Chapter Twenty-Two
“I need to go down to Drewsbarrow,” Adam said. He had arranged for Clara to visit him at Penrose House, his London home. He and Clara had indulged themselves upstairs when she arrived, and now they satisfied other appetites at dinner.
“You seduce me, then leave me so early in the affair? I think you are too sure of me when I have given no cause for such confidence.”
Her eyes reflected her displeasure at his announcement. He liked how she did not hide her reaction to his pending absence. The sophistication she showed others did not extend to him anymore.
“How long will you be gone?”
“A week perhaps.”
“That is not too long. Long enough for me to flirt with other men, however. I will have to review my invitations and choose some good ones.”
He reached for her hand and entwined his fingers through hers. “It is far too long, but necessary.”
“Then of course you must go. I will miss you, but I have matters of my own to attend that will make the days fly by.”
He had on occasion wondered how she passed her time. Her arrival in the hackney today reminded him of her use of them in the past and of meeting her on her own in town far from Mayfair when she still lived in her brother’s house.
“More mysterious doings?” he asked. “What matters require your attendance?”
“The normal woman things.”
“What sort of woman things? You do not make many calls now, and you are not buying an extensive wardrobe.”
“Women do not only make social calls and shop. We are often busy people. If men are unaware of that due to lack of interest, we do not mind.”
“Because men would object? That is what you are implying.”
“They might. Most women have some man who might think he can interfere. I, of course, do not.”
I answer to no one, including you. He understood she had sound reasons for refusing to marry, both emotional ones and practical ones. Only now it entered his mind that Clara might be involved in something that she feared a husband would forbid.
What could it be? Reform work that took her to dangerous areas? Radical demonstrations that might turn violent? Whatever it was, the ability to come and go at will without any interference might be why she now lived on Bedford Square.
“I hope you know that I would not try to stop you from doing something that truly mattered to you, Clara.”
She smiled sweetly, but he doubted she knew that at all.
Their meal done, they retreated to the library. “I love this chamber.” She held out her arms and made a little twirl in its center, looking up. “It was my favorite as soon as I saw it when you gave me the tour before dinner. No one would guess looking at the house’s exterior that its library had a dome.”
“At night, if you look through those windows set into it, you can see the stars on a clear night, or even the moon.”
She threw herself onto a divan beneath the dome and gazed up. “You can! How wonderful. The lamplight from down here does not reach it, so the windows are quite black.”
He strolled to a desk and retrieved a box from its drawer. “I have something for you.”
He sat beside her and handed her the box. The ruby necklace, so long in the giving, lay inside. She lifted it. The lamplight created deep sparks in the stones.
“It is beautiful. And thoughtful.” She undid the clasp and set it around her neck. “It is also too generous.”
“I do not think it generous enough. It is past time for me to express my . . . affection for you.”
She did not seem to notice the slight pause caused by that catch in his words. She looked down, admiring the jewels lying on her chest.
To express my love for you. That was what he had almost said. The word emerged on his tongue without thought or choice. He stopped because such declarations required both of those things. He did not want to sound like a man who professed love easily, without meaning it, even if he had been that man in the past sometimes.
Now he wondered how she would have reacted if he had been less careful.
She reached behind her neck to unclasp the necklace. “It is stunning. I will have a special dress made to wear with it as soon as I can flaunt jewels again. I must find an event appropriate to their richness. One that my grandmother will not attend.”
“Do you think she won’t like them?”
“She will love them. This necklace is to her taste. Add four or five more stones and she would love it all the more. I don’t want her to see it because she will question me about how I came by it.”
He set his arm around her shoulders. “Tell her your lover gave them to you.”
She laughed. “Or better yet, tell her one of my lovers gave them to me. Oh, I can picture her now, suspicious that I goad her but wondering and worrying if I tell the truth.”
He kissed her temple. “Or even better yet, tell her that I gave them to you.”
Her mirth subdued, she fingered the gold setting of the largest ruby. “She will be relentless then in trying to force a proposal. You must promise me that you will never tell her there has been one already, insincere though it was.”
“I will not give her cause to browbeat you, but . . . we could both do much worse, darling.”
“You certainly could do much better.”
“I do not think so.” He turned her face so he could look in her eyes. “I must marry eventually. You know that. You can choose to continue as you are, but I cannot.”
Her expression shattered. “Of course I know it. It is unkind to remind me now, right after giving me that gift.”
“You are right. It was unkind and clumsy.” He kissed her cheek and tasted moisture. He never expected to see Clara cry about anything, least of all him.
He pulled her on his lap to embrace and kiss her until pleasure made her forget any unhappiness.
A half hour later they lay entwined on the carpet, under the dome, catching their breath while they gazed up at the stars speckling the black in the circle of windows at its base. She wore only the necklace and he nothing at all.
“Come down to the country with me,” he said. “You can stay at the Grange and ride over to Drewsbarrow every day to be with me.”
She did not respond at once.
“Of course, if your mysterious doings will not allow it—”
“It sounds scandalous,” she said with a naughty smile. “Shocking. A whole week of unfettered passion. Why, some might call that decadent. What kind of woman do you think I am?”
“An enchanting woman. A beautiful woman.” He kissed her. “A rare woman.”
She laughed. “Those were excellent answers.”
“I can keep going.”
“Please do.”
He continued praising her, with his words and then with his hands and mouth, until she agreed to try and join him down in Warwickshire.
* * *
Clara did not believe she could leave town for a week without her family knowing it. She would have to tell them but find good reasons that called her there. The next morning she wrote to her grandmother, explaining that she had to go down to Hickory Grange to meet with the steward about some tenants on her property. She offered to bring back anything that her grandmother requested.
A letter arrived in the next post, from Emilia. I was told you are going to Warwickshire. Please do not stay there long. I will be left with a different chaperone during your absence, which means I will have no fun at all.
That evening a letter from Theo arrived, asking her to bring back a favored waistcoat that he had left behind.
No response came from her grandmother. No scolds. No complaints. No objections. How odd. Perhaps she schemed to use this time to send Theo to Stratton, to put the question to the duke. If so, Theo would be unable to do so.
Packed and ready, the next day she and Jocelyn climbed into the carriage with Mr. Brady at the reins. Two days later they pulled up in front of Hickory Grange’s manor house.
She let Jocelyn settle her in while she met with the steward that afternoon. She had not lied about having business with him. She used the same one as Theo, and together they rode to the farms in question and discussed the improvements that he felt two houses needed.
They finished early enough that she debated her plans. She had intended to ride over to Drewsbarrow in the morning, but right now she was halfway there already.
“Please tell the housekeeper and butler that I decided to continue riding,” she told the steward. “I should be home by dusk, but in any case they are not to worry. If night or weather catches me, I will stop at a neighbor’s house.”
He rode away charged with her message. She turned her horse east. Stratton would be surprised to see her now, but in the best way.
She had never visited Drewsbarrow. She had never even spied the house from a road. As she rode toward it, its appearance struck her as appropriate to its name. A thick grove surrounded it on its hill, filled with tall, old oak trees. People of the county often still referred to it by the old name for the hill from centuries ago. Back then it was called Druids Barrow, or grove of the druids.
No druids greeted her. Only servants. The house, constructed of stone, rose tall, wide, and formidable. Little decoration relieved its mass. Any thoughts that it might not be a comfortable place disappeared as soon as a footman admitted her. Old-fashioned luxury waited.
The servants had never met her, but they knew who she was. Her footman did not even look at her calling card. “You are expected,” he said. “I will bring you to His Grace at once.”
Through cavernous chambers and echoing halls they traipsed. All the rich paneling, beamed ceilings, thick tapestries, and heavy fireplaces made her feel like she toured one of Queen Elizabeth’s castles.
Finally, in what seemed a deep corner of the ground level, the footman opened a door. A simple office lay on the other side, one with plaster walls and a timbered ceiling. Wooden boxes piled high with papers and scrolls lined a long table. Only when the footman announced her did a dark head emerge on the other side of that wall.
“Lady Clara. What a happy surprise.” Stratton stood and came around the table. He bowed. She curtsied. He sent the footman away. As soon as the latch clicked, he grabbed her. “Damn, I thought you would never get here,” he murmured between kisses. “I had given up hope for today.”
“I can only stay a short while before riding back.” She looked at those boxes. “What are you doing?”
“Digging through family papers sent here from Kengrove Abbey.”
His father’s papers, she assumed. “You have spent four days here doing this?”
“No, first I opened every hiding place in this pile, to see what they would yield. There are a lot of them.”
“Did you discover any treasures?”
“Not the one I sought.” He took her hand and led her out of the room. “I know you have been out for hours, but I have been buried. Let us take some air.”
A door to the grounds was not far away. It gave off into the grove. Once outside she looked up the severe stone face of the house. “It could use some new decorating.”
“Do you think so? You do not favor my great-grandfather’s taste?”
She laughed. “It is all very dark.”
He shrugged. “It was all but abandoned after my father married. They made their country home at Kengrove Abbey, not here.”
“They did not come here because of us, you mean.”
“Yes.”
She hated how that old argument had hung on for years, affecting not only the generation that started it, but the next one as well. And the current one, she had to admit. She wondered if anything could truly end it. Perhaps if they all agreed to say nothing about it to children born hence, it would eventually die.
He backed her against one of the trees and gave her a long kiss. “How long can you stay?”
“Not long enough for what you are thinking.”
He laughed. “Am I so obvious?”
“I read your mind in your kiss. I promise to ride over early tomorrow so we have many hours with each other.”
He kissed her again as if that hardly mollified him. With a sigh of resignation, he released her and took her hand. “Come inside and I will show you some of those hiding places. There is one that could house several people inside the walls.”
* * *
Jocelyn set out her green riding habit. “This will have to do for today. Or else the black. I need to mend the blue one.”
“This will do.”
Jocelyn began to help her dress. “There is a bit of talk among the servants about you are riding every day, all day. The women fear you will harm yourself somehow, with all the time in a saddle. The men remember how you did this after your father passed, and worry that you are again lost to grief.”
“And you?”
“I think you are not riding all day at all.”
“Just keep those thoughts to yourself.”
“Of course.”
“And reassure the servants that I am healthy and happy and well beyond deep grief. I do not want anyone feeling obligated to write to London with concerns.”
“I will take care of it.”
Dressed and ready, she once more aimed her horse east.
She doubted she would ever again know such grand days. She and Stratton had turned time upside down. They spent the morning in bed and, after the first two days, when late afternoon had found them still there, then dressed and ate and played like children. One fine day he took her to a little lake where they bathed. Another they met in an archery contest. Yesterday they brought pistols and muskets and practiced shooting. And of course they had kissed. Again and again they had kissed.
He told her stories too, about how his father had met his mother when she was a girl, then returned to France to marry her and bring her back before the troubles started there. He showed her the family graveyard where two older brothers were buried. Both had died as infants, which made his survival like a miracle. He described Paris in the years right after the war, when it seemed all of society from all over the world arrived to stroll in the Champs-Élysées.
Not once did he mention his father’s death or the cause of it. She began to think that perhaps, just maybe, it would not take another generation for the old memories to fade. They might do it together. They might forever find common ground, if they tried.
A groom waited to take her horse, as always. A footman opened the door. No formality greeted her, however. She strode to the stairs and went up to Adam’s apartment. Old-fashioned like the whole house, at least these chambers had been redone in the last century. Gilt carvings festooned the bed’s massive headboard with abandon. The moldings dissolved into arabesques of leafing tendrils. The entire apartment presented an environment of excess and decadence.
He still lay abed. The drapes had not even been opened. She went over and sat on the bed, and he unfastened her habit. She stripped it off, and her chemise, and climbed into bed with him.
“I wish you could stay here and be spared all this dressing and undressing,” he said after a kiss. “I would have you all the time then.”
“We would have to pay the devil not to be found out. Besides, I have taken to not wearing stays, so the dressing part is easier now.” So was naughty play later in the day if they chose.
“What is the worst that could happen if we are discovered? Your brother demands I marry you?”
That probably was the worst that could happen. This morning, after the heightened familiarity of this week and the depths of their intimacy, it did not sound so bad.
“We would stay here together and ride and swim and shoot during the day and be scandalous at night,” he said. “You could redecorate this old pile and renovate the gardens, and I could reclaim my place with the estate and the county.”
“It is sounding very domestic.”
“Isn’t it? It all has great appeal to me.” He glanced sideways at her.
It had appeal to her too. Mostly because he left out the parts that did not.
“Or if you won’t stay, you could ride like Godiva and be spared any dressing at all,” he said.
“That would be a fine sight for the tenants.”
“They would be in awe. There you would be, riding out of the mist in the early morning, your hair flying behind you, all creamy on that black horse. You would look like something out of a myth or a dream. Legends would start. Hundreds of years hence farmers would tell about the naked fairy who came with the spring.”
“What an imagination you have. You should be writing poems or novels.”
“What can I say, you inspire me.” He pulled her close to him. “I am far better at creative pleasure than poetry, however. I am wondering if you might be too.”
He proved what he meant. His mouth aroused her with devastating precision. She had no defenses anymore with him and succumbed quickly to whatever he did. This morning she had arrived so eager and full of joy that one smoldering gaze might have left her breathless. As it turned out, he had much more in mind.
His kisses moved in a hot trail down her body. She knew what he would do, but he moved so slowly that she moaned with impatience. He did not move down her body, either, but bent to kiss her stomach, and lower.
Hot breath on her mound. A firm hold on her hip. He turned her to her side, then turned himself as well so they faced each other upside down. He lifted her knee over his shoulder and sent her screaming into delirium. Even in her daze she realized this odd position allowed her to caress him. She took his phallus into her hands to give pleasure in return. The more she pleased him, the more he gave her, until finally she used her mouth too, first with kisses, then with more, while his tongue astonished her again and again.
* * *
Adam rose from the bed while Clara slept. He went to the dressing room and pulled on trousers, boots, and a shirt. He left just as his valet hurried in, carrying one of his banyans. He returned to the bedchamber, picked up Clara’s riding habit and chemise, and laid them on the nearby chair. He placed the banyan on top of them.
He left the apartment through the dressing room. “Do not disturb her. Leave hot water here, then make yourself scarce. I will be in the old study.”
He went down the stairs and wound through the chambers to the beamed room with the boxes.
Since he arrived he had examined every hiding place once more, looking for the missing jewelry. Nothing of such value had been found. Then he had begun the long chore of looking through his father’s personal papers. He faced those boxes again and pulled one toward him.
When the butler at Kengrove Abbey packed all of this, he had begun with the most recent papers and worked backward through time. That meant the oldest material had been on top, and Adam’s examination had moved forward through the years. If he did not sift through quickly, it was because each letter revealed something about his father. Even the reports from the stewards opened little windows.
The most interesting items had been letters from his mother, written before they married. Sent from France, she reported on the mood abroad in her country and expressed her concerns. Not love letters as such, they read as warm and affectionate communications between friends. He had set those aside to give to her when next he saw her.
He sat behind the boxes and removed a big stack from one of the last ones. Within ten minutes he realized that he had before him the papers from the last year of his father’s life. There were a lot, and many letters from other lords. He unfolded each one and read it.
In some, people begged off a party his mother had planned. In others, peers pointedly set aside the rumors and wrote on about bills to be discussed. The tone began changing, however. One man wrote to break their friendship. Another bluntly referred to the smell of treason. Then for several months, there were no letters at all.
Finally he found the reason why. A long letter in a fine hand began with regrets over the difficulties an old friend faced. However, it then gently gave bad news. Marwood sent a man to France, unbeknownst to anyone, I assure you. No minister approved this mission, and more than one is angry for the interference and the earl’s insistence on stirring once again this cauldron of innuendo. Unfortunately his man found the pawnshop at which the jewels were sold and retrieved a description that, along with the pawnkeeper’s explanation of their heritage as given to him, ties them directly to you. It is all around town, and I beg you to remain in Surrey until the worst passes. I regret that I must inform you of this, but you need to know. It is time, old friend, to discover what you can about these events so you are not impugned for others’ actions. It was signed Brentworth.
It touched him that the last Brentworth had remained a friend to the end and even assumed the rumors were untrue despite new evidence to the contrary. The last sentence loomed large, however. If not you, then who?
There was only one other possible who. The most likely who. Had his father asked her and learned that indeed she had done it? Had he chosen a path to ensure she would never be asked, by him or anyone else?
Adam stared blindly at the letter a long time. The revelations in it emptied him out until only a dark hollow existed in his heart. He had assumed he would find proof the accusations had all been wrong. As for the who—
“What do you have there that makes you frown so seriously?”
He looked up. Clara stood just inside the door. A ribbon bound her hair at her nape. She wore the banyan and, he guessed, nothing else. It was much too large, and the sleeves covered her hands. The bottom pooled around her feet. If any servants had seen her, she would never know it. They all had orders to fade away if the lady visited.
Her eyes held naughty lights that said she wanted to play. They faded, one by one, as she gazed at him. She walked to the end of the table and looked at the pile of papers in front of him. “Your father’s papers.”
“I am going through the last group.” He set the stack back in the box. “I will bring these with me to London and finish there.”
“What was that you were reading, Adam? You looked far away and almost lost.”
He looked down on that letter, not even folded again now. “It was a letter he received that explained what he faced.” He held out his hand. “Come along. I will have breakfast sent up to my chambers.”
She did not take his hand but instead kept looking at that box. “Have you learned anything from them?”
“A few things, yes.”
“Did you learn that my father played a role?”
He wanted to lie, desperately. Had she asked an hour before or an hour later, he probably could have. “Yes.”
“I think you always suspected that. I feared you would learn you were right. It is why my brother fears you and my grandmother is so eager to make peace. Not because of some old argument over a piece of land. Because of this.” She looked at him with a gaze both sad and defiant. “Do you think of my father when you see me?”
“Not any longer. Not since very early. Please believe that.”
“I am not sure I do. What if you discover he is to blame for all of it? Or did you already? He is dead and you cannot challenge him. Do you take what little revenge you can through me?” Her voice rang with both fury and hurt. “When you are with me, perhaps you are thinking Look what I am doing to your darling daughter, you scoundrel.”
“That is not true. Do not say that.” He reached for her, but she slipped away. Her back to him, she hugged herself.
He moved behind her but restrained himself from the embrace he longed to give her. “When I am with you, I think how I would like to live here with you, as I said this morning.”
“Here? A few miles from his home? From my family home? You will never give this up, ever, if you live here, with the grave of a man you blame mere miles away. As for me, am I to abandon them? Cross the great divide and never look back?”
He dared one touch on her arm. She did not thrash at him or jump away. “We can make peace, just as your grandmother first proposed. There would be no need to cross a divide if a bridge is built.”
She turned, angry still, and looked at him. “What were you reading when I arrived, Adam? Something bad, I think. Very bad, if you do not want to speak of it.”
“It confirmed some things I had already guessed and told me others I wish I did not know.”
“Was it enough for you? Are your questions answered? Are you now finished with this? Because if you are not, there will be no bridge that stands long, and no place for me in your heart that I can trust.”
Was he finished? Was it done? He wanted it to be. With his whole soul, if it meant he could have her.
Her expression smoothed. She reached up and laid her palm on his face. He would remember forever the look she gave him, as if she sought to memorize his face. “You must see it through, of course. This is your legacy as surely as these lands. What a fool I was to fall in love with you, knowing that. And yet, I find I am not sorry, even knowing what I now will suffer.”
“Clara—”
She touched his lips with her fingertips. “Do not. Please, do not. I think you would lie if you had to, and that would be too sad.” She lifted the hem of the banyan and walked to the door. “Please stay here until I am gone.”
She slipped from view. His mind went black and he slammed his fist into a wall. Then he sank down its length until he sat on the floor, and the hollowness filled with anguish.