Why couldn’t they have each other?
Because she was a mother first and a woman second, and she refused to risk her son’s heart.
Truth, Clara.
Very well. Her own heart, too.
Because more than she missed his body, she missed standing at the window with him, watching Alfie dash down a tree, discussing plans for the dower house, collecting words to give to the both of them so she could hear them laugh as they created the silliest rhymes.
On the landing, all doors were open but for the one in the far-right corner. She opened it and found him curled on his side on a small bed there. And something like relief sailed through her. A moment only, though. Because his big body, shaped in such a pose of innocence, of vulnerability, that back put to the world as if he expected it to hurt him…
She pressed her eyes tightly closed against the tears, inhaled to pull them into a retreat behind the walls of her heart. He had been hurt, and he knew what he needed to do to heal. She could never deny him that. No matter how real her own desire for him, no matter how real his felt for her at times.
“Atlas,” she said, his name barely a whisper.
He shifted his top shoulder, rolling him onto his back, revealing his stubbled profile. How could such a large man, a former soldier, be so pretty, too? His dark lashes fanned across his tanned skin, and even in sleep, that square jaw of his clenched tightly, his lips thinned. What visions did he see in sleep that put such a pallor on his face? He’d seen things he did not wish to remember, but dreams did not care for preference. You took what they gave you, whether it made you scream or not.
She’d married this man, made love to him, thinking him nothing but a jolly fellow willing to sacrifice to help others. He was that. But not only that. He hid his pain so well, hid even his plans to heal it.
How lonely that must be.
And she’d made him lonelier. She’d married him to save herself and her son. She’d stayed in his bed for weeks to please herself, revel in her own surprising joy. Then she’d pushed him away for Alfie’s sake. And at every turn, he’d done exactly as she’d asked.
He’d given her so much.
She owed him more than she currently gave him.
She knelt beside him, having floated there without much thought, and trailed her fingers down his cheek. “Atlas.”
His eyelashes fluttered, and then his eyes opened, and his jaw softened, a blush rushed across his cheeks, wiping the pallor away. His lips fleshed out into a sleepy smile, eradicating the narrow worry he’d worn in sleep, and he clasped her hand,kissed her palm, sighed into it, his eyes closing once more. “Clara.”
Caught. And kept in such delicious chains, the palms of his hand about hers rough with the evidence of his daily labor, strong and warm and her name on his lips something like a benediction, a prayer.
Something shifted inside her. If saying her name, holding her hand, seeing her upon waking placed such a look of peace upon his face, perhaps… Was it possible thatshe did give him something, without even trying?
He sat up with a groan. “Good morning.” He released her hand and swung his legs to the floor to stand, stretching as he did so.
She followed him to her feet, unable to look away. Would not, had someone paid her to do so. He wore only buckskins and a thin linen shirt, and beneath that linen, muscle bunched and flexed. A fine sight. She knew the feel of him, too. The taste of him.
“Did you sleep well?” she managed to say, each word weaker than the previous one.
He found his waistcoat and shrugged into it. “No better or worse than usual.”
“You should sleep here more often. It is not right for you to curl up on the floor each night.”
“It is no bother.” But his fingers stroked up and down the outside of his wounded thigh, and the muscle of that leg bunched and loosened, a rhythmic contraction and relaxation she’d seen often from him before. The damn leg pained him, though he wouldn’t admit it. “I will find better accommodations soon.”
After they told his mother the truth.
He stood before the window, shoulders almost as wide as it, and looked out onto the morning. “I worked most of the night.”Turning, he gazed over the room, from floor to ceiling, wall to wall. “But I finished it.”
She spun in a slow circle, taking in the molding and the door frame, work he’d completed on the fireplace mantel and the bad spot in the floor. All finished. And well, too.
“Where did you learn carpentry?” she asked. Why had she not asked it before? A natural question, considering his father had been a marquess.
“A man in the village taught me a bit. A furniture maker who used to attend my father’s yearly house party taught me some as well. My father encouraged it from the artist, but less so from the skilled laborer.” He snorted. “Likely why I preferred working with old Franklin over Mr. Credinsly.”
“Credinsly?” She wrinkled her nose. “I know him. Stole my papa’s design for a wardrobe once.”
