Now, they had traveled too far to safely ride back to the main house, and the storm had found them. The rains were so forceful and abundant that he was already soaked through his coat and knickerbockers. His hat was a sodden, bedraggled mess, and he could scarcely see through the rains lashing his eyes as they rode on. There was a lumpy mess somewhere in the distance that appeared as if it could have been a building of some sort, but such was the deluge that he could not be sure.
He attempted to ask her if the gray lump was indeed the temple in question, but another violent report of thunder split the air, drowning out his words.Damn it.The lightning overhead was vicious and bright. They were in danger.
“Tilly, we have to get ourselves off this infernal machine of yours,” he shouted, his voice hoarse.
If the lightning should strike them, it would be disastrous.
A swelling sense of doom hit Adrian, filling his chest with the sick sense of disappointment. He had not acted quickly enough to protect her. He had not been careful enough. If he could not even safely guide them from a storm, how was he to manage what would come next for them when Longleigh reappeared at Coddington Hall, expecting his wishes to have been carried out?
What a failure he was. In life, in love. He should have looked after his mother, should have tried harder to get her out of that goddamned asylum. But he had been a lad. What could he have done? He had failed Amelia, failed Arthur.
You will fail Tilly, too, whispered a sneering voice deep within him. The voice of doubt.
And he knew it was only a matter of time until he did. He was a bastard, with scarcely a pound to his name, and after he confronted Longleigh, he would no longer have the promise of ten thousand pounds.
Tilly was worth the sacrifice.
Her love was worth it.
He only hoped he could keep it.
The rain continued lashing them as the lump in the distance began to take the shape of a domed roof and Doric columns. The temple at last, but he did not recall passing it on his initial ride to Coddington Hall. Mayhap he had been too caught up in his ruminations as the carriage had led him to what would eventually prove a far more complicated situation than he could have ever hoped to imagine.
He had never been meant to fall in love.
“Here we are,” Tilly shouted to him over the din of the rain splashing against them and the thunder booming once more.
They managed to bring the cycle to a halt, and he leapt from his saddle, helping her to wrestle her sodden skirts away from the steering bars, where they had become caught. Another bolt of lightning had them racing, hand in hand, through the rains, up the slippery steps of the temple.
The roof covered them as they reached the door, thankfully providing them shelter from the rains and the danger of lightning. But when Tilly tried the latch, the portal was locked.
“Damn,” she muttered. “We shall have to wait here beneath the overhang until the storm passes.”
“Have you a hair pin?” he asked, knowing she would.
He’d had occasion to pick a lock or two in his past.Hell, when he had been a lad, he had stolen without compunction, doing anything he must to stay alive. He’d been an orphan when his mother had been committed to Broadmoor, and his mother’s parents had refused to take him in because of the shame acknowledging her sin would bring them. The orphanage which had taken him in had been rife with mistreatment. One of the older boys had warned him that the mistress liked to touch the younger lads and make them kiss her and touch her beneath her skirts. The first moment Adrian had chanced an escape, he had fled and never looked back.
Tilly was eying him with a curious expression now, one that plainly read she wanted to know more about him. Over the course of their almost-month together, she had asked increasingly probing questions, and he had sensed her desire to understand him. But what could he have said? He was not yet ready to reveal the truth to her. Not until he knew what to expect from the Duke of Longleigh. He would have to face that bastard first.
She said nothing, however, merely reached beneath her sodden hat and plucked a pin from her soaked coiffure, offering it to him. He took it, bent to inspect the lock, and found it the easier variety to open. Sliding the pin into the key hole, he maneuvered once, twice, and felt the inner mechanism give. The lock sprung open. He opened the door, and they stepped over the threshold, seeking deeper shelter from the violence of the storm.
Windows on the domed roof allowed some natural light to filter through the space, but it was still deuced difficult to see.
“That was not the first lock you have picked,” she said quietly at his side, a statement rather than a question.
In the shadows, he tried to study her face, to read her expression, but could not. “No. It was not the first lock I have picked.”
“That seems an odd skill for a gentleman to possess.”
Was she doubting him? Guessing at the truth? Had he given himself away?
The fear snaking through him was sudden and startlingly clear. He was not prepared to lose her.
Still, he would be as truthful with her as he dared. “I have told you before that I do not claim to be a gentleman.”
By-blows could not be, by definition.
But he had most certainly not lived his life in honor and leisure and nobility. He had scrabbled and clawed for everything he had gotten. He had been eighteen when he had met Amelia, the innocent daughter of the local vicar, and he had been smitten. She had made him want to be better. Until she had left him.
