He prodded the congealing film on top of his cooling bowl with a spoon. “It really isn’t.”
She dipped her own spoon again. Objectively, there was too much broth, too little salt, and almost no meaty bits.
“It’s only edible because we’re both famished,” he told her. “You should eat more than the soup.”
She didn’t say anything. She took a bite of bread instead. It was excellent bread, delicious bread…
Well, technically, it was both dry and chewy all at the same time, as if the loaf had been forgotten in the cellar for a week after being baked. The crumb was almost impossible to tear with her teeth, and the loaf itself was dense as a board.
“Good thing I’m famished,” Camilla said with a little nod of her head. “Or I’d finish the meal far too hungry.”
He shook his head. They ate for a few minutes longer. Every bite she took chipped away at her hunger, bit by bit, and made the food less palatable.
She was still hungry when she gave up on the soup.
He set his spoon on the table and prodded the potato with his fork. It promptly fell into bits, as if it had been boiled into mush. “My brother says I’m too trusting, but…” He shrugged. “I am who I am. It’s not changing. I could sit here and wonder whether I could tell you the truth. I could dance around the issue and keep silent, and you could wonder why I was behaving in a secretive and irrational manner. Or I could tell you everything all at once, hope for the best, and we could work together to get ourselves out of this situation.”
Camilla felt her lips tilt up in a smile. “What an incredibly difficult decision you have before you. You could lock yourself in a cage of your own making. Or you could not. I suppose it’s up to you.”
He stared at her for a moment before his face crinkled into a warm smile. “I like you.”
Well, that made one person. It was one person more than the zero it had felt like an hour before. She took another sip of her soup. “Your voice sounds different.” She wasn’t sure when it had changed, or even how, the shift was so subtle.
“That’s because I’m not trying to fit in with servants any longer. This is how I sound when I’m around family.”
“Do you alter your speech much?”
“All the time. Most white Englishmen are nervous enough around me. The more familiar I sound, the more comfortable they are, and the less likely they are to have the constables come after me on some pretext. It’s not even something I do on purpose most of the time. I’m just very good at fitting in, in every way that I can.”
Camilla thought of her own speech. It, too, had shifted. Once, she’d had a governess who had drilled her on her vowels, slapping her palm with a ruler when Camilla spoke like—what had she called it? “Like a stable boy,” the woman had said. “Speech makes a lady.” Camilla had eaten it up, believing that if only her vowels were perfect enough, nothing bad could ever happen to her.
But no. She wasn’t going to think of her family and the legacy she’d left behind. That version of Camilla was gone forever.
“That makes sense,” she said instead.
“Let me get right to it, then. My name is Adrian Hunter. My mother was born Elizabeth Laurel Denmore, the daughter of the Duke of Castleford.”
Camilla blinked.
“Which is why,” Mr. Hunter said, straightening in his seat, and shifting something about his face, something so subtle she couldn’t even identify it, “I can also talk like this. Do you see what I mean?”
Like her governess. Like the lady Camilla had once thought she would be. She swallowed and looked up at him. “That’s…very good. Bravo!”
“My mother met my father when she was twenty-five and a widow at a meeting of abolitionists.”
She looked over at him. “Before slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire? That was a while ago.”
“I’m the youngest of…” His smile flickered momentarily; he looked away. “Two. I suppose it doesn’t sound so impressive that way, does it? My father was a speaker for the abolitionist cause. Guess where he was born.”
She swallowed. It felt rude to make assumptions, but he had asked. “Africa?”
“Close. Maine, in the United States of America.”
“I didn’t think the former colonies were close at all to Africa!”
His smile flashed out at her. “Not that close, no. I was just trying to make you feel better.”
The conversation felt like it had the first time they’d met. Despite everything that had happened that day, he was easy to talk to. She found herself smiling in response.
“To make a long story short, when my parents married, her father disowned her entirely. If you’ll believe it, my grandmother suggested she could take my father as a lover, but to marry him would be beyond the pall.”
Camilla thought of her own uncle, shuffling her off to distant relations without a hint of embarrassment. “I’ll believe anything of the gentry, really.”
“After tonight? I should say so. In any event, her brother, my uncle on my mother’s side, is the Bishop of Gainshire. He kept in contact with my mother. He’s always been…shall we say, not entirely opposed to the causes my family cares about? We’ve always held out hope that maybe he’d come around. He asked me for a favor, and I thought…” Mr. Hunter looked up and let out a sigh. “Never mind the reasons, really. I am explaining how I came to be impersonating a valet. My uncle believes that Bishop Lassiter has done something wrong, and he asked me to help determine what it was.”
Camilla’s head hurt trying to follow this story. “I…see.” She might, in a day or so, after she’d slept. But even on this, the longest day of her life, when she wanted nothing more than to retire to bed for a week… It wasn’t the most believable story.
“That brings me to you. You seem like a perfectly nice girl, but I don’t wish to be married to you.”
That hurt not just her head, but somewhere just beneath her breastbone. Camilla bit her lip. It wasn’t that she wanted him to swear his undying love. She wouldn’t have believed him if he had. But it would have been nice if he’d been a little bit less blunt about not wanting her at all. It had been lovely earlier, when he had said he liked her.
“Of course you do not,” she said instead.
“I imagine you don’t wish to be married to me, either.”
What was she to say to that? She wished the whole last day hadn’t happened. She knew what she was—desperate, grasping, wanting, so much that maybe she’d hoped that he’d confess over terrible soup that he’d developed an affection for her, something that could blossom into more if they tended it properly.
What luck, that they’d married at gunpoint, she had perhaps hoped he would say.
God, it sounded stupid even admitting it in her head. And his story—she still didn’t understand it. But of course he hadn’t fallen in love at first sight. That
didn’t happen, not except in stories, and Camilla knew she wasn’t any sort of heroine. There was nothing to do but pull her bravado about her like a cloak, and let none of her hurt show.
“I do prefer husbands I’ve known longer than a week.”
He nodded, as if this was the answer he’d wanted. Good. She’d made the right choice.
“So, let us make a pact. I know a little bit about how annulments work.”
“Annulments?”
“Yes, annulments.” He leaned across the table to look at her. “You must consent to be married, and saying ‘I do’ at gunpoint is not consent.”
Camilla swallowed. “But—the witnesses, our witnesses. One of them was a rector who knows me exceptionally well. The other was my particular friend.”
She had used to hope Kitty was something like her friend, at any rate. After what she’d said? After the key ring that had appeared in her pocket as if by magic? Obviously, Camilla had been wrong again.
“And we were married by a bishop. Who will believe our version of events?”
“My uncle.” He sounded almost uncertain, but as she watched, his jaw set. “My uncle,” he repeated more definitely. “I told you I worked with my uncle, the Bishop of Gainshire? He cares for me and my family. I know it sounds ridiculous. I know you have no reason to believe that I would know a bishop on such intimate terms, but it is true. If I were lying, I’d come up with a better story. If I can swear to him truthfully that we qualify for an annulment, he will help us get one.”
Camilla bit her lip. “So that’s it, then? We just ask your uncle?”
What would happen to her after the marriage was annulled? She tried not to panic at the thought.
“It’s a bit more complicated than that. There’s this thing called consent after the fact.”
Camilla was tired. The day had been interminable. But that made no sense, no matter how she turned it over in her head. Either one consented or one didn’t. Her nose wrinkled. “That’s a thing?”
“Law,” he said in commiserating tones, making a face similar to hers. “Ecclesiastical law. But it’s not that tricky. We must continue to show that we haven’t started to consent to the marriage until it’s properly annulled. That means we can’t tell other people we’re husband and wife.”