy bun. She had fallen asleep, he realized.

Tomorrow, then.





Chapter Eleven





Camilla wasn’t aware that she had fallen asleep in the carriage until she awoke with a crick in her neck and the jingle of the harness in her ears.

She blinked, straightening, her eyes focusing on… Three shops, all next to each other, with a bit of a park across from them. It was late afternoon.

They weren’t in Lackwich. They were in the town they’d passed through on their way to see Mrs. Martin—Cranfield? Something like that.

Here was a green-grocer. There was a baker. And there, on the corner, stood a little shop advertising ready-to-wear clothing. Mr. Hunter was tying the horses.

Camilla blinked and rubbed her eyes. Every muscle in her body felt stiff.

“Why are we stopping?”

“Because you need to purchase some things,” he said.

She looked over at him. She felt as if she must be missing something. “Things.” She frowned dubiously. “What sort of things?”

He reached into a pocket and removed a fine leather wallet. “Well, that’s what we need to discuss. I ought to have thought of it before—when you had only the one valise—but I didn’t. You need a new pair of shoes and gloves—that much is obvious. You could probably do with another gown or two.” He looked away, as if embarrassed. “And…I cannot know without inspection, which would be awkward, but possibly some…”