The Unforgettable Hero(29)
Adam nodded, his jaw still clenched. “I’ll send you back in the coach and will bring her along shortly.”
Mary nodded. “Very well. I’ll await her there.”
As soon as the girl had left, Adam rang for Hughes. The butler entered the room and stood at attention. “Will you please see to it that Mary gets home safely and send a maid to fetch Miss Harcourt?”
“As you wish, sir.”
Minutes later, Cecelia tentatively entered the room wearing the same gown she’d been in the day he’d met her. Her rumpled manuscript was in her arms.
“You … wanted to see me?” she asked in a slightly shaking voice.
“I spoke to Mary this morning,” he replied in a voice he intended to be void of all emotion. “She’s on her way home now.”
“She left without me?”
“I told her I’d take you home. I wanted to speak with you … alone.”
Tears sparkled in her eyes. “I see.”
“The carriage should return momentarily.”
No more words were spoken until nearly twenty minutes later when the coach arrived. Adam held her manuscript and assisted her in, then handed the pages to her and climbed in behind her. He sat opposite her and braced his elbow against the sill.
She placed the manuscript on the tufted velvet squabs next to her and folded her hands in her lap. “Adam, I think it’s best if—”
“You’ll forgive me if I’m confused as to what you think is best. Your decisions over the last twenty-four hours have entirely befuddled me.”
She reached out a hand toward him but soon let it fall back into her lap. “Are you angry with me?”
He pressed a knuckle to his temple. “I want to know why. Why did you ask to stay last night?”
She heaved a deep sigh. “I can’t explain it. Not in any way that would make sense to you. I wanted to pretend. For just one more night.”
His fist tightened into a knot at his side. “Your sister said as much. I only hoped it wasn’t true. Were you pretending in my bed?”
“No! Never. I—”
“Got used to living in a fine house, did you?” His voice was flat.
“No.” She shook her head vehemently. “That’s not it at all. I wanted to be with someone I cared about. It’s just that—”
Adam studied her. The look of shock on her face made him think she was telling the truth at first, but then cold reality settled over his heart. This woman was a liar and a consummate actress. No doubt she’d remembered who she was sooner than yesterday. Perhaps she’d never forgotten.
“It’s just that what?” he interrupted. “You couldn’t help yourself?”
She’d gone completely pale. “I know you have no reason to believe me, Adam. But I wanted to stay with you. For one more night.”
“Ah, yes. You were pretending I was your betrothed, weren’t you?”
The coach came to a stop in front of her father’s town house.
“You don’t understand,” she began. “I—”
“I think I do understand. The question is, will your true affianced understand. You are engaged, are you not, Miss Harcourt? You let me touch you and hold you last night when all the while you were pledged to another man. Not to me or to the fictitious Duke of Loveridge. But to someone named Percy.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Three weeks later
“I thought I’d find you here.”
Adam looked up to see Derek striding through the smoky tavern. It was a small watering hole not too far from Derek’s house in Mayfair but far enough away that it certainly was no competition for the esteemed gentlemen’s clubs of St. James. The Curious Goat was different. Untitled men came here. Men like Adam.
“I told you that you’re welcome to come with me to Brooks’s,” Derek said as he pulled over a chair and sat next to his brother. He tossed a coin to the serving maid and ordered a tankard of ale.
“And I told you that I prefer it here,” Adam replied. He’d tried Brooks’s. Went there more than once. But it was the sort of place where everyone saw him as one thing and one thing only, the brother of the newly minted Duke of Claringdon. That was all anyone there would ever see. They never asked him about himself. No. They always had searching eyes. “Where is your brother? Haven’t seen him of late.” It made Adam want to punch the asker in the jaw. It didn’t seem to bother Collin the way it did Adam, but Adam was acutely aware that he didn’t belong. He was only welcome by association. Here at the Curious Goat no one knew he was the brother of a duke, and more important, no one cared.