“If she is free, yes, I think she will come.”
Then Madeline pulled her arm out of his grasp and quickly went ahead of him through the gate.
Chapter Eleven
Adam walked into the house, went straight to his private study and closed the door behind him. Good God, did he truly notwantDiana to come? He’d been so sure that she was the only one he had ever—or could ever—love.
He walked to his desk, opened the bottom drawer and pulled the cedar box out. He found the tiny key in one of the pigeonholes and unlocked the box, then rifled around inside it, his big hands searching for the miniature he still possessed after all these years.
There. He found it.
For a long time, he stared.
Adam hunted in his mind for the memories of Diana, therealwoman, trying to remember how he had felt when he was with her, trying to bring back those feelings. His young heart had been hopelessly besotted. He’d felt intoxicated from the sound of her voice, weak at the sight of her face.
He stared at that face now, waiting for the longing to come. Trying tomakeit come.
He saw only a picture. He felt nothing. No surge of longing. No heat, no vigor. His blood was racing, yes, but that was from holding Madeline’s arm, trying to keep her there with him outside the gate, beseeching her for answers.
Answers to what? To how she felt about him? How she felt about Diana?
He reached for the letters in the box—letters Diana had written to him after she’d married Sir Edward. They’d continued for almost a year. She’d written intimate things to Adam, reminisced about their times together, and he’d known she was unhappy.
Of course he never wrote back. He could not encourage her, and he was married himself by that time. She had made her choice and he did not wish to prolong the misery. Neither hers nor his.
After a while, the letters stopped coming and he had presumed she’d forgotten him and grown into her role as another man’s wife.
Thank goodness Jane had not known about the letters. At least he didn’t think she had. If she had gone through his things and found them, it would certainly have explained some of her anger and insecurities.
Lord, so many hearts had suffered. Adam squeezed his forehead with his hand, racking his brain for an answer, a plan, a proper course of action.
In the end it was his heart that guided him. He knew what he had to do.
“I love you, more than anything in the world. You’re planted so deeply in my heart, sometimes I think you must have been born there. Not even a poet could express what I feel for you, my darling.”
Madeline heard the words spill tenderly from Mary’s lips, just as she stepped into Mary’s open doorway. Chessboard in hand, Madeline froze. She saw Jacob leaning over the bed, kissing his young wife.
Just then, everything on the board—the kings and queens and knights and pawns—started to slide and Madeline had to fumble in a panic to keep from dropping the entire game onto the floor with a resounding crash.
“Madeline!” Mary called out, surprised but not the least bit sheepish over what Madeline had just seen and heard. She rose from the bed, straightened her skirts and went to greet her. “Come in. Oh, bless your dear heart, the baby just fell asleep and I’m in need of some distraction.”
Madeline handed the chessboard over to Mary. “Well, I should leave you two….”
“No, no! Please come in. Jacob was just trying to leave and I wouldn’t let him.”
He stood. “Yes, Father’s waiting for me. We’re preparing to drive a herd of beef cattle to Halifax.”
“To Halifax?” Madeline asked. “But he just returned.”
“Father won’t be going, just George and I and a few fellows from Jollicure. We’ll start out early tomorrow and be back in a week.”
He kissed Mary on the forehead and whispered something secret in her ear that made her giggle and gaze at him flirtatiously.
“See you at supper, Madeline.” He smiled at her as he left the room.
Madeline moved all the way in and sat in the chair by the window.
Mary began to set the chess pieces in place on a table. “Say you’ll start a game with me, Madeline.”
