Sir Timothy was a fraud.
Not in business and matters of the parish and estate. In those dealings he was perfectly honorable.
No, it was in matters of the heart that he was unscrupulous—a liar of the worst degree.
He tried to tell himself that Adelaide was enough, that Adelaide was all he wanted. That it was Adelaide he loved. And yet, as he hugged his daughter good night, it was not his wife he imagined tucking the dear thing into bed. When he kissed his wife errant thoughts of her would drift into his mind, unwelcome and unwanted. And when he lay next to Adelaide at night, he could swear he sometimes heard the telegraph clicking downstairs. He half expected to wake up next to a different woman after a night of startlingly vivid dreams of what might have been.
So Timothy tried the next best thing—to hide all signs of these thoughts from his wife. But they were tricky things, darting this way and that, avoiding capture, and they had the most uncomfortable habit of popping up at the most ill-opportune moments.
Damn Dorcas Lane! Damn her and her beautifully curled brown hair, damn her stunningly intelligent hazel eyes, damn her defiantly proud lips—these thoughts were NOT helping.
Why was it not working? he wondered. Why could he not convince his wife that he was hers? He had done all the rights things, said all the right words, showed up at the right places—and yet, there was something missing.
When he married her, he had thought that Adelaide would be enough. And in some ways, she was more than enough. She loved him, he knew, and it just made him feel all the more guilty when he thought about her.
For, try as he might to change, Dorcas Lane was his one weakness.
