Adrian imagined his secretary and his wife in the process of a tearful parting, spending a languid afternoon alone in each other’s arms.
He sat and took a sip of tea, scalding his tongue and focusing on the real pain instead of the imagined one. He must not doubt his choices, now that they had been made. Here, in his own home, he could show to best advantage that he was not the helpless invalid she might fear him to be. He had told his man to take care with his dressing, that everything about him must be just so, clean and unrumpled. And he had not taken so much as a drop of wine with his noon meal, that there would be no evidence of excess in his diet. He would hold himself with a posture worthy of a dress parade, so that, in the first glance she had of him after so much time, she would think him strong, capable and worthy.
Yet he knew them to be superficial changes that might not be enough. Perhaps it would be better if he were not alone for this. He was blind. And he had not told her. There was no way to excuse that.
He called out to the footman, ‘Parker, I wish to see Mr David Eston. Send someone to his rooms and request his presence, tonight, a little before seven. Explain to him that his sister will be visiting me. And that we may require his assistance in a delicate matter.’ Her brother could act as a buffer between them and escort Emily home, should the worst occur and she rejected him.
But if she was truly in a delicate condition, it was unfair of him to expect her to weather this alone.
That night, Emily twisted nervously upon the handkerchief in her hands as they came into her husband’s lodgings. Hendricks glanced at her and then at the footman, waving aside an announcement of their entrance. Then he threw himself down on a bench by the front door as though he suspected the need for a hasty retreat and gestured towards the sitting-room door. ‘He will be there, waiting for you,’ he said in a surly voice. ‘I am staying here. Call if you need me.’ He glared up at the footman, as though daring the man to find anything odd about the situation and said, ‘Parker, bring me a brandy. A large one.’ And then he stared at the opposite wall as though he had arrived alone and unwelcome in the home of strangers.
Emily walked down the hall and away from him, hesitating on the threshold of the room where she knew her husband waited.
But the pause had been without purpose, for she could not have turned and left unnoticed. Adrian’s head lifted eagerly at the faint scuffling of her slippers. ‘Emily?’ He listened for the clock. ‘You are early.’ He stood at her approach and her heart nearly stopped at the look on his face and the way he reached out to the doorway, welcoming her through it. He was wearing a coat of midnight-blue wool that lay smooth over his broad shoulders. Black trousers covered his well-shaped legs without a wrinkle. His cravat was a Mathematical and starched to an almost painful formality, and his boots gleamed in the candlelight as though his valet had made it a life’s mission to show her the reflection of her entrance back into her husband’s life.
It was a stark contrast to the casual handsomeness that he normally showed her. He had wished to look his best when they finally met.
And then he seemed to lift his face and scent the air. There was a growing look of alarm in his blank eyes. He had recognised her even before she spoke.
‘Adrian?’ she said softly.
His hand dropped and his smile faltered, becoming a frown. ‘I am sorry. I was not expecting …’
‘Perhaps you were.’
They both paused then, trying to decide who should speak next. She closed the distance between them, coming behind his desk to lay her hands on his face in reassurance. He closed his fingers over hers and felt the ring she had taken from her jewellery case for the occasion.
‘Your wedding ring,’ he said.
‘It belonged to your mother,’ she reminded him. ‘I have not been wearing it for some time. It is quite heavy. And I found the continual reminder … difficult.’ Then she brushed his fingers over her own features so there could be no doubt that he knew her for who she was. ‘There is something I must explain to you.’
‘I expect there is.’ His voice was as crisp and tight as his cravat.
‘Our first meeting was not by chance. I sought you out.’
‘I know that,’ he said. ‘But I did not know that you had found me.’ He pulled his hand from her grasp and away from her face.
‘Mr Hendricks warned me that I would not like what I found.’
‘Hendricks.’ Adrian gave her a cool smile. ‘Why am I not surprised that he was involved in this?’
‘But I insisted he take me to you. I did not know how horrible the place was, and when you rescued me …’
‘Lucky for you that I did, my lady,’ he said. ‘To go there demonstrated no care for your virtue or your safety.’
It had not bothered him so much when he had thought her another man’s wife. But perhaps she deserved his scorn. ‘I was wrong. I know that now, and will not make the same mistake again. But you saved me from my own foolishness. And you were so heroic. And when you kissed me? It was just as I’d always imagined it could be.’
He pulled her close to him suddenly, and the contact was more frightening than comforting. ‘And now you will tell me that you have spent our time apart, dreaming of the taste of my lips. Please spare me the poetry, for there is much more to this story, I am sure.’
She turned her head away from his sightless stare. For the first time since she’d found him, it was unsettling her. ‘I wanted to be with you. But there was so much wrong.’
‘Finally. We come to the meat of it,’ he said.
‘What if you laughed at me? What if you rejected me, once you knew?’
He pushed her away from him, and turned away from her to face the fire. ‘And in an unguarded moment, I told you that such a rejection was unlikely. That I suspected already, and would forgive you anything. Why did you not tell me the truth then?’
She struggled to remember what he had said that might have been a cue to a revelation, and could think of not one thing that mattered more than any other. ‘I did not tell you because I did not want what we were doing to end. It had not yet been as it was last night.’
‘But now that I have planted my seed in you, you have nothing to fear. You know there is no chance I will cast you off, now that you might carry my heir.’
‘Adrian,’ she said, disappointed, ‘that is not what I meant at all.’
‘Then perhaps you should explain again. For I fail to see any other logical explanation for your behaviour.’
There was a commotion from the hall. The sound of Hendricks’s voice raised in protest, and the curt dismissal of someone who had no intention of listening to him. Parker’s voice was raised as well, so that he could be heard over the din and making his usual offers of assistance and announcement.
‘Emily.’ Her brother burst into the room, staring at the two of them together. ‘It is about time that you have come to your senses. When
