He poured each of them a healthy amount of sherry and returned to where she was still sitting, now like a cat with her feet tucked beneath her, curled comfortably. He held the glass out to her, and their fingers brushed as she accepted it from him.
“Thank you,” she said. “Will you sit?”
She gestured to the cushion at her side.
Dangerously near.
He sat. He could not deny he enjoyed her company, that there was something deeply compelling about this woman, almost on an inherent level. In a way he had not experienced before or after…
Amelia.
He hated to so much as think of his wife now. She was gone. He had loved her, she had been an angel too good for this bitter, terrible world. When she had died after childbirth, he had lost his heart. But when their son had died scarcely even a year later, he had lost his soul.
That was how he could be here, in this moment. That was how he could do what he must. Adrian was no stranger to numbness.
“You are quiet,” the duchess observed.
For a wild moment, he wondered what would happen, what she would say if he were to blurt out the truth. If he were to tell her that he was no nephew but instead the bastard son her husband the duke had done everything in his power to pretend did not exist.
He took a swallow of his sherry instead. Conscience? Who had known he still possessed one?
“How did you come upon your love of sad poetry?” he asked instead of answering the unspoken question in her words.
Why?
He could not speak of Amelia and Arthur. Not now. Not ever. He had not done so since the burial at their shared plot. Nothing but a small, simple marker to commemorate their lives, all he could afford.
Not enough. And meanwhile, he sat in a room laden with thousands of books, ensconced in a home with hundreds of rooms and the most ostentatious nods to luxury he had ever born witness to. The mere grounds of Coddington Hall were astounding, large, open, opulent. It presided over a massive manmade lake. The gold accents on the windows still nettled.
“Life is filled with so much sadness,” Tilly said, watching him, taking a swallow of her drink. “Disappointment, loss, pain. I suppose that is why sorrowful poems appeal to me more than those about love.”
He could not quite temper his resentment. “What disappointment can a duchess know, living in a house such as this?”
“Houses do not make happiness, and neither do titles.” Her smile was sad, trembling, and so inexplicably lonely that he wanted to take her in his arms.
He wanted to haul her into his lap and hold her. To kiss her. To commiserate. To protect her from the darkness and the shadows. To be her light, even for a month.
It made no sense. Why should he feel so connected to a woman he had only just met this afternoon? Adrian drank his sherry, considering her and his next words with deliberate precision.
“How right you are,” he said. “All too often, titles only beget misery, and wealth begets greed and viciousness.”
It had never been the Duke of Longleigh’s coin or his title Adrian had wanted. It had been his acknowledgment, and once upon a time when he had been a simple lad, it had been his approval. Before that, it had been to treat his mother with care.
Mama had not deserved what Longleigh had done to her.
“I suppose you think me spoiled,” she said, sipping at her sherry.
Spoiled? Yes, of course she was. How could a duchess not be spoiled, even if it meant she was chained to a villain like the Duke of Longleigh? Her gown was elaborate and fine. The jewels at her ear and throat likely cost more than he could comprehend, he had no doubt.
“I think you a duchess.” He cast an exaggerated glance about the library. “Look around you.”
“I hate this house.”
“Why?”
“Because it is a prison.” She shook her head, then raised her glass to her lips. “Forgive me. I did not intend to burden you with my problems. I meant to persuade you that not all poetry is the currency of lovesick swains.”
“And you have done so.” He’d not had opportunity to read much poetry in his life, but he could not admit that to her beneath the guise of his ruse.
