“That door,” he had said abruptly, gesturing to the door that connected her chamber to his, a dressing room in between. “Where does it lead?”
“To my dressing area, and from there, to my chamber,” she had answered.
“I cannot stay here,” he had insisted, his voice hoarse.
Her heart had plummeted, but she had seen him moved to a nearby guest chamber instead.
He had subsequently failed to arrive at dinner, and she had spent a miserable meal alone, staring at his place setting and wondering where he had gone. Had he left? Was he somewhere within Haddon House? Her pride had not allowed her to ask her servants. Instead, she had waited for a quarter hour before realizing he had no intention of joining her. A trip to the guest chamber and a knock on the door had been met only with silence.
Now, as she watched through the crack in the open door as Adrian rocked in a chair within the nursery, Robby on his lap, she knew where he must have been all along. For a moment, she lingered, eavesdropping upon this treasured moment between father and son. Robby had taken to Adrian quite well over the last few weeks, his frequent visits accompanied by much enthusiasm from the lad, who had added a new word to his lexicon.
Papa.
The first time she had heard Robby call Adrian Papa, her heart had swelled. That old hope returned yet again now, determined and stubborn. Growing and budding and blossoming as she listened to Adrian speaking to their son.
More words, more sentences, than she had heard him give to anyone since his return. He was reading their son a story, so the words were not his, and yet, to hear his voice, so perfectly pitched and modulated, deep and strong and true, gave her such happiness.
The window across the nursery was open to allow the evening air to cool the chamber, and an abrupt breeze sent the door blowing open with a creak. Adrian paused in reading, looking up, their gazes meeting and holding.
“Mama!” Robby’s enthusiastic cry had her smiling as she tore her stare away.
Adrian settled their son on the floor, and he came toddling toward her as fast as his little legs would allow. She bent her knees and opened her arms as the boy came tumbling into them. She caught him against her bodice before he could do himself any harm, his feet having tripped over themselves. She pressed a kiss to the curls atop his head, breathing in deeply of his sweet scent.
“How is Mama’s darling boy?” she asked him, before kissing both his cheeks and then his nose.
Robby giggled, then wriggled from her arms. He was a very independent lad. Obligingly, she released him and watched as he made his way back to Adrian with a triumphant squeal.
Adrian caught their son and lifted him over his head. “He is going to fly to the moon.”
Robby giggled, his happiness and innocence infectious. Her stupid heart was once more swelling, once more filling with hope. For a moment, it seemed so natural, the three of them together in the nursery. A family.
And then she recalled that Adrian had not wanted to live with her. He had been avoiding her all evening. He did not even want a room adjacent to hers.
He still did not trust her.
It was possible he never would.
And never mind the matter of his own deception, for which it was entirely possible she would never receive a full explanation. He was too angry and broken inside for her to push him just yet, and Tilly had no guarantee he would not always be thus.
However, uncertainty was the price she was willing to pay. Whatever his reasons for lying to her, regardless of his failure to be honest when things had proceeded, he had been imprisoned. Whereas she… She had been left to worry and wonder.
She would have experienced all those aching months of fear and loneliness and isolation just for the chance to see Adrian and Robby together. To know that, regardless of what they needed to work through, and in spite of the possibility they would never find more common ground than their son, at least they were married now. No one could tear them apart, and Longleigh was gone.
“Shall you fly to the moon, lad?” Adrian was asking their son.
Her heart gave a pang at the relaxed nature of his countenance. Most of the hardness and rigidity which ordinarily occupied his features was gone.
Robby giggled and flapped his arms, then said something that sounded distinctly likebird. He was such an intelligent little fellow.
“There you are.” Adrian lifted him again. “Our Robby is a bird, Mama.”
Our Robby.
The possessive statement—the acknowledgment—warmed her. How could it not, even if he was still obdurately refusing to call her Tilly, preferring to instead call her Mama in the presence of their son or Duchess at all other times? Perhaps it was a means by which he attempted to exercise his control, which for so long had been denied him.
“What a handsome bird he makes,” she said past the knot in her throat.
The day had been an emotional one, and she was weary. Marrying Adrian had been nothing as she had once imagined it would be, and their nuptials had solved none of their problems. And yet, he was here.
