“But you found me.”
“Yes, I found you. Mary told me you had gone for a walk, and I took the chance that you would go this way, along the same route we explored together a few weeks ago.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes. The horse, still plodding along behind them, snorted in the damp air.
“In the future,” Adam said, knowing that he was the one now pressing for information, “if John asks me if he may visit you, what would you like me to tell him?”
Madeline stopped. Adam stopped, too, awaiting her answer.
“Are you asking me how I feel about John? If I want him to come calling?”
He stared directly into her eyes. “Yes, that’s what I’m asking you.”
Adam felt a surge of impatience.
“Yes, I would very much like John to call on me again.”
Adam squared his shoulders. “Very well, then.”
They continued walking.
Adam tried to subdue the displeasure that was clinging to him, following him like a shadow. God, this was all so bloody confounding. His head was reminding him that he was engaged to Madeline’s sister, while his heart and body were refusing to believe it. There was a full-blown battle raging inside of him.
Just then, Madeline slapped her neck. “Ouch! What was that?”
Adam moved toward her to clap his hands beside her ear. “A mosquito. Looks like they’ve found us.” He inspected his palms, then wiped away the tiny corpse.
Another little fly came flitting, floating around Madeline. She took a few steps backward, but the insect followed.
Adam waved his hand in front of her face. “They must like the way you smell.”
“What do you mean, the way I smell?”
“The flower water you use.”
He was embarrassed for having revealed that he’d noticed.
“Shove off, you nagging beasts!” She began to wave her hands about, then took off in a run along the path.
Adam couldn’t resist laughing. “See? I told you! We should go home! It’s all this damp weather. It will be better up on the ridge.”
Not wasting another moment, Madeline ran back to Adam, who turned his horse around.
They walked quickly up the hill, where a welcome breeze began to blow. “You’re right, there aren’t as many up here.”
“Not at the moment, but I wouldn’t stand still for too long.”
“You mean we can’t stop to catch our breath?”
He shook his head, his brows creasing in a teasing way. “Not a wise thing to do on a wet day on the marsh.”
By the time they reached the top of the ridge, they were both breathing hard with exertion.
Madeline’s voice was light and airy as she spoke. “That was a good walk. I feel exhilarated now.”
“Exhilarated? I could hardly keep up. I think I need to rest my weary bones.”
“Well, don’t do it here, the mosquitoes will have you for dinner.”
“You’re quite right, and I wouldn’t want that. Then I would miss the spelling bee you have planned for tomorrow evening. Wonderful idea, Madeline.”
They reached the gate, and Adam opened it for her. She brushed by him but stopped. “Ouch!” She slapped her neck and inspected her hand. “Another one! He bit me! Cheeky creature. I’m bleeding. Look.”
Adam inspected the squashed mosquito in her hand, surrounded by a few drops of blood. “He certainly had a bellyful. Let me see.”
He moved a few wispy hairs aside and pulled back her lacy collar to examine the back of her neck. Sure enough, there was a red spot already swelling.
Madeline lifted her upswept hair so Adam could see the whole area. All at once, the world around him seemed to disappear, and all he could see and feel was Madeline’s presence before him, her feminine scent, her soft, smiling nearness.
Her skin was smooth, like peach cream. What he wouldn’t have given to touch his lips to the warmth of her neck, then turn her toward him and kiss her mouth, to feel her sigh and whimper with amorous pleasure against him. How he wanted to slowly slide his hands under her collar and ease them down the inside front of her gown, to feel the silky, fleshy texture of her breasts…
He jumped when Madeline spoke. “Well?”
Adam cleared his throat and stepped back. He broke into a sweat under his wool coat. “You’ll be itchy, but you’ll live.”
He thought of what day it was, tried to anchor himself in reality. His proposal to Diana might very well be in her hands at this moment. She might be scrolling her name to become his wife.
God, if Madeline ever recognized the lust he felt for her, she would think him a low, faithless scoundrel who could not be trusted.
What the hell was he going to do?
Whatever happened, however he decided to handle this situation, he had to keep his integrity and his honor intact. But how? What was the right thing to do?
Before he had a chance to realize what he was asking or why he was asking it, he took hold of Madeline’s arm to keep her from going into the house. “Madeline, will you tell me something?”
“Of course.”
“Is Diana still the same? Has she changed at all?”
Madeline’s eyes met his disparagingly. “She’s still very beautiful.”
“No, I mean, has she changed in other ways? Is she still the same person? Does she still like to ride?”
“She and Sir Edward used to go fox hunting quite often.”
“They were close, then? Do you think…do you think she’s over him, and ready for another marriage?”
A breeze blew a wayward lock of hair into Madeline’s face. She closed her eyes, then gently pushed the hair away. “I can’t say with absolute certainty, Adam, for we did not speak intimately with each other, but I do know that you were always the love of her life. She said that to me once, years after she married Sir Edward. She said you would always be the man she dreamed of.”
A month ago, that news would have put him in the clouds. Today, it filled him with dread and confusion. “Do you think, when she receives my proposal, that she will come?”
There was something intense in Madeline’s expression, in the color of her eyes and the set of her jaw, as if the certainty of Diana’s arrival was the most elusive thing in the world to her, too.
“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 not want Diana 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, the real woman, 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 to make it 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 co
uld 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.”
“I shouldn’t. With all the preparations for Lord Blackthorne’s arrival…”
“Just fifteen minutes, then I’ll come and help you.” Mary’s blue eyes flashed at Madeline. “Besides, you can’t leave now. You still look flushed.”
Madeline felt her cheeks turn an even deeper shade of pink. “Flushed?”
“Yes, from walking in on Jacob and me. I apologize. We didn’t know anyone was upstairs.”
“I should have knocked.”
“No, the door was open. We should have been more discreet, but sometimes, I just can’t help myself. I can’t help telling Jacob how much I love him.”
With a twinge of sadness that seeped into her bones and ached like an old wound on a damp day, Madeline stared absently at the chess pieces. Ever since her conversation with Adam out on the road, she’d felt flustered and disconcerted in the most bothersome way, and she hated that she did not know what was going on and how he felt about her.
When she’d tried to leave and he had taken her arm and pulled her toward him, she could have sworn she’d seen passion in his eyes, that he’d wanted to kiss her. But that couldn’t have been true. It must have been wishful thinking on her part. No man had ever felt passionate about her.
Nevertheless, her heart had leaped into her throat and it had taken every ounce of self-control she possessed to keep from kissing him first. How she had wanted to.
Then he asked about Diana, and Madeline had been knocked backward and off her feet, back into her secluded, solitary place.
Now, to walk in on two young lovers who seemed to know so much more than she did about love and life, she suddenly longed for some new understanding. She wanted to feel she was knowledgeable and capable, that she could handle and understand her emotions when it came to Adam.
“You spill out your hearts to each other,” she said to Mary. “You hold nothing back. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
Mary’s voice brimmed with sincerity and an odd hint of commiseration. “What other way is there to love someone? There’s no need to keep it inside. Jacob likes it when I tell him I adore him, and I like it when he tells me. Love is as much about what you say and do and what you show, as it is about what you feel inside, because the one you love can’t read your mind. Besides, it feels wonderful to tell him. I can’t stop myself. I know it sounds trite, an exaggeration, but my heart swells every time I say it.” She moved her first pawn.
While Madeline considered her own first move in the game, she found herself wondering what it must be like to feel so free to give and receive love.
She supposed she’d never had any example of it before. She’d never had a mother and a father who would express things like that to each other, nor did anyone express such things to her. She could not imagine telling someone she loved them. Was it something a person got used to? Like jumping into the cold ocean? Shocking at first, then it almost began to feel warm?
How did Mary become so secure in her belief that Jacob would not break her heart in return? Madeline could see for herself that Jacob shared Mary’s feelings, but when did Mary come to know that? Who took the chance and declared their love first?
Maybe they just knew how the other person felt.
Would Madeline ever just know?
She knew John Metcalf was interested in her, but he was not passionate, the way Jacob and Mary were. At least she didn’t think so. Maybe that came later.
With Adam, on the other hand, she knew how he felt, because he continued to make his feelings about Diana known. As Mary said, love was about what you said and did and showed, not just about what you felt, and Adam had already told Madeline that after all these years, he still loved Diana, and he’d asked questions about her today.
Madeline found herself wondering what Adam would do if he knew how Madeline herself felt. If she came right out and told him.
Then, while she waited for Mary to make a move in the game, Madeline began to fantasize. She imagined that if she did tell Adam that she adored and wanted him, he would take her into his arms and tell her he felt the same way, and together they would somehow find a way to resolve the situation with Diana. Adam could retract the proposal, and if the proxy marriage had already been finalized, well…marriages could be annulled, couldn’t they? Yes, Diana would be angry, but she would recover from it, the way everyone recovered from pain in their lives. No one was safe from it.
Madeline rested her cheek on her hand and tried to imagine Diana receiving the news that Adam was jilting her. For her younger sister.
Diana would be shocked out of her petticoats to be sure, Madeline thought mischievously. Diana would probably break something. A piece of china. A mirror. Madeline could almost hear her sister screaming like an old witch for someone to come and clean up the shattered glass at her feet…..
Lord, what a child Madeline was. Still.
She had to give up these foolish dreams, for she was coming dangerously close to making a fool of herself and spoiling any chances of continuing a relationship with this family, whom she was growing to love, after Diana came.
It was her turn in the chess game, but as she gazed down at the board, she could see no logical way to move her pieces.
“Mosquito,” Penelope said with very precise diction. “M-o-s-q-u-i-t-o. Mosquito.”
Everyone clapped. She sat down beside Charlie on the chintz sofa.
Charlie rose to stand in front of the fireplace like a soldier, his arms planted firmly at his sides.
&n
bsp; Madeline picked up the next card and read the word printed upon it. “‘Tempestuous.”’
Momentary panic dashed across Charlie’s face. “Tempestuous. T-e-m-p-e-s-t-u-o-u-s. Tempestuous.” He quickly sat down.
“This is getting tense,” Jacob said.
Madeline glanced at Adam, who sat in one of the wing chairs with his legs crossed, his temple resting on an index finger. He was watching her. Feeling a whoosh of butterflies in her belly, she quickly picked up another card.
“George, it’s your turn.”
George rose and took his place in front of the fire. “I’m ready.”
Madeline read the word. “‘Apprehension.”’
George spelled it correctly, and the bee continued for another hour until Penelope finally took the prize, after George and Charlie both misspelled dilemma and she proudly got it right.
After much applause and congratulations and the presentation of the award—a cream cake in the shape of a trophy—the children made off to bed, and Mary went into the kitchen to feed the baby and tidy up before going upstairs to join Jacob.
Madeline was left in the parlor to collect and put away the spelling cards she’d made, while Adam moved the furniture back into place.
“Are you ready for Lord Blackthorne’s arrival?” Adam asked. “A ship is arriving from Halifax tomorrow, and he should be on it.”
“Almost. Mary has been a wonderful help to me.”
All too aware that she was alone with Adam in the candlelit room, she stood up to leave him—a little too quickly.
He gently squeezed her arm. “Won’t you stay and have a cup of tea with me?”
She tried to keep her voice steady and polite. “I really shouldn’t. Tomorrow will be a busy day.”
His expression was impossible to read. “Of course. I understand, but will you come to the fort with me tomorrow to meet the ship? I would be proud to have you at my side, Madeline.”
Proud to have you at my side. Oh, with words like that, how could he even think she would refuse?
His beautiful eyes and his deep silky voice reduced her to a puddle of melting resolve on the floor. The idea of being alone with him even for an hour was a temptation too powerful to resist. “I would be delighted.”
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