Chapter Twenty-Six
My story is not an indictment of desire; it is an indictment of inequality.
If you believe our act in conceiving a child was sinful, we both sinned. If you believe, as I do, that our act was natural, we both took our pleasure.
But I was judged, sentenced, and punished; my lover was not. And I am one of nameless thousands.
Is it coincidence, that the men who enact the laws of the kingdom are the same ones who are spared? None of us is guiltless. Yet half of us bear the consequence and the other half walk free.
—Memoirs of a Rakess, Volume II
* * *
What was it about a man’s tears that made even the most shale-hearted woman feel like she would rather die than watch him cry?
Adam sobbed like he was grieving something.
“Darling, slow down,” she said, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. “What can’t you do? Tell me what’s the matter.”
He sat back, put his head in his hands and gathered his breath. Then he looked up at her with shattered, red-rimmed eyes. “I have to end this.”
She froze.
Her arms stung. She looked down at her wrists and saw the fine hairs on her skin were standing straight up in the air.
Her body understood before her mind did.
He was grieving her.
“What’s happened?” she asked faintly.
He closed his eyes and shook his head.
“Every hour of the day I’m a breath away from coming here. I want to live with you, I want to fuck you, I want—”
It was difficult to divorce the meaning of these words from the horrible way he said them, his accent as thick as she had ever heard it, his breath harsh, like he was confessing he had a fatal illness.
“And it’s a fantasy,” he said. “It’s a juvenile, reckless bloody fantasy because every shred of that’s impossible.”
“Why is it impossible?” she asked, taking care to speak to him gently, as she might address a child. “Slow down. Help me understand.”
“Because of who you are, and who I’m not able to be.”
This explained nothing, but when he opened his eyes, there was not a question in them but a certainty.
No.
She wrapped her arms around herself. She felt so cold.
He kept those awful, anguished eyes on her. “I have two children with no mother who I’ve scarcely seen in weeks, and every moment I can steal, I’m contriving ways to be with you. I owe six thousand pounds to Mayhew, and he wants it back. I’m days away from landing a commission that will set me for life, and I can’t focus on winning it because my head is here.”
He was just exhausted. People said things they didn’t mean when they were overwrought.
“Adam, darling, you’re tired. Let’s get you home, or you can sleep here if you like, and we’ll sort this out in a week or two, when you’ve finished your work.”
He shook his head. “Even if I win the commission, if people found about us—”
No.
He looked at the floor and did not finish his sentence.
He didn’t have to.
She sank back against the wall. “I see. You’re worried for your reputation.”
He nodded with such heaviness it was like the movement pained his neck. “The selection is made by the Royal Board of Works. Lord Pendrake is the ultimate decision maker.”
No.
Adam was watching her closely, as if to see if she understood the implication. But of course she bloody understood. Of course she did.
“Lord Pendrake will decide your fate? And you have known this and said nothing of it at all?”
He nodded with that same weariness, as though he could no more believe it than she. “I know how it must look. I didn’t mention it because I was sure you must despise his politics.” He paused and looked down at his lap, wincing. “I don’t admire the man’s views, but I can’t afford to be precious about them. I thought I could keep my work separate from . . . this. You. But my partner learned Pendrake is close with Lord Bell. And the risk of association is just . . . it’s more than we can afford.”
We. How chilling those words were when used to define a group one was outside of.
“I see,” she said faintly.
She wondered how long he'd been plotting to give her up over Pendrake's good opinion. Had he decided this afternoon, while she'd allowed herself to daydream that he might smile when she told him her news? Last week, when they'd made love? And for Pendrake, of all the ironies.
God, she’d been so stupid.
Adam knelt before her and took her hands. “Sera, don’t look at me like that. Please. My every instinct says to blow it up to hell. But you see, my instincts can’t be trusted. When I follow them, when I take what I want and damn the consequences, I destroy things. I’ve done it before. And I cannot live with myself if I do it again.”
She wrested away her hands and pressed her fingers to her temples. His emotional display was far less moving with every second he knelt on her polished floorboards lamenting his decision to betray her. “Destroy things?” she repeated sharply. “What do you mean?”
He looked up at the ceiling, pained. “Catriona nearly died giving birth to Adeline,” he said quietly. “The physician said that another pregnancy would likely kill her. He took me aside and told me in no uncertain terms not to ‘bother’ my wife.”
His lips curled around the word bother.
“I’d been in love with Cat since I was twelve years old. I should have treated those words like gospel. I should have protected her, put her safety above my . . . needs. My children’s mother. But I loved her so much, and coupling had always been . . . a part of that. A part of us. To not be together, ever, at all was like—” He clenched his eyes shut.
She was remembering all the times he’d flinched at the idea of penetration. She’d thought his concern had been abstract.
The anguish on his face said something very different.
“We did try to be cautious. But we were not careful enough and she conceived. Her third pregnancy was much easier than Addie’s, and we both took that as a sign that the doctor had been wrong. And then when her time came the delivery was . . .”
He shook his head.
She did not want to hear the rest of this story.
She could fill in the gaps from her own life.
That animal fear. The mysterious rhythm, the primal pain, all of it absolutely beyond anyone’s control.
Stop, she wanted to say, I can’t listen to this. Not now.
But he was no longer looking at her. His eyes were fixed in the middle of the room, surveying his own grief.
“The labor went on for days and by the end the baby was not living and there was a problem with the afterbirth—an infection. She wasn’t strong enough. We lost them both.”
His hands were shaking. He needed comfort, she could see that.
He was telling her this not because it brought him any pleasure to recount it but because he needed her to understand, to forgive him.
He could not know that every word he said injured her twice over. Salt rubbed into the gashes of her past. An extra lashing for her future.
Get through this, she commanded herself.
She forced herself to reach out and take his hand. His skin was too hot and she wanted to recoil, but he squeezed her gratefully.