Chapter Eighteen
Adelaide rose to her feet slowly, staring from Toby to Melinda and to the twisted, horrified face of Graham. Pain and empathy flooded her, for what her friend had endured. For what both her friends had endured, for she could see that murdering a man, even if justified, weighed on the kind and gentle Toby.
“My God,” she whispered. “Oh Melinda, oh Toby. I’m so very sorry.”
“I’m not,” Toby repeated, just as strong as the first time he’d said it. “I’m only sorry I didn’t do it before he touched her.”
Melinda rose then and rushed to him, wrapping her arms around him as they trembled together. “It’s not your fault. It’s not.”
Adelaide’s eyes went wide as she realized she wasn’t seeing two friends who comforted each other. She was seeing two people who were in love and had gone through almost the worst thing imaginable. They leaned against each other, giving comfort and taking strength. She couldn’t help but look at Graham in that moment and wish she were so free as to do the same.
But they had not spoken of feelings. Or anything else to do with whatever their relationship had become in the past few weeks.
“We’ve been hiding here for two days,” Melinda explained as she broke away from Toby’s arms. “When the Home Office captain comes to question us, as he has a handful of times, the others put us where we can’t be found. But we both know it won’t last. They’ll figure out what happened eventually and then…then...” She bent her head and began to sob softly.
Toby lifted his chin. “I’ve told you, Melinda, I won’t let them know your part in hiding the body. I’ll happily be hanged or transported.”
Melinda glared at him. This was obviously an argument they’d had more than once. “As if I’d let you take the blame alone. We will go down together.”
Graham had been mostly silent since entering the room, allowing Adelaide to manage the exchange, but now he straightened his shoulders and his presence filled the room just as it always did when he chose to allow it.
“I will not let that happen,” he said. “I will put all my power behind stopping it.”
Toby and Melinda both stared at him, confusion and disbelief in their mutual stares. “Why would you do that?” Toby asked.
Graham hesitated and then said, “Because I understand the drive to protect a woman you…you…” His gaze flitted to Adelaide. “A woman you care about.”
Adelaide took in an unsteady breath. Care about? It wasn’t exactly a grand declaration of love, not that she had expected one. Caring for her was perhaps the best she would ever get. And yet it felt hollow.
“Besides,” he continued, oblivious to her thoughts. “I was asked to watch Sir Archibald months ago, for the very kind of bad acts that he perpetrated upon you, Miss Melinda. I was…I was distracted from that duty. If I had not been, perhaps I could have prevented this. Or if I hadn’t attacked him the night he moved on Ade—Lydia he would not have returned and vented his rage on you. Whatever the answer, I see it as my duty to see that you don’t pay for a crime that was my fault.”
Melinda stared at him, then to Adelaide. “He would truly do this for us?”
Adelaide nodded, her gaze firmly on Graham. “He would, for he is the best of men.”
Graham paced the small room. “I’ll arrange for a carriage to pick you up and you’ll be taken to a small estate I own just outside London. It will be as good a place to hide as any while I contact a solicitor and we come up with the best plan of attack.”
“Could we be married at your estate?” Toby asked, his gaze flitting to Melinda.
Her lips parted, as did Adelaide’s. “Marry me, Toby?” Melinda whispered. “Can you mean that?”
He faced her and pushed up his spectacles nervously. “I love you, Melinda. I always have. If we are to be destroyed, I would like a few moments of happiness before it happens. If you’ll have me.”
She nodded without hesitation, tears flooding her eyes again, though this time they were happy ones. “I will, of course. I do love you, Toby.”
She reached out a hand and he caught it, drawing her against his chest. Graham shifted, as if this display of emotion made him uncomfortable. He didn’t look at Adelaide as he said, “A marriage could very well make a defense easier. I’d be happy to arrange a special license and have the duty performed at the chapel on my estate.”
Adelaide smiled at her friends, happy in this moment, despite the horrors they had so recently endured. She’d known them both for months and had no idea of their feelings for each other. Yet there they were, so clear and so real on both their faces. She felt foolish for not seeing them before.
“You are too kind,” Melinda said, breaking from Toby’s embrace and reaching out to hold out a hand to Graham. He took it with a gentle smile.
“I don’t think you should suffer any more than you have, my dear,” he said softly. “If I can prevent it, I shall do anything in my power to do so. Now, if there are arrangements to be made on your side, I suggest you make them. I’ll send a carriage for you to the theatre in an hour.”
Toby moved forward, his hand outstretched, and the two men shook. In that moment, they were equals. Men who would protect those they loved. Then Toby looked at Melinda. “There are a few things to gather in my office.”
She nodded. “Yes, I’ll come help you.” She faced Adelaide and her lips trembled. “You have been such a friend to me, Lydia. I cannot find the words to thank you.”
Adelaide held back a sob as best she could. “It is I who should thank you. You helped me when I was a green beginner, terrified of the stage and of myself. I couldn’t have become…me without you.”
“I hope—I hope we’ll see each other again.”
Adelaide embraced her gently. “We will, Melinda. We will see each other again.”
She watched as the two left the room, leaving her alone with Graham. When they shut the door behind them, she moved into the arms he opened for her. He held her like that for a moment, his hands smoothing over her hair as she struggled to come to grips over what had happened.
Then she stepped back. “You were kind to offer them help,” she whispered.
He shrugged, like he hadn’t just offered two drowning people a lifeline. “We all know Sir Archibald deserved what he got. If I can help them, I will.”
Adelaide pursed her lips, looking around the room. She had loved coming here as an escape to the empty life she’d been leading with her aunt. Putting on the costume of Lydia Ford had made her feel confident and powerful and free. But now being Adelaide didn’t seem so terrible.
Because of Graham.
And in that moment, a plan began to hatch in her mind. A plan that could save her friends even more than any solicitor or powerful ally Graham could create for them.
She smiled and then took his arm. “Come, we should go back to Emma and James’s home. I know they’ll be worried.”
Graham took a long breath and looked around the room with her. “This was the first place I kissed you,” he said.
She nodded, all the memories of that first night flooding back. “It was.”
He turned her toward him and bent his head, brushing his lips to hers. She lifted her hands to his forearms and clung there, not swept away as she had been that first night, but anchored. Anchored by his strength and by her love for him.
And even though she knew she might lose that and soon, she still clung to it in that moment and prayed that somehow she would find the strength to go on, no matter what happened.
Graham had been almost entirely silent as they rode in the carriage, but he sat across the way from Adelaide, just watching her. She couldn’t read what was in his mind, but she shifted under the weight of his very focused regard.
At last he cleared his throat and he said, “Your friends are not the only ones to marry soon. You and I will have to do the same, Adelaide.”
She caught her breath as she stared at him in shock. “What?”
He tilted his head. “Come, you know it’s true. You confessed our affair not only to our friends and your aunt, but to Captain Black. The man has a vendetta against those with a title, anyone can see that just looking at him. He may not pursue me for the murder again, but I wouldn’t put it past him to let the truth of our relationship out.”
“That isn’t why I said what I said,” she protested. “I wasn’t trying to trap you, Graham. I would never do that.”
“Yes, you’ve made that clear,” he said, his voice still soft and even. “By not wanting to confess your double life until you could tell me for certain there was no child created by my imprudence. By never asking me for a damned thing, not as Adelaide or as Lydia. By throwing yourself onto a fire without ever demanding protection in return. There are many things I feel right now, Adelaide, but I don’t feel like this is a trap.”
He let out a long sigh, and she felt his exhaustion and his surrender. Not things she ever wanted from a man in the midst of a rather unromantic proposal.
“If not a trap, then what is it?” she asked, folding her arms as a shield against his indifference.
He met her gaze. “When James arranged my marriage to Margaret all those years ago, I was stifled. I tried so hard to develop feelings for her. Any passion of any kind. But it was a failure. For both of us.”
Adelaide thought of Meg. She’d said something similar, and none of it made sense to Adelaide. “How could she kiss you and feel nothing?” she mused, almost more to herself than to him.
He jerked his head up and met her gaze. “I never kissed her.”
Adelaide stared at him, a mixture of disbelief and pure pleasure boiling in her chest. “No?”
He shook his head. “I never…wanted to. I couldn’t picture that future, even in the slightest. So that marriage would have been a horrible trap for both of us. But with you, it is different.”
“How so?” she squeaked out, for suddenly his words seemed far less unromantic.
He reached for her hand. “I want you, Adelaide. In a powerful way that I never understood before I kissed you.”
She stiffened. “You want Lydia,” she corrected.
“No,” he said, his jaw tightening. “I’m not talking about Lydia. I told you last night, it’s you. When I saw Lydia return as we went into the theatre earlier today, I wasn’t happy to see her.”
“But you told me you were torn between Lydia and me,” she whispered. “That was what brought you such trouble, wasn’t it?”
He nodded. “But now I know why you created Lydia: to hide. She was a shield against trouble, a barrier between yourself and unhappiness. She was a corner you were forced into. And yes, I cared for her. But what I’ve come to realize is that everything wonderful about her are all the things that are best about you. The real you. Not the spinster wallflower, not the bold actress. You. I didn’t tell Lydia Ford my secrets. I told you. And you are who I want. My Adelaide. The woman who knows me and whose secrets I will protect with my life. The woman who would do the same for me. That is who I want. So we will marry, Adelaide.”
This was no declaration of love, certainly. And she still ached for that because her own love for this man was so strong and so powerful. But what he offered was still magical. A future with him. And she could see it stretching out in front of her, happy, if she could make it so. If she could accept what he could give and what he couldn’t.
In that moment, she hoped she could.
“Are you asking me or are you telling me?” she said with a half-smile for him.
He grinned in response, and that rare and bright expression lit up the whole carriage. “Asking,” he said. “Though I’ll tell you I won’t take no for an answer.”
She bent her head. She would have safety. She would have passion, at least until he bored of her. She would have stability because he would ensure it.
And she found herself nodding. “Yes. I will marry you, Graham.”
He crossed the carriage in one smooth motion and his mouth was on hers, hard and heavy and filled with passion. She lifted into him, her arms around his neck, her body molded to his as she accepted this offer with everything she was.
He pulled away as the carriage slowed and turned into James and Emma’s drive. “I have much to prepare for Melinda and Toby,” he said. “And a few things to ready for us, as well. But I’ll come back here for supper.”
She nodded as the footman opened the door. “I look forward to it.”
He kissed her hand and then allowed her to exit. She turned to watch him go, torn between joy and disappointment. Her whole life she had never expected a love match. And now she had it, at least on her side, and it wasn’t enough.
She entered the foyer and was greeted by Grimble. “Is the duchess available?” Adelaide asked as he took her gloves.
“The duke and duchess have taken an afternoon rest,” Grimble explained. “The duke was very clear that Her Grace was not to be disturbed until supper.”
Adelaide smiled. “After this morning’s upset, that is likely best for her and the child.”
She looked around. This house was a good home for Emma, but it wasn’t Adelaide’s home. She thought of her aunt, so devastated by Adelaide’s choices. She was the only guardian Adelaide had known since the death of her parents. The only person who had taken care of her. And she had taken care of Adelaide. She remembered moments of tenderness between them though they were long ago, when she was still a child.
It was only as she grew older that Opal’s anger increased. That her anxiety and accusations were born. But perhaps an engagement to a powerful duke would assuage her. Perhaps there was still some way to maintain a relationship of some kind with the only family she’d ever known.
“Is there something I can do for you, my lady?” Grimble asked.
Adelaide blinked, realizing she had been standing in the foyer beside the poor man, drifting off into fantasy. “I’m sorry, Grimble, I was woolgathering. But do you think you might arrange for a carriage to be brought round for me?”
Grimble nodded. “Of course, Lady Adelaide. What direction should I give to the driver?”
“I’d like to go to Lady Opal’s,” she explained. “I need to see my aunt.”