Page 61 of The Rogue’s Embrace

She didn't turn around to him when his boots crunched onto the pebbles lining the brook.

Toren stared at the back of her head. Her hair in a singular long braid that curled forward over her shoulder, the grey hood of her cloak was now bunched about her shoulders.

She had to be hot. The sun was shining down, soaking into the dark fabric. Yet she hadn't complained once about the extra layer in this unusual heat. Not once. He had asked her to keep it on while they traveled, and especially inside the coaching inn, and she had obliged, not questioning or arguing against it.

Because she trusted him.

Only an arm's length away, he could reach out and touch her. It seemed appropriate in this instance, like something he should consider. Maybe if he could fix this for her. Give her what she needed. Maybe then it would be appropriate.

But he couldn't. So he didn't.

His arms stoically at his sides, his heel shifted, the pebbles clinking together. "Nothing has changed from what I told you at the beginning, Adalia. I am still incapable of love. You know how I grew up."

"Do I?"

Her arms curled around her middle. She didn't turn to look at him. "You have mentioned it, but you have never strived to make me understand it."

"That is just it, Adalia."

He moved forward, setting himself at her side so he could at least see her profile. If he could watch her, he could figure out what she needed. Her green eyes held so little back. He had learned that about her—if he needed to know what she was thinking at any moment, she held it all in her eyes.

He cleared his throat. "There is nothing to understand. I was raised by a governess that was strict and kept me in line if I veered. Our interactions were, at the most…cordial…at the least, cold."

He paused as Adalia lifted her eyes, but not her chin to him, watching him as an aside. Her arms stayed wrapped around her ribcage. "Her name was Mrs. Marchall. I asked her once about love, because I wanted to understand the concept. I had just read The Odyssey and learned of Odysseus and Penelope's great love. I asked her if she loved me. Before I had even finished the question, she told me love was not acceptable. Love was not reality. She told me she was being paid to make sure my needs were met, nothing more."

Adalia's eyes flickered down to the moving water. "How old were you?"

"Seven."

He sighed, watching her eyes close as he said the word. "Yes, I know how it sounds. But what you need to understand is that her answer didn't make me sad. I had never known love, I didn't understand it, so when she said that, it made perfect sense. And it troubled me not in the slightest. That was when I knew I was incapable of the emotion. And it has always been so."

"And there was no one else?"

The question came softly, barely audible over the bubbling of the brook.

She needed more from him—more explanation. Toren took a deep breath. He had never told another soul about his childhood, other than short, practiced, snippets meant to steer the conversation away from the topic.

But if Adalia needed this—needed this to understand what he could not give her—he would keep talking.

His look centered on her delicate profile. "No. There were no others. Mrs. Marchall was the only one allowed to talk to me. Mr. Octon, our family's solicitor, was my official guardian. I only spoke to him of finances and how to handle the estate, and only when I was old enough to understand. The servants never spoke to me. Nor did they talk to each other—at least not where I could hear them. I knew very little of the world and even how to interact with other people until I went to Eton."

Her green eyes lifted to his look, her full face finally turning toward him. "And that is where you met Theo?"

"Yes. And I was awkward—horrifyingly awkward around other people for the longest time. But Theodore never let that bother him. Where others were distant—reflecting what I was—Theodore was having far too much fun teaching me about the world."

A broken grin crept onto her face. "If you learned about the world from Theo, you got a very skewed representation of the world."

"I imagine I did, but that didn't matter to me. Theodore knew how to talk to people. How to make friends, how to charm. I already knew everything I needed to from the textbooks—but I had never opened my mouth to speak of anything other than numbers or science or geography or the running of the estate until I met Theodore. He was the one to teach me how to do that."

Toren's hand lifted, rubbing the back of his neck. "In fact, I had never even questioned how I grew up. I never realized my life had been so very odd."

Her arms relaxed around her waist, one hand lifting to tuck away a rogue tendril of hair that had fallen in front of her left eye. "What was it?"

His eyebrow cocked in question.

"What was that first conversation you had with Theo?"

An instant smile crossed his lips. "He was rambling philosophical about the mating habits of peacocks. On whether or not the males were blind—or had severe lack of sight—since they spent all their time growing ridiculous displays of plumage and would then end up mating with females that had nothing at all to recommend them."

His look dipped to the water as he shook his head. "Theodore thought the males would be depressed if they could actually see what they were mating with—hence the blindness he presumed they possessed. He feared that if the eyesight of the males ever improved, the males would grow despondent and die, and that would mean the demise of the species. The only thing he could imagine that would save the species was if one could encourage true love between the peacock and the peahen."

Adalia laughed. "That was Theo. He always started with the absurd and then turned philosophical into fact. I imagine you began to poke holes in his theories?"

"I did. It was impossible not to."

"Oh, he did love to argue."

Her smile went wide. "And I imagine your explanation of the mating habits of peafowl was specifically scientific—exactly what the male needs and the female needs to mate?"

"Yes. It was ridiculous how many times we went around that. I wanted him to recognize the reality of facts. He wanted me to recognize the magical possibility of undying love in birds."

Her smile faded. "And that brings us back to the topic in discussion."

He looked away from her, watching the long branches of a willow swing into the water downstream. "Adalia, everyone in my life—all of them—has been there because they are paid to be so. Even with Theodore, I realized I was handy to have around—a duke tends to make people nervous in advantageous ways."

His look dropped to her. "And you as well, you came to me looking for something in return."

"To be safe."

He nodded. "So how can I think of this as any different? I pay people to be trusted—to be in my life. This is no different."

Her head snapped back, her green eyes widening. "No different?"

"Well, not exactly?—"

"The difference is that I am your wife, Toren."

Her left hand went onto her hip. "Your wife. No matter how our marriage began. I am your wife. No one is paying me to be with you. To enter your bedchamber. I do it of my own free will. I am with you because I want to be."

"Yet you are with me for the sake of the girls. For the sake of your own safety."

Her right hand flew up, waving into the air. "You're right—I would do anything in the world for those girls—anything. But I have never been worried about my own safety. I am not in danger, Toren. You think it, but I have not been. Everything has been directed at the twins for some god-awful reason. To make me suffer, I suppose. So if all I wanted was to ensure their safety, I would have married you and then left them safe at the castle weeks ago. I even considered it for days."

He blinked hard at her words. "You considered leaving?"

Her right hand went to her forehead, rubbing it as she looked up at the sky. "Blast it, Toren, how do you not see this?"

"See what?"

A deep sigh shook her whole body, and her look fell to the rocks on the bank of the brook. The toe of her boot flicked a pebble into the water. "Do you know that I did not tell you the full truth about my first marriage?"

Toren's look bored into the top of her head, his words measured. "What do you mean, you didn't tell me the truth, Adalia?"

She looked up at him, her head shaking. "I told you the truth, just not all of it. I blamed Caldwell for choosing Lord Pipworth as my husband—for my marriage being a disaster. I blamed him because I liked to blame him—I liked to pretend I had no hand in the choice, but the truth was, Caldwell was only doing what I wanted him to do—he knew I wanted to marry Lord Pipworth."

"You did?"

"Yes. I idolized the man growing up. He was tall and handsome and brash and my brother's friend. He would come into our house with Caldwell, and he was always so dramatic and funny, and I adored him from afar for years. I was just a little girl, smitten because I didn't know differently. I would have married him whether my brother had arranged it or not. He was the man I thought I wanted and I was that set upon him as my husband."

She heaved a breath. "That is the harsh truth of it. It has always just been easier to blame Caldwell for my marriage. But it was me. Caldwell was just trying to make me happy—he saw how I looked at Lord Pipworth. And Pipworth only married me because he felt obliged to do so after Caldwell's death."

"Why are you telling me this, Adalia?"

Her look fell to the water. "So you understand why I cannot be trusted when it comes to the men that I choose to love. I thought we would be fine as you proposed it at the beginning. A cordial marriage. I would give you an heir. We could live our separate lives. But then…"

"Then what?"

It took a long breath for her green eyes to lift, meeting his gaze, her look piercing him. "Then I damn well fell in love with you, Toren. And I am terrible at choosing a man to love. My choices lead to nothing but pain. So this is too hard. I need to be able to tell you this—need to not have to bottle it away deep inside of me. I love you and if I am damned for doing so, then I am damned. But I cannot keep it to myself any longer merely so you can walk through your days in the comfort of familiarity, with no emotion."

His hands came up, palms to the sky. "What do you want of me, Adalia?"

"Do you really want me to tell you what I want? We both already know what you will allow, so what does it matter?"

His mouth clamped shut, his lower jaw shifting to the side as he shook his head, avoiding her eyes. His voice came out low, rough, unrecognizable to his own ears. "My body needs yours, Adalia. Can that not be enough?"

"I don't know, Toren."

She shrugged, her arms wrapping around her belly once more. "I want it to be enough. I do. But I don't know if unrequited love works like that. That it can do anything but distort, morphing into something ugly and angry. I already travelled that path once. And I don't want to repeat that journey. Not with you."

"So don't let it be so. Let it go."

Tears started to brim on her lower lashes. "I am trying, Toren. I am trying."

The words hit him, slicing into him even as he didn't understand why.

She was trying to fall out of love with him.

There was something inherently wrong with that. And he wanted to stop her from even attempting such a thing.

The pebbles crunched as her boots swiveled on the rocks. She took a few steps toward the coaching inn before pausing, looking at him over her shoulder. "This is my failing, Toren. Not yours. Do not blame yourself for the state I find myself in. I own the fact that I could not adhere to our bargain, and I will deal with the consequences."

Tears unshed, she turned and continued her path to the inn.

Toren watched her, his feet rooted to the ground, until she disappeared past the stable.

No. He didn't want her to fall out of love with him. But he couldn't give her what she needed of him. He wasn't capable. He had never been capable.

He took a deep breath, the air lodging in his chest as he stared at the spot where her skirts had disappeared from view. Adalia was the very first thing in his life that he couldn't fix with appropriate attention to need. That was how his world worked. There was a need, and he met it. It had always been simple.

But Adalia. This was far from simple. Because she needed his love.

And he couldn't give her that.

Especially when his lies would destroy her, and in the process, destroy anything she ever felt for him.

She would hate him.

That he was sure of.