Chapter Sixteen
Did all ladies go damp between their thighs at a few crude words, Adelaide wondered, or was it just the particularly wicked ones?
“You cannot be both my seducer and protector,” she repeated. “Unless—” She drew in a sharp gulp of air. “You are not suggesting I become your mistress, are you? I could never—”
“Adelaide, no. I am saying… Oh, damn, what am I saying?” He frowned at the leathers. “I find that my feelings for you are unchanged from what they were two years ago, during our summer in Cornwall.”
She went hot all over. What did he mean? Could he—
“It’s not love,” he mused, his words hitting her like a bucket of icy water. “What is love, after all? Perhaps what we call love is merely a mixture of lust and friendship. If we’re lucky, the friendship remains after the lust fades.”
Lust, he had said, as though she were a bird of paradise used to such language. A gentleman ought not to discuss such things with a lady. Adelaide tried to summon the proper amount of outrage but fell short of the mark. So he had said lust. Well, what of it? He knew she was not innocent. She knew of lust. She had felt it, with this very man.
“So, it is not love, because love, or what the poets call love, burns bright and then dies,” he said consideringly. “What I feel for you did not fade even when you sent a bullet through my arm. I don’t know what it is. I only know that I want to take off all your clothes…but I also want to remind you to eat luncheon.” He looked truly perplexed at his feelings.
She couldn’t decide whether to laugh or to cry. She knew, of course, that he had not loved her back then, and he did not love her now. But to hear the words from his own lips delivered a blow to her heart, even as it soothed her. So very odd.
She turned her mind to more practical matters.
“What poets?” she asked. “What poets say love dies?”
Nick looked taken aback, but rallied quickly. “Shakespeare, for example. First he compares his lover to a summer day, and the next thing you know, black wires spring from her head. The sonnets are not for the same woman. He must have loved once, fallen out of love, and then lived to love another day. He writes of two different women.”
“They are not two women,” she corrected. “And I don’t think the summer’s day sonnet is about love at all.”
Nick frowned. “You think they are the same woman? Did she grow ugly with time?”
Adelaide gave him a withering glance. “No. The first was a man. Or, rather, a fair youth.”
Nick looked askance. “What? No. That cannot be. That would mean…” His voice trailed off as he appeared to consider all the things it could mean.
The horses shifted dangerously off course, and she gave a sharp tug on the reins to set them right again. “Didn’t you attend Cambridge? What did you learn there, if not Shakespeare?”
“Not that.”
Adelaide laughed.
“You should know nothing about it, either.” But he was laughing, too.
“I should not know that some believe the purest love can only exist between two men, and women are merely sport?” She shook her head, smiling. “It’s too late, I’m afraid. I’ve already read the Greeks.”
He gave her an amused look. “I doubt what happens between lovers is ever pure.”
“The poem is clearly about the beauty of youth in general,” she said. “Not a specific person. He could not be speaking to a lover in such terms. A lover would never abide it.”
“What do you mean?” Nick asked quizzically.
“‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely, and more temperate,’” Adelaide quoted. She snorted. “Temperate! That is what one wishes to hear from a governess, not a lover. I should empty a teakettle on his lap, so he understood I was capable of heat.”
Nick winced. “I shall keep that in mind, if I am ever filled with the misguided desire to write you a poem.” He glanced sideways at her. “You would prefer to be told of black wires, then?”
Adelaide considered. “I think I would not mind that my lover recognized my black wires for what they were, if those black wires were loved.”
“Hmm,” he said. “I suppose we all want that, selfish though it is.”
“Why is that selfish?”
“Because we ask for more than we can give.”
What on earth did he mean by that? Adelaide gave a perplexed shake of her head. “Surely you don’t think love demands perfection? Of course love must acknowledge faults, or it is not truly love at all.”
“Exactly.” He twitched the reins. “If that is the standard, then true love does not exist. Love most certainly alters when it alteration finds. When I was eleven, my mother loved me. When I was twelve, she cast me out. Is that love? Or did it snap with Nate’s ankle?” He looked at Adelaide. “Do you know the story?”
“No,” she said. “That is, I heard it from Alice, but I have not heard it from you.”
“The facts remain the same. Does it matter who tells it?”
“Of course it does,” Adelaide said softly.
“Very well.” He waited until a curricle passed before continuing. “The earldom of Wintham follows a rather…unique…pattern of inheritance. First sons die under mysterious circumstances before begetting an heir of their own, leaving second sons to claim the title. My own father was an only son, but his father—my grandfather—was second born. From the time of my birth, my parents looked on me as a threat. When Nathaniel was given lessons in fencing, I was not. They didn’t want me to learn how to kill. When we fought, as brothers will, I was always the one who was whipped.”
Her hand was tucked in his own before she realized what she was doing. “Oh, Nick. I’m so sorry.”
“When we were twelve, we climbed the old oak tree at Haverly. I don’t remember the argument, only that I pushed him and he fell, breaking his ankle. I’ll never forget the sound it made as the bone broke. If he hadn’t been screaming, I would have thought him dead. It was the worst moment of my life. Worse, even, than the banishment that came an hour later. But the banishment lasted until this past month, whereas his ankle was fully healed within half a year.”
The poor child.
“A mother’s love is supposed to be unconditional,” Adelaide murmured. “It is no wonder that you doubt love’s longevity. How could you not?”
He looked down at her hand, still held tightly in his own. “I do not mean to be harsh—I would not hold myself to that standard, either. I assure you, it would not matter if my wife were Aphrodite herself—if she abandoned her child as my mother abandoned me, I would toss her in the gutter where she belonged. All love would turn to ashes.”
The sun beamed brightly upon them, but it did nothing to warm the sudden icy chill Adelaide felt in her bones. She shivered.
“Yes,” she said softly. “How could it not?”
“You and I, we would not ask for too much, I think,” he continued, still holding her hand. “We would not ask for love. Only companionship, sometimes, and perhaps friendship. It would be a very convenient arrangement.”
She felt each word like a thousand tiny cuts, deep beneath her skin where no salve could reach.
Companionship. Sometimes.
A very convenient arrangement.
“You are not offering marriage so soon, are you?” she chided teasingly, desperately hoping to ease the tension. “We have only been courting for three days. That is not at all proper.”
His lips lifted in a smile that did not reach his eyes. “Quite right. We must concede to convention in all things, yes?”
She peered into his crystalline blue eyes. Eyes were the window to the soul, were they not? Alas, all she saw was her own reflection staring back at her. Nick’s soul was nowhere to be found.
“I care for you a great deal, and I am happy to hear that you likewise care for me.” She reclaimed her hand and kept it firmly on her lap. “But when you do offer for me, Nick, I have every hope that I shall say no.”