“Are you in love with someone else?”
He laughed a true hearty sound as he threw his head back and littered the air with a dark sort of glee. The sound should not be shadowed, but it seemed to draw rain clouds. When he recovered, he said, “No, I’m not. Not at this very second, at least.”
“If you hold out hope to marry for love, you should not have proposed to me at all.”
He inhaled deeply, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “I should not have proposed.”
“But you did. Now will you honor that question?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I have no money. I am one of five sons, and our father squandered the family fortune. We work—work, Mrs. Bronwen, when no one else of our station does—because we must rebuild what he demolished. I cannotafford to take a wife. I can’t even afford a marriage license. I spoke to you the other day without thought to practicalities. I merely wished to”—he held his arms out, dropped them heavy to his sides—“save you.”
“Thensaveme. What care I for fortunes or labor? I’m a cabinetmaker’s daughter. Work is no sin to me. And if it is money that worries you, I may have a solution to that.”
His thick, dark brows furrowed.
“My husband bought me jewelry for every occasion. A, frankly, obscenely elaborate parure when we wed, necklaces and earbobs for every birthday, when Alfie was born, when he felt guilty for not taking my side over his father’s in some argument.” As if jewels could make up for neglect and cruelty. “And when he knew he would die, he bought more still, though I asked him not to. He… he feared what his father might do, and he wished me to have something valuable, you see. To sell should I need to. I’ve not sold any yet, but I’m sure?—”
“Don’tyouwish to fall in love, Mrs. Bronwen? I do not plan to marry, but surely there’s some corner of your heart that wants to…” He took several steady steps toward her, his gaze lingering on her face, her hair, her lips, each look as tender and touching as a kiss. “See a man and feel the sun heat up your heart, fill in all those lonely, shadowed places? Don’t you want to find a man whose countenance is as familiar to you as your own, more beautiful than any springtime bloom?”
She snorted. “Pretty words. I’ve no need for poetry.”
“I am poetry.” Quiet words. “So you have no need of me.”
She rounded the pianoforte with ginger steps, not wanting him to run again, and this time she stopped several feet away from him. “I have been in love. It withered and died, as all pretty things do. I need security. Alfie needs protection. You do not wish love and domesticity, either. You need money. You need someone to help you finish the dower house. I can give you that.”
He growled, sinking onto the piano bench. “If you must marry me, you should know I am wounded.”
A final attempt to run her off? She wanted to laugh, but the firm set of his chin moved her body differently. She sat beside him on the bench. He almost swallowed the space, and his thigh nudging up against hers was thick and muscled through the wool of his trousers. His gloved hands on the keys were big, fingers almost too large for them. They should have looked awkward on the elegant instrument, but they seemed agile instead, nimble and waiting for the right moment to send music soaring into the air. She followed the length of his arm up over his wrist to his shoulders, broad and bumping against her own. Snowy cravat, dimpled chin, eyes blue and shadowed. He did not look wounded, looked nothing like a dying man, and she knew well the look of one of those. Pale and skeletal not sun-bronzed and big. He used no cane, and he moved with grace.
But the deep hunch of his shoulders and tight set of his jaw gave truth to his words.
She sighed and hit a key, then another. “I suppose.” Then another key and another. “We are all wounded in our own ways. Look.” She held out her hand, pulled her glove off, revealed that little bit of herself she often tried to hide. Mostly to avoid questions, wide-eyed looks. “An accident with a saw. Hurt so badly I passed out. The doctor feared infection, but as you see, I survived.”
His hands on the keys froze and then lifted. He took her hand between his own, turning slightly to face her, knocking their knees together on the narrow bench. He stroked the too-short length of her smallest finger with a heavy inhalation. Barely half of the finger remained. He did not seem disgusted by it, though she’d met many who were. Her father-in-law for one. He’d instructed her tosleepwith gloves on.
Lord Atlas did not shy away from the imperfection, the long-healed wound. He folded her hand wholly between his and squeezed as gentle as a prayer.
“I should not show you.” She spoke because the way he held her hand sent flutters through her chest. “You will think me a dunce with my tools and will not let me help with the dower house. I was fully trained, I’ll have you know, when it happened. And always careful. Accidents happen, though, do they not?”
“They do.” He set her naked palm on the outside of his far thigh just above his knee. “Here.” He smoothed her hand up to his hip. “All the way up to here. A bayonet ripped me open good.”
Beneath her hand, his thigh was hard. She’d never felt anything like it, hard as ice, warm as a roaring winter fire. Could she feel the puckering of the skin, the anger of the old wound? She ran her palm up and down from knee to hip. His muscle bunched beneath her touch.
“I’ve other wounds,” he said. “I’m not pretty to look at.”
“I doubt that.” Oh. True as the sentiment may be, she’d not meant to say it. But it quirked the corner of his lip up, and that sent her heart scattering into a thousand fluttering wings.
She pulled her hand into her lap where it tingled with the feel of him. “Your wounds do not scare me. Separation from my son does. If you truly have decided against your proposal?—”
“It was terribly rash.”
“Just so… and I will join you as a cabinetmaker instead if you… if you rescind the other offer.” Anything would do. Anything would have to do to get them out of London.
He set his fingers atop the pianoforte keys. “Your son came to see me earlier this week. He threatened me.”
“Oh no.” She swung sharply toward him. “You haven’t found unmentionable substances in your footwear, have you?”
A broad grin, a shake of his head. “Nor have I found myself pelted with rocks. He threatened me, as well, with a slingshot.”
