After the Wedding (The Worth Saga 2)

y passing day.

Adrian had a problem, he realized after he’d been working on the design for so long his head was spinning with lack of sleep.

Truth be told, he’d had one for a while, but he admitted it to himself for the first time on a long night, while they were on the verge of finishing their designs.

He realized it at night, in bed, when he was alone.

It wasn’t cold, and he wasn’t lonely. Not in any traditional sense of the word. He wasn’t one of those sordid creatures who claimed that it was impossible to go for any length of time without having intercourse: any man who claimed such a need was hardly a man.

Adrian had nobody to blame for his problem but himself, and he should have seen it coming.

His problem was this: Adrian liked Camilla.

He more than liked her; he’d noticed that first dizzying swirl of sexual interest the first day they’d met. She was pretty and so easy to talk to. She listened to him and had her own thoughts. She’d adjusted to the whirlwind that they’d embarked on with a grace that few would have managed.

He knew what she’d gone through; he’d watched Rector Miles and the others she had worked with for only a handful of days, and even that alone had been mildly painful to watch.

She’d told him everything she had experienced, and as bare as her recital had been, he’d heard her loneliness, her worry. He knew how much she yearned.

And still, she’d looked him in the face and told him that she believed she would be loved.

It had sunk into his skin. Every moment he spent with her, he found himself wanting—just a little. Every minute in her company, his heart seized with an almost painful gladness. Tonight, she had talked about something else she had found in that book of ecclesiastical law that she had started carrying about. He’d found himself leaning forward, smiling, wanting that future happiness for her, so much that…

That he’d gripped the arms of his chair to keep from reaching out and touching her himself.

He let out a sigh.

Oh, he had a problem. If they weren’t semi-legally married, it might be different. He might have moved his hand to touch her tonight. He might have asked if he could kiss her, just so he could taste the determination in her voice. If they hadn’t been married, he could have explored this—slowly, sweetly.

But they were something like married, and he didn’t want to be. They had to not consummate the marriage. And if they started kissing and touching… No. A bad idea all around. He knew it was a bad idea.

More importantly, he knew how much Camilla wanted affection; it would be the cruelest thing he could do—to give that affection she wanted to her, when he didn’t want anything aside from that momentary affirmation. That footman she mentioned had done just that to her—used her and then discarded her.

He wasn’t cruel; he just didn’t want to be married to her. He wouldn’t want to be married to anyone like this.

He liked her. And he wanted her. He shut his eyes and let himself imagine a different conclusion to their talk this evening—or any of the evenings they’d spent together. He imagined her eyes, sparkling in the lamp light, the fierce determination on her face as she looked across the room and said that she wasn’t going to steal love, that she was going to earn it.

He imagined that they weren’t semi-goddamn-why-me-legally married, or whatever this was, and he could tell her the truth: You deserve the world at your feet.

She would look at him with the confidence that had begun to creep up on her, a look that suited her as if it had been perfectly tailored for her. She’d tilt her chin up.

“Oh?” He could just see how she would say it. “Why don’t you show me?”

Now he was veering into fantasy territory, but—he knew this for a rationalization—it was better to get the fantasies out of his blood than to indulge in more of this foolishness while watching her over supper.

God, he wanted to show her what it was like to be desired. Camilla wasn’t the sort to lie there passively, not if she were interested as well. He’d do his best to listen to her, to watch her awakening desire and to stoke it until she was gasping beneath him.

He gave up on pretending. He took hold of his hardening cock and imagined her hand on his, the warmth of her exhaled breath in his ear. He imagined her kissing down his neck, her body brushing his lightly at first, and then with more certainty.

She’d slide down on him so wetly, so perfectly.

His hand was an imperfect substitute, but it would do. He strained up into it, thinking of her, of the little noises she would make as her hips met his. She would smile as he found every sensitive spot with his tongue—ears, breasts, everywhere he could reach. She wouldn’t play coy; she’d give herself to him with all abandon. She wasn’t the sort to hold back.

His hand moved faster; his whole body seemed afire. God, he was an idiot; he couldn’t be thinking about her this way. He was going to have to see her tomorrow; he couldn’t be wondering what it would be like if she—if they—

And then he wasn’t thinking at all. His body tipped over the edge, filled with heat and desire. He painfully swallowed his own grunt of pleasure before it came out sounding like her name.

He lay in bed afterward, far too warm and more than a little embarrassed. Not that there was anything wrong with masturbation. If it were actually possible to go blind from it, he’d have lost his sight long before he turned eighteen.

It was a bad idea, thinking about her like this. It was possibly the worst idea he could have had.

She’d had enough done to her. She’d been hurt too much. She trusted him. He wasn’t going to be the person who took her confidence, not when she had so little of anything in this world.

And the fact that she might, possibly, be willing to give…

…That was unthinkable. Because with her, with the way things were, there could be no idle kissing, no mere enjoyment to be found together. If he came to her wanting this, he was married to her for life. He had a problem, but that’s what real men did—they had problems on their own, where the solution required a hand towel to clean up afterwards, and not an apology to someone for ruining her life.

Well.

On the bright side, masturbation was limited only by his refractory period. And it made less of a mess.

* * *

Camilla didn’t realize she was changing until she was almost at the end of her transformation.

It started with Miss Laney Tabbott, the woman who was seduced and abandoned by the horrid, lying Sir William.

She read the court’s account again and again—first, she thought, to learn what was happening and how she could do better. Then she started reading it with her crochet hook in hand, thinking and wondering and crocheting without truly knowing her own thoughts.

She imagined that she was Miss Laney Tabbott, born a century and a half before, betrayed by the man she loved. It was easier to imagine herself angry on behalf of someone else than to think of her own situation. The anger she felt for Miss Tabbott was almost unbearable.

So she crocheted and she imagined.

She imagined herself facing the ecclesiastical court and giving testimony as Miss Tabbott had undoubtedly done.

Camilla wouldn’t beg for them to not annul her marriage with a man who clearly didn’t want her. No; Camilla as Miss Tabbott would wreak maximum embarrassment.

“No,” she imagined herself saying with confidence, tilting her wrist just so. “Of course we didn’t consummate the marriage. He wanted to, but I took one look at his private parts, and… Syphilis, you understand. Poor thing.”

They said that hell had no fury like a woman scorned, but they were wrong. Women were scorned again and again and again. It was only after the seventieth scorning that they let loose a fraction of their righteous anger. Frankly, men had no idea how lucky they were that any woman was rational at all.

Day after day, Camilla honed Miss Tabbott’s speech, muttering it to herself as she paced in the library or as she walked thro

ugh the little clumps of trees along the riverbank. She honed it as she crocheted, finished her scarf, and ripped it apart again for yarn.

She wasn’t sure when she started delivering her own words—when, instead of the sordid details of Miss Tabbott’s unwelcome ruination, she started talking about what had happened to her instead.

“I just wanted to do what was right,” she told a stand of willows. “I was trying to do what was right, and they ruined me.” She thought of the look on the rector’s face. “They made me feel shame for my friendliness, for my willingness to trust others. They made weaknesses of my strength.” Her eyes stung with hot tears, and she clenched her hands together.

“I won’t let them,” she said blindly, through the hot veil of her tears. “I won’t let them have me. I won’t let them make me weaker or stupider. I’m not going to let them take me away.”

She imagined Miss Tabbott standing at her side as she spoke.

Three days in, she looked at her crocheting and thought of old Mrs. Marsdell—the woman who she’d tried to impress by learning to crochet.

Adrian had told her that she should try to look back eventually. Every time Camilla thought of Mrs. Marsdell, she remembered those sniffs and suspicious looks. Camilla had opened her heart, and…

And she’d learned to crochet. The feel of yarn beneath her fingers gave her strength; the activity let her think in ways that simply sitting did not.

She had tried to give, and giving had made its own form of return. Once she started thinking of it that way, she could look back a little more. Camilla had read a book of fairy tales to Baby Angela; when times were hard, she still thought of women who kept on going, even when there was no reason to do so. Camilla had learned to kiss from Larissa. She had learned to put a square sheet on a bed from Kitty.

Camilla was a collection of things she had learned from the people she had loved. They hadn’t loved her back, but she’d taken everything she learned with her any way.

All this time, she thought she’d found nothing all those years.