She nodded. “I am very lucky to have made a family of friends in the years since I left the South Bank. And still . . .”

  He waited for her to finish, knowing not to push. Finally, she looked down at the letter in her hands—the one in which his father changed a destiny. “This—she was his sun.”

  As Adelaide might be to Henry.

  As she was, already.

  Like that, he understood. He saw his father’s life with perfect clarity. Saw, too, how his mother had blessed him. Blessed them all.

  How he, too, might be blessed. “What a gift she gave him,” he said. “A family to love. To be proud of.”

  Adelaide nodded. “And the gift he gave to you. His love. His support.” She pressed a soft kiss to his lips.

  Let me give you the same.

  They looked at each other for a long time, and he would have given anything to hear her thoughts before she finally said, “No wonder you are such a man. So vocal in Parliament. Using every bit of your voice to speak for children who have not been so lucky.”

  “I think any decent person with sense and a shred of humanity would do as I have done if they saw the conditions in which these children live.”

  She shook her head. “Plenty see it and say nothing. Do nothing.”

  He cleared the lump in his throat, the relief that someone finally understood. “My mother would have been cast out. From her family. From her community. And me with her. We could just as easily have found ourselves in a workhouse than in an ancestral home. I could have just as easily not have become a duke.” A pause. Then, “And there is the fact that I am not a duke. Not really.”

  “What does that even mean? Not really? You’ve the name and the title, the letters of patent.”

  “And another letter. One that tells the truth. That though I was born to married parents, I am not my father’s son.”

  Thunder flashed in her eyes. “Bollocks.” She raised the letter. “Trust me, as someone who spent a childhood with a father who thought of me as nothing but money in the coffers, the idea of a father claiming his children with such certainty, with such . . . devotion . . . Henry—what could be more legitimate?”

  Her enormous brown eyes were on him, full of urgent concern. “This man—he loved you unconditionally. And your mother as well. What a glorious truth to hold close.”

  “When he told me—” he began, then stopped, the memory of that day coming on a flood of shame. “I was furious.” She stilled, watching him without judgment, and he pressed on. “I was fourteen, and home from school. An absolute monster. Entitled and full of bluster and certain that I knew everything there was to know about the world.”

  “An aristocratic man in the making,” she said with a gentle tease.

  “My father was nothing like that. He was . . .” He searched for a word.

  She lifted the letter in her hand. “I know him.”

  “You do,” he agreed. “That letter—it was the heart of him. And I was too angry to see it. I was so furious with him—I blamed him for lying to us. For telling us at all. For burdening me with the truth—and the knowledge that if anyone found out, it would mark us forever.”

  “But it wouldn’t. They were married when you were born. You were his son.” She paused. “Are. You are his son.”

  “He died three years after he told me. And I was still angry. Because his secrets were mine, and they made me a fraud.”

  “They most certainly did not,” Adelaide said, the words loud enough to startle him. He met her eyes, flashing with frustration and righteous outrage. “I think they made you more a duke than any of the others who wander the halls of the House of Lords. I think they made you strong and noble and kind and decent.” The words were soft, but full of steel, as though if anyone wandered in to disagree, Adelaide would happily hand him his head before seeing him out. “I think you have spent a lifetime trying to prove that you were worthy of a title that is nothing close to worthy of you. And I think the man who wrote this letter would be so very proud of you, Henry Carrington, Duke of Clayborn. Son. And brother. Prince among men.”

  She was magnificent in her anger, and it occurred to Henry that anyone who had Adelaide on his side—in battle or in life—would be immensely lucky.

  “I am sorry that he was not able to see what you would become,” she said, reaching for him, tracing over his skin, down his arm to his hand, where she laced her fingers through his, the movement full of all the truth the words carried.

  He lifted her hand to his lips, pressing kisses along her knuckles. “Thank you.”

  She let him linger for a moment, watching him worship her hands, before adding, “The only thing I do not understand is why you will not marry.”

  “Adelaide, the storm that would come for me in that scenario—I would not lose the title, but I would lose everything else. Reputation. Community. Respect. Any woman would regret loving me when it came.”

  “Why, because the world might think you less a duke, because your father was more a man?”

  “That’s not all of it.”

  “Tell me the rest,” she said, fairly vibrating with her affront. He reached for her, drawn to her fury on his behalf, his fingers sliding into the curls that made her an avenging angel.

  “When I was ten, Jack was born. He is the image of my father.”

  She stilled, immediately understanding. “Henry.”

  “No—” he said. “I know what you will say.”

  “And you should hear it. You are Clayborn. The law says it. Your parents were wed when you were born. Your father claimed you as his. That makes you legitimate.” She brandished the letter. “This man—he would have wanted you to claim it.”

  “You misunderstand,” he said softly. “It is not that my father did not wish me for heir. He did. He was the best of men—and I never for a moment doubted his love, which is why I was so angry when he told me the truth. He never cast me out. I cast myself out.”

  She shook her head. “Why?”

  “Because Jack . . .” He sighed, searching for the right words. “I do not pass it to him because of the circumstances of my birth. I pass it because of the circumstances of his.” He looked away from her. “He is theirs. Born of love. Is that not the best way to continue the line?”

  “Henry,” she said softly, reaching for him, holding him tight. “He was born of their love, and you were raised in it.” She kissed him, soft and sweet. Still there, surrounding him, even now, with his secrets revealed. “And what of that? Do you not deserve children born of love?”

  Those babies again. That collection of fire-haired, bespectacled little girls. A serious boy or two in the mix. Something tightened in his chest. “I did not think much of them until recently. Until you.”

  Something flashed in her enormous brown eyes. Something soft and quickly shuttered. “I have thought of them recently, too.” She pressed her lips to his again, then whispered, “But I cannot promise you children. All I can promise you is myself. For as long as it suits us both.”

  It was an offer. She’d made it before.

  Marriage isn’t the only path.

  “And what, we hide from the world?”

  To his surprise, she laughed. “I have only ever hidden from the world, Henry.” He didn’t like that, but before he could say so, she pressed on. “Think of it. We would be harming no one, and I cannot think it immoral for two adults who want one another to have one another. I do not need a benefactor: no money need change hands. I have my own income, work I do not wish to part with—a world to change from Covent Garden.”

  Her girls. Her shield-maidens.

  “And you . . .” she continued. “You’ve a wide world to change from Parliament. And this way—we can taste all of it.”

  It was meant to tempt him.

  Surely, plenty of men had played this game over the years. Had taken partners in secret. Had loved and grown old and had families with them. The world gave men a wide swath of opportunity for it. But Adelaide, who’d spent her life alone in the turret on Westminster Bridge, keeping herself safe, trading bits of herself for fear of being cast aside—it was not enough.

  She deserved so much more from the world.

  From him.

  “I straddle two worlds, Henry, one foot in the muck of Lambeth and one in the ballrooms of Mayfair. Neither fits me.” She shrugged one shoulder. “It’s a strange half-life that never seemed to have a path that would lead to this. But this path, I can walk it.”

  There was another path, though. She could find a decent man who could give her a full future. A full heart. All she deserved.

  And still, he was greedy for her, wanting to say yes. Wanting to take everything he could have of her. Whatever pieces he could carve off.

  Hoard.

  Before he could find the words to explain, Adelaide was once again lost to the letter.

  “Wait. I stole the box. I stole it, and the letter within, from The Bully Boys, who stole it from you—for someone. Alfie Trumbull does not steal puzzles for sport—and I do not imagine he would care one bit if he knew the truth about you, other than to blackmail you with it until you were bled dry. But even that is not my father’s preferred sport. Which means someone hired him to get it, and paid him well to burgle it from Mayfair. He knows better than to draw the attention of Scotland Yard.”

  He nodded. “Havistock.” She recoiled at the name as he pressed on. “The Marquess of Havistock was a childhood friend of my father’s. Friend,” he spat. “My father was a decent man who led too much with kindness. Believed too much in others. Thought Havistock the kind of friend he could trust, and showed him the letter. The box. The ring.”

  “No,” she said. “A man like Havistock—he would use this to get whatever he wanted. Forever.”

  She shook her head. “But there isn’t a whisper of this in your brother’s file. For all Havistock disdained your parents—he never spoke of it.”

  “I don’t think it mattered to him. Until recently.”

  “Why now?” He didn’t have to reply. She divined the answer almost as soon as the question had left her lips. Her turn to be clever. “Child labor. He wished to stop your campaign, which threatens his workhouses.”

  He shouldn’t be surprised, and yet, “How did you know about them?”

  “Havistock has a file, too. And it’s not full of gambling debts and idiocy. It’s thick as my thumb, and filled with a score of activities that, though not illegal, are most certainly immoral.”

  “Including employing children in his factories,” he said.

  “Yes, well, employing is not the word I would use for the way he treats them, and the little he pays them.”

  “And there’s nothing to be done. It’s not illegal. But it will be,” he vowed. “Unless Havistock finds a way to turn Parliament against me.”

  “By making you a scandal.”

  He nodded. “I wouldn’t lose the title, but I would lose all its influence. The cause would be set back years. Longer.”

  “And the only reason why it hasn’t been revealed already . . .”

  He met her gaze. “. . . is because you stole it.”

  She adjusted her spectacles, unable to resist the quip. “You may thank me any time.”

  They shouldn’t joke. And still, he liked her too much not to. And she liked him, too. He flashed her a smile. “I intend to. Thoroughly.”

  She leaned in and kissed him, long and sweet, like a treasure, drugging him with her softness and the scent of her, thyme and fresh rain. When they parted, he said, “I was afraid of that box, of its contents, for so long. I made to destroy it a thousand times, knowing that it was a risk to let it exist. But I couldn’t, because it proved that love existed. That it was good and worthy and true. And so I took the risk.”

  He kissed her again, unable to stop himself from stealing another moment with her. Another piece of her here, in this magical place. “All that time, I thought the truth of that letter would weigh heavy when it was released. And instead . . . because of you . . . I am free of it.”

  Staring deep into his eyes she said, “Why did you let me keep the box? Why did you let me open it?” There had been a dozen moments when he could have emptied it, and she knew it. “Why did you leave the letter there?”

  He’d asked himself the question a dozen times. Told himself it was because the letter was safer there than it was on his person. But it wasn’t the truth. “I wanted you to know,” he said, finally. “I wanted to trust someone with it. I wanted that someone to be you.”

  She shook her head, and he knew what she was going to say before she said it. “I’m a thief.”

  He reached for her, pulling her to him, willing her to understand all the ways she was a marvel. “You think I don’t know that?” He said, “You stole me that first day, on the docks. The first time you kissed me.”

  She pressed her forehead to his and closed her eyes. “I intended to give you back.”

  “Impossible. I’ll never allow it.”

  “So imperious.” Something flashed in her eyes even as she smiled. Something he wanted to banish from her thoughts. Something he wanted to banish from their time together.

  She kissed him then, long and lush, and somehow sad and urgent—a kiss that left his chest tight with fear that it might be the last one. And when it was over, he said the only thing left to say to this woman who had stolen his heart.

  “I let you keep the box because I trust you.” Another kiss, like a reward. “I let you keep it because I wanted you to have a piece of me that no one else has ever had.” And another, like a temptation.

  Tempting him to tell her everything. “Adelaide, I let you keep it because I love you.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The confession was raw and beautiful, and Adelaide did not know what to do with such a gift, so she did what she had done for her whole life and escaped it. She left the bed, reminding herself that they required food and drink.

  In the kitchens, she filled a plate with ham and cheese and apple and spoonfuls of mustard and pickle that had been left in the stores, trying the whole time to forget what he’d said. How it had sent a current of excitement through her.

  How it had made her believe in a future with him.

  In her lifetime, Adelaide had never been a coward. But when she returned to the room, plate piled high, to discover Henry up and washed once more, a shirt pulled over his head, hiding bandages and muscles, she found she could not look him in the eye. She was too full of a dozen emotions, none of which was pleasant, and she feared that if he saw them, he would come for them. Vanquish them. Chase them away.

  Foolish Adelaide; he came for her anyway. Crossing the room the moment she entered, relieving her of her burden and pulling her to him, tilting her chin up so he could look past her spectacles into her eyes and read her thoughts. And then, without a word, he tugged her into his lap, refusing to let her hide.

  Somehow, impossibly, she didn’t mind, because Adelaide had never been interested in hiding from him, not from the first moment she’d met him. Not since. It was why she’d gone head-to-head with him the first time they’d ever met. Why she watched him in Mayfair ballrooms, willing him to see her. Why she had kissed him on the dock, why she had challenged him to a race across Britain, why she had stayed there in that house for days, waiting for him to wake. Waiting for him to see her.

  Which he’d done from the start.

  So she let him pull her into his lap and hold her tight as he ate the food she’d prepared for him. Of course she did. Because of all the strange, uncomfortable, wonderful emotions he evoked, the one she was able to name—willing to name—was desire.

  She desired him. This. And not in the way she’d been trained to think of desire. Not in covetous gazes, quick and hot. She desired him in a cool, steady stream, like a balm. And it was a balm when he touched her, soothing aches that she’d never noticed until he was there, that she’d had for a lifetime.

  His hunger had returned, and Adelaide delighted in watching him eat, loving the knowledge that she nourished him in some small way—giving this magnificent man a bit of herself, risking it.

  This cannot last, she tried to remind herself, again and again, but the words of warning were washed away every time he paused to feed her little tastes, the best morsels from his plate, as though she were a prize to be won. A treasure to be held.

  As though it was he who nourished her.

  He loved her.

  So she looked to that magnificent man who made her feel magnificent, too, and said, “I want to trust you. I want to know what it’s like.”

  He stilled, a piece of cheese in hand, halfway to her mouth. His eyes found hers, serious and searching, and a muscle in his cheek twitched, as though he had a thousand things to say. Finally, he settled on one. “Please.”

  She took his hand in hers, accepting the food he’d been about to offer her, using the time it took to eat to consider how to tell him all the things she wished him to know, even as she knew her story would end whatever she might have dreamed.

  “You asked about information. About why I collect it. Why conversations with me feel like they must be bought and paid for.”

  He shook his head, passing a hand over her back. “You don’t have to explain it.”

  “I think . . .” She paused. “I think I want to.”

  Back and forth, his fingers trailed over the thin lawn of her chemise, ignoring the ridge she knew he could feel there, knew he’d found before. He was no fool; he would not be surprised to discover it was part of her story. Indeed, it was Adelaide who was surprised, because she had never imagined she’d speak of it to anyone.

  “I do not know where to begin.”

  His hand was still there, at her back, stroking. “Your father is Alfie Trumbull.”

  Her gaze shot to his. “How did you—”

  “Our visitors at the Hungry Hen.”

  “You were half dead.”

  “Excuse me, I was not.”

  She slid him a look, but did not argue.

  “I might have been worse for wear, but my hearing was in pristine order.”