After the Wedding (The Worth Saga #2)(83)

“That’s lovely.” He stroked his hand down the side of her face. A flicker of a smile touched his lips again. “Family is lovely. Even if Grayson is a wretch.”

She smiled back. “So. Do I get to meet this uncle of yours while we’re here?”

He tensed beside her. “Camilla.”

Just that one word and the doubts she had thought banished rose to the surface of her consciousness, like goldfish rising in a pond to be fed.

She was imagining things. She was so used to unhappiness that she could not let herself believe…

But no. She wasn’t imagining it. Adrian had pulled away. Just an inch, but it was there between them.

“Do you not want me to meet your family?”

He sat. Put his hands over his eyes. “Family.” The word sounded so bitter. How could he be so bitter about a word like that at a time like this? “I won’t call him that anymore. I asked him for one thing. One thing. And I was fed…that astonishing pack of self-serving lies.”

Camilla felt her whole body go cold. “What happened?”

He scowled up at the ceiling. “It’s too late, he said. We waited too long. If his colleagues find out that his own nephew posed as a valet, it will make him seem underhanded. He can’t stick his neck out for me, no. Not even after all that I’ve done. And I should be happy that you are not a complete wretch.”

Oh.

It was all she could think at first. Her happiness felt cold and out of place.

Oh. Oh. Of course he hadn’t chosen her.

He turned to her. “Oh—no, Camilla. I didn’t mean it like that. The one thing he was right about was that I am unstintingly lucky that it was you I was tied to. I went for a long walk afterwards. I didn’t know what to think; I felt numb all over. The only thing that made it bearable was knowing that it was you. I promise you, the thought of you was like a ray of light amidst all the darkness.”

He hadn’t chosen her.

“I’m not upset about you at all. It’s about him. About my own expectations.” His voice shifted—higher, more quavering—as if he were imitating his uncle. “‘My dear boy, it’s better than someone like you could have expected.’ I’m such a damned idiot.”

It wasn’t about her at all. This last hour, when he’d brought her to bed? It hadn’t been about her.

She ought to have burst into tears at that. It hurt enough. But she’d cried too much today already.

Camilla shrank back. She didn’t want her mind to work, but it did. It was working all too well. “He…was not willing to assist you in obtaining an annulment?” She should have asked outright, but she had been so happy that she hadn’t questioned.

“No. Grayson was right.” Adrian turned around. “And I’ll have to tell him so. I’ve come to realize that I doubt my uncle actually thinks of me as a blood relationship. I’m a convenient tool, and his only surprise is that I expected him to care about me in return for the care I gave him. Tools shouldn’t ask for a response.”

She shouldn’t focus on what this meant for herself. He’d just had his heart ripped out. He’d lost something—something enormous—and she knew she should comfort him. She had promised to make him happy, after all.

Nonetheless, the next quavering words out of her mouth were these: “You didn’t choose me?” She had thought…

After how he’d held her. After what he’d said on the train. After everything that had just happened…

Camilla was all too good at inventing encouragement; she’d done it often enough.

She was sure that if she went through it all, she could find all the ways she had misstepped, the ways that she had imagined appreciation where there was none.

She had invented it all, a tale of love and forever out of lustful looks and a weeks-long friendship. She’d put her heart on her sleeve once again. She’d imagined that he would choose her, that he’d want her.

She’d prepared to have her heart shredded. She hadn’t prepared for this—to have it taken from her, treated with gentleness, and then burnt to a crisp in a blast furnace.

Adrian turned to her. The harsh, unforgiving lines of his face melted. “Oh, Cam.” He came to sit next to her. His arm went around her. “I won’t lie to you. No, I didn’t choose you. But you have been everything to me these last weeks. I didn’t choose you, but I do choose this: I choose to make the most of what we have.”

Before she’d come to know Adrian, she would have accepted that. Second best was still a form of best, after all.

But she hadn’t just wanted him to want her. She wanted everything he had painted in that idyllic picture weeks ago, when he’d told her why he wanted an annulment. She wanted a slow falling in love. She wanted a merging of friendship and adoration. She wanted a promise of mutual joy. She thought she had found it.

He hadn’t found any of that with her. She would always be his forced bride. She would always know that they were joined with a pistol and a deception first, and his uncle’s betrayal second. She would never know what it was like to be chosen.

She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Adrian. I’m so sorry.”

She was. For both of them, she was sorry.

He brushed his lips against her forehead. “Don’t be sorry,” he said lightly. “We’ll make do. We’re remarkably good at that.”