“He has a letter,” Mary said. “I wonder which one of us it is for.”
They all stood up and waited. The footman’s shiny buckled shoes crunched noisily over the gravel as he approached. Adelaide couldn’t help but notice the perspiration dripping from under his white wig.
What a silly ensemble on a day such as this, she thought. Then she wondered if she truly was cut out to be a duchess. How would she ever manage?
The footman arrived and bowed to her. “A letter, my lady.”
She glanced down at the gold plate and winced at the blinding reflection of the sun as she picked up the letter. “Thank you.”
He bowed again, then turned and began the long trek back to the palace.
“Who is it from?” Mary asked.
Immediately, Adelaide recognized the dark blue seal, and her pulse began to race. The summer heat seemed suddenly intensified, and she was forced to sit down again on the fountain wall.
“It is from Mr. Thomas,” she explained as she broke the seal.
Her sisters sat down on either side of her and leaned close to read over her shoulder, but she could not possibly allow that. She rose to her feet and strode off across the green grass to read it alone.
My darling Adelaide,
Forgive me for such intimacies when you are about to be married, but I must speak from my heart. I received your letter about your engagement, and I have come home to declare myself.
You said I was your closest friend, and I remain ever so. Nothing matters more to me than your happiness. For that reason, I must assure myself that you are certain of your path, and that you are in full possession of the facts before you embark upon a lifelong journey you cannot undo.
Please see me one last time before your wedding. I am not far from you now. I am staying at the inn in Pembroke Village, and I will come to the estate at dusk. I will wait for you at the entrance to the maze.
— William
Before Adelaide could fully comprehend the situation, she found herself scanning the horizon, as if William would suddenly gallop out of the distant forest, ride toward her, scoop her up onto the back of his horse and ride away with her.
Her heart raced. He was back! He had returned from abroad. How she longed to see him!
A hand touched her shoulder, and she jumped.
“What does it say?” Margarite asked with a frown.
Adelaide quickly folded the letter. “It says he has come home from Italy, and he is here in Pembroke Village. I can hardly believe it.”
“Does he wish to attend your wedding?” Mary asked innocently. “Good heavens, will the duke allow it? It is a very small guest list. Family only. I believe he ordered quail. A very specific number!”
Mary seemed quite concerned about the menu.
Adelaide met Margarite’s concerned gaze and knew at once that her older sister recognized a danger here, and understood there was far more to this sticky situation than maintaining a proper headcount for quail.
“He wants to meet me at the maze,” Adelaide confessed. “At dusk.”
“But why?” Mary asked.
With growing unease, Adelaide cleared her throat and tried to maintain her composure. “I am sure you must recall, Mary, that he was always very protective of me. I suppose he wishes to assure himself that I know what I am doing.”
“Well, of course you know what you are doing!” Margarite replied incredulously. “You are about to become a duchess, for pity’s sake.”
Adelaide spoke firmly. “He wants to satisfy himself that I have no reservations about it.”
“Do you?” Mary asked, sounding completely shocked and bewildered.
Adelaide squared her shoulders and replied too quickly. “Of course I have no reservations, but that is neither here nor there. The point is...” She paused. “I have not seen William in over a year. You both know he is a dear friend to me. I must go to him, if only to say hello...and good-bye.”
Margarite gripped her arm. The pads of her fingers dug painfully into Adelaide’s flesh. “You must not do that. It will confuse you.”
“I will not become confused,” Adelaide argued. “I know how fortunate I am to be marrying Theodore, and I will wed him in two days’ time. Nothing is going to change that.”
Margarite’s grip on her arm tightened. “Are you sure about that? You say William is only a friend, but—”
Adelaide had no intention of allowing her sister to finish that thought. “I am not a fool.”
They stared at each other heatedly. “Then why would you even consider going to meet another man—who so clearly has designs upon your affections—mere days before your wedding? If you were truly devoted to the duke, you would not risk your future with him. You would be loyal. Do not go there, Adelaide. You can say good-bye to William in a letter. After you are married.”
Adelaide tugged her arm free and glanced up at the white palace. It was impossible to imagine not seeing William in person now that he was home. She could not simply leave him waiting at the maze alone, without any explanation.
Margarite’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What has happened between the two of you? I thought you were friends, nothing more.”
“We are friends,” she insisted. “Nothing has happened.”
“Has he ever kissed you?” Margarite asked. “Or touched you?”
It was Mary’s turn to grab hold of her other arm. “For that matter, has the duke kissed you?”
“That is completely irrelevant!” Margarite scolded Mary. “They are engaged to be married! But if there had been some past affair between Adelaide and Mr. Thomas, it could become complicated. Are you a virgin, Adelaide?”
“Good heavens!” she replied, horrified that her sister would ask such a thing. “Of course I am! And there was no affair.” She backed away from them. “William and I are just...” She paused. “We are very familiar with each other. That is all. He cares for me. Like a brother.”
A brother? Oh God. She was going to burn in hell for uttering such a lie, for she had never thought of William as a brother.
Therein lay the problem at the moment. The deception of those words hit her like a wooden club across the chest.
Margarite shook her head with a warning. “Do not make this mistake, Adelaide. Not when we have come so far. The duke will lift us up very high in Society. Think of your future children. They will be heirs to a dukedom and will inherit a great fortune one day.” She waved a finger. “Do not, under any circumstances, meet Mr. Thomas at the maze. Be sensible and let him go.”
Her advice cut Adelaide to the core, for she knew her sister spoke the truth. She could not meet William two days before her marriage to another man. The words in his letter were clear. After all this time—when she had finally given up on him—he had come home to declare himself.
Part of her hated him for it—for staying away so long. For not giving her some hope before now.
For ever leaving in the first place.
Oh, why did she write that letter? She should have known this would happen.
Perhaps she had known.
The idea that she wanted any of this frightened her. She had been so sure of her decision to marry the duke.
Margarite was right. Adelaide could not meet William at dusk. If she did, it could ruin everything.
She must accept that her friendship with William—as she once knew it—was over. She must steel herself against what was, and what might have been, for she was about to become a duchess, and everything was going to change.
Four
William galloped fast and hard to reach the maze before dusk. He dismounted under an oak tree in a sheltering copse where he could tether his horse out of view of the palace windows.
The heat was stifling, but he barely noticed as he strode along the square-clipped cedars on the outside wall of the maze. When he found the entrance, he quickly slipped inside while struggling to comprehend the complexities of his emotions, and his presence there—a continent away from t
he world he had come to know so well in the past year. How impulsive he’d been to rush away from all that he found fascinating—science and the study of medicine—to pursue his dream of love. He had been so passionate to stop this wedding. It was as if he would explode like a keg of gunpowder if he did not see Adelaide again and claim her for his own.
Would she come to him tonight? Was this his destiny, and hers? Or had he been a bloody fool to think she might love him that way? Enough to throw aside a wealthy duke and disappoint her father and sisters? Perhaps even be disowned?
Would she take on all that, to marry a mere medical man?
A blackbird fluttered out of the cedars overhead as he continued along the tall green hedges, careful not to venture too deeply into the maze, lest he become lost in the dark and fail to return to meet Adelaide when she arrived.
If she arrived...
Turning back, he strode to the entrance to sit down and wait.
He would wait all night if he had to, for he could not lose her.
When William checked his pocketwatch for the hundredth time, his heart was in shreds.
It was past midnight and Adelaide had not come.
With excruciating regret, he rose to his feet, looked up at the stars, and wondered what the bloody hell he was doing here in this dark maze, when clearly Adelaide had made up her mind and he had misunderstood the letter she wrote.
He turned to leave, determined to forget her, determined to bury the past and the foolish hopes he had clung to, but stopped abruptly when his weary eyes locked upon the most exquisite vision...
There, in the moonlit entrance to the maze, stood Adelaide, her golden hair falling loose and windblown about her shoulders, her chest heaving as if she had run a great distance. He imagined her fleeing from the palace—running recklessly across the wide, rolling green lawns beneath the starlit sky—to reach him.
His darling Adelaide. She was so beautiful, so grown-up since he had last seen her. A woman now. A woman who was soon to become another man’s wife.
Anger and hostility coursed through him—along with a barbaric desire to hoist her over his shoulder, toss her onto the back of his horse, and gallop away with her to parts unknown.
Slowly, carefully, he approached. As he drew closer, however, the scorn he saw in her eyes left him pained and disoriented.
“What are you doing here, William?” she asked with a frown. “Why are you doing this?”
Why? God... Why indeed?
“I had to see you,” he explained, but it was a pathetic response, for it did not touch the convoluted condition of his reasoning, his heightened desires, or his selfishness at this moment, because he wanted her at any price. He had claimed in his letter that he would place her happiness above all, but that was a lie. Seeing her now, after so much time apart, he felt a deep arousal in his body and feared that if he did not win her hand, it would be the death of him.
“You had no right to say what you did in your letter,” she said as she pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “It’s been almost two years since you left Yorkshire, and you haven’t written to me in months. Whatever we were to each other then—and I am not even sure what we were—it is no longer the case.” Her eyes flashed with emotion and her bosom rose and fell as her breathing quickened. She glanced back at the palace, almost desperately. “I shouldn’t have come here. Margarite warned me. I don’t know why I did.”
She turned to leave, but he dashed forward to block her way. “You came because you care for me.”
Her gaze lifted to meet his. “Yes, but as a friend. Nothing more.”
He shook his head. “I don’t believe you. We’ve always been more than friends, Adelaide. You know it as well as I.”
Her eyes raked over his shoulders and chest. He had loosened his neck cloth in the heat, and his shirt was open slightly. She wet her lips. For the first time, a clear, sensuous heat passed between them.
“Then why did you leave without some sort of understanding between us?” she challenged.
“You were too young,” he explained.
“I was not so very young. I was old enough to dream of you. To want you. And why did you not come back sooner?”
He let go of her arm and stepped back. “I didn’t intend to stay away so long, but I always thought...”
“You thought what?”
A shadow of despair darkened her eyes, and he was glad. He wanted her to feel pain, so that she would not marry the duke.
“I thought that when I came home,” he honestly explained, “you would be there waiting for me.”
“How arrogant of you.” She adjusted her shawl around her shoulders and steeled her posture. “There was no promise between us, William. You did not propose before you left. If you had, I would have waited because God knows I loved you. But you did not. What was I to think? When you stopped writing months ago, I assumed...” Her chest heaved with a deep intake of breath. “If you must know, I expected you to come home with a bride on your arm—if you ever came home at all—so I forced myself to forget you. And now I have moved on.”
“No,” he replied with a frown. “You’re lying. Otherwise you would not have written me that letter, and you certainly would not be here now, alone with me at midnight.”
She bristled at that. “I am here to say good-bye to you because I consider you a friend,” she explained, “and I felt you deserve to know the truth.”
“And what is the truth exactly?” he asked, taking hold of her arm again. “In your letter you said you were unsure, and I know you too well to believe that anything has changed. I see it in your eyes, Adelaide. You have doubts. Admit it.”
She tried again to leave but he would not release her.
“I am not admitting anything to you,” she said.
“Not to me,” he replied. “To yourself. Do you love him?”
Adelaide stared at him irately, then wheeled around and ventured deeper into the maze, as if she could escape him—and the question. But there was no hope of that. He would not give up. He would never give up.
“Do you love him?” he repeated, more forcefully as she veered left into another cedar-lined corridor, her skirts whipping about her legs as she strode fast beneath the silvery moon.
Suddenly she stopped, stood still for a moment, and finally turned around. “Step aside, William,” she said. “We are going to get lost in here, and I must go back.”
“Answer me first,” he said. “If you tell me you truly love Pembroke with all your heart, I swear I will leave you now and never mention any of this again. I will return to Italy, knowing that you are happy.”
She was breathing heavily now. Her brow was furrowed. “He is very devoted to me,” she explained. “He has been a gentleman in every way, and he is a duke. The Duke of Pembroke! Have you any idea what this means to my family?”
William hesitated, then spoke in a quiet, calmer voice. “Still, you have not answered the question... And yet you have.”
The crickets chirped noisily in the grass outside the maze, and a gentle breeze whispered over the evergreen hedges.
“I respect him,” Adelaide said at last. “He is intelligent, witty, and very attentive. Might I also add that he is handsome? I will not deny that I was infatuated when he first asked me to dance and when he invited me to go walking in the park. I had butterflies in my belly when his coach arrived to escort us to the theater. It was all very exciting, William. Very flattering.”
Upon listening to this, William wanted to retch up the contents of his stomach.
Then he wanted to march through the palace gates, storm into the house, and choke the Duke of Pembroke until he turned blue.
Adelaide continued. “When he proposed, I felt...”
“Yes?”
“Triumphant. I still feel that way.”
William fought to control the feral jealousy that was burning a hole in his gut. He balled his hands into fists, stared long and hard into Adelaide’s eyes, and fought to see into her sou
l as he always could—for she had never held anything back from him.
Tonight, however, her eyes were cool and steely. Guarded. It was as if she had slammed a door in his face.
Clearly she was angry with him for leaving, and had made every effort to banish him from her heart. She was struggling to do so now.
Adelaide raised her chin as if to communicate, in no uncertain terms, that she would not be deterred.
Perhaps he was wrong to have come here. Perhaps she had changed from the free-spirited young girl he once knew. Or perhaps she had hidden that person away, buried her forever in the depths of her duty and ambition.
William’s eyebrows pulled together with dismay. Grief poured through him. Had he truly lost her? Was this the end?
“Then you are sure?” he asked, taking a step back, fighting to understand.
“Yes, I think so,” she firmly replied.
Something sparked and flared in his heart. “You think so,” he said. “That is not convincing enough, Adelaide. Not for me.”
She inclined her head at him, in that way she always did, to warn him against pushing her too hard.
“Do not dissect my every word, William. You must simply accept that I have made my decision, and I do not wish to alter it.”
For a long excruciating moment they stared at each other in the moonlight, while the night breeze continued to blow through the hedges. William felt as if the walls of cedar were closing in on him. He wanted to grab hold of Adelaide, shake her, then pull her into his arms and hold her—so tight that she could not escape him, not until she realized she was making a dreadful mistake. That she was his. That she could not marry another, not even a duke.
“Please, William... you must say good-bye to me now,” she whispered. “Let us part as friends.” She held out her hand.
No. This was wrong. He would not shake her hand. He would not say good-bye. His mind wandered to other times. Good times they’d shared.
A Kiss Before the Wedding - A Pembroke Palace Short Story Page 2
