After the Wedding (The Worth Saga #2)(66)

He was not delighted. He wanted to keep her.

It felt so selfish, so desperate, so wrong. He wanted to keep her, and he couldn’t.

He put his head in his hands. Truth, eh? He’d never been good at lying.

“Cam,” he muttered. “I wasn’t acting.”

He could hear her stillness, the lack of motion. He could almost envision the look on her face.

She let out a long, slow breath, and when she spoke, her voice was low. “I know. I’m sorry; that was cruel of me. I thought you would come to your senses at any moment, and figured…it would hurt less if I did it first?”

He lifted his head and their eyes met. Hers were dark and…no, not unreadable. She was watching him with an intensity that he understood all too well. She’d looked at him that way often enough.

“And what,” he said slowly, “if I didn’t want to come to my senses?”

She folded her arms and looked away. “Then it would hurt even more when you finally did.”

Oh, Cam. Brave Cam, clever Cam, vastly unloved Cam. Cam who chased stars and deserved to wear her dreams like a crown. He wanted to punch the entire world for what it had done to her. She should not have felt that way.

She should not have been right.

He stood and took a step toward her.

“Please.” She sniffed. “We shouldn’t.”

“I won’t,” he promised. “Not that. But would it hurt so much if I gave you a hug?”

“Yes.” Her voice cracked. “But it will hurt more if you don’t.”

He wrapped her in his arms and held on as tightly as he could. It was just for now, but he wanted to enfold her in all the comfort he could send. And she burrowed into him, melting as if she were meant to be molded to him. Her chest shook, just a little, and when he brushed her cheek, there was a little wetness to it.

God. How long had it been since someone touched her in affection?

He realized he’d asked the question aloud when she answered.

“It feels as if I’ve been nine years starving.”

He stroked her hair. This was unfair, so unfair, most of all to her. “And here you are—not allowed to eat.”

She shook her head. “I’m allowed, but I’ll pay the price. If we let ourselves do any more, we will be married. In truth.”

It was madness to think they should contemplate that possibility. He didn’t want it. If he gave in like this…what if he regretted it later?

What he said was this: “Am I so horrible, then?”

She looked up at him. “You know you’re not. Of course you’re not. But you told me so yourself. You don’t want a wife who will choose you because you’re not ‘so horrible’ and she felt she didn’t have a choice. You want…” She inhaled. “You want a long, slow falling in love.” She said those words precisely, as if she’d memorized what he’d told her those weeks ago. “A partnership, built over time. Certainty and sureness. You want a choice, and you want to be chosen. You don’t want this—not like this.”

“Cam.”

She looked up at him. She reached out and slowly, slowly touched his cheek. “Adrian. I like you well enough that I promise I am going to give that to you. Don’t give it up, not like this.”

He exhaled.

She pulled herself from his embrace and wrapped her own arms about herself. “Tell me about your parents again. What you said the last time… It was lovely. I want to hear it again.”

I need to hear it again, he heard, and so do you.

He nodded. He sat back down, because if he didn’t, he might reach for her once more. His hands made fists on the arms of the chair, as if holding onto it would somehow substitute for her. “My mother married young, once. She never speaks of that. After her first husband died and left her a wealthy widow, she defied her family to join the abolitionist movement. She devoted her fortune to the cause. Worked with my father for years. My parents fell in love slowly and surely.”

“That sounds lovely.”

“They were comrades-in-arms before they were ever married.”

Cam had become his comrade. His ally in truth, not just in name. Even now, she protected him. She was the one who was reminding him what he wanted, no matter what it cost her.

He trailed off, searching for the right words.

“You’re right,” he finally said, “I want a choice.” He looked up at her. “And I want you to have one, too. You’ve had so little of it; I want whoever ends up loving you to know that you could have had anyone in the world, and you chose him. I want him to think that he has had a gift bestowed upon him, not that he was sentenced to your company by circumstance. You deserve better than this.”

Funny, how she’d faced everything that happened to her in the rector’s household with nothing but resolve, but this could bring tears to her eyes.

“You deserve to have no doubts,” he told her. “You deserve to believe that you were wanted above all others.”

His heart hurt in his chest.

“You deserve everything I want,” he told her. “You deserve a partner, a comrade-in-arms, a slow falling in love. You don’t deserve to be stuck with a man simply because he’s got a hankering for his own pleasure.”

“Is that what you’re after?”