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“Cam.”
“I never needed that person to be a husband. I imagined being a faithful companion to an elderly woman. A bright spot in the day of a shopkeeper. And yes, sometimes a wife.” She looked over at him. “I don’t have to be your wife, Adrian. But can I be your friend? No matter what, even after all this is over? It would be more than I have ever had.”
There was nothing for it. He stood. He walked to her again. His arms came around her once more, this time in friendship. His head leaned against hers.
“Yes,” he said. “Please. I think we could both use a friend.”
Chapter Seventeen
Camilla lay alone in her bed that night, knowing that she should sleep. Tomorrow they would embark on a long journey. If they were successful, Adrian would disappear from her life.
In her heart, she knew she was susceptible to praise. That she was practically starved for affection. Even the offer of a scrap of goodwill would have had her heart in a tangle. But he’d given her a veritable feast. Actual respect? Friendship? Encouragement? Eight plates of tigers?
Of course she had fallen in love with him. It didn’t mean anything—she would have fallen in love with anyone who gave her as much.
No matter how much her brain told her this, her heart still hurt.
Part of her wanted to go back to their time together in that room. To that moment when he’d looked at her and he’d desired her, when their lips had come together in heat and fire. She wanted to throw her inconvenient sense of right and wrong in the dustbin.
She didn’t want her stupid conscience. She just wanted his hands on her.
It would take so little to get it back and if she did, she could have him forever. All she had to do was stand. Go down the corridor to his room at the end of the hall. If she were to show up in nothing but a nightgown…
If they consummated this thing between them, there would be no annulment.
She put her hands over her face.
God. She was a horrible person to even think such a grasping, calculating thing. To trap another person for the rest of their lives?
That wasn’t love. She knew it wasn’t love.
Still, she shut her eyes and let her imagination run wild.
She didn’t want to trap him. She’d spent enough time with people who didn’t like her; she could hardly hope to spend the rest of her life with someone who felt the same. She couldn’t even find joy in imagining it.
Her breath hissed out.
But what if he wanted you?
What if he was in his room, thinking the things she was thinking? What if he was thinking not of his imminent freedom, but of his loss? What if he decided he wanted her?
He might stand up in his night things. She didn’t know what he wore to bed, but her imagination stuttered, and she imagined…nothing. Nothing at all. He’d feel the way she did. He’d find a robe, or perhaps a spare sheet, for modesty’s sake.
She shut her eyes, thinking of what he’d look in the moonlight, his skin showing like midnight through almost translucent bedsheets.
He’d stand. Pace his room, thinking of what to do. He’d make his decision after an hour of deliberation—that he didn’t want an annulment, that he wanted her instead.
Adrian did not strike her as the sort of person to put off acting on decisions, once they were made. He’d take off down the hall. He would tap lightly on her door.
She would never tell him no, not in a million years. He’d tell her that he had chosen, that he didn’t want to be without her.
And Camilla would reach out and pull the ends of that sheet—in her imagination, it was a strip of almost sheer gossamer—from his grasp.
They’d kiss the way they had wanted to kiss tonight—skin to skin, his hands holding her in place as if she were precious, as if he didn’t want to let go.
She could imagine him trailing kisses down her neck. She could imagine herself giving in. The heat of his breath against her throat; the slide of his body against hers. His hardness.
She wasn’t a virgin. She knew what would happen. She wanted it to happen; she wanted it rather desperately.
Her hands slipped between her thighs. It wasn’t helping matters at all to think this way about him, to touch herself and imagine his fingers instead of her own, to bite back her own response.
She had told him that she wanted to earn love, not steal it. She had hoped he would see through her words, to understand that she wanted his adoration, his attention. She wanted it now.
It was madness to do what she was doing—imagining him pressing on top of her, his lips finding hers. She did it anyway. She shivered as she imagined him inside her, thick and hot, his hands tangled in her hair. She thought of him whispering that he wanted her, only her, for the rest of their lives. It was madness to feel this kind of desire, something that was so deep, her fingers could not palpate it.
She wanted him to want her. It was madness to wonder if he was in his room, feeling the things she did—that flutter of desire deep in her abdomen, flames fanning with every brush of her own fingers.
In her imagination, she could have him. She could dig her nails into his back, encouraging him to take everything from her and give it back.
It was too easy to imagine their joining. Too easy, and yet so impossible, when it was just her lonely hands bringing out her own response.
Even the orgasm that came felt imperfect. Unfulfilling. She could hear her own breath panting out in the night, the only sound present in the stillness.
She shut her eyes.
God, she was such a fool. He was asleep. He was grateful she’d called a halt to their activities earlier.
She wasn’t going to have his love. She’d take his gratitude, and it would be…
Not enough. It would never be enough.
She stood, washing herself off, wiping away the stupid tears that insisted on coming now that she was alone, demonstrably alone. Her skin felt hungry, almost desperately so, for another person’s touch. That tiny taste earlier had only whetted her appetite.
Camilla exhaled slowly and nodded at the darkness in front of her.
So be it. She’d built fantasies in her imagination before, and she’d survived the wreckage of them, when they crashed against the unforgiving shoals of reality. She was good at that—surviving the inevitable destruction of her hopes. She would do it again.
In the corridor, a board squeaked.
She straightened, turning. Her heart beat double time. It was him. He was coming. He was here; he cared. She waited, breathless, time drawing out until hope fell into discouragement.
There was nothing. She let out a l
ong breath. That creak was merely the sort of sound that a house made at night.
She’d always been good at reconstructing shattered hopes. She did it now, building the truth out of the ruins of her desire.
He didn’t love her. She had survived not being loved this long; she would survive it longer.
He didn’t love her, but he did like her, and it was more than she’d been given in ages. He liked her, and he wanted well for her. It wasn’t enough—not forever—but that?
That would be enough for now. For giving her that much, she would give him anything he wanted. The thing he wanted was for her to shatter her own heart, true, but her heart had been broken before. Now she knew the truth of heartbreak—that morning would come, and she would stand up and move on.
She stared at the ceiling, listening to the faint ticking of the clock in the hallway until all sense of sound finally dissolved into the nothingness of sleep.
* * *
The train ride east to Surrey, then down to Lackwich, was one of awkward silences. Every time Camilla thought of how brazen she’d been the night before—seating herself on the arm of his chair, leaning in, practically taunting him until she was unsure of who had actually closed the gap between them—
She felt herself coloring.
He hadn’t said anything about their tryst that morning. He’d only looked at her, and the way he’d looked… She had to hold herself back from hoping.
She had no space for hope, no space for worry, not when she had this final duty to perform.
He did not say anything as he had the telegram sent. He did not say anything as he walked with her halfway down the all-too-familiar road. He stopped a half-mile out, with the house where she had spent eighteen months on the horizon.
Don’t look back, she thought, but she finally could.
Her hands felt cold. He reached out and took hold of them. “Camilla,” he said.
It was a friendly gesture, she reminded herself, because they were friends. It was a gesture of comfort and…and maybe a little more, but Camilla had been desired before, and she wouldn’t let it change what she had to do.
