Chapter Twenty
Clara watched dusk fall, then the night gather outside the windows. She began to think Stratton would not return tonight.
She had only herself to blame if that happened. She had given him no promise that she would come here as originally planned. When they parted, she was not sure that she should.
Yet here she was, feeling less confident in her decision by the minute.
He had been very kind at the race. Very charming. She did not doubt his apology was sincere. Time had cleared the worst of his mood, too. She still sensed that shadow and saw it in his eyes, but not with the intensity of the morning.
Dangerous. She had forgotten that people said that about him. He had not seemed dangerous to her. Not in the ways the gossip meant. This morning, however, when he appeared in that clearing, that word fit all too well.
Had he been there that day? Had he seen the result? She suspected he had. He had been lost to her, to the whole world, while he stared at that big rock. Lost to himself too.
She looked around the chamber in which she lay. Althea had urged her not to come. If he needs you he will find you, she had said. Althea thought that like most men, Stratton would want to be alone if he lost a battle with himself.
Althea had probably been correct.
* * *
Adam entered the house near midnight. It had been a hellish day. The only good thing had been seeing Clara. Their time at the race shone as a bright spot surrounded by storms. There was a painting in the gallery like that, a landscape of a cloudy day with beams of sunlight pouring out from the clouds, illuminating a few farms in the middle.
Eventually, of course, the clouds would close in over those farms too.
It had taken two months for someone to force a challenge out of him here in England. As expected, it had not been a man who bore any responsibility for what had happened years ago. Rothborne might have known what anyone of his station knew or heard in private gossip, but he was drunk so often that his voice had no influence, and his befuddled mind could never form an argument for action.
He mounted the stairs. On impulse he approached the chamber Clara had used. In the moment before he opened the door, a soulful hope twisted in him. In the next instant it died. She was not there, of course. Why would she be? An apology did not absolve him of the cold way he had treated her this morning. He had not blamed her, not in words, not even in his mind, but she had seen what was in him and probably guessed that he did blame her family. Familiarity, even passion, does not change who we are.
He walked to his apartment, grateful now that it had been totally changed so nothing of its previous occupant would haunt him. His manservant slept on a chair in the dressing room. He wanted no fawning servant imposing on him now. He jostled the fellow awake and sent him on his way. Then he shed his coats and sat down to pull off his boots.
The second one hit the floor loudly. He stripped off his shirt.
Another presence intruded on the space. He felt it before he looked. When he turned his head, he saw Clara at the threshold to the bedchamber, wrapped in a sheet. Her bare shoulder indicated she was naked underneath.
She looked beautiful there, washed in the pale golden light from the small lamp. She seemed to be emerging from the shadows, barely visible but elegant and soft.
“I thought you remained in Epsom,” he said.
“I decided not to.”
“I cannot imagine why.”
Her brow puckered a little. “I am not sure I can either.”
He reached out. “Come here. Leave the sheet.”
She dropped the sheet and came to him, naked and beautiful. He drew her onto his lap facing him, so he could hold her against his chest. Her warmth soothed him. Contentment spread like a long, physical sigh.
Her face nuzzled the crook of his neck. “Was I wrong? Did I make a mistake?”
“I am grateful you are here.” He caressed down her back and over her hips and the round swells of her bottom while she lay against him. Her breaths quickened in the musical way her arousal sounded.
He should take her to bed and show his gratitude by giving her every pleasure she ever imagined. He should express his affection with slow lovemaking. Instead hard and desperate desire exploded in him,
He lifted her to her knees and moved her to straddle him. He used his mouth on her breasts and stripped off his lower garments. She braced her arms against the chair back while he pushed her ruthlessly toward the abandon that would deny him nothing.
He put his hand to her until she reached the edge, then watched as her release shattered her. Its tremors shook through her powerfully. Beautifully. While she dwelled within them, he wrapped her legs around his waist, stood, and carried her to the nearest wall. With thrust after furious thrust he exorcised the memories and resentments that haunted him.
* * *
“This is a very nice bed.” Clara made the observation well into the night. It was the first words spoken since the ones in the dressing room. Only now, a good hour after he had carried her to this bed and taken her a second time, had they both calmed enough for any conversation. This seemed a safe topic.
“It is, isn’t it? Nice and big, so I feel appropriately ducal. It is all new. I was surprised by its appearance when I arrived.”
Any number of responses came to mind, but each one of them led back to his father. So she said nothing.
The bed in question looked disreputable right now. They lay under the sheet stripped away in the dressing room. It barely covered them, dragged here as it had been and thrown haphazardly. The maids would wonder what had happened. Then again, probably they would know.
She lay against his chest, sated and, if truth be told, a little sore. She did not mind that. Her spirit had known what was in his while it happened. His releases had been about much more than carnal pleasure.
“I almost had to challenge a man today,” he said. “A drunk, dim-witted fellow. He would not restrain himself. At least twenty men heard what he said, so I could not pretend I did not.”
“Yet you did not challenge him.” She made a statement but sought reassurance. There was no guarantee the dim-witted fellow was not very good with a pistol.
“Langford and Brentworth tried to intervene, but it was the Duke of Clarence who saved the day. Thank God he likes disobeying his physician by drinking Brentworth’s whiskey, or he might have left earlier.”
“It is said he is called Silly Willy.” Her father had told her that. She left that part unsaid.
“I know, but not by me after today.”
They lay there in peaceful silence, both awake, his hand sliding up and down her back as if stroking out the rhythm of his thoughts.
“He died there, in that clearing. But I think you guessed that.”
His words broke through the night. Her breath caught.
“It was one of his favorite places. He and my mother would go there. I think sometimes they bathed in that pool, not that I ever saw it.”
She dared not speak. She would allow him to say whatever he wanted to say, although already her heart wept at what was coming.
“He had been melancholic for months. I did not know all of it yet, but I knew enough because I had not been spared either. That day I suggested we go riding. It was my attempt to distract him. When he was not at the stables at the agreed-upon time, I knew. I just knew. So I went looking for him.”
She closed her eyes to try and contain the anguish she felt for him.
“He must have been sitting on that stone, but he had fallen beside it. It was what the ancient Romans did, to save their families and fortunes, when disfavor fell on them. To save their sons. I felt an unholy anger that day, mostly at him. I still do, which seems unfair.”
“That anger is common when those we love leave us.” She knew this from her own experience, and she had not even lost her father in the manner he had.
He pressed a kiss to her crown. “I had not been there since that day. Until this morning. That was why—”
“You do not have to explain.” She stretched and kissed him.
He stroked his fingers through her hair and held her head to a deeper kiss, one heavy with emotion. Then he pulled the sheet over her shoulders and tucked her back under his arm.
She rested there, drowsy now, her heart drenched with layers of emotion.
“I did not have to explain,” he said. “But I wanted to.”