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She shook her head, and he knew what she was going to say before she said it. “I’m a thief.”
He reached for her, pulling her to him, willing her to understand all the ways she was a marvel. “You think I don’t know that?” He said, “You stole me that first day, on the docks. The first time you kissed me.”
She pressed her forehead to his and closed her eyes. “I intended to give you back.”
“Impossible. I’ll never allow it.”
“So imperious.” Something flashed in her eyes even as she smiled. Something he wanted to banish from her thoughts. Something he wanted to banish from their time together.
She kissed him then, long and lush, and somehow sad and urgent—a kiss that left his chest tight with fear that it might be the last one. And when it was over, he said the only thing left to say to this woman who had stolen his heart.
“I let you keep the box because I trust you.” Another kiss, like a reward. “I let you keep it because I wanted you to have a piece of me that no one else has ever had.” And another, like a temptation.
Tempting him to tell her everything. “Adelaide, I let you keep it because I love you.”
Chapter Twenty
The confession was raw and beautiful, and Adelaide did not know what to do with such a gift, so she did what she had done for her whole life and escaped it. She left the bed, reminding herself that they required food and drink.
In the kitchens, she filled a plate with ham and cheese and apple and spoonfuls of mustard and pickle that had been left in the stores, trying the whole time to forget what he’d said. How it had sent a current of excitement through her.
How it had made her believe in a future with him.
In her lifetime, Adelaide had never been a coward. But when she returned to the room, plate piled high, to discover Henry up and washed once more, a shirt pulled over his head, hiding bandages and muscles, she found she could not look him in the eye. She was too full of a dozen emotions, none of which was pleasant, and she feared that if he saw them, he would come for them. Vanquish them. Chase them away.
Foolish Adelaide; he came for her anyway. Crossing the room the moment she entered, relieving her of her burden and pulling her to him, tilting her chin up so he could look past her spectacles into her eyes and read her thoughts. And then, without a word, he tugged her into his lap, refusing to let her hide.
Somehow, impossibly, she didn’t mind, because Adelaide had never been interested in hiding from him, not from the first moment she’d met him. Not since. It was why she’d gone head-to-head with him the first time they’d ever met. Why she watched him in Mayfair ballrooms, willing him to see her. Why she had kissed him on the dock, why she had challenged him to a race across Britain, why she had stayed there in that house for days, waiting for him to wake. Waiting for him to see her.
Which he’d done from the start.
So she let him pull her into his lap and hold her tight as he ate the food she’d prepared for him. Of course she did. Because of all the strange, uncomfortable, wonderful emotions he evoked, the one she was able to name—willing to name—was desire.
She desired him. This. And not in the way she’d been trained to think of desire. Not in covetous gazes, quick and hot. She desired him in a cool, steady stream, like a balm. And it was a balm when he touched her, soothing aches that she’d never noticed until he was there, that she’d had for a lifetime.
His hunger had returned, and Adelaide delighted in watching him eat, loving the knowledge that she nourished him in some small way—giving this magnificent man a bit of herself, risking it.
This cannot last, she tried to remind herself, again and again, but the words of warning were washed away every time he paused to feed her little tastes, the best morsels from his plate, as though she were a prize to be won. A treasure to be held.
As though it was he who nourished her.
He loved her.
So she looked to that magnificent man who made her feel magnificent, too, and said, “I want to trust you. I want to know what it’s like.”
He stilled, a piece of cheese in hand, halfway to her mouth. His eyes found hers, serious and searching, anda muscle in his cheek twitched, as though he had a thousand things to say. Finally, he settled on one. “Please.”
She took his hand in hers, accepting the food he’d been about to offer her, using the time it took to eat to consider how to tell him all the things she wished him to know, even as she knew her story would end whatever she might have dreamed.
“You asked about information. About why I collect it. Why conversations with me feel like they must be bought and paid for.”
He shook his head, passing a hand over her back. “You don’t have to explain it.”
“I think...” She paused. “I think I want to.”
Back and forth, his fingers trailed over the thin lawn of her chemise, ignoring the ridge she knew he could feel there, knew he’d found before. He was no fool; he would not be surprised to discover it was part of her story. Indeed, it was Adelaide who was surprised, because she had never imagined she’d speak of it to anyone.
“I do not know where to begin.”
