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ANOTHER PACKAGE HAS ARRIVED
DISPOSAL IN THE USUAL MANNER
Adrian read it. “I have actually seen quite a few of those. And here’s this—the date seems right.”
TO: MILES
PACKAGE RECEIVED
MY THANKS FOR ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL DISPOSITION
A few more minutes found this:
TO: LASSITER
AN ISSUE HAS ARISEN IN RE PRIOR PACKAGE.
ORIGINAL OWNER IS RAISING A FUSS
ASKING FOR PACKAGE WHEREABOUTS
ADVICE IS NECESSARY
CANNOT COMMIT MORE TO TELEGRAM
Camilla stopped. “This is the day before you arrived.”
“It is.”
“This is it. I know it’s not perfect, but… This shows they were working together, yes? And that they had an agenda that they could not discuss in public.”
“I think it is enough,” Adrian said slowly. “Given the dates, Lassiter’s arrival, the fact that they discussed Mrs. Martin in your presence…it might be enough.” Adrian tapped his finger against the page. “And these are the last telegrams we have. But for this. It’s the one sending for a special license. No surprise there.”
Camilla took the form.
It was hard to see her future written out in India ink like that. Lassiter had made the request, issuing the order with all the authority of his position.
NEED EMERGENCY SPECIAL LICENSE.
The details followed. To think so much had changed since the Wednesday weeks ago when this has all transpired…
Except.
Camilla pushed the page forward. “Adrian, this telegram was sent on a Tuesday.”
“Yes?”
Her voice shook. “Look at the date. He requested a special license the day before we were put in the bedchamber together.”
He blinked, then looked up at her. “So he did. And that’s our story—it all fits together now. Rector Miles receives his package—two thousand pounds. He pockets half, and shares the remainder with the bishop who is helping him cover the crime.”
“Yes.”
“The bishop comes to consult on the matter. I start asking questions about the rector’s household, and the two of them get wind of this and decide to discredit me. But Lassiter sends for a special license the day before their scheme goes into operation—and that pins the blame squarely on him.”
“Yes,” Camilla agreed again.
And then, across the room, Kitty, who had been sitting and reading said, “No.”
They turned as one.
“No?”
Kitty smoothed her skirts and looked away. “When the rector approached me, he said it was about Camilla. That she’d done something wrong and he couldn’t prove it, so he needed to catch her in the act. The only thing he said about you, Mr. Hunter, was that you were nobody.”
Camilla felt a strange sensation—an almost dizziness. “Me? But—that had to be an excuse, of course. What would I—”
“You knew about Mrs. Martin,” Adrian said. “You’re the one who told me.”
She had, technically. She’d overheard it, and remembered—even if they hadn’t mentioned the words. “But—who would I have told? I don’t know anyone. I’m nobody.”
“No,” Adrian said. “You’re not.”
“Maybe not in the general sense of things,” Camilla said, “but to the rest of the world—”
“No.” Adrian said, and Camilla felt her chest contract as she remembered. “No, even then you’re not. You’re the daughter of the Earl of Linney.”
She felt sick. “And Bishop Lassiter asked me about my sister. But she doesn’t want anything to do with me. I know she doesn’t. Why would that matter?”
“Do you know that they want nothing to do with you?”
“Of course I do. Judith said—she said—” She had said, years and years ago. And she hadn’t written, and Camilla had taken all the hope she could not contain and pushed it into the future—hoping, hoping, hoping, and never looking back.
Adrian looked at her. “Do you know?” he asked once more.
Yes. Of course Camilla knew it. She knew it, knew it the way she knew everything she had told herself over and over at night, knew it the way she knew that it was likely hopeless to love, knew it the way that she knew that she’d do it anyway. She knew that nobody wanted her, that nobody remembered her, that nobody cared about her. She knew she’d hope for it forever.
She knew it with a heart that had been bruised too often, with hopes that she’d held onto and lost too many times. She knew it with every fiber of her being.
She just didn’t know it with her head any longer.
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t know.”
Her finger reached out and touched the dark letters asking for a special license—and pulled her hand away, feeling stung.
“It makes a sort of sense,” he said. “I should have considered it the moment you told me. They didn’t know who I was. It wasn’t me they were trying to discredit. It was you all along.”
“Oh, God.” She inhaled. “Of course. It’s all my fault. I should have known.”
“Camilla.” His hand pressed against hers, warm and comforting. Her heart was beating fast and impossibly loud in her ears. “It was not your fault. It was never your fault. It was always theirs.”
She bowed her head.
“And we’ve won,” he told her. “Look at this. They thought they could make you into nobody, and they couldn’t. We’re going to bring them to justice—you and I together.”
She inhaled. She didn’t know what to think, what to say. Look forward, she thought, don’t look back, don’t look back, don’t look back.
If she looked back and they didn’t want her, it would hurt too much. Even for her.
It was too much to comprehend.
“Not me.” She shut her eyes and turned her palm over so that their fingertips could glide against each other. His breath hissed out. “Us,” she told him. “It has always been us.” She was saying too much; she wasn’t saying enough. “From the moment when you stopped me in the road and told me Miles and Lassiter were our enemies,” she confessed. “From the moment I chose to believe you without proof.”
He leaned into her. “Camilla,” he whispered.
She held her breath, hoping. The heat of his body warmed hers. His arm, not quite around her waist, braced her in place. His breath whispered against her ear. But Kitty sat half a room away, and hope was all they could do.
She tilted her head and looked up at him.
He smiled at her. Oh, God, that smile. She could feel it break across her like sunlight. She had never felt so precious, so wanted.
His hand twitched at his side, but it did not come up to brush her cheek. She felt it only in her imagination—the brush of his hand, like the caress of his gaze, stroking her.
All the want she couldn’t let herself feel rose up in her. All this time, she’d
hoped and hoped and hoped.
Maybe it wasn’t all the hope that had been the problem. Maybe it was that she had not let herself hope enough.
Adrian’s smile felt almost sad.
“I could not have been more lucky in my choice of women to not be married to,” he said.
And maybe she could hope for more with him, too.
Her heart wasn’t breaking. It was too full to break. She wanted him, and he wanted a choice, and she wanted to be chosen. It hurt, the best kind of pain, this holding back. But this prickle of hope, of sheer desire… It was nothing to the sea of loneliness and want she’d swum in for too long. To know that she might be loved, that she might be respected? To know that her family might want her?
It was more than she’d had in years, and still, now that she gave free rein to her hope, she hoped for more.
She had not come this far, holding onto all this hope for this long, just to give it up. She wanted him, too. She wanted him to choose her, freely. She wanted it all, and her entire being ached with the wanting.
And so she just nodded.
“It’s the same for me,” she whispered. “Not being lawfully wed to you has been a singular honor.”
Chapter Twenty
Weeks ago, standing in the road with the bad taste of the marriage still in his mouth, Adrian would have been delighted to know that this moment would come—that he would be sitting on a train with the woman he had been forcibly wed to, his satchel packed with affidavits and accounts. They were ready to annul the legal flimflammery that bound them together.
The problem was that it was only the legal flimflammery that bound them together. When they were finished… What then?
Camilla sat looking out the window. She’d taken off her gloves, but held them still. She did not seem to notice that she was turning them around over and over again, as if she could direct all her nerves into the cloth.
“Have you thought of trying to find your family afterward?” he finally asked. “I know you haven’t wanted to speak of them. But they’re still there.”
“I don’t know.” She blinked, looking at her gloves, then set them aside. “Nothing’s changed. Judith didn’t write to me. And maybe she’s changed her mind—I suppose there’s no reason to imagine she’s tracked my whereabouts all these years—but if I go to her and she throws me out…” Camilla trailed off, shaking her head.
