She turned the idea over. She had her own funds through her grandfather. She could travel until the scandal died down—or forever, if she wished. She could even still travel to visit her father, simply without a husband. She’d memorized her father’s address years ago, a Venetian palazzo on the Grand Canal that he shared with his new family. Given his past, he could hardly refuse her. But he’d abandoned her once before. And if he rejected her again, what would she have lost that wasn’t already gone? The thought of running made her breathe easier than she had in weeks.
Below her window, Colin stood, still smiling, as upright a man as she’d ever met. A man she would have been proud to marry . . . before. The anxiety returned. Even if she could run, could she expose Colin to that sort of opprobrium? Could she repay his kindness with scandal? And if she became faithless once—and to her dearest friend—could she ever be found faithful again?
No matter what choice she made, someone suffered.
The bells rang out the final call to the service.
Look up, she willed him, wanting Colin to look toward her window and give her courage. Just a glance could settle her nerves. But he stood in heavy conversation with his brothers and Sam, until the duke gestured them to the chapel’s office door. She watched Sam hold open the door, watched Colin follow the duke inside, and watched the door swing shut. She imagined it thudding against the door frame as would a prison door.
The carriage yard was empty. As she was.
She waited. Jeffreys would return soon to escort her to the chapel.
Then she saw him.
A severely dressed man in a dark red tailcoat walked through the graveyard. A man who should be dead. Letting himself through the gate, he strode toward the chapel. His steady pace was more suitable to a funeral than a wedding. Inexorable, unyielding, like the progress of time.
She didn’t need to see his face to know it was Adam.
She’d watched him walk across the fields too many times.
He’d come.
But not for her.
She knew him that well, at least. No, like Lucy, he’d come to say goodbye.
But he’d come. Even if back from the grave, he had come.
Somehow that helped her to decide.
Jeffreys’s knock at the door drew her attention from the window. “Lady Emmeline, it’s time.”
“Join me, Jeffreys.” Emmeline walked slowly to her writing desk and took a seat. “I need your counsel.”
Chapter Three
He hadn’t thought this through.
All he wanted was to forget her. A dead man should be able to forget. But every night, if he slept at all, she appeared to him, her hand uplifted as if to touch his cheek, her dark eyes filled with tears and anger. In the dreams, he called out, wanting her to stay. But each time she turned away, as he’d expected, as he’d intended. Leaving her had made dying easier. He hadn’t known then that the living could haunt the dead.
At first, Adam could escape Emmeline’s ghost by burying himself in work—in plans and stratagems, intrigue, and machinations. He chose the most dangerous assignments, hoping that someone would do him the kindness of making him a dead man a second, more permanent time. So, it seemed only reasonable—if reason could be found at the bottom of a bottle—that seeing her marry would exorcise her ghost and give him peace at last.
Of course, he’d come to that reasonable conclusion, while alone in the dark belly of Whitehall, hours after his Home Office colleagues had left for the wedding in the spacious carriages Lord Colin had provided. Once Adam had decided he must go to the wedding, his only option was the last seat on the last post coach from London to Gloucestershire.
As further punishment, he’d spent the ride wedged between a Sadler’s Wells actor and an itinerant preacher, both declaiming loudly from their respective holy books, and neither liking the other’s performance. Adam, for his part, made a drinking game of it: one swallow of Irish whiskey for every “hale fellow” in Shakespeare or for every heathen smote with the judgment of the Lord in the Bible. The bottle was empty long before Oxford.
Adam turned his hired horse into yet another stable yard, hoping this one—the tenth in as many miles—would have an open stall. A brisk walk to the wedding would clear his head of its spongy whiskey edges. Besides, he needed to come and go from Emmeline’s estate unimpeded and unrecognized. He was supposed to be dead, and dead men didn’t attend weddings.
The stableboy at the inn studied him carefully, then shook his head a broad no. Even though Adam’s brain was still fuzzy from the whiskey, the stableboy’s look gave him pause.
No, he hadn’t thought this through.
Adam turned his horse back into the lane. He should have predicted that Emmeline’s wedding would become the event of the season—or at least of December. He’d had to give up reading the newspapers entirely. Every page seemed to offer some notice of the impending nuptials of reclusive country heiress Lady Emmeline Hartley to the dashing former Waterloo officer, Lord Colin Somerville, brother to the Duck of Forster.
Duke, not duck. Adam shook his head, straightening out his slurring words. But if Aidan were a duck—Adam let himself play with the idea—which one would he be? A mallard? Or perhaps a merganser, all trim and shiny? He considered every option, liking puffin a great deal. But all the time he knew that if Aidan were any bird, it would be a falcon or a hawk or some other bird of prey. And if that bird knew that Adam wasn’t just a friend of the groom’s family, but of the bride herself . . .
No, it wouldn’t come to that.
He only needed to hear her voice. He didn’t need to see her.
But the stableboy’s stare had reminded him of the stakes. Every time Adam stopped in a carriage yard or posting inn, he risked being recognized. Some in the counties nearest Emmeline’s lands would not be happy to see him alive, Em likely in their number.
All that risk, and still no open stall for his rented horse.
No, he hadn’t thought this through at all.
Worse yet, he was acting like a regular wedding guest, one who traveled the main roads and stayed at the typical inns. But he knew this land, and if he were going to risk its residents remembering him, he might at least find a damn stable.
He turned off the main road, taking to lanes and paths he had never intended to travel again. He would find a stall for his horse, damn it, and he would see that damn woman married, if it killed him. Or someone else did.
* * *
Adam pulled his horse into the yard of a dilapidated cottage with a more dilapidated barn. In regular circumstances, he wouldn’t stable any animal here, even a hire.
A wizened old man opened the cottage door.
“Any space in your barn?” Adam called out the question, even though, from the sounds from the stable, he could already tell the answer. If there were no stall, he would have to decide: return to London or continue on to Hartshorne Hall. He couldn’t simply tie his horse to a tree and hope for the best.
“Aye.” The ancient man pulled the cottage door shut behind him, but remained at the doorway. “One.”
Perhaps this would work out after all.
“How much?” Adam threw himself down from the horse’s seat. He studied the landscape: the walk to Hartshorne Hall would take under an hour.
“It’s not for rent.” The old man rubbed his nose with a stubbed finger.
Adam started to argue, but stopped himself. The man’s age, if nothing else, warranted a polite reply.