My bonny lass, my truth.
He might understand that line now. The truth?
In less time than it took a second hand to travel round the clock, and for the second time that day, Atlas fell in love. This time not with a pianoforte.
Two
The man whose bulk threatened to collapse the chair groaning beneath him must be a bloody giant. Clara’s eyes had almost jumped right out of her bone box when she’d entered the room. But years of tempering her reactions had kept them right where they must remain—behind her lids. She needed to make a good impression. She needed this position. Alfie needed it. She could not very well walk in and stare her fill at a man who would either be a woman’s naughtiest dream or worst nightmare. Depended on the lady.
Clara was no lady, no matter eight years of training to make her one. Make herappearone. That she must never forget. Her husband’s family had never let her forget—she was not a lady by birth or blood, could only hope to fool others with pretty speech and fancy clothes.
And as she sank into a chair at the front of the room before the large windows, she knew she played the part well. She wore a plain but fine gown, and she’d wrangled her hair into a prim coronet around her head. Not a fashionable coiffure, but one that conjured images of Madonnas, angels, innocent shepherdesses. She offered, to go with her appearance, a gentlesmile that entirely ignored the pounding in her heart. Two men before her.
At least one possessed a title, that she knew of, and held her destiny in his hands. The hulking fellow at the side of the room? A man clearly too big for the chair, and the chair, groaning beneath his weight, clearly not hardy enough to survive him. Or the slim man sitting behind the table? Neither of them quite like any of the swells she’d seen before, neither like the one she’d been married to. The sitting one fit her expectations more, though. Sleek, polished, handsome in a cool, aloof sort of way. Entirely untouchable behind the glimmering glass of his spectacles.
Behind him sat a woman with curly but tamed black hair, the only soul in the room keeping Clara’s limbs from bouncing off her body. The curly-haired woman touched the untouchable man, first tapping him on the shoulder and then, when he did not look up from his notes, using the feathered end of her quill to tickle his ear.
He swatted it away and, finally, looked up at Clara. “And you are?”
“Mrs. Clara Bronwen.” Said in her best Mayfair voice. “I’m come to interview for the position of cabinetmaker at Briarcliff manor. You are Lord Atlas?”
The man behind the desk said, “I am Lord Andrew. Lord Atlas is my brother.” He gestured to the giant. “He is the one in need of an assistant. I am merely helping facilitate the interviews.” Both lords, then. They looked much alike with hair from sandy to chocolate brown waving back from their foreheads, striking blue eyes, and fine features. Lord Atlas was much larger, more muscled, and he possessed a dimple in his chin, just below his thin-lipped frown, that seemed out of place on so burly a man.
Lord Andrew did not introduce the woman behind him. Typical of a peer. Was the woman his wife? What else could she be? A sister?
Clara took the woman’s presence as a sign, a reassurance—the interview would go well. She must leave London as soon as possible, and if what she’d heard about Briarcliff were true, it would be something of a haven for her and Alfie. Still, she’d better do her best to appear nonthreatening. Men like Lord Andrew did not like a woman to appear too strong, too knowing, too hardened.
Clara folded her hands in her lap and cast her gaze down toward them. Unfortunately, the modest posture did nothing to sell her skills. She would eventually have to speak up about those and shove humility to the side. On the side of the room, the Lord-Atlas-afflicted chair creaked. It took all Clara’s self-control not to turn and see if the man had broken it yet.
“It is most unusual,” Lord Andrew said, “to see a woman with your training, and?—”
“My father was a journeyman, and he spent some time learning from Sheraton.” She’d interrupted him, but how could she not? He’d questioned her. She could no longer remain silent. “Do you know of him?”
“Mrs. Bronwen, I’vemethim.” Lord Andrew raised a brow, clearly not amused. “My parents fostered connections with every talented artist and artisan in England, no matter how little well-known by others. But that is of no import. Nor is your father’s training. We’re interviewingyou, madam, no one else.” Lord Andrew stretched out a leg, his boot popping out from under her side of his table. “Andyouare not a journeyman.”
“Because I’m not allowed to be. But the lack of a slip of paper does not mean I have no skill. My father taught me everything he learned. Though I prefer Hepplewhite’s style to Sheraton’s. More elegant in my opinion, which is what your project needs.Additionally, I can accomplish any task you require of me with refinement and skill.” Clara held her chin high. She was proud of her abilities. But prouder still of her father. It had been almost a decade since he’d passed away, leaving her alone; a decade since she’d found herself in a predicament similar to the one she now found herself in. She’d figured out how to fend for herself then. She would do so now.
“You were not on our list of artisans to interview, Mrs. Bronwen.” Lord Andrew brushed his hair behind his ear, raised a brow.
“I heard Lady Theodore speaking of it to Mr. Clapton. I am more capable than he. And I paint as well.” She nodded to the wall behind them, the mural sprawling across it. “That is my work.” She’d been thinking, as she’d painted it, of the day her husband had died. A gray day. She remembered little but for the birds perched on the roof of his family’s country manor, how they’d stayed there all day then taken flight as the sun sank into the horizon and navy blue spilled across the sky. She remembered, too, how Alfie had cried. How she had wanted to but had not.
The woman with the dark curls stood and traced the flying birds with gentle fingers. “Beautiful.” She looked to Lord Atlas, buthisface remained as much a mask as his brother’s. If the woman found anything in the man’s visage, she possessed keener sight than Clara did.
Lord Andrew turned to his brother as well. “Something like that would be appropriate for the dower house, don’t you think?”
“We don’t need anything fancy.” Lord Atlas grimaced and shifted in his seat. “Apologies, madame.” His voice…holy Hepplewhite,what a miracle of a sound. How did… How could she recover from that? If she’d been pressed to guess how he would sound, she’d say gruff, like shagreen scraping across wood. Surely. Just look at the man. He should sound like treebark. Or a donkey’s bray. Or like the constant clip-clop of horses and carts on a muddy London street.
But his voice sounded like pure silk, smooth and warm, a melody without a song, a strain of pure beauty. She inhaled to collect herself. Voices, no matter how perfect, were of no matter at the moment.
She reconnected with that ever-present strand of fear coursing through her every limb and stood. “Please know I do not beg for myself but for my son. He must escape the city. For his health. Please do not dismiss me because I am a woman. I assure you I have as good or greater skill than any man.”
“It is not because you are a woman.” Lord Atlas stood, shoulders hunched as if he were a child receiving a lecture. Wrong, that, to see so strong a man curved like a slender branch beneath a gentle breeze.
Lord Andrew made a tsking sound. “Our mother would skin our hides if she even thought we were suggesting that. You see my secretary behind me, yes?”
Ah. The woman with dark curls was a secretary. Interesting.Promising.
“Yes.” Clara tempered the hope from her voice.
