Clara opened her eyes and stood. Tried to. Atlas would not let her. As Cook settled the plate before them and left, he held her fast, picked up a point of toast and held it to her lips. “Eat.”
“I’m not hungry. I’m in no need. You are.”
“Need. Yes.” He tore into the toast then offered it to her once more. “I am in need.”
Clara glanced at her mother-in-law and Matilda. Their heads were bent at their work, but their cheeks were red as berries. Mortifying. These were moments best left for private, but she and Atlas had forced themselves to serve them up for public appraisal.
She nudged the toast aside and leaned close to whisper in Atlas’s ear. “You go too far. You must release me.”
“If it bothers them, let them leave.” His thumb stroked across her bottom lip, melting her resolve, meltingher.
“You are acting the scoundrel.”
“The rogue?”
“Precisely.”
He pulled her so tightly against his body she felt the planes of flexing muscle beneath the thin linen. When he whispered into her ear, his lips caressed her skin, his breath burned fire into her being. “The longer we continue, the more rogue I become. You make me feel like my old self. You make me want to misbehave.” She shivered, and he stroked his thumb down the exposed length of her neck. “You make me want to take something, for the first time in a long while, for myself.”
“You wouldn’t.” Not a dare or a challenge. A truth. This man never took for himself. She escaped his hold and pushed the food closer to him. “Eat, Atlas. Please?” As she settled in a chair at the other end of the room with Franny and Matilda, he reached for the plate, slowly at first then with greater gusto, digging into the pile the cook had brought him.
Good. He needed his strength. To fix a house. To fight his demons. To pretend he loved her. Everything for everyone else.
But what about Atlas?
“So,” Franny said, looking up from her needlework, “have you decided about the mistletoe?”
“Do leave the woman in peace, Franny,” Matilda said, placing a white stitch in the white linen. “She will make the decision in her own time.”
“Alfie would enjoy it, is all.” Franny pushed her work aside. “When I took him up to the nursery this morning, he could speak of nothing else.”
Words wriggled through Clara, squirmy, unclear until she said them. “Alfie’s happiness is always my priority, Franny. But Atlas is my husband, and what he needs must be of some importance, too. He is exhausted.” Her worry for Atlas real even if it was not why she did not approve of the mistletoe outing. She glanced over her shoulder. Atlas paid them no mind, his hungry focus solely on his plate. “He works himself to the bone for you and Raph, to complete the dower house. And he follows Raph wherever he is asked to follow. He’s gardener, stable master, footman whenever the situation calls for it. What if he should rest instead of gather greenery? Why cannot someone else do it?”
Franny’s open face, closed like a door, and as red flamed across her cheeks, her hands worked more quickly at her needlework, tangling up a form that had promised to be a flower but now resembled more a bramble of thorns. Then her hands stilled altogether, and she, too, glanced at Atlas. “Is he tired?”
Clara could not give away the truths Atlas did not wish others to have. “He would not say so.”
Franny nodded slowly. “Being a mother is most difficult. You would think after over thirty years of practice, I’d have the hang of it. ’Tis a difficult line women tread, pleasing everyone. Which are we first? Mother or wife? I never quite figured it out. Most of my mistakes occurred because I lost sight of one while being the other.”
“I think,” Matilda said, her hands going quiet atop her own needlework, “we are…usfirst. And if we listen to that part ofourselves, theuspart, we can better manage the other things we are. Wife, mother, marchioness. I hope so at least.” She laughed, resting a hand on her growing belly. “I do worry.”
Franny patted Matilda’s arm. “I do not. For you. You’ve managed so many grouchy old women in your past life as companion, you’ll have no problem with a babe and a beefwit for a husband. You, too, Clara. You are a most excellent mother. And your heart is clearly big enough to love your son and mine. I concede to you. If you say Atlas is too tired for mistletoe, I will simply not ask about it anymore.”
Did Clara have the balance right? Since her marriage, she seemed more torn. For the first weeks, she’d reveled in her own bliss, celebrating the pleasure that benefited only her. And then she’d acted for Alfie’s sake alone, cutting off her pleasure and, yes, Atlas’s too.
“Franny,” Clara said, “those mistakes you made, when you lost sight of a part of yourself… what do you wish you’d done instead?”
“Listened.” Franny unpicked her tangled stitches, smoothing out the mess she’d made. “To my children. A rather unheard-of concept, I’m afraid. We ship our children off. To wet nurses and governesses and schools and go about our merry ways. But I’ve always gone my own way in all else. I could have swum against the current there as well. And if I had, perhaps I would have been able to keep my husband from wasting his inheritance, from hurting so many people. Some lessons we learn too late in life.”
“But you are learning now, Franny,” Matilda said. “It is never too late.”
Clara jumped to her feet. “Excuse me. I must…” She made for the door.
The chair toppled behind Atlas as he stood too quickly. “Are you unwell, Clara?”
“I’m perfectly fine. I’ll return.” She found Alfie in the nursery with a pile of books. He’d built them into a fort and walked the figures Atlas had made him across the top as if they kept watch from a castle rampart.
He looked up and waved as she approached. “Will you play with me?”
