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She grinned. “There was a duke in a roadside inn once.”
His laugh was a low rumble from his warm chest. “I like that one.”
“Me, too,” she agreed, leaning up to kiss him, slow and soft.
When the kiss stopped, she sighed, and he said, “Tell me about your first kiss.”
She hesitated. A girl born in the heart of Lambeth lost her innocence young—even if her father was a king there. Perhapsbecauseher father was a king there. Innocence was for girls from Mayfair. Not for girls like her.
“Are you looking for a comparison?”
She’d never seen anyone look so arrogant. “I think I can top it.”
She had no doubt about that. But she stacked her hands on his chest and set her chin atop them. “Jamie Buck lived down the road. His father worked for mine.”
“Ah. The girl in the tower.”
There was no tower, but Adelaide didn’t tell him that. She couldn’t change where she’d come from, and it would do them both well to remember that hers had been a very different world than his.
Except she didn’t want him to think about that. Not right now. Now she wanted him to know the girl she’d once been, and so she told him more than he needed to know.
Ridiculous.
“I like Westminster Bridge.” Surprise flashed on his handsome face at the change in topic. “I know it’s odd, but I do. I suppose I could simply like bridges—and I do like bridges, generally—but there’s something about that one. There’s a poem about it; Wordsworth, I think? About looking at the City from it.The City now doth, like a garment, wear the beauty of the morning. Do you know that one?”
“I don’t,” he said, and she feared she’d gone too far in her storytelling—there was nothing interesting about poems written about bridges. “But I’d like to see you wearing the beauty of the morning.”
The words tumbled through her, making her pulse race, and it occurred to her that there might, in fact, be something fascinating about poems written about bridges, after all. “That’s sweet.”
“You are sweet,” he replied, his eyes still firmlyclosed. “Go on. What does Westminster have to do with Jamie Buck?”
“There is a turret about halfway across that gives you a glorious look at the Houses of Parliament. You’d think the whole bridge would provide such a thing, but it’s not true. It’s a particular turret, fourth from the Westminster side, at the perfect angle, where you can see directly into the little rooms in Parliament, and if you are there at precisely the right moment, it feels like... magic,” she said simply, wishing she could explain it more clearly. “I would linger in that little turret for hours, wishing...” She trailed off.
“Wishing what?”
She should have known he wouldn’t let her stop. “Wishing there were someone there, with me,” she said softly. “I was alone a great deal of the time. I didn’t dislike it, mind you—but my father... he scared people, and boys especially. And those he did not scare were willing to do anything to gain access to him—including pretend to be friends with his daughter.”
His eyes were open now, watching her as though he didn’t wish to miss a single word, and she worried her lip, feeling embarrassed and strange, like she shouldn’t give parts of herself away to this man, who was so different from her—so far beyond her—that when he left she’d have no hope of getting them back.
“I used to stand in the turret and wish for a friend,” she admitted softly. “For something beyond the world I had—someone who didn’t feign interest in me because they feared my father, or wished access to him. Someone who did not see me as a path to something greater. I wanted someone who might be... a partner. Who would like me for me. Who wouldloveme for me, I suppose.”
He tightened his grip on her. “Go on.”
She swallowed, suddenly wishing there was distance between them. “One afternoon . . . I was fourteen? Maybe fifteen? . . . and there, in my turret. Jamie walkedby, with a group of other boys—clearly set out for trouble. But he saw me first.” She closed her eyes. “Heheardme first.”
“What were you saying?”
She immediately regretted telling him the story, but was too far down the road to stop. “Please keep in mind that I was a young girl with a head full of dreams. I am no longer this impressionable.”
“I am already disappointed to hear it.”
The laughter helped with the embarrassment. Barely. “I was talking to myself.”
“About what?”
“Well, not really myself, I suppose. I was talking to someone else. Someone who was not there. Pretending I had the partner I’d been dreaming of. And Jamie Buckheardit. He laughed and laughed...”
Henry’s eyes narrowed. “And?”
