by Sophia James
‘Yet these are the last of the railway lines that I shall build. I might even sell those I already have.’
He could not believe he had said that to her, here in a room full of his competitors. But if his unending capacity for sound financial decisions were to continue, he knew that the cloud of ruin was already inherent in the proliferation of existing lines and the lack of government regulation over them.
‘You wish to leave these lords to their own game, then?’
He laughed. ‘No, I want to beat them all at it.’
‘Lofty goals?’
‘But very attainable.’
‘Are you always so certain in your strategies?’
‘I am,’ he returned and for a moment he wondered if he was talking about business or about her.
The fellow next to Adelia turned and took her attention and as Simeon looked across the table he saw Winston raise his glass and speak.
‘Here’s to you, Mr Morgan, and to the future of the railway.’
His own glass was in hand, the crystal catching the light and sending a rainbow across the plate before him.
‘The future,’ he repeated and knew that what was to come did not belong in the shares of iron tracks or the frenzied bubbles of speculative purchasers driving the price so high that it could only collapse.
He’d build this part of the system and then he’d get out.
Nothing lasted for ever. Not love. Not hope and not luck. And certainly not marriage.
And if Adelia was helping him tonight, then tomorrow she would undoubtedly be gone, back to her beloved Athelridge Hall and away from the city. Away from him.
That thought disturbed Simeon, for he would have enjoyed showing her his London, a place of river walks and gardens and beautiful buildings. Richmond and the new piece of land came to mind, but he shoved that thought away. Adelia was as skilled as he was at pretending, but it still did not make anything true.
He was suddenly aware that Grey at one end of the table was watching him and he worried about the calculation in his wily old eyes. It was just as well that Lord Grey had no notion as to what had just been said between him and Adelia. Again he felt a tremor of guilt run through him.
Then Lord Grey rang his knife against his crystal glass and everyone stopped speaking.
‘I have an announcement,’ he said, his voice as serious as Simeon had ever heard it. Lady Grey was smiling, giving the impression that she already knew what it was her husband might say. ‘I want to tell you all that Mr Simeon Morgan will be my partner on the next railway project in the north.’
Simeon had not expected such a public promise, and Adelia at his side placed her hand across his and he felt her grip tighten.
‘Congratulations.’ Her voice was small and quiet. ‘A victory of sorts, at least?’
He understood what she meant and was grateful, but having achieved everything he had set out to do, all he wanted now was to take his wife home. Lord Grey, however, was not quite finished.
‘Tonight Mr Morgan and his new bride celebrate only a few weeks of married life together and I would like to give them some advice. Be honest and be adaptable, for without either your union will wither. Celebrate the things that make you different as well as all the things in which you are alike.’
Simeon tipped his head in thanks and Adelia’s dimples caught the light from the chandelier above them, sending shadows across her cheeks.
It seemed that an answer was expected so he stood. ‘We will both take your advice to heart, Lord Grey, and we thank you for the good wishes. With a marriage as successful and long as your own we can only benefit from such insightful guidance.’ He raised his glass. ‘So here’s to longevity and triumph.’ He deliberately left out love.
* * *
Dancing followed the dinner and once the meal was cleared away a small group of musicians set themselves up at the head of the room. Adelia was excited about the prospect, but Simeon looked less than enthusiastic.
‘Do you enjoy a twirl, Mr Morgan?’
‘I do not, Mrs Morgan.’
This was a new retort, for more normally he gave her back her Christian name or insisted she use his.
‘But you will ask me for a waltz?’
His frown deepened. ‘My education did not extend to the fine and intricate arts of dancing.’
‘But you do know the steps?’
He remained silent.
‘You don’t?’ Amazement filled her. Here was something she might teach him. ‘It would be more than easy if you just follow my lead.’
He looked horrified, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Rebecca Winston advancing on him with that particular look of a predatory female and she knew Simeon had seen her, too. With the first strains of music beginning, she literally gave him no choice, her hand on his arm as she urged him forward.
Just for a moment she wanted him to know that in all of the abrasive weeks leading up to the wedding and all the silence after that there might be something they could now share in a way that was pleasant. A dance. Touching. Listening to the music and feeling it.
This evening had showed her the sort of man that Simeon Morgan was: clever, strong and himself. He did not pretend a knowledge about the many odd mannerisms of society, but he didn’t let it worry him, either. He’d been honest about his dancing finesse and yet he still allowed her to lead him to the floor as if being shown how to do something was another challenge he would rise to.
She’d hated each and every dance she had been made to stand up for during her Season, the wandering hands, the senseless conversations, the prying eyes all around. She had been tongue-tied by the very notion of the marriage mart, the expectations and the disappointment. Marriage to Simeon had never felt boring. He was a man who said what he felt and meant what he said. No guesswork. No covert hidden agenda. He had not wanted to marry her and he had never pretended otherwise. But his conversation was stimulating and worthy. He listened to her opinions as no one else ever had and gave her back a logical explanation of his own beliefs and ideas. He did not sweeten the taste of disagreement with lies.
So here now she wanted to say thank-you, to pay back a tiny bit of his generosity in the care he had given her family whom he had very little reason to like.
Her fingers came into his and she placed his other hand on her left shoulder blade.
‘The waltz is a smooth dance, travelling in a line and characterised primarily by its rise and fall action. Your shoulders move parallel with the floor and not up and down and your head looks over my right shoulder. Then it’s just counting. We stand a little bit sideways from each other, like this.’ She placed her feet so that his left foot came between her own. ‘Then we count. One two three, two two three, three two three, four two three. And that is it, really.’
She stopped and with their faces only inches away from each other a dislocation assailed her. They had been like this when first they had met, the heat around them, the forbidden closeness, the link of flesh and desire and need.
Now they were fully clothed and in a room crowded with others and yet it was as if they were alone, only them, the musicians in the background, the slick beat of their bodies counting time, both in the fall and in the rise. The dance of love. She blushed and if he saw he made no comment. She could see him measuring out the beat stiff with concentration and trying to understand it exactly. After a moment he relaxed, his breath slowing and the grip of his hand less rigid.
‘You are doing well.’ She felt she should say something as the silence between them lengthened and when he smiled at her she understood that the beauty in him was undeniably potent. The beauty of a man who knew who he was and did not pretend to be who he wasn’t.
‘At least I have not yet tripped you up.’
‘I wish you could have danced with me during my endless Season.’
It was a boldne
ss to say so and she knew she had strayed across a boundary, yet she could not take it back, could not retract that which she honestly thought with all her heart.
The gold in his eyes sharpened and focused. ‘I am certain you would have refused me, Adelia. Is it not said that every debutante who arrives in society for the Season is after a title from some ancient family?’
She shook her head. ‘I was simply after a real conversation and a man who could look me in the face and was not overcome by what he saw.’
He frowned and his grip tightened on her back. ‘You think I am immune to the way you look?’
She did not know quite how to answer this without sounding vain. ‘Well, unlike all my other suitors, you have never mentioned my beauty.’
‘You wanted me to?’ The humour was back, threaded through his query.
‘No. I was glad when you didn’t.’
‘But you think I do not notice it?’
‘Do you?’ Her heart began to speed up. She could hear and feel the beat of it in her throat and knew that he would, too.
‘When people smile, Adelia, everyone is beautiful.’
His answer was so unexpected she began to laugh.
‘You think I do not smile enough?’
‘I think it is good to finally see you happy.’
And she was, there in his arms, the music swelling and their steps gaining in confidence. She wished the dance might have gone on for ever but it didn’t, the last notes of the music fading into silence.
Lord Grey joined them with his wife.
‘I remember seeing you at some of the events from last Season, Mrs Morgan. You never looked as cheerful as you do now.’
His statement was not said in any other way than as a passing reference and Adelia was pleased that he seemed to require no true answer. Still, she saw Simeon take note of the words.
‘We are having a country gathering in three weeks at our estate in Kent, Mr Morgan. My wife and I wondered if you both might also like to join us there.’
A further invitation. Simeon answered for her.
‘That is kind of you to ask, but in the next few days I am going to the north for a month and so it is unfortunately impossible.’
All the gladness left Adelia in one breath. Of course he would not want to do this again, especially after he had just concluded the business concerning the new railway tracks to his satisfaction. No, after tomorrow she would be once more back at Athelridge Hall with her mother and sister and all this would be only a memory.
An inconvenient wife and a marriage forced upon him. She wondered again where the red-headed beauty who had come to their wedding was now. Waiting for him in some luxurious bed, no doubt, sultry and sensual? Passing the hours until her lover was back from completing his duties with an unwanted bride and then laughing about it with him.
She pasted a smile across her face and thought she had never had such a night of ups and downs.
* * *
Adelia looked crestfallen at his reply and he could not understand why that should be. She had stipulated precisely that what she wanted was a sham of a marriage and nothing more, though as he had held her in the waltz he had thought perhaps things were changing. In the dance he had wanted to keep holding her in his arms, the sweet touch of her a closeness he had not felt in a very long time.
The invitation from Lord Grey and his wife for them to attend another social occasion had surprised him, though he understood why people had warmed to Adelia.
She was interesting. She listened well and her conversation was knowledgeable and sensible. When she had showed him the steps of the waltz he had understood for the first time exactly what his feet and body should be doing. Before tonight he would never have attempted such a thing in a room full of people.
Her dimples had been easily seen and he was glad of it. A beautiful woman, her father’s poor character harder and harder to see in her the more he got to know her.
He wanted to ask her why she had been so unbending in her insistence on a marriage between them. He wanted to know that closeness he had experienced the first time he’d met her and felt her response to him, but Grey was asking him a question and it brought him back to the moment.
‘You know you are a lucky man, Simeon? I thought that Adelia Worthington was one of the finest girls of the Season and I was right. You suit each other and I wish you all the best in the world.’
* * *
The carriage ride home was a silent one, the unsettling realisation of his imminent departure to the north leaving her stranded. If Simeon journeyed from London tomorrow for the north and sent her home to Athelridge Hall, then there was no hope for them and yet she could hardly demand it be otherwise.
He was quiet in his corner of the conveyance, street lights blinking on his face as they passed them by, his expression distant and aloof until a sudden lunge of the horses jolted the carriage and threw her along the seat, the shout of the drivers loud. As if by magic Simeon was beside her, his arm tethering her to the leather, protecting her, making certain she was safe.
‘It’s all right. I think we missed whatever it was the driver did his best to avoid.’
Glancing outside, he banged on the roof. Within a few seconds the horses pulled up and the driver came to the door.
‘It were a pedestrian, sir. He walked straight out in front of us and if we had not swerved then God knows what might have happened. A drunk, probably, with little sense but a lot of luck.’
‘Very well, Kennedy.’ Simeon’s voice was gruff. ‘Just get us home safely.’
‘I will do, sir.’
In the next second the driver was gone and the carriage went on at a much diminished speed. Simeon made no move to return to his former seat, but stayed beside her.
‘You were more than helpful tonight, Adelia.’
Surprise made her look at him. He was not a man adept at using flattery, so it certainly was not an empty truth.
‘A useful thing, then, ancestry?’
He smiled. ‘I do not just attach my compliment to the completion of any business transaction, I assure you. I meant it sincerely.’
She frowned because he seemed different and she did not wish to be disappointed again if she was interpreting things wrongly. ‘There is no one to observe us here, Mr Morgan. I absolve you from any pretension.’
‘You think that is all tonight was?’
Adelia stiffened. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Do you not?’
He turned then so that there was barely any space between them, his hand touching her arm. Skin to skin.
‘When you came to me that first night I thought you might have been an angel sent down by a celestial being. I was sick with the fever, you see, and so…’ He gathered his words and went on. ‘When you told me you were your father’s daughter I imagined he might have come along with you and would jump out unannounced and insist on reprisal.’
‘He might well have done so had he still been alive.’
‘When I asked you to go away, you didn’t. Why not?’
‘I felt safe with you until you said you pitied me…’
‘I still do.’
She removed her hand.
‘I pitied you for the father you had, for his lack of scruples and for his stupidity. No man should blow his brains out in front of his child.’
‘Yet you didn’t know he had, then.’
‘I knew you had fresh bruises all over your arms and neck. I knew you were scared. I knew that in all your demands there lay secrets and that Lionel Worthington was one of them.’
‘You asked me once if I had killed him.’
‘I believed you might have until last night when you told me the truth.’
‘Yet you brought me to London and found me a gown…’
‘People sometimes kill for reasons
that do have merit, Adelia, it’s not always cut and dried.’
‘So why did you give me the benefit of the doubt?’
‘Because I have walked among killers and you did not fit the mould.’
‘In your past? In the childhood you don’t speak of and the one which everyone else does? That is how you know them? These killers?’
‘You are not the only one who has ever considered taking revenge, Adelia, for the sins committed against you.’
Her ire dropped away into shock. They were so different and yet there was so much in them that was the same.
Pity.
It was a word with far more meaning in it than she had first considered.
‘Who was your father, then?’ Her question came without thought.
‘A man who decided to leave my mother almost at the same time as I was born. A weak man of no principle and little sense.’
‘And you never saw him again?’
‘Unfortunately I did on and off over the first five years of my life. Neil Finnegan came back on occasions to steal from my mother and to beat us up.’
‘So you took your mother’s name?’
‘Not quite.’ He didn’t elaborate further as he turned to her and she felt the broken thing inside him reaching out, bringing her in, his mouth coming down, the hardness in him as apparent as the shame.
This was no easy quiet kiss, but a brand, stamping his need, imprinting her with the force of his want. A kiss that spoke of harshness and terror, but also of passion barely bridled, loosened with his confession and riding on the edge of lust.
Adelia could have broken away and refused him, but she did not. All resistance faded into feeling, his tongue, his lips, his hands drawing her closer, her head tipped up to pleasure and the air between them shared.
‘Open for me, Lia.’
Whispered words, urging her to comply, and she did, the shadows of night and quietness giving way to a red-hot roar of hunger as well as a deep-set ache, inexplicable and potent. Entwined in need, all the past that had shattered him once now put back together in desire.