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I’ve the boy and his gel.
Time to come home. Bring that duke yer tupping.
Adelaide went cold at the words, refolding the paper into a crisp square. Hating it, she looked to Clayborn, already pulling her into his arms, warm and firm and safe. For a heartbeat, Adelaide let him do it. Even as she knew the truth. That this was the end.
He tilted her face up to his. Searching her gaze. “Tell me.”
“Jack and Helene are alive. For now.”
He exhaled, and she could hear the relief there. He didn’t realize there was no cause for relief. “Where?”
Oh, no. She shook her head. She could not tell him. Couldn’t bear the idea of him with her in Lambeth, his tall frame ducking through narrow, dark alleyways, his shining boots on the filthy cobblestones where she’d grown up.
“Adelaide,” he said firmly, the words pulling her gaze to his as though she were tethered to him. “Whatever it is,” he began, reaching for her, his touch sure and true, and she barely stopped herself from leaning into his warm palm and turning herself over to him, “we shall face it together. You and I. And your league of terrifying women.”
Her attention flickered to the women in question at that. Not terrifying. Wonderful. Dear. And strong as steel, a line of warriors watching, waiting, ready to do whatever it took to keep Adelaide safe. But at what cost? Too much.
Not the Belles, who had a bolder, broader battle at hand.
And not Henry; beautiful, strong Henry, honorable and good and powerful enough to bend so much of the world to his will.
Not this world, though.
This world abided by different rules. Different power.
And if Henry walked into it... if any of them did—it would destroy them.
But Adelaide had been forged in its fire, and so, this fight was hers.
It was time for her to go home.
***
Together, they made a plan. Spent most of the evening sorting out what was to come and how they were going to fight. They decided to leave at first light, so they could move as fast as possible in the carriages they had.
They worked out the places for food and safety and fast horses on a nonstop ride to London, using a map spread wide on the scarred kitchen table where she and Lucia had saved Henry’s life.
And the whole time, as the people she loved planned to go to war for her, Adelaide made her own plan... to keep them all safe.
Because if she allowed this magnificent crew into her father’s lair and surrounded them with her father’s men, they’d never leave alive.
That night, they took to their beds, and Henry tugged her into his own, making slow, quiet love to her, whispering his love at her ear, to the tip of her breast, to the swell of her stomach and the hot, aching core of her. He gave her one final night of imagining they were possible. Of loving her.
Of letting her love him, even as she did all she could not to speak it, fearing that if she let it out, she might never be able to put it back.
When he slept, Adelaide slid from his arms, ignoring the ache that came at the loss of him. Snatching up her bag, she stepped into the hallway beyond, making quick work of dressing before creeping down the stairs, planning to be miles away before anyone in the house noticed she was gone.
Slipping out the back door and into the cool night, she made for the stables, hitching the horses and tossing her bag into the carriage—nearly making it before Duchess spoke from the darkness. “Stealing off in the dead of night is something of a cliché, don’t you think?”
Adelaide stopped, somehow not at all surprised that she’d been found out.
Duchess had found her once before, had she not? On her wedding day, as street gangs in Lambeth fought for position and power. She’d offered Adelaide a new life, and hadn’t blinked for a moment when Adelaide had threatened her with a Bible. She was the kind of woman who would always find what she was looking for.
Adelaide turned and closed the door to face Duchess, leaning against the door of the carriage, arms folded tight to ward off the chill.
“Why did you choose me?” Adelaide said, finally. “It wasn’t my age or my station.”
“No,” the other woman agreed.
