Chapter Twenty-Nine
Adelaide stood as if rooted to the spot. She had the oddest feeling of being tangled together with Nick, caught in an invisible net of their own making, and no matter how they fought to free themselves, their desperate thrashings only served to bind them more tightly together.
“Shall we rejoin our families?” She lifted her skirt to step over a muddy spot.
“Will you sit by me?” he asked.
She hesitated, knowing she ought to say no. Still—
“Yes,” she said.
Two large blankets had been spread across the slightly wet grass. The servants had placed four pillows on each blanket, to further protect them from the dampness. Lord and Lady Wintham had joined her mother and father on one blanket, leaving Adelaide and Nick to pair with Alice and Abingdon. Alice, she noted, had left a very proper amount of space between herself and her fiancé. Adelaide followed suit, scooting her green velvet pillow a foot away from where Nick sat.
“There are so many delicious things, I hardly know what to eat first,” Alice said, clapping her hands delightedly.
There was, indeed, a stunning spread of food. A tray boasting a ridiculous variety of sandwiches served as the centerpiece. Surrounding it was a basket of fruit, another of cheese, and two trays of biscuits and tarts.
“A strawberry, perhaps?” Abingdon offered.
“Yes, please.”
He handed her a plate of fruit, simultaneously tugging her cushion an inch or two closer to his. Adelaide looked away.
“Roast beef.” Nick held a sandwich between two fingers and studied it critically. “Is a cow a god? Well, no matter.”
She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“In India, they believe the cow is sacred. A man can’t find a slab of beef anywhere to save his life.” His sandwich was disappearing in rapid bites. “Most Indians are not Christian, you know. They have many gods, and one of them is a cow herder. Thus, the great reverence for what is to us merely a beast of burden. Or a food,” he added, helping himself to another sandwich.
She stared at the plate of sandwiches. Cucumber, chicken, lamb, and beef. She chose chicken. Her immortal soul was tarnished enough without offending heathen gods.
“They decorate their cattle with flowers in their horns, while we drink the blood of Christ in sacrament.” He paused, considering the last bite of beef he held in his hand. “Do you know, I think that is the biggest difference between us and them. We eat our deities.”
He raised his eyes to hers, and the hunger she saw in their blue depths pierced her to the core. He was a starving man, and she was…well, a cow. The heat from his gaze warmed her with alarming speed from the top of her head to the tips of her toes before settling low in her belly.
She was hungry, too.
Adelaide was no longer innocent. She knew what his look meant, and she understood her own body’s shameful answer. Had the past two years taught her nothing? Her body seemed only to remember the pleasure, but her heart knew what followed—agony, remorse, and ruin. A lady’s sin could never go unpunished.
And yet, she wanted him.
She always wanted him.
She turned deliberately to her sandwich. One could not be consumed by lust while consuming a cold chicken sandwich, she was certain.
She took a bite.
She chewed and swallowed.
She looked at Nick and immediately looked away again.
Oh, dear. Apparently one could be consumed with lust while consuming a chicken sandwich. What a wicked little wanton she was.
She set the sandwich aside, disgusted. The hot feeling ebbed, leaving coldness in its wake. Where chicken had failed, self-loathing had succeeded.
“The chicken is not to your liking?” Nick asked.
“It is not,” Adelaide said firmly.
His narrowed gaze suggested he was aware they were discussing more than mere sandwiches. “Adelaide,” he said, his tone cajoling, “won’t you— Ouch.”
“Pardon me,” Abingdon said cheerfully. “Was that your foot? Do try one of the cucumber sandwiches, Adelaide. They are just the thing.”
She bit her lip to hide her smile and accepted Abingdon’s offering. “Thank you.”
“Alice!” Lady Wintham called from her blanket, at a volume just short of uncouth. “Have a word with my son about his hair, won’t you? We have decided it must be short for the wedding. A queue is all well and good for a home wedding, but a groom must be fashionable at St. George’s.”
They all turned to look at the offending queue.
Abingdon grimaced.
“I cannot cut my hair, Mother,” he said reasonably. “How will the congregation tell the bride and groom apart from our attendants?”
Adelaide shared a look with Alice, and they both burst into peals of laughter. Two sets of identical twins standing before the archbishop had all the makings of a Shakespearean comedy.
“Imagine if the archbishop tried to marry me to Nick, or Nate to you,” Alice said, still laughing. “Or—” She broke off hastily, clearly not wanting to call out the last ridiculous coupling by name.
Or Nick and Adelaide.
“Ask Wessex to stand up with you,” Nick said evenly. “No one will mistake you for the duke, no matter how your hair looks.”
“I don’t want Wessex. I want my brother,” Abingdon said.
“Don’t be absurd. Everyone wants a duke.”
Adelaide looked sharply at Nick, who was studying the assortment of biscuits as though choosing was the only thing of import. But she sensed the hurt beneath his veneer of indifference.
Abingdon’s lips pressed into a thin line. “If you don’t wish to—”
“Oh, look! I think I see a—a fish!” Alice jumped to her feet. “Let’s go see.”
Abingdon peered at her as though she had gone mad, but stood willingly enough and brushed the grass from his breeches. “As you wish.”
Adelaide waited until Alice had dragged her fiancé several feet away before turning to Nick with a reproachful look. “Do you truly not care to stand up with Abingdon?”
Nick looked mildly surprised. “Should I? Wessex is just as good—nay, better. They have been friends these past ten years that Nate and I have not spoken.”
“But he is your brother!” she protested.
“And he will continue to be so after the wedding, whether I stand beside him or not. It makes no difference.”
She thought it made a good deal of difference. She pursed her lips. “Only because you insist upon indifference. It does not have to be like this between you. You could be brothers—true brothers.”
“Why do you blame me?” He studied her for a moment, giving her the disconcerting feeling that he was reading her mind, then let his breath out in a slow exhale. “I have told you how it was, Adelaide. And yet you take his side.”
“Hush, Nick.” She glanced quickly to where their relatives sat paying them absolutely no mind. “I am not taking anyone’s side.”
Which wasn’t true. She was sympathetic to Abingdon’s obvious guilt, but that sympathy paled in comparison to what she felt for Nick. What a terrible burden he had been forced to carry! He had been an innocent child, and yet the weight of his family’s suspicion had rested on his shoulders as heavily as outright guilt. She wanted to scream and cry and bash all their heads together, from the very first Earl of Wintham to the heir apparent. They all needed some sense knocked into them, every last one of them, for ever thinking that Nick could be capable of that.
She touched his hand. “I do not blame you. I only think that—perhaps—you do not form proper emotional attachments.”
“He is my brother—my twin brother. We are attached by birth and will remain attached until we die, whether I wish it or no.”
“You recognize the relationship exists with your head, but you do not feel it with your heart. And not just about your brother. You have often told me that love is not necessary or even wanted in a marriage.” She turned once more to the selection of sandwiches, lest he mistake her heated face as evidence that she had hoped for more from him. Such as a proper emotional attachment.
He spread his hands in a baffled gesture. “I don’t understand.”
“No, I suppose you don’t.”
“But what would you have me do?” he persisted. “I am a dog they sent away. Should I now return and beg for scraps of love? If there is no attachment of the heart, as you say, it is because they made it so.”
He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees and his chin on his fists. Adelaide watched silently. There were so few moments when his mask dropped and the real Nick was revealed. She didn’t want to startle him away again.
Her lips tingled to soothe that crease between his brows with a kiss. He must have been so desperately lonely and frightened. “Poor child,” she said softly.
“So much sympathy for the child, and yet you care nothing for the man.” He gave her an aggrieved look.
She would have laughed if she didn’t ache so much for him. “I care very much for the man. But I think the man is still in many ways that little boy who was sent away. You want to be loved, but you can never believe it’s real, even when it’s right in front of you. Which is why I feel obligated to point out that Abingdon is doing his best to love you, and you ought to let him.”
Nick looked at her intently. “Would that make you happy? If I forgave him and stood with him at their wedding?”
She flushed and glanced away. He ought not to look at her so, as if his entire reason for being depended upon her answer. “I think it will make you happy,” she said. “And your happiness would make me happy.”
He cocked his head consideringly. “Are you happy now?”
Was she?
She shouldn’t be. She did not deserve to be happy. But there were moments, here and there, when something startled her to laughter or made her smile. There were moments when she was immensely relieved to be home with Alice again, despite everything, and that was very similar to happiness. And just now she had a lovely apple tart in her hand. It was hard not to be happy when one bit into a delicious tart.
But underneath all of that was a lonely ache. Epsom seemed somehow both very close and very, very far away. Someday, perhaps after she married, she would truly be happy again. She could bring James home to live with her. She could invent a distant cousin and kill her off. Montrose would not mind a young ward, would he? Perhaps he would not even notice. Men rarely had any interest in babies and young children, beyond the existence of an heir.
“Am I happy?” She repeated Nick’s question. “I am certainly trying to be.”
Soon.
Soon.