Graham nodded. “Remarkable. But you must think me a great fool, not to have realized you were Lydia.”
“Do you know how many men in our circles came to my plays?” she asked, sitting up and turning to face him fully. “Even came back to talk to me as you did that first night?”
“I assume none of them kissed you,” he said, leaning forward to brush his lips back and forth against hers gently. “Nor did they ultimately take you to their bed, as I did.”
She shivered as he let his fingers drag down the slope of her neck and across her bare breast before he settled his hand back against his muscular thigh.
“No,” she admitted. “None of them did. But I created a character, Graham. Lydia, who possessed all the confidence I lack as Adelaide. She is bold and unafraid. She dresses differently, she moves differently, not to mention that I wear the spectacles and pull my hair back when I’m Adelaide.”
“As a shield,” he murmured.
“You sawexactlywhat I wished you to see,” she said. “Though I admit that first time you approached me to dance after you kissed Lydia at the theatre, I was petrified you had discovered me. And then I was…a little jealous of myself.” She shifted. The truths were on the table now, but Graham seemed no angrier to hear them now than he was when he’d realized she and Lydia were the same. That gave her some of the boldness she had created in her character. “May I ask you something?”
He nodded slowly. “You may.”
“Why…why did you say thank God when you realized Adelaide and Lydia were the same?” she asked.
He tilted his head. “Don’t you know?”
“No, or I wouldn’t have asked.” She smiled a little.
“There’sthe Adelaide who so easily puts me in my place,” he said, a chuckle bubbling from his lips and warming her. “I said thank God because I have been torturing myself for weeks now over you and Lydia.”
She wrinkled her brow. “What could you possibly mean?”
“Adelaide, I wanted you both. And I had no idea that you were the same person. Here I was, wrecked by a betrayal from one of my closest friends, and yet I was thrown back and forth between two remarkable women, like a complete bastard.”
She stared at him, eyes widening as his statement sank in. “I don’t understand. You wantedLydia. Not me.”
“I think I just proved that statement very wrong,Adelaide,” he said, reaching his hand out to pull her a little closer. “I can do it again if you’d like.”
“You wanted me because you realized IwasLydia,” she said, wanting to give in to the desire in his stare but still confused by his statement.
“She who thinks she knows so much really is in the dark,” he said. “You couldn’t be more wrong. I have spent days and days coming to terms with the fact that I wantyou, Adelaide. I woke up with your name on my lips and your face in my mind. When I touched Lydia, I felt as though I was betrayingyou. So please trust that I know my own mind. I most definitely wantyou.”
Her heart leapt at that statement and the honesty with which it was put. He meant it. He believed it.
“You must see, though, that I’m not her. I’m not confident or bold or—”
“Well, that is pure poppycock,” he interrupted. “You have been bold with me many a time in ballrooms and parlors. In fact, I think the real you isn’t exactly the woman who hides behind her spectaclesorthe lady who walks the boards. I think you are something between the two. All the best parts of both.”
She blinked for sudden tears stung her eyes at his absolute faith in her. A faith she hadn’t felt for herself…perhaps ever.
“I was going to tell you,” she whispered. “I was going to tell you the truth.”
He lifted both eyebrows and actually looked surprised by that confession. “I’m happy to hear it. But why? If I was so blind, why not let me remain so?”
She shivered. “Because you gave me a piece of your soul that night after Sir Archibald attacked me. I couldn’t sit by and keep it without allowing you to know the truth.” She met his stare and held there even though it was hard. “When you told me about your past, about your father and your mother, it meant so much to me, Graham. Even though I was little jealous of…of myself.”
He smiled slightly, though she could see his pain at the reminder of what he’d told her the night before. “It meant a great deal to me, Adelaide, to trust you enough to tell you my past. I’m glad it was you, not just Lydia, who knows it. And it means a great deal to hear your own. I understand only a few people must know of your subterfuge.”
She shook her head. “No one but Rebecca,” she confessed. “And my driver, too.”
His brow wrinkled. “Not Emma?”
“No,” she admitted. “I’ve wanted to tell her so many times, but before she was married I didn’t want to get her in trouble if the truth came out. You know her, she cannot lie—it isn’t in her nature.”
Graham nodded. “I can see that. But what about Melinda and the others at the theatre?”
