Leave. Leave before the question comes. Pack what you brought and take nothing else. Slip out while the rain hides your steps.
She pressed the heel of her hand to her mouth. The wave of it came fast and unmanageable, not a polite ache but a deep wrench, like the body’s answer to a blow. She sat down hard on the chair and folded forward, elbows to knees, and wept. It was silent at first and then not. The latch clicked. The door between the rooms opened.
Winston stood there in his shirtsleeves and under garments, hair dark with water, a blanket slung around his shoulders like a soldier’s cloak.
He crossed the room in three steps and knelt at her feet, awkward in his height, careful of her dignity even now. He didn’t speak. He gathered her in, blanket and all, until her forehead rested against his chest and his chin settled lightly in her damp hair. She turned her face, and her lips nearly grazed his own. Winston smelled of wet wool, peat smoke, and the soap from the inn’s basin.
Her hands were clumsy at first; then they found purchase, one at his shoulder, one at the small of his back. His heartbeat under her ear was steady and sure.
“I’m sorry,” she said into the fabric. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You do,” he said, voice rough. “It’s too much. It’s been too much for too long.”
“I should go,” she said suddenly, the truth bursting out. “I should have gone last night. I’ll hurt you if I stay.”
“You’re hurting now,” he said. “That’s enough hurt for one house.”
She drew a breath that caught on a broken laugh. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”
“I know what you’ve done since you came to me,” he said, holding her a little tighter. “You’ve kept a child from breaking. You’ve kept my mother alive through a night I thought would end her. You’ve kept me from drowning in my own damned house. That will do for knowledge.”
The steadiness of it undid her. She tipped her head back. His face was close, intent, the troubled lines smoothed by the heat and the bare facts that lay open between them. He lifted a hand and ran his knuckles once down her cheek to brush away what the tears hadn’t. It wasn’t a question. It was a confirmation.
She kissed him first, quick and searching. He answered at once, not urgent, not restrained, but present, the whole of him meeting the whole of her. His hand slid to the back of her neck; the other found the curve of her waist through damp linen. The blanket slipped, the fire answered with a small rush as if wind had found it.
“Adeline,” he said against her mouth.
“Don’t speak,” she said, and kissed him again, because words were what had trapped her for months, and this was the one place they did not rule.
They stood, the chair bumping harmlessly against their shins. He caught the blanket before it fell and wrapped it around them both. Her back warmed, his chest pressed to her, solid and human and here. He kissed the line of her jaw and the hollow below her ear. She hummed to let him know just how much she liked what he did. She learned his breath, the shift of his ribswhen he held in pain, the way he managed her weight with a care that felt like reverence.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured.
“Cold,” she said, though the fire had done its work. She meant another kind of cold, the kind that lived in the space between a lie and the person she wanted to be.
He seemed to understand without asking. He held her until the shaking eased. Outside, rain beat a steady time against the panes and then softened. Somewhere below, a man laughed too loudly, a woman shushed him, and a door shut. The world went about its business. They didn’t rush. When the urgency came, it was simple, an answer to fear, a way to be quiet in a noisy life. He lifted her, set her carefully on the edge of the bed, and sat beside her, foreheads touching, breath shared.
He pressed a kiss to her temple, then to her mouth again, and again, until the ache changed its shape and she knew, with a deep, constant certainty, that nothing in London had felt like this. Not safety, not danger, not the past beating at a door, only this plain good thing between them. When at last they drew apart, it wasn’t because the moment had ended but because the day would not be held off forever. He tucked the blanket more closely around her and set his palm to the small of her back, his head bowed toward hers as if in prayer.
“Stay,” he said. “Just now. Stay.”
“I’m here,” she said, and it was the truest thing she had spoken in months.
A knock sounded at the door to the passage. The landlord’s wife, muffled by wood, called through it.
“Your fire, Miss, is wanting more coal. Shall I send it in?”
Adeline drew a breath, smoothed her hair, and stepped from the circle of his arms. “One moment,” she called, voice steady enough. She looked back at Winston, who had gathered his blanket and some semblance of a Duke’s composure. He smiled, small and rueful, and nodded.
The woman came and went with the coal scuttle, none the wiser. When the door shut again, Adeline and Winston stood in the quiet and listened to the new strength of the flames.
“We’ll ride back when the rain eases,” he said.
Adeline gathered her courage with her stockings. “Winston…”
He shook his head once. “Not here. Not yet.”
She understood. The orchard had made laughter easy; the inn had made comfort possible. The truth would break neither, but it would change the shape of both. They would face it, but not in a roadside room with wet boots drying by the grate.
