He nodded.
“We are the same in that, I think, then.”
“You are happy, too?”
“Terribly so.Andterribly in love with you. You know, I am not surprised at your being in love one bit. Did not you tell me once you made a habit of it?”
“I think, now, that was less practice and more… searching. I never found the right something to fall in love with until I found you. I never knew what it meant to love, truly, until I met you.” He tipped her chin up, needing her full attention. “I do not loveyou as I love anything I can so easily walk away from. You are not a moment of beauty. You areallbeauty. You are my whole heart.”
Her breath caught, and she toyed with his cravat. “You are a true proficient at love. An artist of it. Must be all that practice.”
A true proficient in the art of love? Yes, with Clara dancing in his arms, he truly felt like a master artist of the heart.
Epilogue
10 years later
When the coach crested a small hill and Briarcliff came into view, Atlas pressed his palms flat against the glass, his heart in his eyes, and Clara fell in love with her husband for the thousandth time. At least. She’d lost count long ago. Difficult to enumerate a thing that happened daily.
“I want to visit the dower house first thing tomorrow.” He spoke without tearing his gaze from his home. “Raph’s last letter said the current occupants left. It may need some repairs.”
“An excellent idea,” Clara said. “I’ll go with you.”
“Papa?” Mary climbed off Clara’s lap where she balanced, little face serious as usual, and leaned against her father. “May I come with you?” She liked to watch her father work because he hummed while he did so, and she made up silly songs to go with melodies. Her command of English was excellent, and after their trip to the Continent, her command of French and Italian impressive for a girl of only five years.
Atlas wrapped an arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. “Of course you may. But you might find you’d rather stay and play with your cousins.”
She pushed her dark hair away from her face. “I will do that, too.”
“I want to go to the lake first.” Across the coach from Atlas, her face pressed against the glass as they rolled closer to home, Grace bounced. Closer to the truth to say her entire body vibrated. “And then I want to spend all day in Grandmama’s room.”
“If Grandmama says you may,” Atlas said.
“She will.” Grace was not wrong. Franny’s personal parlor had become a bit of a second nursery, all the children piled in there daily for drawing lessons and stories and simply to let their grandmother spoil them. “She always does. Kate’s last letter says she needs new paints.” She raised her blue eyes to Clara. “So our gift is perfect.” Turning back to the window, she untied the strings of her bonnet and let it fall behind her. Her auburn hair, so much like Clara’s tested the strength of the pins holding it back, as if it knew arriving home meant freedom.
“Do you think she knows?” Alfie leaned back in the squabs across from Clara, his long legs bent and uncomfortable in the small, crowded space. No longer a boy at seventeen, and no longer a lanky youth after their trip to the Continent. The time they’d spent at concerts, in galleries, and on still-healing battlefields, he’d spent in the mountains. When he’d first seen the Alps, his eyes had glowed. He’d given a slight nod as if accepting the challenge, and he’d set to conquering the mountains.
The most horrific days of their trip had been those during which Alfie had disappeared. He’d returned a bit beaten up but with a certain swagger, having, he’d said, conquered Mont Blanc.
Now, he stared across the coach and out the same window as his sisters and father, his restlessness at being confined evident only in the tapping of a single finger against his thigh. “Kateis excellent at keeping secrets, but Henry can’t keep a word he hears to himself.”
“Henry is no more than seven. Secrets are difficult at that age.” For boys who didn’t have to hide. No wonder Alfie could not understand his cousin’s loose lips. He’d been too grown up for seven years old. Thankfully, the young Viscount Stillman, and future Marquess of Waneborough did not have to hide. Anything. Not even the surprise gathering they’d been planning for his grandmother.
“If he’s told Grandmama,” Grace said, “I’ll kick him in the shins.”
“You will not,” Clara chided. The two fought quite often, when they weren’t plotting something devious.
The coach rolled to a stop, and Atlas opened the door without waiting. He swung Grace to the ground and kept Mary in his arms, humming near her ear. “It’s ever good, my dear, to return home.” He sang the words and then hitched a brow and looked down at Mary.
She wrinkled her face and tapped her lips for a few moments before her brows shot toward her hairline, and she sang back, “No matter, my dear, how far you roam.”
He tapped her nose. “Excellent.”
A game they played often, throwing out rhymes for one another. The other children often joined in, even Alfie, but Clara liked to close her eyes and listen. Just listen. To the voices of those she loved raised together in teasing harmony.
As Clara stepped from the carriage, Alfie just behind her, the door opened, and Briarcliff spilled forth its inhabitants—a veritable army of children, several pups with their back ends wagging, two tiny pigs trailing after tiny girls, and Atlas’s sister and brother-in-law, his brothers, arms wrapped somehow around their wives, all grinning wide and greeting them so warmly, and loudly, the inhabitants of Fairworth likely lookedup from their tasks and shook their heads before resuming once more.
Hugs exchanged until Clara knew not where she ended and the others began. The happy chatter of return the best music. Two babies passed into her arms at one point before Atlas lifted them away for himself.
