Chapter Fifteen
If there had been any doubt left in Graham’s mind, and there hadn’t been, all of it fled the moment his lips touched hers. Adelaide and Lydia were the same person. And he’d never been so confused, so stupefied or so relieved in his entire life. The idea of losing one of the women had been physically painful to him.
Now he knew he wouldn’t have to lose either. And he dove into the kiss, tasting Adelaide’s desire, feeling it in the way she arched against him with those tiny sounds of pleasure that always rocked him all the way down to his very core.
Reason fled, questions fled, all that remained was this burning desire to have her, to claim her. Not as Lydia, but as Adelaide. As whatever woman she was when she allowed those two sides of her to combine.
He pivoted, backing her toward the settee in the middle of the room. She never resisted as he lowered her onto the cushions, his mouth not leaving hers as he delved deeper and deeper into the ocean that was this woman. Body and soul. He wanted it all. He wanted it now.
She reached up and started tugging at his cravat as his mouth moved away from her lips to her throat. She managed to loosen it and he sat up, shrugging out of his jacket and tearing open the buttons of his shirt until he could tug it over his head.
She lifted her hands to his chest, tracing the lines of muscle there as her eyes went wide. He smiled at the expression, for she’d seen him like this a few times and yet she still seemed shocked every time. It gave a man a swelled head to have a woman look at him like that.
Especially this woman.
He pulled her to a seated position and glided his hand down her spine, flicking open her buttons one by one even as she lifted her mouth back to his with heated, desperate need. They tugged the dress and chemise down together, and he shoved her back on the settee as he latched his lips around one tight nipple. She arched beneath him, her hands coming into his hair as she shut her eyes with a shuddering sigh.
He watched her face as he pleasured her—there was Lydia, there Adelaide. And he tamped down all his questions for the moment.
“Please,” she murmured, her hips jolting up against his in time to the way he suckled her breast. “Please.”
He nodded and got up, yanking off his boots and fighting with the buttons on his trousers as she shimmied her dress off her hips. She blushed as she slowly opened her legs and revealed herself to him. He stopped what he was doing and stared.
In that moment, she was all Adelaide. And even though he’d had this body before, he’d never known it was her. Now that he did, it was all new again. She was new. And he wanted her with more power and passion than he’d ever desired Lydia.
Which was saying a great deal.
“My God, you are amazing,” he muttered as he dropped his trousers, kicked them away and slowly lowered himself over her. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?”
She smiled as she reached between them and gently cupped his rock-hard cock. “I have a little idea.”
He shook his head. “Not that. I acknowledge you do that, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about this.”
He took her hand and lifted it away from his cock, sliding it between their bodies until her fingers rested against his chest, just over his heart. She swallowed hard and met his gaze as he positioned himself against her sex. As he drove forward, his heart rate ratcheted up and her eyes went wide.
She held her hand there, his heart pounding against her palm as he took her with long, slow strokes. Her sex clung to him, squeezing as she lifted against him, her gaze going blurry with pleasure as he took her. He drove deep, circling his hips as she squeezed, and raw sensation rushed up his cock and spread through his entire body. He was alive, he was on fire, and there was nothing like it.
Nothing like her.
He cupped the back of her head, tilting her mouth for better access. He drove his tongue past her lips, tasting her unique flavor as her body began to shake beneath his. He gripped her hip, grinding harder over her, forcing her pleasure until she bucked beneath him, her pussy gripping him as waves of release rolled between them.
She milked his cock, driving him toward home, toward her, toward that blinding moment of perfect pleasure that always existed between them. He thrust harder, shutting his eyes, sucking her tongue, feeling the intense sensation grow until his balls tightened. Biting back his roar, he withdrew, pumping his hand over his cock as he came between them, then flopped forward to cover her body with his as he rained gentle kisses down the slope of her neck and shoulders.
She wrapped her arms around him, cradling his body against hers, her legs tucked around his waist, her soft sounds of pleasure still warm and incoherent against his neck.
And in that moment everything in his world, his life, his riotous mind, was perfect.
That was what she did for him. Adelaide. Lydia. Both. The same. And that thought drew him from the hazy pleasure.
He lifted his head and stared down at her. She was looking straight back at him, not flinching, not hiding. Not anymore. Everything had been laid bare and her secrets would soon merge with the ones he’d confessed so recently.
If she wanted to tell them, that was. Because she hadn’t forced him. And as much as he wanted to do so, he refused to force her.
He stroked the back of his hand along her cheek, tracing the soft lines there as he whispered, “Tell me?”
She stiffened just a fraction, and her gaze slid away from his. He mourned the connection that had been broken. He mourned that she felt she had to break it. That she couldn’t fully trust him. Hadn’t trusted him. Might not trust him still.
“I-I owe you that,” she said with a nod of what could only be described as resigned surrender.
He cupped her chin and lifted it, forcing her to look at him. Her blue eyes widened, pupils dilating as she met his stare. He shook his head slowly.
“You owe me nothing,” he whispered. “I’m asking you for the truth, but if you want to protect your secrets I, of all people, would never force them from you.”
His answer seemed to shock her, for she was silent for what felt like an eternity. Then she swallowed hard. “No, Graham. I was always going to tell you. And it’s time. It’s time for the truth.”
Adelaide groaned as Graham gently lifted his weight from her. She prepared for him to get up and walk away, to dress, so there would be a barrier between them. But just as he had been from the moment he entered the room, he surprised her. He didn’t leave her, but merely shifted them both into a seated position. He tucked her against him, his arms around her, and she rested her head against his bare chest with a shuddering sigh.
She felt safe in his arms. An illusion, she knew, but one she chose to cling to in this moment of vulnerability and fear. He hadn’t abandoned her yet, and he already knew the worst of her lies.
“What I told you about the first night we made love when you thought I was Lydia, it was true,” she began, surprised she could make coherent speech when she was shaking so hard. “Three years ago a gentleman began to show interest in me. No one of any real consequence, but he seemed to like me. And no one had ever liked me before. He seduced me. I shouldn’t have allowed him to…to take me, but I thought he cared. It seems he didn’t, for he disappeared soon after.”
She felt Graham’s jaw tighten and looked up to see anger on his face. At her? But no, it didn’t seem to be. “Who?”
“It doesn’t matter now. He ran off to the Americas, his father has said publicly. No one has seen or heard from him in years.” She sighed. “He would rather run than marry me, it seemed. At the time, it was devastating, for I knew I’d destroyed any small chance I had at a future. My aunt found out and was enraged, so it made my life at home even harder.”
“It changed you,” he said softly.
She nodded. “As all experience does, I suppose. I coiled further into myself. Into books. Into the wall. I didn’t want to be seen.”
He looked down into her face and she saw his empathy and understanding slashed across his handsome face. In that moment, her sense of safety grew, despite having told him a fact that could easily change what he thought of her. Lydia’s fall was one thing to process. Lady Adelaide’s was quite another. Two different worlds, two different feelings on the same subject.
And yet Graham didn’t seem fazed by the truth.
“How did it lead you to Lydia?” he pressed gently.
She drew a ragged breath. “I was not happy. As I said, my aunt didn’t react well when she discovered I’d been ruined. She would screech the most vile things at me. She would—” She broke off, thinking of Opal’s harsh slap during that terrible time. Of the way she’d choked Adelaide just that very day.
“What did she do?” Graham asked, his body stiffening as if he already knew. But perhaps he did, he would know the signs better than most, she would wager.
“She was cruel,” Adelaide said softly. “And I was unhappy and trapped. But she got a head cold a year and a half ago. She was bedridden for almost three weeks, and suddenly I had this tiny taste of freedom again. My maid, Rebecca, who knew how unhappy I was, suggested I sneak out with her and go see a play. It was so wicked, so entirely against character, but I did it.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Quite a jump from seeing a play to performing on stage at one of the most popular theatres in London.”
She nodded. “It was. You see, Rebecca had a friend backstage, and suddenly we were there. The actress in one of the supporting roles got violently sick and I looked a bit like her. I got pushed out onto the stage with three lines to say and I-I…” She hesitated even as joy flooded her. “I loved it. When they applauded, it was like someone had…had turned a light on that I didn’t even know existed.”
“You are very good, Adelaide,” Graham said softly.
She smiled up at him. “Thank you. It snowballed from there. I was asked to do another part and another. Lydia was born, for I certainly couldn’t perform as Adelaide. Rebecca and I have an elaborate system for my sneaking out and in. Aunt Opal hasn’t suspected…yet.”
Graham nodded. “Remarkable. But you must think me a great fool, not to have realized you were Lydia.”
“Do you know how many men in our circles came to my plays?” she asked, sitting up and turning to face him fully. “Even came back to talk to me as you did that first night?”
“I assume none of them kissed you,” he said, leaning forward to brush his lips back and forth against hers gently. “Nor did they ultimately take you to their bed, as I did.”
She shivered as he let his fingers drag down the slope of her neck and across her bare breast before he settled his hand back against his muscular thigh.
“No,” she admitted. “None of them did. But I created a character, Graham. Lydia, who possessed all the confidence I lack as Adelaide. She is bold and unafraid. She dresses differently, she moves differently, not to mention that I wear the spectacles and pull my hair back when I’m Adelaide.”
“As a shield,” he murmured.
“You saw exactly what I wished you to see,” she said. “Though I admit that first time you approached me to dance after you kissed Lydia at the theatre, I was petrified you had discovered me. And then I was…a little jealous of myself.” She shifted. The truths were on the table now, but Graham seemed no angrier to hear them now than he was when he’d realized she and Lydia were the same. That gave her some of the boldness she had created in her character. “May I ask you something?”
He nodded slowly. “You may.”
“Why…why did you say thank God when you realized Adelaide and Lydia were the same?” she asked.
He tilted his head. “Don’t you know?”
“No, or I wouldn’t have asked.” She smiled a little.
“There’s the Adelaide who so easily puts me in my place,” he said, a chuckle bubbling from his lips and warming her. “I said thank God because I have been torturing myself for weeks now over you and Lydia.”
She wrinkled her brow. “What could you possibly mean?”
“Adelaide, I wanted you both. And I had no idea that you were the same person. Here I was, wrecked by a betrayal from one of my closest friends, and yet I was thrown back and forth between two remarkable women, like a complete bastard.”
She stared at him, eyes widening as his statement sank in. “I don’t understand. You wanted Lydia. Not me.”
“I think I just proved that statement very wrong, Adelaide,” he said, reaching his hand out to pull her a little closer. “I can do it again if you’d like.”
“You wanted me because you realized I was Lydia,” she said, wanting to give in to the desire in his stare but still confused by his statement.
“She who thinks she knows so much really is in the dark,” he said. “You couldn’t be more wrong. I have spent days and days coming to terms with the fact that I want you, Adelaide. I woke up with your name on my lips and your face in my mind. When I touched Lydia, I felt as though I was betraying you. So please trust that I know my own mind. I most definitely want you.”
Her heart leapt at that statement and the honesty with which it was put. He meant it. He believed it.
“You must see, though, that I’m not her. I’m not confident or bold or—”
“Well, that is pure poppycock,” he interrupted. “You have been bold with me many a time in ballrooms and parlors. In fact, I think the real you isn’t exactly the woman who hides behind her spectacles or the lady who walks the boards. I think you are something between the two. All the best parts of both.”
She blinked for sudden tears stung her eyes at his absolute faith in her. A faith she hadn’t felt for herself…perhaps ever.
“I was going to tell you,” she whispered. “I was going to tell you the truth.”
He lifted both eyebrows and actually looked surprised by that confession. “I’m happy to hear it. But why? If I was so blind, why not let me remain so?”
She shivered. “Because you gave me a piece of your soul that night after Sir Archibald attacked me. I couldn’t sit by and keep it without allowing you to know the truth.” She met his stare and held there even though it was hard. “When you told me about your past, about your father and your mother, it meant so much to me, Graham. Even though I was little jealous of…of myself.”
He smiled slightly, though she could see his pain at the reminder of what he’d told her the night before. “It meant a great deal to me, Adelaide, to trust you enough to tell you my past. I’m glad it was you, not just Lydia, who knows it. And it means a great deal to hear your own. I understand only a few people must know of your subterfuge.”
She shook her head. “No one but Rebecca,” she confessed. “And my driver, too.”
His brow wrinkled. “Not Emma?”
“No,” she admitted. “I’ve wanted to tell her so many times, but before she was married I didn’t want to get her in trouble if the truth came out. You know her, she cannot lie—it isn’t in her nature.”
Graham nodded. “I can see that. But what about Melinda and the others at the theatre?”
Adelaide laughed. “If they knew I was a lady, the daughter of an Earl, they would never allow me to work there. The ramifications would be too great, my aunt would make sure of it. Not to mention that there are some there who might try to use that knowledge against me. Blackmail me.”
“So you are the only soul in the world that knows my secret, beyond a few servants,” he said.
“And you are the only one who knows mine,” she finished with a soft smile for him. One he returned instantly.
“And when would you have told me if I hadn’t uncovered the truth tonight?” he whispered.
She caught her breath. This was something he hadn’t fully thought through yet. She wasn’t exactly ready to help him do so, but she couldn’t lie to him. She didn’t want to.
“I was waiting for…for…” She blushed and he leaned forward.
“It cannot be worse than anything you’ve already said,” he reassured her.
She shifted, suddenly feeling her nakedness keenly. Clenching her fingers in her lap, she took a deep breath and said, “The last time you were with Lydia, you weren’t…careful, Graham.”
He stared at her a moment, then his eyes went wide, as if he were remembering the last time he’d made love to her before he knew the truth. “Oh God, I was so upset, so distracted that I…I came inside of you.”
How she hated the horror in his voice. “For a woman like Lydia, it might not end the world to have an illegitimate child. But I’m not Lydia, not truly. I wanted to come to you after I could safely say there was no baby. I didn’t want my telling you the truth to force you into…into some kind of honorable response.”
His jaw tightened. “You mean you didn’t want me to be forced into marriage with you.”
She nodded. “I’d never do that, Graham. The fact was, I was ruined before you touched me. As long as there is no baby—which, based on the timeline, there likely won’t be—there is no reason for you to throw yourself away on me.”
He stared at her, his brow wrinkled. “You think that’s what I would see it as?”
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “But I know after what you’ve just been through with Meg and Simon, with your past with your parents, the last thing you should have to do is be forced into a life with someone. I’d never do that to you.”
He shook his head. “I would never accuse you of doing so.”
He pushed to his feet as he said the words, and she watched as a wall came down between them. One she hadn’t expected after their connection and their honesty. One that stung her far more than it should have, given her lies, given his kindness about those lies.
“I should go,” he said, finding his trousers in the mess of clothing on the floor. “Before we’re found.”
She swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat. Past the disappointment she hadn’t earned. Graham had never made promises to Lydia. And even if he said he wanted her as Adelaide, he’d never acted on those impulses until the truth was out.
He owed her nothing. She would ask for nothing.
She pulled her chemise from her dress and tugged it over her head. “I understand.”
He was buttoning his shirt as she spoke and turned on her with a strange expression. “I’m not entirely certain that you do,” he said. “Emma says you’ll be here tomorrow.”
She nodded. “She is trying to keep me here as long as my aunt will allow.”
“Why?” he asked, once more his body and face on edge.
She hesitated, not wanting to cause him to think on the horrible past. “She likes having me here,” she lied.
He seemed to ponder the answer a moment, but he didn’t challenge it. “Well, I’ll return tomorrow. We can discuss all this in more detail then, Adelaide. When neither of us is so…distracted.”
She nodded, knowing he was right. Recognizing that some distance was what they both needed. He leaned in and kissed her gently, his mouth probing hers until she opened to him and relaxed against him with a shuddering sigh.
He pulled away, his gaze unfocused and filled with the desire she had come to know so well. Then he shook his head. “Good night, Adelaide.”
“Good night,” she said, watching him go. Then she sagged against the settee.
When she’d pictured telling Graham the truth, she had never allowed herself to hope that he wouldn’t hate her. That it wouldn’t destroy all the bonds they had built between them. But he’d been wonderful and understanding and everything she had ever wanted.
And even so, she was left unsatisfied, because he had left with so much between them unsaid. And she was left with growing feelings in her heart that could only leave her disappointed.