Her lips parted, as did Adelaide’s. “Marry me, Toby?” Melinda whispered. “Can you mean that?”
He faced her and pushed up his spectacles nervously. “I love you, Melinda. I always have. If we are to be destroyed, I would like a few moments of happiness before it happens. If you’ll have me.”
She nodded without hesitation, tears flooding her eyes again, though this time they were happy ones. “I will, of course. I do love you, Toby.”
She reached out a hand and he caught it, drawing her against his chest. Graham shifted, as if this display of emotion made him uncomfortable. He didn’t look at Adelaide as he said, “A marriage could very well make a defense easier. I’d be happy to arrange a special license and have the duty performed at the chapel on my estate.”
Adelaide smiled at her friends, happy in this moment, despite the horrors they had so recently endured. She’d known them both for months and had no idea of their feelings for each other. Yet there they were, so clear and so real on both their faces. She felt foolish for not seeing them before.
“You are too kind,” Melinda said, breaking from Toby’s embrace and reaching out to hold out a hand to Graham. He took it with a gentle smile.
“I don’t think you should suffer any more than you have, my dear,” he said softly. “If I can prevent it, I shall do anything in my power to do so. Now, if there are arrangements to be made on your side, I suggest you make them. I’ll send a carriage for you to the theatre in an hour.”
Toby moved forward, his hand outstretched, and the two men shook. In that moment, they were equals. Men who would protect those they loved. Then Toby looked at Melinda. “There are a few things to gather in my office.”
She nodded. “Yes, I’ll come help you.” She faced Adelaide and her lips trembled. “You have been such a friend to me, Lydia. I cannot find the words to thank you.”
Adelaide held back a sob as best she could. “It is I who should thank you. You helped me when I was a green beginner, terrified of the stage and of myself. I couldn’t have become…mewithout you.”
“I hope—I hope we’ll see each other again.”
Adelaide embraced her gently. “We will, Melinda. Wewillsee each other again.”
She watched as the two left the room, leaving her alone with Graham. When they shut the door behind them, she moved into the arms he opened for her. He held her like that for a moment, his hands smoothing over her hair as she struggled to come to grips over what had happened.
Then she stepped back. “You were kind to offer them help,” she whispered.
He shrugged, like he hadn’t just offered two drowning people a lifeline. “We all know Sir Archibald deserved what he got. If I can help them, I will.”
Adelaide pursed her lips, looking around the room. She had loved coming here as an escape to the empty life she’d been leading with her aunt. Putting on the costume of Lydia Ford had made her feel confident and powerful and free. But now being Adelaide didn’t seem so terrible.
Because of Graham.
And in that moment, a plan began to hatch in her mind. A plan that could save her friends even more than any solicitor or powerful ally Graham could create for them.
She smiled and then took his arm. “Come, we should go back to Emma and James’s home. I know they’ll be worried.”
Graham took a long breath and looked around the room with her. “This was the first place I kissed you,” he said.
She nodded, all the memories of that first night flooding back. “It was.”
He turned her toward him and bent his head, brushing his lips to hers. She lifted her hands to his forearms and clung there, not swept away as she had been that first night, but anchored. Anchored by his strength and by her love for him.
And even though she knew she might lose that and soon, she still clung to it in that moment and prayed that somehow she would find the strength to go on, no matter what happened.
Graham had been almost entirely silent as they rode in the carriage, but he sat across the way from Adelaide, just watching her. She couldn’t read what was in his mind, but she shifted under the weight of his very focused regard.
At last he cleared his throat and he said, “Your friends are not the only ones to marry soon. You and I will have to do the same, Adelaide.”
She caught her breath as she stared at him in shock. “What?”
He tilted his head. “Come, you know it’s true. You confessed our affair not only to our friends and your aunt, but to Captain Black. The man has a vendetta against those with a title, anyone can see that just looking at him. He may not pursue me for the murder again, but I wouldn’t put it past him to let the truth of our relationship out.”
“That isn’t why I said what I said,” she protested. “I wasn’t trying to trap you, Graham. I would never do that.”
“Yes, you’ve made that clear,” he said, his voice still soft and even. “By not wanting to confess your double life until you could tell me for certain there was no child created by my imprudence. By never asking me for a damned thing, not as Adelaide or as Lydia. By throwing yourself onto a fire without ever demanding protection in return. There are many things I feel right now, Adelaide, but Idon’tfeel like this is a trap.”
He let out a long sigh, and she felt his exhaustion and his surrender. Not things she ever wanted from a man in the midst of a rather unromantic proposal.
