“My husband.”
He spun to face her and recoiled. “Yourwhat?”
She fluttered her hands in front of her, as though she could wave her impetuous response from his memory. “No, not myhusband, I mean, he is supposed to be—hewillbe—“
“Adelaide,” he barked, taking a long step back. “You’re married?”
“No!” She huffed out a breath. “It’s complicated. John—Lord Clements, he’s a friend, and he was widowed last year.” She worried her lower lip; should she reveal the secret she was marrying to protect?
But Will’s eyes were so eager for an explanation, so primed tolisten, she couldn’t hold back.
“I’ve been writing suffragist pamphlets for the past five years under a pseudonym. Venus Unshelled?” His brow furrowed, and she winced. “I know, it’s a terrible name, but I was young and had a book on Botticelli—“
“I’ve read them.” He blinked several times as though sorting this new information into place. “They’re extraordinary.”
The earth stopped in its rotation. She’d heard remarks about the columns before, calling them provocative and subversive; once she’d overheard a matron call them revolutionary, but Adelaide was certain it wasn’t a compliment. But aside from her publisher, whom she’d never met in person, no one had directly praised her work. The small income she collected from their sales was praise alone. “You’ve read them?”
He cuffed the back of his neck, cringed when he touched the raw skin there. “My father preached on abolition in the colonies and women’s suffrage, made some enemies for it. My mother kept up the cause after his death. I think she’s read everything you’ve ever written.”
She was suddenly desperate to meet his mother, an unusual desire to be sure. “Lord Clements wrote to me, through my publisher, after his wife died. She had used my writing to convince her husband to support progressive causes in Parliament, and he wanted to fund me. We struck up correspondence, and…”
“You fell in love.” His words were cautious, selected with the same deliberation he’d shown for the stones he’d tossed across the stream.
“No, well, not in the way you’re thinking. I respect him a great deal, but I suspect he will always love his wife. Our marriage will be a friendly one.”
She swallowed hard as familiar regret formed a lump in her throat. Happy marriages had flourished on far less. But mutual admiration would not keep her warm at night, nor give her children or the love of the family she so wanted.
“So why the rush to Somerset?” There was no chastisement in his words, no judgment, merely curiosity and caution.
“John has invited several members of Parliament to the ceremony on Saturday. The Married Women’s Property Act is going to vote next month,” she said. “He thinks if I write under my name instead of a pseudonym, with my family’s prominence and his title behind me, more lords will support the measure.”
He looked over the water, pulled his lower lip between his teeth before releasing it. “Will you be happy in that role? A political wife?”
“Of course. At least I will be of value to someone.”
A grumbling noise came from his chest. “Your worth isn’t in helping someone else meet their goals. Besides, if you hurt yourself rushing like this, you’re of no value at all.”
“You’re right. I was being silly.” She pushed a stone into the stream with her toe, watched the water change course to accommodate it. Her throat tightened, and she spun on her heel, fleeing toward the carriage with no logical reason for doing so. Well, if she was being exact, it was because she felt foolish. And Adelaide had spent far too much of her time on this earth feeling foolish, and she wasn’t about to do so in front of a man she actually—
What? Wasattractedto? Silly, silly girl.
No, this was more than attraction, something stickier, something that had been dipped in sweet honey then placed in her palm. She wouldn’t forget Will Shipley easily.
“Miss Kimball,” Will called from behind her. “Adelaide!”
“I’m sorry.” She stopped, buried her face in her hands. Tears, not perspiration, streaked her cheeks, and she was not about to show it. “It sounds so ludicrous, like I’m a person of great importance, when I’m no one.”
Will grabbed her hands and pulled them from her face. “That’s not true.” His green eyes caught hers and held. “Miss Kimball, you’re worth a great deal.”
She laughed, although it lacked mirth. “You can’t say that. You don’t even know me.”
He stepped back, released her hands as he bit his lower lip. “I don’t,” he finally said, and she thought she heard regret in his voice.
But how would she know? She barely knew him, either.
Chapter 6
Will barely knew her,but it hadn’t stopped him from obsessing over every word Adelaide had said to him during their brief sojourn by the creek.
