by Darcie Wilde
***
“Adele?” Madelene said tentatively. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to disturb, but . . .
“Miss Sewell said you’d had a note,” said Helene. She didn’t bother hanging about in the doorway, but stepped straight into the room. “Is it from James?”
Adele was sitting on the edge of the bed in Miss Sewell’s spare room. It was late, and she had not yet dressed. There was a tray with tea and toast untouched on the table. Helene had come and gone. Madelene had come and gone. They had spoken to her, but she could not hear them properly. Or maybe she did not want to. At last, Miss Sewell had come in. She’d laid a piece of paper on the tray and left without a word.
“It’s not from James,” croaked Adele hoarsely. She was so tired. Just holding on to the paper seemed to take all her strength. “It’s from Mademoiselle Marie. She writes that James is taking the Pride of Calais to France.” She swallowed. “She thought I might want to know.”
Her hands shook again, and the paper fluttered from her fingers. Helene picked it up off the floor.
“They are to catch the midday tide,” she said.
“That means you still have time.” Miss Sewell stepped softly into the room to stand with Helene and Madelene.
“For what?” murmured Adele. She couldn’t think. Her head was so full of anger and exhaustion it felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool.
“To see him,” said Helene. “To require an explanation.”
“No.”
“Adele . . .” Madelene began. “You must. You owe it to yourself.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Because if you must make an end, you must do it to his face, not by hiding in your room. That is the coward’s way,” announced Helene.
“Perhaps there is a misunderstanding,” Madelene said. “My brother is not the most reliable witness.”
Hope, cold and terrible, rose up in her. She suppressed it ruthlessly. She could not let James—Monsiuer Beauclaire—make a fool of her yet again.
“He used me,” she reminded them all. “He went behind my back and traded on my expectations!”
“If that is the case,” Helene said, “you must know that you can stand up to him and what he did.”
Adele lifted her head and looked at her friends.
“She’s right, Adele,” Miss Sewell said.
“One of us can be with you,” Madelene offered. “Or all of us, if you want.”
It was this sign of courage that made Adele feel ashamed. “No. I will see him alone. I . . . You’re right, of course. I was just . . .”
Dying. She’d used that word to describe the feeling of being held by James, that ecstasy that threatened to carry away all sense. How wrong she’d been. Dying was the opposite. It was this slow numbing and crumbling, the understanding that there was nothing at all left to hold on to, and yet no way to stop the fall into darkness.
“Adele,” Miss Sewell said. “If James has done what we all fear, it is terrible. Perhaps unforgivable. But are you sure sure it’s enough to blot out the rest of what you and James have shared? Is it worth ending that all here, in this moment, in this way?”
“How do I answer that?”
“I don’t know,” said Miss Sewell. “But you must.”
***
“You’re lucky, you are,” said the man in the greasy waistcoat who sat behind the desk at the harbormaster’s office. “Another hour and you’d be waiting until midnight, or tomorrow.”
“Yes, very lucky,” James said as he tucked away his tickets and his other papers. Outside the small office, men shouted back and forth in barely comprehensible sailor’s cant, their voices mingling with the shrieking of the gulls. “You can show me to the ship?” He could have traveled overland to Dover, but he had decided on the water route. It was quicker, which meant he’d need to pack less. He wanted to be gone as soon as possible.
“Right this way, mon-sewer.” The man climbed to his feet and led James out to the bustling docks. James glanced back over his shoulder toward the city. Back there, Adele was sitting with her friends. Adele believed he had betrayed her, that all his words of love, all his kisses and their embraces were nothing but a ruse to gain her money.
Better for her. She can hate me and dismiss me and heal. Never mind what Marie said. Marie was wrong.
James walked down the dock and tried not to feel the last of his heart crumble to dust to scatter across the foam.
***
“The coach is here, Adele,” Helene said from the doorway of the spare room. “Are you sure you don’t want us to come with you?”
Adele shook her head and picked up her reticule. “I have to do this on my own. You were right.” She glanced at herself in the mirror. The girl who looked back was as far away from the beauty who took to Bassett’s dance floor as could be imagined. She was puffy eyed and pale, and her shoulders sagged. She tried to rally herself and failed. So, she just clutched her things and started past Helene.
“We’ll be here when you return.” Helene touched her arm.
Adele nodded. She’d made up her mind. She’d just time enough to reach the docks before James’s boat sailed. Taggert would go with her as protection, but the others would stay home. She’d find James and she’d find out what he’d done and tell him exactly what she thought of it, so he did not dare try to charm her, tease her, seduce her again. Then she would . . . she would . . .
She couldn’t think that far. A future where James was a betrayer was nothing but a mass of cold, gray fog.
Her friends filled the foyer to help her with pelisse and bonnet and gloves. Madelene opened the door, and Adele walked down the steps toward the waiting coach.
Then, something, the touch of some deep awareness, made her stop, and made her turn, so that her view of the walk was no longer blocked by the sides of her bonnet.
James was standing, frozen, on the sidewalk.
He was as much of a mess as she was. He’d changed into a blue coat and buff breeches, but he had no hat, his collar was open at the neck, his cravat had gone missing, and his curling hair was in a state of complete disorder.
James. Her mouth shaped his name, but no sound emerged from her. James took one step forward, and another, his hand stretched out toward her.
She was going to faint. She was going to die. She was going to commit murder. She was going to run into his embrace and kiss him and cry and beg him to forgive her, or demand to know what he’d done to her.
She did none of these things. All her endless upbringing rebelled. It was ridiculous, but it would not be ignored. This was a public street. She could not be seen simply standing here waiting for this disheveled man to take her hand.
Adele looked back up at the house. Helene, Miss Sewell, and Madelene all stood at the windows, their eyes wide and their mouths open. James took two more steps forward. She could reach out and touch him if she wanted to.
The hired driver looked down from his box and cleared his throat.
Decision seized hold of Adele. She yanked open the coach door. “Get in,” Adele said. James hesitated, so she turned him and shoved him toward the waiting vehicle. “In!”
He obeyed. Adele clambered in after him. She slammed the door shut and yanked the curtains closed.
“Walk on!” she called to the driver.
The driver obeyed and touched up the horses. The coach started forward, swaying gently as they were pulled into the current of London traffic.
Adele crossed her arms. She looked at the swaying curtains that covered the windows. She could not look at James. She had too much to say.
“I was told you were sailing for Paris,” she said.
“I meant to. My passage was paid. I put my foot upon the gangplank, and I could not go.”
“Why not?” She forced her eyes to meet his. She sat still as stone when she saw
the mute plea shining there. She remembered those eyes filled with fire and need. She remembered his burning touch and his hands holding her. She set all that aside. She told herself it didn’t matter.
But it did. Oh, it did.
“I could not leave without seeing you and explaining what happened.” He paused. “Were you going home?”
Adele was certain she meant to lie, but the lie would not come. “I was going to the docks.”
James did not answer at once, and when he did, the note of terrible hope reached straight down to Adele’s aching heart and seized hold. “Why?”
Adele wanted to scream. She wanted to say it was none of his business what she did now that he’d used her so treacherously. If only he wouldn’t look at her like that. If only her heart was not beating so painfully. If only she could not feel his terrible, desperate, lost, impossible hope. And her own.
“Because I did not . . . I could not . . . I could not throw away the possibility of you . . . of us without some final word.” Without knowing if it was true that you did not care about me. Without knowing for sure how much I have to grieve in losing you.
He wanted to reach out; she felt it. The space between their seats felt wider than an ocean and twice as cold, but he did not move, and neither did she.
“I was told you gambled with my dowry.”
“I did. It was the only way I could get Pursewell to keep playing. He had to believe that I was desperate, and that he had me caught in his trap. I had to play him long enough to see exactly how he was cheating so I could, as they say, turn the tables on him.”
“And did you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you cheat?”
“Yes. Fortunately, I’m better at it than Pursewell.”
Do not smile, she ordered herself. Do not know that it was obvious he would be, because James is in every way the better man. The best man. She leaned her head back against the seat. She’d crush her bonnet, but she didn’t care. “Why did you do this? I know you lost some money, but how could it have been enough to make you play such a stupid game!”
He took a deep breath, gathering himself. “My father is in Paris,” James said. “He has been for years. He’s been trying to regain the property that was stolen from us during the Revolution. But that takes time and money. More time and far more money than any of us realized. That was why I was so in debt, and why I took to the gaming tables,” he paused. “Why I sought a rich marriage.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“Pride, and fear. At least at first. Then, I did not want to raise one more barrier between us. There were already so many.” He rubbed his hands together. Adele watched their movement, fascinated. She ached to reach out, to take them into her own. She needed his touch like she needed her heart to keep beating, but she could not.
“Last night, your brother and I talked, about you, Adele. About my intentions. I swore I would not come to you in debt. When I made that promise, I was sure I was only a few hours from erasing all my father’s debts with enough left over that . . . well, we would not need to depend on your money. Then last night, I heard the ships were lost.” His voice faltered. “Another time I might have been able to regard it as just a delay, but . . . there at the ball, I saw you with all the beaux of London around you, and I was afraid I had no time left. I thought if I made you wait, one of them would steal you away from me.”
Adele heard this, and emotion beyond words lanced through her. Before either of them could draw another breath, she was across the carriage, lurching onto his seat. She was also beating on him with both fists. “You thoughtless wretch! You coward! You . . . you . . . idiot!”
“Adele!”
“You thought after all we did -- after all I did and said -- I’d turn away just like that! Just because the same idiots who ignored me for so long finally saw I was pretty!”
“Adele, that’s starting to hurt.”
“Good!” she shouted.
“I deserve it. I deserve all of it and worse. I should have trusted you. I know that. I was a coward. I am a coward. I was ready to leave you rather than risk having to watch you leave me, or worse, be the ruin of your own hopes because I am not worthy of you . . . Ow!”
“You are not to say such a thing! I will decide who is worthy of me! Not society, not my aunt or my sister, and certainly not you, you idiot!”
“Ow! Adele!”
“Don’t you dare laugh at me!”
“Never, never, only will you stop hitting me! Ow! What was that for?”
“Ordering me around!”
She was crying. Tears streamed down her cheeks. James caught her arms, not tightly, just enough to fend her off, and somehow that touch turned into an embrace, and then they were kissing, the hard, frantic kind of kisses they’d lavished on each other from the very first.
Adele cried out in fear and frustration and pushed him away. James stared at her, stunned at her wildly shifting reactions to him. But he could not be more stunned than she.
“I love you,” Adele whispered. “It doesn’t matter if I should or I shouldn’t. I do. I have since the first moment. Before, even. I think. I must have. It was so fast and so strong, and all I’ve wanted since then is you. All the work, all the hope, everything, I did it because at the end, you would be there. When I thought you’d left me, I couldn’t see. I couldn’t think. Nothing was ever going to matter again. I died, James!”
“You love me?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, James, I do.”
“And I love you, Adele, now and forever.”
Then James had his arms around her, and he was warm and real and solid and strong. He kissed her damp cheeks and her mouth, pulling her close until she was crushed against him. She could barely breathe, and she did not care. He loved her. He loved her.
Eventually, they separated, and now she could look into his magnificent blue eyes and see only the joy and the wonder shining there.
“I have to go to Paris,” he told her. “I have been running from my family’s past. I have been afraid of a lost cause, of . . . of facing down my own father. He has been draining the family dry in his attempt to recover the property that may be lost forever. I need to confront him, I need to convince him that if this last effort, this last payment does not succeed, he has to come back to England. That our family does have a future here.” He lifted his gaze toward hers. “Do we have a future, Adele? Can you believe me when I swear that I love you, and that I am going to put matters right so I can be with you?”
“Yes, James. I swear it.”
“And I swear that the moment I come back, we will be married. No one and nothing will ever come between us again.”
“James.”
How long they kissed, she could not say. There was no time in James’s embrace. Only the heat, the passion, the trust, and the hope. Love. There was only love.
Eventually, they did separate, and James touched her lips with his gentle fingers in that way she loved so much.
“We keep this secret for now.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but he laid one finger across her mouth. “Hear me out,” he murmured, tracing her lips with that same finger, lightly, lingeringly. “We talked about this, and nothing has changed. I will be a distraction. You have great plans with your friends for this season. Because of who I am, what I have been . . .” She opened her mouth again, and this time he kissed her, thoroughly, and for a long time. When he pulled away, her eyes were entirely glazed over. “Because of who I have been,” he repeated. “The gossip will be about you and me, and whether you are a fool or not.”
She dropped her gaze. “I suppose . . . Oh, I hate this!”
“No. Don’t hate it. You are helping your friends, and you are building a foundation for us both here. You must do that, as I must help my father. We will be together again. I swear it. I
swear it, Adele. Because I love you, my beauty, my dearest. For now and forever.”
“For now, James, and forever.”
Keep reading for a special preview from Regency Makeover Part II: The Stepsister’s Triumph, available from InterMix in April 2016.
It must be considered a ridiculous thing for a grown young lady to hide from her own brother. That, however, was exactly Madelene Valmeyer’s intention when she ducked into the small side gallery of Somerset House.
The Royal Academy of Arts was holding its first exhibition of the season. The catalogue promised a carefully assembled collection of works by the finest artists from England and abroad. Madelene had come with her friends Lady Adele Endicott and Lady Helene Fitzgerald.
Helene, however, had stopped in the main gallery to speak with a cluster of girls and matrons and Adele was taking a closer look at a collection of French portraits, probably examining the dresses for aspects she might incorporate into her own designs. Their unconventional and somewhat alarming chaperone Miss Sewell had stationed herself in some corner from which, presumably, she could keep one eye on them all. So, for the moment, Madelene had the smaller gallery to herself.
Madelene, Helene, and Adele had become fast friends since meeting at the Windford’s New Year’s Eve party. They had all three remained unmarried for long enough that society had listed them in the category of the haut ton’s disappointments, and shook its collective head at them. How, they wondered, could such girls be such failures? Adele was a duke’s daughter. Helene’s father was a viscount. Madelene herself was heiress of a considerable fortune that would be entirely hers in one year’s time. Still, the world confidently pronounced them all spinsters in the making and had started to overlook them when it came to the matter of invitations and calling lists. But at New Year’s, they had exchanged a mutual promise to change this dreary prediction. Together, instead of another year of disappointment and neglect, they would together create a triumph.
Madelene remembered the flush in Helene’s cheeks as she spoke so confidently of the possibilities. Helene, though, was brave. Actually, she was more than brave. She was a radical bluestocking, and proud of it. But Madelene did not have the same courage. Maybe she had once, a long time ago, but somewhere during the years spent immersed in the simmering discontent that filled her father’s house, that courage had dissolved, like sugar in the rain. As she’d listened to Helene and Adele talk about their plans, Madelene had felt the familiar shrinking inside. No, cautioned her inner voice. Don’t do it. You don’t want to be seen. You don’t want to be noticed. It’ll all be ruined anyway. Why even try?