Ann Lethbridge - Regency Society

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 I heard that you were invited here tonight, I was afraid I would have to drag you to the meeting. Or do you think that this is the result of your plans to sort your affairs?’

‘David. What are you doing here?’

Adrian said, more to the fireplace than to them, ‘I invited him because I feared that the shock of discovering my condition might unsettle your delicate nerves.’

‘Your condition?’ David strode across the room to her husband and seized him by the shoulder, passing a hand in front of his face. ‘Adrian, what is this I hear about you from Anneslea? It is a joke, is it not, for I saw you just last week.’

‘But I did not see you,’ Adrian responded, laughing bitterly, and slapped his hand away. ‘I have enough sight left to know that you are waggling your fingers in front of my eyes, trying to catch me in a trick. I can see the shadow of them. But that is all. Now stop it, or I will find sight enough to thrash you for the impudence of it.’

‘And you let me stand here yammering at you the other day and said nothing about a problem. You let me think you were drunk. Or were you drunk? I no longer know what to believe out of you.’ She could see the anger and confusion clouding David’s face, and held up a warning hand, hoping that he would not muddy the situation any more than it already was.

‘You can safely believe that I did not tell you, because it was none of your damned business. Any of it,’ her husband snapped. Then he pushed David away and walked back to her, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her to his side. A hand came up to her face, and his head cocked to the side as he traced the lines of her, as though trying to replace this image with the one he held in his mind. His other hand released her, reaching for the miniature, as though there were some way left to compare the two.

‘Then you shouldn’t have invited me into the middle of things tonight,’ David shouted at the back of his head. ‘And you.’ Her brother stared at her, almost shaking with rage. ‘It was him, all along, wasn’t it? I do not know which is worse—that you do not admit to the world that you are together again, or that you could not at least admit it to me.’

Adrian smiled at her. And his expression was so cold and heartless that she was glad he could not see her fear. ‘Oh, I think there is much more that needs to be confessed, if you wish to know the whole of the story, isn’t there, Emily?’

‘Certainly not.’ Surely he did not expect her to tell her own brother the most intimate details of the last few days.

‘You could at least assure David that he was right in his assumptions about your entertaining another gentleman under our very noses.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Where had he gotten such ideas?

Adrian looked at her brother. ‘Your little sister has led me a merry dance, David. She tricked me into thinking she was another woman, rather than admitting from the first that she was my wife. She would not even give me a name, because she said I would know her in an instant, should she give me the smallest clue to her identity.’ He laughed. ‘And I have been dangling after her for days like a lovesick idiot, racked with guilt at my betrayal of my wife and the depths of feeling I had developed for this supposed stranger.’

David was staring at her, his anger stifled by bafflement. ‘Why would you do such a foolish thing, Emily? Would not the truth have been simpler?’

‘Oh, I think the answer is obvious,’ Adrian announced. ‘She came to London to trick me into bed, hoping that she could hide the evidence of her infidelity. And when she realised that I could not see, she found it good sport to trick me with lies. I hope that you have gotten sufficient amusement from our time together. For I certainly have.’

She gasped in fury at the thought that he might refer to the things they had done together, even in such an oblique way. ‘Of course, Adrian. Because why would I not find it amusing that my husband had been so long away from me that he did not even know me? Or to have evidence of your frequent infidelity thrust in my face?’

‘My infidelity?’ he shouted back. ‘At least you did not have to drink endless toasts to celebrate the results of it, as I did for you at White’s.’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ she said, angry, but still confused.

‘When, exactly, am I to expect the heir you seem to have got for me? Or is the date of delivery to be as much of a surprise as the parentage?’

‘I say …’ David sputtered, ready, once again, to come to her defence. ‘Emily, are you …?’

‘Oh, hush,’ she said, glaring at him. ‘If you have nothing constructive to add, then please refrain from speaking.’ She turned to Adrian and said, ‘I did not tell you the truth because it was apparent, almost from the first day we married, that you wished no part of me.’

‘If my treatment bothered you, then you could have spared yourself the trip to London and written me on the matter. If you had explained your dissatisfaction, we might have discussed the matter like adults.’

She could feel him growing distant again, as though it were possible at this late date to go back to the way they had been. ‘If you had bothered to answer my letters at all. Or told me the whole truth when you did. I had to come to London to see you, to learn about the loss of your sight.’

‘And when you did, you thought it would be easy to trick a blind fool into thinking he’d got you with child so that you would not have to explain yourself.’