The boy read off the numbers to him as they passed, and then led him up to the door he specified. ‘Here we are, sir.’ The boy was hesitating as though afraid to lift the knocker.
For a moment, Adrian hesitated as well, then mounted the step and fumbled and then grabbed the ring, giving a sharp rap against the wood. ‘Very good.’
‘Lord Folbroke?’ The butler’s greeting was unsure, for it had been a long time since he’d visited. And if the servants’ gossip here was as effective as it was in his own home, the whole household must be buzzing since the return of his wife and her brother.
Adrian gave a nod of affirmation and held out his hat, hoping that the man could understand the nature of his difficulty by the vagueness of his gaze. ‘And an associate,’ he said, gesturing down to the boy with his other hand. ‘Could someone take this young man to the kitchen and feed him? And give him the shilling I have promised him.’ He glanced down in the general direction of the child and heard another sniff. ‘And wipe his nose.’
Then he reached out, and found the boy’s shoulder, giving it a pat. ‘And you, lad. If you are interested in honest work, some might be found for you in my house.’ If he meant to walk the city in future, a guide would not go amiss. And he suspected a child of the streets should know them better than most.
‘Yes, sir,’ the boy answered.
‘Yes, my lord,’ Adrian corrected. ‘Now get some dinner into yourself and wait until I can figure what is to be done with you.’
Then he turned back, looking down the entrance hall of his brother-in-law’s home and trying to remember what he could of the arrangement. The butler stood behind him, still awaiting an explanation. ‘Is my wife in residence?’ he asked. ‘I wish to speak with her.’
He suspected the man had nodded, for there was no immediate answer, so he tipped his head and prompted, ‘I am sorry, I could not hear that.’
The man cleared his throat. ‘Yes, my lord. If you would wait in the salon …’
Adrian felt the touch on his arm, and shrugged it away. ‘If you would describe the way to me, I prefer to walk under my own power.’ The man gave him instructions, and Adrian reached out with his stick to tap the way into the sitting room.
As he crossed the threshold, he heard a gasp from the left, on the other side of the hall. Higher than it should be. There were stairs, certainly. And a woman in soft slippers, running down them with short light steps.
‘Adrian.’ Her voice was breathless and girlish, as he had remembered it, as though she could not quite overcome the awe she felt, and her pace was that of his eager young bride.
But now, before she reached him, she slowed herself so he would not think her too tractable, and changed her tone. ‘Adrian.’ In a few paces she had changed from the girl he’d left to the woman who had come to London for him. She was still angry with him. And pretending to be quite unimpressed with his arrival.
‘You notice I have come to you.’ He held his arms wide for her, hoping that she would step into them.
‘It is about time,’ she said. ‘According to David, you never visit him here any more, though it is not far, and the way is not unknown to your coachman. Not an onerous journey at all. Hardly worthy of comment.’
He stepped a little closer to inhale her scent. Lemons. His mouth watered for her. ‘I did not request a coach. The night is clear, the breeze fresh. And so I walked.’
He thought he heard a faint gasp of surprise.
‘I very nearly got lost along the way. But there was a boy in the street, trying to pick my pocket. And so I caught him, and forced him to help me.’
Now he could imagine the little quirk of her mouth, as though she said the next stern words through half a smile. ‘That was very resourceful of you. There is no shame, you know, admitting that you need help from time to time. Nor should a minor setback on the journey keep you from taking it.’
‘Trying to teach me independence, are you?’
‘I think you do not need teaching in that. It is dependence that you fear.’
‘True enough.’ It had made him resist her for far too long. ‘It was wrong of you to lie to me, you know. I felt quite foolish, to think I had been seducing my own wife.’ And now he had wrong footed it, for that sounded like she was not worth the effort.
The smile was gone from her voice. ‘If you had not kept the truth from me in the first place, then I would not have needed to lie to you. And I doubt you’d have bothered to seduce me at all, had you known who I was. If the first week of our marriage was any indication of our future, you’d have grown bored and left me by now.’ Her voice was smaller, and with the breathless lack of confidence that he remembered from the girl he had married. Then there was the tiniest sniff, as though she might have a tear in her eye at the thought, but it was stifled and replaced with the firmer resolve of the new Emily. ‘And I would have found a less tame lover to satisfy me.’
Damn the woman. He had forgotten her assessment of his abilities, in the early days of their union. And she had chosen to remind him of it, in a common hallway where anyone might hear. He stepped the rest of the way into the salon and pulled her in after him, closing the door so that they could be alone together. Then he let the heat of anger spread lower in him, to change to another kind of heat entirely. ‘Or you would have learned to speak aloud what you wished from me, so that you were sure I understood. I am blind, you know, and need an understanding woman.’ He tried to sound pitiful.
But she was having none of it. ‘Your eyes were good enough when we married, and yet you were blind to my charms.’
‘Which are considerable,’ he added. ‘Given a little time, I’d have discovered them. It is far more likely that I would have crept away to London by now just to get some rest.’ He leaned closer to her, so that he could whisper into her ear, ‘I swear, after only a week in your company, I am exhausted by your appetites.’
‘Exhausted already?’ She was definitely smiling again. ‘I thought it was just getting interesting. But, of course, you had already begun to think of another while you bedded me. Some paragon of innocence and common sense named Emily who is most unlike me.’ She caught him by the lapel and fumbled in his coat pocket to be sure that the locket was still where he always carried it. ‘And she is most unattractive, to judge by this likeness.’
He gripped her wrist to stay her hand. ‘She is a goddess.’
‘Your picture of her is spoiled.’
‘And yet I am loathe to part with it. It got me through Talavera unscathed, and many other battles after that one. I do not need to see it, for I carried it halfway across Portugal and I memorised every line.’
‘Really.’ There was a quiet awe in her voice as she softened to him, and he knew he had won. ‘But I am not the girl in the picture any more. I have changed, Adrian.’
He eased the locket from her hand, and replaced it in his pocket, marvelling that he had not known her from the first. ‘Not as much as you think. You were beautiful then, and you are beautiful now. Emily,’ he said, enjoying the sound of the word on his lips and the little cooing noise she made when he named her. ‘Emily.’ His body tightened in anticipation, just knowing she was with
