“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 intoher 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 abed, 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.
