Breathless, her palms went flat on the worn wood on either side of her as she caught herself. Toren stomped away from her.
Ten steps, and then his fingers ran through his dark hair as he spun. He stalked back to her and slammed the butt of his palm on the wood plank by her head, making the whole wall rattle against her back.
“Why in the blasted hell would you do that, Adalia?” His chest almost touching her nose, his palm slammed the wood again.
Adalia cringed at the sound but didn’t cower, her chin tilting upward so she could see his face. “Toren—”
“No, Adalia, you don’t get to speak. He could have had a damn blade. He could have had a pistol. He could have knocked you down. He could have slammed you into the fireplace and crushed your head on the stone. He could have bit you. He could have thrown a knee so deep into your belly you could never breathe again. He could have snapped your neck. He could have—”
Her hands lifted and waved in front of his face. “Stop. Stop, Toren. I understand. I was in danger—you don’t like that. But I needed to look at him straight on, and you were only feet away. Your men were only feet away. I was safe.”
“No, you weren’t. You don’t know what the hell could have happened in those seconds it took for me to reach you.” His head shook, his eyes going to the wall above her head as his lip curled in disgust.
“Don’t be ridiculous, I—”
“I froze, Adalia.” His brutal voice cut her words, his palm slamming into the wall again as his look pierced her. “My damned feet froze.”
Confusion creased her brow. “Froze? No—you didn’t. You were to me in an instant.”
“No, dammit. My blasted feet froze. Dead weight. Watching you—the moment he recognized you—his sneer—I could not move my bloody feet.”
“What? You were the first one to me, Toren. A second in time did me no harm.”
“It could have.”
Her hands went lightly onto his chest, fingers splaying wide. “I am right here in front of you, Toren. Not hurt, not scared. I knew you were there the whole time. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise. I knew I didn’t have anything to worry about.”
“But—”
“No.” She reached up to grab his hand on the wall and tug it down to set his palm flat against the slope of her left breast. “Feel this. Even my heartbeat—it is steady. I am steady. If I had been worried, my heart would still be frantic—out of control—but I am not.”
His look went upward, his head shaking again.
“Look at me, Toren—all you have to do is look.” She reached up with her other hand, setting her fingers along his cheek and drawing his look down to her. “I am not scared. You have all my trust. You did not fail me in there, Toren.”
His brown eyes hard on her, he swallowed, his jaw shifting to the side. “Do not put that upon me, Adalia.”
“Put what upon you?”
His voice dropped to a low rasp. “Your trust. Your love.”
Her hand dropped from his face with a sharp intake of breath. “Why not? You practically demanded a week ago that I give you my unequivocal trust. So you have it. You have it because you demanded it.”
Blast it. It was bubbling up in her, steam demanding to escape the kettle.
She was going to say it again, and this time it would be no slip of the tongue. This time she would say it because she had to, because Toren was standing in front of her and making her feel it as never before. Because she would say it a thousand times over for the smallest hope that it would someday reach him.
Her hand tightened along the side of his cheek. “You have it because I love you.”
He jerked away from her. His hand ripping from her chest as he turned, his face angled to the bright sky.
She stilled for a long second.
Turn. Turn back to me, dammit. Turn back and tell me you feel something—anything for me. Just turn. Even if it is only in your damn eyes and not your words. Turn.
The moment passed. Then another. And another.
He didn’t turn back to her.
Her knuckles went to her lips, hiding her slight gasp as she pushed herself from the wall of the stable. Dazed, she walked forward, walking to escape him, escape the moment.
Past the pasture. Past the sparse woods. She walked until the ground stopped, her toes at the edge of the brook that ran at the base of the hill behind the coaching inn.
He had told her—been very honest with her about his feelings, or lack thereof. She had sworn to him she could accept it.
She had truly thought she could.
But that was before . . . before he was the most doting of all uncles to the twins . . . before he took her, night after night, in his bed, his only goal to make her body feel indescribable euphoria . . . before he had requested his gardener start work on the rose garden, reviving it to its former glory just because it made her happy . . . before he put the twins and her safety above all other concerns . . . before he cracked a man in half for her . . . before he held her when she cried . . . before he allowed himself to be beaten night after night at whist, and by two eight-year-olds, just because it would make them laugh—make her laugh . . .
Before all of it. Before he became so very core to the life she lived . . . before she couldn’t imagine her life in any other way but with him.
She stared at the moving water of the brook, wanting nothing more than to lose herself in the swirling bubbles of it.
The man damn well made her feel loved. So why? Why could he not bring himself to actually do so—to love her?
And did it matter?
{ Chapter 14 }
She didn’t turn around to him when his boots crunched onto the pebbles lining the brook.
Toren stared at the back of her head. Her hair in a singular long braid that curled forward over her shoulder, the gray hood of her cloak was now bunched about her shoulders.
She had to be hot. The sun was shining down, soaking into the dark fabric. Yet she hadn’t complained once about the extra layer in this unusual heat. Not once. He had asked her to keep it on while they traveled, and especially inside the coaching inn, and she had obliged, not questioning or arguing against it.
Because she trusted him.
Only an arm’s length away, he could reach out and touch her. It seemed appropriate in this instance, like something he should consider. Maybe if he could fix this for her. Give her what she needed. Maybe then it would be appropriate.
But he couldn’t. So he didn’t.
His arms stoically at his sides, his heel shifted, the pebbles clinking together. “Nothing has changed from what I told you at the beginning, Adalia. I am still incapable of love. You know how I grew up.”
“Do I?” Her arms curled around her middle. She didn’t turn to look at him. “You have mentioned it, but you have never striven to make me understand it.”
“That is just it, Adalia.” He moved forward, setting himself at her side so he could at least see her profile. If he could watch her, he could figure out what she needed. Her green eyes held so little back. He had learned that about her—if he needed to know what she was thinking at any moment, she held it all in her eyes.
He cleared his throat. “There is nothing to understand. I was raised by a governess who was strict and kept me in line if I veered. Our interactions were, at the most . . . cordial . . . at the least cold.”
He paused as Adalia lifted her eyes, but not her chin to him, her look intent. Her arms stayed wrapped around her rib cage. “Her name was Mrs. Marchall. I asked her once about love, because I wanted to understand the concept. I had just read The Odyssey and learned of Odysseus and Penelope’s great love. I asked her if she loved me. Before I had even finished the question, she told me love was not acceptable. Love was not reality. She told me she was being paid to make sure my needs were met, nothing more.”
Adalia’s eyes flickered down to the moving water. “How old were you?”
“Seven.” He sighed, watching her eyes close
as he said the word. “Yes, I know how it sounds. But what you need to understand is that her answer didn’t make me sad. I had never known love, I didn’t understand it, so when she said that, it made perfect sense. And it troubled me not in the slightest. That was when I knew I was incapable of the emotion. And it has always been so.”
“And there was no one else?” The question came softly, barely audible over the bubbling of the brook.
She needed more from him—more explanation. Toren took a deep breath. He had never told another soul about his childhood, other than short, practiced snippets meant to steer the conversation away from the topic.
But if Adalia needed this—needed this to understand what he could not give her—he would keep talking.
His look centered on her delicate profile. “No. There were no others. Mrs. Marchall was the only one allowed to talk to me. Mr. Octon, our family’s solicitor, was my official guardian. I only spoke to him of finances and how to handle the estate, and only when I was old enough to understand. The servants never spoke to me. Nor did they talk to each other—at least not where I could hear them. I knew very little of the world and even how to interact with other people until I went to Eton.”
Her green eyes lifted to his look, her full face finally turning toward him. “And that is where you met Theo?”
“Yes. And I was awkward—horrifyingly awkward around other people for the longest time. But Theodore never let that bother him. Where others were distant—reflecting what I was—Theodore was having far too much fun teaching me about the world.”
A broken grin crept onto her face. “If you learned about the world from Theo, you got a very skewed representation of the world.”
“I imagine I did, but that didn’t matter to me. Theodore knew how to talk to people. How to make friends, how to charm. I already knew everything I needed to from the textbooks—but I had never opened my mouth to speak of anything other than numbers or science or geography or the running of the estate until I met Theodore. He was the one to teach me how to do that.” Toren’s hand lifted, rubbing the back of his neck. “In fact, I had never even questioned how I grew up. I never realized my life had been so very odd.”
Her arms relaxed around her waist, and one hand lifted to tuck away a rogue tendril of hair that had fallen in front of her left eye. “What was it?”
His eyebrow cocked in question.
“What was that first conversation you had with Theo?”
An instant smile crossed his lips. “He was rambling philosophically about the mating habits of peacocks. On whether or not the males were blind—or had severe lack of sight—since they spent all their time growing ridiculous displays of plumage and would then end up mating with females that had nothing at all to recommend them.”
His look dipped to the water as he shook his head. “Theodore thought the males would be depressed if they could actually see what they were mating with—hence the blindness he presumed they possessed. He feared that if the eyesight of the males ever improved, the males would grow despondent and die, and that would mean the demise of the species. The only thing he could imagine that would save the species was if one could encourage true love between the peacock and the peahen.”
Adalia laughed. “That was Theo. He always started with the absurd and then turned philosophical into fact. I imagine you began to poke holes in his theories?”
“I did. It was impossible not to.”
“Oh, he did love to argue.” Her smile went wide. “And I imagine your explanation of the mating habits of peafowl was specifically scientific—exactly what the male needs and the female needs to mate?”
“Yes. It was ridiculous how many times we went around that. I wanted him to recognize the reality of facts. He wanted me to recognize the magical possibility of undying love in birds.”
Her smile faded. “And that brings us back to the topic under discussion.”
He looked away from her, watching the long branches of a willow swing into the water downstream. “Adalia, everyone in my life—all of them—has been there because they are paid to be so. Even with Theodore, I realized I was handy to have around—a duke tends to make people nervous in advantageous ways.” His look dropped to her. “And you as well, you came to me looking for something in return.”
“To be safe.”
He nodded. “So how can I think of this as any different? I pay people to be trusted—to be in my life. This is no different.”
Her head snapped back, her green eyes widening. “No different?”
“Well, not exactly—”
“The difference is that I am your wife, Toren.” Her left hand went onto her hip. “Your wife. No matter how our marriage began. I am your wife. No one is paying me to be with you. To enter your bedchamber. I do it of my own free will. I am with you because I want to be.”
“Yet you are with me for the sake of the girls. For the sake of your own safety.”
Her right hand flew up, waving into the air. “You’re right—I would do anything in the world for those girls—anything. But I have never been worried about my own safety. I am not in danger, Toren. You think it, but I have not been. Everything has been directed at the twins, for some god-awful reason. To make me suffer, I suppose. So if all I wanted was to ensure their safety, I would have married you and then left them safe at the castle weeks ago. I even considered it for days.”
He blinked hard at her words. “You considered leaving?”
Her right hand went to her forehead, rubbing it as she looked up at the sky. “Blast it, Toren, how do you not see this?”
“See what?”
A deep sigh shook her whole body, and her look fell to the rocks on the bank of the brook. The toe of her boot flicked a pebble into the water. “Do you know that I did not tell you the full truth about my first marriage?”
Toren’s look bored into the top of her head, his words measured. “What do you mean, you didn’t tell me the truth, Adalia?”
She looked up at him, her head shaking. “I told you the truth, just not all of it. I blamed Caldwell for choosing Lord Pipworth as my husband—for my marriage being a disaster. I blamed him because I liked to blame him—I liked to pretend I had no hand in the choice, but the truth was, Caldwell was only doing what I wanted him to do—he knew I wanted to marry Lord Pipworth.”
“You did?”
“Yes. I idolized the man growing up. He was tall and handsome and brash and my brother’s friend. He would come into our house with Caldwell, and he was always so dramatic and funny, and I adored him from afar for years. I was just a little girl, smitten because I didn’t know differently. I would have married him whether my brother had arranged it or not. He was the man I thought I wanted, and I was that set upon him as my husband.”
She heaved a breath. “That is the harsh truth of it. It has always just been easier to blame Caldwell for my marriage. But it was me. Caldwell was just trying to make me happy—he saw how I looked at Lord Pipworth. And Pipworth only married me because he felt obliged to do so after Caldwell’s death.”
“Why are you telling me this, Adalia?”
Her look fell to the water. “So you understand why I cannot be trusted when it comes to the men that I choose to love. I thought we would be fine as you proposed it at the beginning. A cordial marriage. I would give you an heir. We could live our separate lives. But then . . .”
“Then what?”
It took a long breath for her green eyes to lift, meeting his gaze, her look piercing him. “Then I damn well fell in love with you, Toren. And I am terrible at choosing a man to love. My choices lead to nothing but pain. So this is too hard. I need to be able to tell you this—need to not have to bottle it away deep inside of me. I love you, and if I am damned for doing so, then I am damned. But I cannot keep it to myself any longer merely so you can walk through your days in the comfort of familiarity, with no emotion.”
His hands came up, palms to the sky. “What do you want of me, Adalia?”
; “Do you really want me to tell you what I want? We both already know what you will allow, so what does it matter?”
His mouth clamped shut, his lower jaw shifting to the side as he shook his head, avoiding her eyes. His voice came out low, rough, unrecognizable to his own ears. “My body needs yours, Adalia. Can that not be enough?”
“I don’t know, Toren.” She shrugged, her arms wrapping around her belly once more. “I want it to be enough. I do. But I don’t know if unrequited love works like that. If it can do anything but distort, morphing into something ugly and angry. I already traveled that path once. And I don’t want to repeat that journey. Not with you.”
“So don’t let it be so. Let it go.”
Tears started to brim on her lower lashes. “I am trying, Toren. I am trying.”
The words hit him, slicing into him even as he didn’t understand why.
She was trying to fall out of love with him.
There was something inherently wrong with that. And he wanted to stop her from even attempting such a thing.
The pebbles crunched as her boots swiveled on the rocks. She took a few steps toward the coaching inn before pausing, looking at him over her shoulder. “This is my failing, Toren. Not yours. Do not blame yourself for the state I find myself in. I own the fact that I could not adhere to our bargain, and I will deal with the consequences.”
Tears unshed, she turned and continued her path to the inn.
Toren watched her, his feet rooted to the ground, until she disappeared past the stable.
No. He didn’t want her to fall out of love with him. But he couldn’t give her what she needed of him. He wasn’t capable. He had never been capable.
He took a deep breath, the air lodging in his chest as he stared at the spot where her skirts had disappeared from view. Adalia was the very first thing in his life that he couldn’t fix with appropriate attention to need. That was how his world worked. There was a need, and he met it. It had always been simple.
But Adalia. This was far from simple. Because she needed his love.
Of Valor & Vice: A Revelry's Tempest Novel Page 14
