“She informed the administration that I am Lord Ashdowne’s doxy.”
Her gaze did not waiver from his as she said the word, and she tilted her chin a fraction, as if daring him to look away, as if he might believe Lady Harriet’s claim.
But it was nonsense. The Ashdowne siblings seemed determined to bring misery to the Hamiltons, and it enraged him.
Will moved to retrieve his hat. Surely there was something he could say to Matron Marley to convince her to reinstate Ada. He would deal with Lady Harriet Ashdowne later.
As he turned, he felt Ada’s hand on him, small but firm against his coat sleeve.
“Where are you going?”
“To speak to Matron Marley.”
“No. It’s for the best. You needn’t speak to Matron Marley.”
The shock of her touch nearly equaled his surprise at her calm regarding the situation.
“You no longer wish to be a nurse?”
Her answer was instant and emphatic. “Yes, very much, but most of all I wish to find my sister. My worry for her consumes me. I am little use as a nurse or anything else until I find her.”
Ada smiled at him then—a tender, affectionate expression that stole his breath. “But thank you.”
Beyond her beauty and strength, Will glimpsed a woman who looked at him and saw more—more than a wounded man, more than a wretch who had come to Whitechapel for dishonorable reasons. Her gaze searched him, sifted his very soul, and seemed to find something there worth cherishing.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Is he a lord as well then?”
Her mother’s words echoed in Ada’s mind as she settled into the plush first class train carriage and knew the first moments of contentment she’d felt in days. Taking action, going to look for Beth, felt right. And she was not alone. Whatever his reasons, however long he would abide with her, Mr. Selsby was her ally, and one she sorely needed.
Looking around at the details of finely-stitched upholstery, polished wood and brass, and the pretty little blanket that had been provided to warm her, she felt a bit like a grand lady. And it was easy to imagine Mr. Selsby as a lord It wasn’t just to do with his fine clothing and proper manners. Despite whatever injury caused him to rely on his cane and stiffen in pain when he thought no one was looking, he carried himself with an air of confidence and authority that, Ada noticed, made other men make way for him. He and his sister had mentioned his time in the army, and Ada thought he must have commanded men.
He certainly commanded her attention. Though they had the carriage to themselves at the moment, Mr. Selsby had very properly chosen to sit across from Ada rather than by her side. Her disappointment at not having him near was only alleviated by the prospect of studying him as he read The Illustrated London News.
She’d noticed his hands the first night she met him, and not just because of the scars. His fingers were long and elegant, and she imagined they would have served him well as a surgeon, if that was what he’d hoped to be. She could easily imagine him as a doctor. Beyond the pain she saw in his eyes, there was kindness. And as Vicky constantly reminded, he had a very pleasant voice, just the kind to put a wary patient at ease.
Though he sat up, back straight, his long legs encroached across the space between them, and Ada relished the feel of them pressing against her skirt. She inched her boots out toward him, her feet on either side of his. The desire to touch him, to draw closer to him, was overwhelming.
He moved the newspaper in his hands and she could finally glimpse his eyes over the edge. Gaze moving over the lines of type, he did not seem nearly as distracted by her presence as she was by his. If only he would lower the newspaper a bit more, she could study his lips. Though they would prove the most distracting of all. She knew what his lips could do.
“My sister sometimes studies me as fixedly.” He lowered his newspaper and folded it neatly before setting it aside. “Usually when she thinks I’ve been up to something dastardly and is determined to suss it out.”
“Are you often up to something dastardly?”
He grinned, the movement revealing charming dimples on each side of his face. Ada had studied the anatomy of the human body enough to know it was impossible, but she was certain her heart flip flopped in her chest.
“Not as often as she thinks I am. Not as often I used to be.”
It was hard to believe a man with such beautiful eyes could ever be dastardly. Despicable acts were best left to men like Ashdowne and the monster they called the Whitechapel Ripper.
“You’re reformed then.”
Ada meant her words to be taken lightly, but Will turned his head toward the train car window and looked out onto the rain-soaked landscape beyond. A ghost of a grin still curved his mouth, but his eyes were contemplative.
“Let’s just say I have learned my lesson.”
He turned his gaze back to her, and Ada felt the same enveloping heat he had stoked the first night she met him. He looked into her eyes, but she felt him deeper, as if he could reach inside and explore all the thoughts and feelings she kept hidden.
“I don’t think you have.”
This provoked a stunning smile. It made him look rakish, as if naughty deeds were not foreign to him at all.
“No? What makes you say so, Miss Hamilton?”
“Ada.” It was so forward, too much familiarity for a man she had only known for a handful of days, but she wanted that intimacy with him. She wanted to hear him say her name. “Please call me Ada, Mr. Selsby.”
“Ada.” Though her name consisted of two short syllables, he made it sound effusive, a lavish confection he planned to savor. He leaned in, repeated her name huskily, more quietly than any word he had said to her so far. “Ada, you must call me Will. And you must tell me why you think I have not learned my lesson.”
Her clothes had fit perfectly a moment before, but now they made her body itch. The heat in her limbs, the sense of melting, fired her cheeks. Ada clutched her dress with both hands, needing to keep them busy so that she did not reach for him. She wanted to provoke him, wanted him closer.
“Because you are taking a train journey with an unmarried woman. Alone.”
He looked down, seeming to study the folds of her dress, noticing her hands clutching the fabric.
“I am better behaved than you know, Ada.” He looked up slowly as he spoke, letting his gaze trail over her lap and up the row of buttons on the front of her blouse, hesitating at her mouth, and finally meeting her gaze. “There is so much more I would like to do with you.”
She had done it now. Whatever threshold of propriety separated them, kept them from touching each other, tasting each other, stripping away clothing and artifice and manners and seeking the pleasure they would surely find together—that threshold was crossed. And she didn’t want to go back.
Ada reached for him, aching to kiss him. She touched the firm line of his jaw, traced the light stubble with her fingers. But he didn’t kiss her mouth, merely turned his head to lay a kiss against her palm.
His hands were busy elsewhere, reaching down, gathering the edge of her skirt and petticoat, lifting them slowly, skimming his fingers along her legs. His hands moved higher, higher—she ached for him to reach the top of her cotton stockings, to feel his fingers against her bare flesh.
“These skirts have been tormenting me all day.” He shook his head. “No, not your skirts.” Her skirts were bunched around his arms, and he reached under one of Ada’s legs, lifting it so that her boot heel rested on the edge of his bench seat. “The thought of these legs, this soft skin. That’s what drives me mad.”
His left hand closed around her thigh, and she felt his fingertips against her bare skin. He reached higher still, slipping his fingers inside her drawers.
Ada hissed and nearly let out a cry of frustration when Will stopped, as if he meant to release her, as if he feared he had crossed the line.
“Please.” She meant to ask him to touch her, to love her and not to stop, but she co
uld only manage the single word.
He kissed her then, his mouth touching hers tenderly at first before he sought more—tasting her, teaching her. Their lips met again and again, drawing more from other every time they touched.
Ada felt his fingers slide further, deeper inside her draws, until they touched the curls at the apex of her thighs.
After another kiss—as deep as she wished his fingers to be, as wet as the moistness between her legs—he pulled back to watch her. Ada bit her bottom lip to hold back the cry she longed to release, and she held still, though she wanted to move. She wanted to push against his finger, feel more, stoke the pressure building inside her body.
“Should I stop, Ada? We are treading close to the edge.”
She moved then, to show him, to tell him with her body that she wanted him, wanted all of him. “Don’t you dare stop.”
He moved and the pleasure-pain of his finger breached her core, claiming her as no man ever had. He kissed her as he drew closer, leaning into her, his finger sliding inside her slick heat.
Ada relished the press of his body over her, the slip of his finger inside her, and she wanted more. With one hand she reached for his lapel, tugging at it, needing him as close as she could have him, and she moved her other hand around his neck, raking her fingers through the hair at his nape.
A shudder began to rock her. She felt it building, igniting at every point their bodies met, and swelling out, down her legs, her arms, tickling up her spine, until she trembled in his embrace. Waiting. Just on the precipice.
He touched her deftly, each movement more delicious, pushing her further. He released her mouth and moved his lips across her cheek, up near the shell of her ear.
“Let go, love. I’ll be here to catch you.”
When his teeth grazed the tender skin of her earlobe, Ada let go—falling, soaring, trembling and crying out, caring nothing for who might hear her.
And when she could breathe again, could think again, he was there, just as he promised. He’d given up any pretense of propriety and sat beside her, holding her, his lips pressed to her temple.
Ada turned so that she might fit more snuggly against him and realized he was trembling, just as she had been moments before.
Pulling back, she gazed up at him and he grinned down at her, and not just with his mouth but with his eyes. It was the first time she looked at Will and did not discern sadness in his gaze.
The words on the tip of her tongue were straight from her heart but Ada feared letting them out. Only days before she would have considered a man such as William Selsby far above her station, but now she was closer to him—more intimate with him—than she had ever been with anyone in her life.
“That was—”
“You look—”
Ada smiled and Will shook his head. They must learn to take turns speaking, it seemed.
The thought made Ada consider the future and a wave of anxiety crashed in, washing away the moment of ease and contentment. Would there be a future with Will? It was difficult to consider any future at all. In her mind’s eye, all she saw was Beth’s face. How could she plan her own future when she did not know her sister’s fate?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Wythorpe was even grander than Ada predicted, and it was bewitching to the eye with its many windows lit from within. The November night was cold and she could see a massive fireplace blazing through a immense window to the left of the front doors. It made the too large country house seem inviting, though she knew the Ashdownes would never offer her anything like hospitality.
Will led her to stand on the doorstep beside him, but she hung back, out of sight behind his tall frame, fearing her presence would get them turned away altogether.
After a brief wait, a gentleman dressed in the fine kit of a rich man’s servant opened the door.
“Good evening, my name is William Selsby. I realize the Ashdownes are not at home, but I wonder if I might speak with the butler or housekeeper here at Wythorpe.”
Ada peeked around Will’s arm to see the young man at the door raise his eyebrows and shoot Will an assessing gaze before replying.
“Lord Frederick Ashdowne and Lady Harriet Ashdowne are at home, sir. Shall I inform them you have come…to call?” The young man looked up at the night sky, as if to imply calling at such a late hour was akin to heresy.
Will glanced back at Ada with a questioning expression. Neither of them had expected the Ashdownes to be at home. Only days before Ada had confronted the siblings in their London townhouse. The brother and sister must have decamped shortly afterwards.
Ada shrugged, less helpful, perhaps, than Will wished her to be.
“Yes, if you would be so good. Thank you.”
Will pointed his cane ahead of him to indicate Ada should precede him into Wythrope’s massive entry hall, and both of them followed the young man into a drawing room to the right of a grand double staircase.
When the young man left them alone in the room, Will reached his hand out to Ada and she grasped it quickly, grateful for his strong, steady presence. If he was concerned about another confrontation with Ashdowne, it did not show on his face or in his gaze. Yet he seemed to sense the fear that made it difficult for her to stop shivering.
“You have nothing to fear from Ashdowne. We shall face him together.”
Ada drew closer to Will. After what they had shared on the train, she was finding it difficult to stay her hands from touching him at every opportunity. She turned her gaze up to his face and focused on his cool grey eyes. The emotion she saw there both ignited and soothed her.
He bent his head down and her mouth tingled, anticipating his kiss, but movement and sound beyond the drawing room door made them pause.
Ada heard women’s voices and laughter, their giggles high-pitched and harsh to her ears. One woman’s voice was louder, her words clear.
“No, this one’s the sitting room, I am certain. Is it not far too easy to get turned around with so many rooms?”
When the doorknob began to turn Ada pulled away from Will. Propriety dictated she had no right to touch him, no matter how she wished to. But he held her fast, allowing her to step away but not releasing her hand. His gaze never wavered from her face, even when the woman who stepped across the drawing room threshold cried out his name.
“William!”
Ada thought the woman’s laughter was shrill, but it was nothing to the sound of her scream. And she did truly scream Will’s name.
When both she and Will turned their heads toward the sound, Ada sensed Will’s shudder before he released her hand. His eyes had gone wide, as wide as eyes of the woman who stared at him from the doorway. She was a striking figure, tall and willowy, with auburn ringlets framing her face and cascading down around her shoulders.
“Is it truly you? I cannot believe it. They told me you would lose your leg. And your arm. They told me you might never walk again. Never be whole again.”
The woman rambled on as she approached them, her elegant gown fluttering around her. She walked right up to Will, as close as Ada stood to him, then closer, and reached her hand up toward his cheek. She paused just before touching him, as if she feared he was a phantasm.
“But you are whole. Whole and well and as impressive as ever.” She touched him then, her fingertips grazing his cheek and tracing a line toward his temple, and Ada saw him flinch. “You always did have the most beautiful eyes.”
The woman did not seem to notice Ada’s presence at all. Her whole focus was on Will’s face, but when she stepped one pace forward, as if she meant to do more—kiss him?—the woman who had followed her into the drawing room called out.
“Emilia!”
Her companion’s tone was harsh, scolding, and seemed to bring Emilia out of a kind of daze.
Watching Will, Ada thought he looked relieved Emilia had stopped touching him, stopped moving toward him. He reached for Ada’s hand again and she took his, stroking his skin and feeling the ridge of scars under her
fingertips.
Ada whispered to him. “Who is that woman?”
“Come away, dear.” The woman who accompanied Emilia was tugging at her arm, trying to extract her from the scene.
But Emilia, now weeping and sniffling, continued to ramble, her words directed at Will.
“I never wished to marry him. Even with all his titles and houses and the castle… I would have married you.”
“My goodness, Emilia, I wondered where you had got to.”
Ada recognized the imperious tone of Lady Harriet, the woman who had lost her a position at the hospital, an appointment she had worked so hard to earn.
When Lady Harriet saw the assembled group and noted the tears streaming down Emilia’s face, she turned pale before directing an angry gaze at Ada and then Will.
“I don’t recall extending you an invitation, Captain Selsby. You or your…companion.” Lady Harriet turned her attention to the woman called Emilia. “Duchess, come away from all of this.”
Ada was stunned to hear that the woman who cried for Will was a duchess, even higher in rank than Lady Harriet, if Ada had her lords and ladies and titles right.
Will had not spoken to Emilia. Ada had barely seen him turn his gaze in the woman’s direction, but then he glanced at Emilia once before speaking calmly and quietly to Ada.
“We should depart. There is no help for us here.”
Relief swept over Ada. She wanted nothing more than to leave Wythorpe, to turn her back on the Ashdownes and the woman who watched Will with a tearful, longing gaze. She was curious about the woman but knew her questions were better left for another time.
He led her, drawing her along, her hand in his.
Lady Harriet spared them one last disdainful glance and they had almost made it to the threshold when Emilia broke away from the woman who embraced her and launched herself at Will.
He turned his body to shield Ada, and then craned his head back, offering his first words to the woman who was so affected by the sight of him.
“Miss Copley. Emilia. What was between us is in the past. Let us leave it there.”
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