Chapter 10

Both of them turned to look at me at once.

Claire was half sitting against the headboard with nothing but a white sheet wrapped around her. Her hair was loose over her shoulders, and two fresh puncture marks on the side of her neck were still weeping blood.

Adrian sat beside her, his shirt open, red still smeared at the corner of his mouth.

Our eyes met across the room.

The tenderness and ease went out of his face in an instant.

"Evelyn?"

Adrian shot to his feet.

He moved so fast that he knocked over the glass by the bed and it fell onto the carpet. The dark red spread through the wool like blood that hadn't finished clotting.

Claire sat up too.

She clutched the sheet, and her eyes filled first with panic and then with something she couldn't quite hide, something like anticipation.

She seemed to have been waiting for this moment all along.

"Why are you in Paris?" Adrian came toward me.

I stepped back and avoided his hand.

That one movement froze him where he stood.

"Don't touch me," I said.

His face lost a little more color.

"Let me explain."

"Put your clothes on first."

I didn't raise my voice.

This was my bedroom, and I had no intention of standing among my mother's paintings and jewelry while the two of them discussed my marriage in a bedsheet.

Adrian seemed to realize what he looked like, and he hurriedly buttoned his shirt.

Claire got off the bed, picked her dress up off the floor, and went into the bathroom.

She stopped as she passed me.

"Your Grace, I—"

"Don't speak to me right now."

She pressed her lips together and shut the door.

Adrian took half a step closer, then stopped because of my expression.

"This isn't what it looks like."

I looked at the wrecked bed, then at the blood on his mouth.

"Then what is it?"

He had no answer.

After a moment he managed, "There are no feelings between us."

"Only feeding?"

"Not exactly."

"Only sex?"

Adrian's jaw tightened.

For the first time I saw that he could be afraid of a question I asked.

"Evelyn, you're the one I love."

"Does that have anything to do with what I asked?"

"I never wanted her to replace you, and I never thought about a divorce."

He spoke quickly, as if proving my position was secure would leave room to explain everything else.

Watching him, I suddenly understood why Claire had dared to sit on my bed.

They both knew I was irreplaceable.

And they both believed that as long as I was still the duchess, I hadn't really been hurt.

"How long have the two of you been together?"

"Evelyn—"

"How long?"

He was silent for a few seconds.

"It isn't the kind of relationship you think it is."

I didn't ask again.

Adrian had already given me the answer.

I went around him into the dressing room and opened the safe at the back.

My mother's jewelry, the Hartwell family documents, and the three small paintings were all still there. I packed them one by one into the case I had brought.

Adrian followed me in.

"What are you doing?"

"Taking my things."

"This is our home."

"It stopped being our home the moment you brought another woman into it."

Real panic finally showed in his eyes.

"I can make her leave right now. She'll never come here again."

"Adrian, you still don't understand."

I closed the case.

"What I'm taking isn't her place here."

"It's myself."

I picked up the case and walked out.

Claire was dressed now, standing in the bedroom doorway. Adrian didn't look at her. He only followed me into the living room.

"Evelyn, come back to London with me first."

"We'll talk after the anniversary dinner."

"Why does it have to wait for the dinner?"

I stopped at the door and turned to look at him.

"Because several hundred employees have spent half a year on it, and the foundation has invited artists who need the funding."

"Your betrayal shouldn't cost them anything."

His lips moved.

I didn't give him another chance to speak.

Before the elevator doors closed, I saw Adrian standing in our living room.

Behind him stood Claire, fully dressed.

To the very last second, he never answered how long the two of them had been together.