Chapter 9

Amazing how quickly a woman could become a different one. Stand up with a lord before a clergyman, repeat a few words—voilà! Mrs. Bronwen became Lady Atlas Bromley. She felt no different than before, but she could not stop looking at her hand as she sat in the middle of the small but jovial wedding breakfast at Briarcliff. She'd worn a ring for eight years, but she'd plucked it off this morning.

Lord Atlas had not replaced it with another. She'd known that would be the case, but her hand felt barren nonetheless. And she could not help but wonder… if her union with Lord Atlas had been for love and not for safety, would he have found her a ring? And what would it look like? What would it feel like to have a bit of him wrapped around her at all times?

Her husband stood nearby. She could reach out and touch him if she dared. The air between them sizzled, and she glanced at him in tiny increments only. The sleeve of his cuff was more frayed than she'd noticed before, and the elbow stretched too thin. The seams of his shoulders were coming unplucked in places where he filled it out too tightly for fashion.

If he was an elegant man who screamed of military bearing, his precision and perfection existed not in his clothing, but in him alone.

Zander said something across the room, and his brothers and their wives laughed. She grinned, happy to be part of such merriment, but still feeling… outside of it.

A hand settled on her shoulder, then her husband leaned over and whispered in her ear, "You are very pretty today, Clara." That deep, rough voice rumbled through her, warmed her more than the fire could. Her body seemed incapable of resisting Lord Atlas. It obeyed his every command, preening now that he'd complimented her, aching now that he touched her, wanting now, too.

"Thank you, my lord," she mumbled. Then, finding bravery, she patted the open space beside her on the sofa. "Atlas, will you sit? You've been standing all day."

He shifted from foot to foot and his gaze flipped from that narrow space to another chair, and then another and another around the room. "No. I'll stand."

What did he find so displeasing about the chairs? One possessed an elegant spindle back with straight, carved arms to match. But he wouldn"t fit in that narrow space, would he? Another had no arms, inviting any sort of body, but the seat was so small his shoulders must be double the size. Another uncomfortable perch. Oh, and the legs of that third chair seemed a bit wobbly, even from across the room. Too spindly, too delicate. Sitting was a precarious activity for her husband. Especially considering…

She studied his stance, slightly tilting to his right, taking weight off his left. Almost undetectable, but clearly he favored the injured side. How much did it pain him, then?

She stood abruptly. "I should like a walk. Is that terribly rude? On such a morning?"

"Not at all," Franny said. "You may go and come as you please here. You'll find us terribly informal in almost every way."

Clara called Alfie to her. "Would you like to go for a walk as well?" She looked up at Atlas. "You must show us your favorite places around the estate."

"Very well." Atlas offered her a hand, helping her stand.

They gathered their coats and soon were striding out of doors, ambling in no particular direction. At least that she knew of. Alfie took the lead, running ahead, exploring fences and ha-has, chasing after rustling bushes.

"Can we get a dog, Mama?" he called.

She laughed. "We'll see."

Atlas shoved his hands into his pockets, watched his walking boots. "He can have a dog. Of course he can have a dog. I had a dog."

"Oh? What was his name?"

"Tickles." The word a barely audible grumble. "Because it tickled when he licked me."

Was that her heart attempting to pop right out of her chest and give the man a hug? Why must he say such things looking as he did, handsome and embarrassed and, she couldn't help but notice, virile.

"That's terribly adorable." Her turn to grumble. "I don't think I should have married you. You're too adorable to be a husband."

"Adorableness is a bad thing in a husband?"

"Yes. It makes a lady wish to cling." And this relationship did not require clinging.

His hand lifted, hovered around his jacket breast, then fell once more. "The lake is just over that rise. The sun is out. We can sit on the bank a bit."

Excellent. A man could sit on the bank of a lake when he could not sit on the floor of a parlor.

"When shall I see the dower house?"

"Tomorrow if you like. It's"—he rubbed the back of his neck—"better than it used to be. But there's still much work to do."

"How did it get in such a state?"

"Time. Bad choices. Made by my father, particularly. The inheritances have helped quicken improvements."

"Inheritances?" She'd not heard of an inheritance until now.

"My father loved art. Expensive stuff especially. More, at times, than he loved his family. That's where all the money went, where all the bad decisions came from. He left, upon his death, everything to the Royal Society for Art. Except for six paintings. Highly valuable ones. Each worth a small fortune in its own right. He willed one painting to each of his children with the stipulation that in order to inherit it, they must first produce a work of art approved by my mother."

"Arsehole." Clara spoke through little wheezes. The small rise that hid the lake was steeper than expected, and when he offered his arm, she took it readily.

Atlas chuckled. "Right bad one at times."

They reached the top of the small hill, and there, spread before them, a sheet of silver gray, glittering in the sun.

"Lovely," she breathed. "Alfie must learn to swim."

"He doesn't know how?"

"No. Lord Tefler did not think it proper. Alfie! Where did he get to?"

Atlas pointed to the far side of the lake. "Look."

"How?" She started down the hill to the lakeshore. "He is going to enjoy it here. He likes to climb. And there are so many trees. And at least two roofs."

"He'll climb the roof?" His brows snapped down into a V.

"He likes high places. I managed to keep him on the ground in London, but I fear I will face the same struggle I faced at Coledale now." She sat on the grass some ways from the lapping edges of the water and grinned up at him. "Sit down, then. Join me."

After a brief hesitation, he complied, stretching both legs out, one a bit more gingerly than the other.

There. Finally, she'd gotten him to sit. He rolled slightly over onto one side, lifting the other leg just a bit off the ground. Did it pain him?

"Tell me more about this inheritance," she said, turning her face up to the sky.

He grunted. "We're not artists. Well, except Theo. Maggie, my sister, a bit too. But we're not artists with a capital A. Not much ‘divine talent,' as my father called it. Maggie won her inheritance first. She created a design for silk brocade. Flower of some sort that had to do with a memory of our father. It's beautiful. Her husband is a silk merchant, and he had a pelisse made with the design for Mother. Raph won his next. You'll have to ask Matilda about that. Then Zander. Drew and I are the only two who have not yet won our inheritances. Mother would just give them to us now. She decided a while back we shouldn't have to suffer for art's sake any longer. But Drew doesn"t want the money at all, and I… I want to earn it."

"What art will you create, then?"

His gaze wandered away from her, seemed to light on every bit of the landscape but for her. Then his brow furrowed, and he cried out, "Alfie, lad, come down from there!"

Clara swung her gaze to the tops of trees bending over the lake on one side. Ah, there. A flash of blue and white where there should be none. "Alfie, down!"

"Very well," Alfie groaned from the tip-top of a tree. Soon after, the branches shook and the blue and white flashed downward.

"You were not joking," Atlas said.

"Afraid not."

"A song," he said after a breath of silence. "I'm trying to write a song."

"Have you written songs before?"

He rubbed his thigh, an absent-minded gesture. "I wrote some songs of victory a long time ago. Before Waterloo. The Crown liked them. They wanted me to write more after Waterloo. I did not. I did not write for a very long time after, either. But… song has been quite pouring out of me for about a year now." A flush of pink crept into his cheeks. "I sell them on the Strand. Love songs sell best. I've found that I can take just about any subject and turn it into one."

She laughed. "Have I heard any of them?"

He shrugged. "Perhaps."

"Will you sing one for me now?"

He inhaled, closed his eyes, shifted his weight so that it rested on his hand stretched out behind him, palm flat into the drop cloth. And then he sang. And the same shocking awareness that had floated through her the first time she'd heard his voice floated through her now. Only now this man was her husband.

He continued singing, and she looked over her shoulder. Alfie had disappeared again. Likely up another tree. For the moment, they were alone, and with his eyes closed, the thick black of his lashes fanned out on his cheek, oh holy Hepplewhite, she wanted to kiss him. She'd wanted to kiss him last night as they'd danced around the fire, for one small moment had thought he'd kiss her. She'd have welcomed it, no matter her talk of a chaste marriage.

Sobering realization, that. It would not take much, from this man, to break her every resolution.

She leaned closer, closed her eyes, and let her head fall back on her neck instead. She let the song skate across her skin and live in her bones. She let it vibrate across her body and sink into her soul. And when his voice hummed to a stop, still she kept her eyes closed, willing the sound to stay in her.

And then his fingers brushed her temple, pushing a lock of hair away from her face. And then she was leaning into his hand. And then his thumb was stroking down the length of her jaw. And then his heat was so very near. So very near she knew he would kiss her, and she wanted it more than anything. How many years had she gone without affection? How many months had her body felt nothing but the numb of fear and uncertainty?

But his touch brushed all that away, made her remember how nice it was to feel safe, protected, adored.

He did not adore her. She knew that. But his touch held a hint of adoration, likely that appreciation for beauty that beat the blood through his veins. She'd take it. Because it had been so long since she'd had anything close to it. She'd take his touch, his kiss, which seemed to be approaching with rapid certainty.

She opened her eyes to watch it happen and found him watching her.

"What about the nights, Clara?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"My mother thinks us in love. She thinks we'll share a bedchamber. She thinks— Doesn't matter what she thinks. What do you want, Clara? I know it is not to share my bed, but we may have to share a room."

What did she want? No one had asked her that in such a very long time.

What did she want? For Atlas to kiss her, a desire at the edge of her consciousness since he'd kissed her that first time, a warning she clearly found difficult to heed.

A rustle in the trees, a flash of skeleton-suit blue. Atlas pulled away from her, his gaze flashing to where Alfie swung from the branches.

She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins. "We are two reasonable adults locked in a… a partnership. I do not see why we can't share a room without succumbing to… to …"

He cleared his throat. "Indeed."

She rested her cheek on her knees, turning from him, hiding the mortified flush heating her cheeks. Had she been about to ask for a kiss?

No. She'd been about to ask for more. For a bed, for his body and the pleasures he might provide now that he'd given her his name for protection. She'd wanted the rogue who'd appeared twice now to ravish her lips and leave her needing more.

She should be happy with what he gave her—a haven, a home—and wish for nothing more.