“Be fair,” Adrian said. “The men who decided this are all dead, too. It’ll be a different set of men.”
Camilla looked up at him. Her eyes narrowed. She wasn’t going to laugh. “Is this amusing to you?”
“No,” he said. “It’s not. It’s why my uncle’s help is of the utmost importance. If they think we are upstanding people, they’ll be more likely to treat our story, outrageous as it is, with belief and kindness. If they don’t…” He shrugged. “Well, you’ve seen it. This all would be dead easy if you were a lady; we could play the lady and the utter blackguard for the court, and the annulment would come too swiftly for us to blink. They’d find a way to make sure you weren’t tied to the likes of me.”
“The likes of you.” Camilla blazed out. “If they say anything about the likes of you, I’ll beat them, too. As if these idiots could judge anyone’s character. I hope she hit him.”
“You hope who hit whom?”
“Miss Tabbott.” She gestured. “Sir William. Of course.”
And then the words he’d spoken came back to her—if you were a lady—and she remembered. She tried to think of her past so little that it no longer registered as a truth about her, not even when he said it aloud. This all would be dead easy if you were a lady.
Of course. He didn’t know.
How could he know? She hadn’t told him. She hadn’t wanted to look back.
They might be able to end this tomorrow, without any of this rigmarole. All she had to do was tell him the one thing that she no longer wanted to recall.
He would thank her; she could let him go without letting him see how much she hurt.
Or…she could keep silent and have him for a little longer. For company. For tea.
She looked over at him across the table. For a moment, she wavered on the edge of indecision. Was it even a lie, if she simply chose not to tell him the truth?
No. It wasn’t a lie. Camilla shut her eyes.
“Camilla? Is everything all right?”
It hurt to remember it. She could not be anything except a scandal to her family. The truth of her birth had no relevance here. She didn’t have to tell him.
It wasn’t a lie.
But it wasn’t right, either.
She exhaled slowly. “There’s something I should tell you.” Her eyes opened. “I didn’t mention it earlier; I didn’t know it would be of use. But… You should know that I used a false name on the registry.”
He blinked. “That doesn’t invalidate the marriage, you know.”
“My family name is not Winters. I was born Camilla Worth.” She kept her eyes down. “My father was the Earl of Linney, and he was hanged for treason, so my family name has no real value. Rector Miles convinced me to use a different name, so that the shame of who I had become would not further damn the rest of my family. They’ve made it out of this mess. I don’t… Even if they don’t want me, I don’t want to hurt them. But you said we could use it, so…” She shrugged. Her throat felt hoarse. “Here you are.”
“The shame of who you are?” he repeated. He said the words slower, enunciating them, grinding them into her soul.
“Please don’t make me say it. I don’t even like thinking it.”
For a long moment, he didn’t speak. She could hear the tick of a clock behind them. She shifted uncomfortably.
“I know you don’t believe me. But…I thought I should tell you.” She lifted her head to look at him.
He was watching her, his eyes dark and intense. “It likely wouldn’t help, you know,” he said slowly. “Your sister hasn’t talked to you in years, and you’d need her to vouch for her.”
“Well. Then.”
“But you didn’t have to tell me. Why did you?”
She shrugged one shoulder. She could not speak, not with that lump in her throat.
“I…” He shook his head and leaned forward and set his hand atop hers. “Camilla, I know how hard this has been for you. At this point, you have seen where I come from, what I have. I have several homes, horses, and ready funds. You have nothing. All you would have to do was lie, once, to the examiners, you realize, and there would be no annulment. I would be legally obligated to supply your needs for the rest of your life.”
“Please don’t point it out.” Camilla didn’t want to be tempted.
“And I know what you want. You want permanence. A place to stay.”
She couldn’t meet his eyes. “Someone to care about me, just a little.”
“And yet here you are, helping me win an annulment that leaves you worse off.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I can’t help but know it.”
“Why, then?”
Because she didn’t want to hurt him. Because she made bad choices. Because… “You told me the other day, that someday someone would love me for who I was?” The room felt large around her. Or maybe she felt unbearably small. “I shouldn’t believe it. There is no evidence it can be true. If it could happen, would it not have done so, once?”
“Camilla.”
“I should not believe it, but I do. I have no reason for hope, so I hope beyond reason. I keep hoping, that someday, someone will care. I believe that I deserve it, even though I know I cannot. I have known for years that it cannot be, and yet I refuse to stop hoping. You are the only person in the world who has ever told me that I should keep on hoping. I’m not going to repay that kindness with cruelty.”
He was watching her so intently, some fierce emotion in his eyes that she couldn’t quite interpret.
Now that she’d given voice to that hope, it rose within her, strong and indomitable. She was going to be loved, damn it. Someday. She was going to.
It wouldn’t be him. She knew that, the way she knew that she wished it would be.
“You can’t steal love,” she told him. “You can only earn it. And I want to be the kind of person who can still believe, after all this time, that I will deserve it.”
“That’s it.” He stood straight up and closed his notebook of sketches. “That’s what I’ve been missing—the last three plates, of course—we’ve been trying to tell the wrong story.”
“Your pardon? Adrian—we should talk about whether we use this—”
He almost ran to the door. “Sorry—I have to fix this now. It’s—ah, sorry!”
He was putting on a coat and hat, and Camilla was utterly bewildered.
“I’ll tell you when it’s done.” The smile he gave her was painful and brilliant and so warm that it felt like it could burn her. “I’m sorry,” he apologized one last time. “I have to go.”
* * *
Adrian barely saw her for days once he understood what to do with the plates. It didn’t matter.
He gradually came to realize that he had a problem over the course of those days.
He spent most of his time at Harvil Industries, working with his artists. Refining, looking for everything that was wrong, shaping the china designs again and again until the story meant more and more to each of them.
He came home for late repasts.
Camilla was always there. She’d tell him about something new she’d read in the ecclesiastical reports or another idea for when he had time again. They would talk, and he would like it, and he didn’t have time to think about how much he was liking it. He really didn’t.
He’d go to sleep and he’d think about china designs—about tigers chasing dreams, and…
And the plates weren’t about her. Really, they weren’t. Every one of the artists involved had a different opinion of what they meant. Mrs. Song didn’t precisely cry when they decided on that first plate, a tiger cub chasing that stylized dream over a waterfall into new and strange terrain, but it was close. Adrian felt a strange compression in his chest when they planned out the last one.
The plates weren’t about Camilla. They were about everyone.
Yet somehow, Adrian had started thinking of her as part of that everyone.
That yearning just got worse with ever