Vice raised his brows. “Does Jack know she’s here?”
“I don’t know. Have you seen Jack?” Ada reached for his arm and his body tightened as her fingertips lightly brushed down his bicep.
“He’s inside,” Vice muttered, leaning closer. “He looks as miserable as she does.”
Ada worried her lip. “Oh dear. They don’t make marriage look easy, do they?”
“They don’t,” he answered, grimacing. Jack had a colorful past but Vice’s… his was worse. By a great deal. “There’s a lesson to be learned there, I’d say.”
Ada’s shoulders hunched. “Surely, there is.”
He turned and held out his elbow. She hesitated before placing her hand into the crook. He stared down at her. “What do you think the lesson is?”
She finally glanced at him then and held his gaze, her own eyes crinkled in question. “I suppose I thought that a man like Jack is too difficult to tame.”
Vice winced. He’d been afraid of that. Ada believed just as Camille had. He was destined to be alone. “I suppose.”
“What did you mean?” She gave his arm a squeeze.
He reached over and brushed her cheek with his finger. “That honesty would have made their start much better.”
Ada stopped, staring up at him. “Oh, that’s much nicer than mine.”
He shrugged. He understood why Jack hadn’t been honest. Just the idea of confessing all his sins to a woman like Ada made his heart hammer wildly in his chest. In fact, he’d likely get through the first two and she’d run away crying never to speak with him again. “I’m not so certain. Look at what Jack’s past has done to them. Imagine if she’d learned all of it before their engagement.” He’d told Camille his secrets. She’d judged him rather harshly and ultimately left him for a better man.
Ada cocked her head to the side. “Maybe. Or perhaps it’s the fact that they are secret and keep popping up to surprise her that is the issue.”
“That hasn’t been my experience,” he muttered.
“What was your experience,” she asked and then shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry.”
They were entering through the main doors, the crush of people both making him feel watched and adding an air of privacy. “You’re not. I proposed to a woman five years ago. She turned me down because my past was too colorful and my future likely to be equally so. She was right, of course. I’d just opened the club. I spent a great deal of time with men who drank heavily and gambled even more rambunctiously.”
Ada’s face spasmed and her other hand subtly brushed his chest. “Still. That must have hurt.”
He’d been bracing himself for a barrage of questions about what exactly he’d done to earn her rejection. Ada’s sympathy was like a balm he’d needed for so long. “It did.”
For a momen
t, their eyes met. He wanted to curl up in the fresh green of her gaze but then she looked away, her arm loosening. “I should return to my family. I…”
“I’m here for you, Ada,” he said, drawing her closer again. “There’s no need to leave.”
Staring out over the crowd. “I’ve my own past and it demands that I keep distance between us.”
“I beg your pardon?” What past? What man? Anger swelled inside him. Who had touched Ada and how had he hurt her?
“It doesn’t matter. Grace says that I shouldn’t pay too much attention to you. I—” She stopped again. “I’m saying this all wrong once again.”
“We’ll get to Grace later. Right now, I want to know who the man in your past was.”
But she’d stopped talking, stopped walking, in fact. She stumbled and he caught her, righting her back on her feet. Her face had gone pale. “Dear merciful saints,” she murmured. “It’s him.”
With a trembling finger, she pointed into the crowd. There stood a man with dark hair and broad shoulders staring directly at his Ada. When precisely had she become his? Vice wasn’t certain and it didn’t matter. That man was not coming anywhere near his woman.
Chapter Eight
Ada’s tongue swelled in her mouth. It was Walter. He’d left six months prior, on a mission to Africa to study wildlife, telling her he’d be gone for years. She’d never expected to see him here, tonight, at her very first event.