It meant hours in tangled sheets without shame or fear.Waterfalls and summer nights and ancient secrets.Rum and mud and laughter.
Adam’s strength at her back for all the battles to come.A united front against the myriad forces of the world that stood against them.Partnership and struggle and discovery, side by side, as the years unwound before them like a tumbled ball of yarn.
“Are you all right with that?”Ellie asked with a quick note of panic.
“Are you?”Adam pushed back uncertainly.
The answer came to her as irrepressibly as a hot air balloon.“Goodness, yes!”she breathed out feelingly.
She could hear the joy in Adam’s laugh.His arms firmed around her back.“Thank Christ,” he groaned with obvious relief.
Then Ellie was laughing too—until she caught his face in her hands and pushed herself up for a kiss.
It was tender and hungry.Ellie drank it in—drankhim.Her lover and friend.Her companion in life.
Her pretend husband.
She laughed again through the kiss, tears cooling her cheeks—and then Adam spun her around and pressed her against the wall.
After that, she felt something else entirely—something that fully and blissfully consumed her for a spell of breathless time.
?
Forty-Four
Ellie was flushed,sweating, and sated as she and Adam returned to the garden.
She had needed that time with him after the tumult of their conversation to try to heal some of the pain he had shared with her—to show him how thoroughly she meant to be there for him.
They had come together like a vow.
She kept hold of his hand as they slipped back into the party, daring the world to take issue.Between the joyful chaos of the glittering crowd and the generous shadows between the pools of lamplight, nobody took notice.
Just like nobody noticed the glimmer of Constance’s figure as she hurried along a raised bridge that bordered the far side of the garden, connecting two of the palace wings.
Ellie’s friend skipped down an open stairwell.Her cheeks were rosy and her eyes glittered.She brightened at the sound of music.
A few relatives spotted her as she reached the ground, sweeping her up into a chattering conversation.
“Wonder where she’s been?”Adam mused.
Neil stepped onto the bridge.
The structure was roofed, raised over the garden on pillars.Ellie’s brother was cast in shadow, but he seemed at least somewhat more put-together than he had been when she had last seen him.
Had that really been this same evening?It already felt like years.
His shirt was tucked in and his waistcoat was buttoned under the fall of his gold scarf—but his hair was still mussed and his spectacles were crooked.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?”Adam asked.
“Absolutely not,” Ellie returned firmly.“Nor do I have any wish to be.”
“You should probably go talk to him,” Adam helpfully suggested.
“Fiddlesticks,” Ellie muttered under her breath.
She wove through the party to climb the steep stone stairs to the bridge.Elegant arches of carved stone marched down the length of the raised walkway to where Neil stood alone.
