Chapter 14
M orning came too bright, too loud, an assault on Clara’s frayed nerves.
A flurry of tapping fingers, rustling silks, and the scent of triumph clung to her mother, thick and unrelenting.
Clara, by contrast, sat motionless at the breakfast table, her fingers curled too tightly around her teacup.
A scream caught beneath her ribs as the world celebrated a future she had not chosen.
Lady Shipley practically glowed as she waved the latest copy of The Mayfair Whisper. “There it is in print!”
Clara sat motionless, her toast untouched beside a pot of Earl Grey, the steam curling upward like a sigh she could not release.
Her mother’s voice carried on in the background, buoyed by triumph, but Clara heard little of it.
Her mind was adrift, still caught in the shadows of the night before, the echo of his touch, the heat of his breath, lingering like a secret she could not confess.
A tide of fear and longing pulled at her thoughts, threatening to unmoor her completely.
The kiss had awakened something—raw, dangerous—and it left her grappling with a torrent of emotions.
Was she afraid of loving him, or more afraid that she already did?
The low, simmering heat he had stirred deep within her lingered, confusion clinging like a fog she could not escape.
Did she want this wedding? Or did she simply want him?
Her heart thudded painfully. Across from her, her mother glowed, oblivious, while Clara sat motionless in the wake of a kiss that had shattered her certainty.
“Six weeks! The Duchess of Lunsford has already sent word requesting an invitation—what a coup!”
Her mother prattled on, planning a spectacle. Clara’s mind, however, was still in that dim corridor at Lady Everly’s. Still tasting the heat of Crispin’s kiss. Still haunted by the fact that she had kissed him back. And worse, had wanted to do so again.
“I suppose you will want a French modiste,” her mother mused. “Something daring, yet traditional.”
Clara rose. “I am going out.”
“To the modiste?”
“To think.”
She did not wait for permission. Her mother’s startled protest followed her, but Clara didn’t turn back.
Each step toward the door felt like reclaiming a fraction of herself.
Her spine stiffened, her breath shallow with emotion.
Frustration, yes, but also desperation. The kind that came from teetering on the edge of something she could no longer pretend was only pretense.
Outside, the air was crisp, scented with rain and roses.
The paving stones were slick, and the sky bruised with the threat of more rain.
Her slippers made soft, wet sounds against the street.
A flower vendor called out near the corner, his wares vibrant against the gray morning.
She turned away from the carriages and chatter, skirts swishing around her ankles, and walked with purpose, her maid a few paces behind.
She needed clarity, and she knew just where to find it.
Lady Oakford greeted her with an arched brow and a warm, conspiratorial smile, the kind reserved for intimates rather than mere acquaintances.
Instead of rising formally, she inclined her head with a subtle nod and extended her hand—not in the rigid style demanded by rank, but palm up in a gesture of welcome.
“Well, if it is not my future daughter-in-law. Come to rescue me from the tedium of polite callers?”
Clara curtsied and allowed herself to be drawn into the countess’s private salon.
A space Clara remembered well. It smelled faintly of orange blossoms and old books.
She had been here once before, during the height of the farce, when Lady Oakford had declared with dry delight that she was thrilled Clara had brought her son up to scratch. The memory warmed her even now.
Today, however, Clara wasn’t here to be congratulated.
“I needed to speak with you,” she said as they settled with tea. “About Crispin.”
Lady Oakford’s eyes gleamed. “Ah. Yes, the rogue of the hour.”
Clara’s throat tightened. She was not sure whether the countess’s amusement comforted or unsettled her. For a moment, she simply stared into her teacup, as if the rippling surface might reflect some truth back at her. Then she lifted her gaze.
“He told me what he did. Public declarations are a dying art—how delicious that he revived it,” Lady Oakford said.
Clara hesitated. “I wasn’t expecting it.”
“Neither was anyone else,” the countess said dryly. “But the ton needed something to talk about beyond lace and Lady Greystone’s unfortunate coiffure.”
Clara managed a smile, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
Lady Oakford grew quiet, then set her teacup down. “You do not look as if you have come to discuss flowers.”
Clara shook her head. “I came because I am losing my footing. Everything is changing, and I do not know how to stop it, or whether I want to.”
Lady Oakford tilted her head. “Do you love him?”
The kiss lingered in Clara’s mind, a spark smoldering in the shadows, refusing to fade—a whisper of something unspoken, dangerous, and achingly real, threatening to catch flame, fueling questions that burned hotter than her mother’s triumph or society’s approval.
Did she want Crispin, or did she want the version of herself that existed only in his gaze—unapologetic, desired, free?
She clenched her hands into fists, grounding herself in the present moment, while her heart wandered through every lingering glance and word they’d exchanged.
She wasn’t ready to decide, not yet. But for the first time, she believed she could.
Clara’s silence was a confession.
The countess reached forward and gently squeezed her hand. “Power, my dear, is not in saying yes or no. It is in knowing when to decide for yourself.”
Clara left with a heart both heavier and lighter.
Lady Oakford’s parting words coiled through her thoughts like ivy, tugging at the foundations of everything she believed about herself and what she deserved.
As the carriage rumbled through the streets of Mayfair, the city outside blurred—familiar yet somehow distant, like a dream she could not quite trust.
As the door to the Oakford townhouse closed behind her, she pressed a gloved hand to her chest, steadying the rhythm beneath.
The weight of the countess’s words settled over her like a velvet mantle, comforting yet unbearably real.
Could she trust her own instincts again, after having spent so long suppressing them?
Could she separate the performative from the genuine when every touch, every kiss from Crispin, blurred that line further?
A carriage wheel splashed through a puddle at the curb, snapping her from her thoughts. She drew a breath, lifted her chin, and stepped forward, not with certainty, but with intent. Whatever came next, it would be a decision made with her whole heart, not one borrowed from expectation.
Each step toward home felt like an act of quiet rebellion and trembling hope, her gloved hands clenched tightly at her sides, her breath caught between fear and possibility.
She had not found answers, but she had found courage.
Her breath eased, shoulders sinking just a fraction, and for the first time in days, she did not feel like she was bracing against the world.
Two days later, the garden party at Lady Densmore’s estate shimmered with golden light and hummed with polite whispers.
Spring had come in full force, sending blooms into riotous color and filling the air with lilac and lemon cakes.
Parasols twirled, champagne flutes glittered in the sun, and laughter rose like birdsong.
Clara drifted among the hedges, her fingers brushing the leaves as she passed.
Beneath her slippers, the grass was spongy.
Around her, shadows shifted as sunlight pierced the canopy in dappled fragments, and somewhere nearby, the soft hum of insects and the distant call of a lark reminded her how alive the garden was.
Her heart beat a nervous rhythm, each pulse a flutter against her ribs.
She wasn’t sure which frightened her more.
Being found, or staying lost. With each step, she caught murmurs of laughter and clinking glass drifting from the main lawn, a world that felt too loud, too certain.
Here, among the hedges, she could breathe—but only just. Her thoughts spun around the words she had not said, the kiss she had not forgotten, and the man whose presence she could not ignore.
She was weary of questions, of glances, of murmured congratulations that felt like veiled warnings.
“Lady Clara,” someone drawled.
Crispin.
He stood beneath the pergola, jacket perfectly tailored, smile slightly crooked. A slant of sunlight inside the pavilion caught the gleam of his hair, his gaze shadowed but intent.
“I was not sure you would come,” he said.
“I was not sure you would be here.”
They moved without speaking, drawn by the invisible thread that had bound them since the masquerade. Around a bend in the garden, the noise of society melted into birdsong and breeze. They found a pocket of quiet, tucked behind a wall of ivy and climbing roses.
He looked at her. “You have been avoiding me.”
“I needed time.”
“To think?” He arched a brow.
“To feel,” she said quietly, the words deliberate, weighted like a lady’s glove laid upon a ballroom floor. A challenge and a confession both.
She did not move when he stepped closer. She stood her ground, breath shallow, every muscle taut with anticipation as if one step might shatter her resolve.
“Why did you do it?” she whispered. “Why announce a wedding date without asking me?”
His voice was quiet. “Because I needed something real to hold on to.”
Her heart twisted. “This started as a farce.”
“It stopped being one the night you kissed me like you meant it.”
Heat flared in her chest. She remembered the garden.
The lanterns casting shadows across his cheek, the brush of his thumb along her jawline, the breath they shared just before the kiss.
That moment had unraveled her, a knot pulled loose by want and fear in equal measure.
She had pulled away. Not because she didn’t want him, but because she had wanted him too much.
“You should not have kissed me like that,” she said, her voice shaking as her fingers clenched involuntarily at her sides, betraying the storm gathering behind her calm.
“Not if you didn’t mean it.” That kiss had stripped away every pretense.
And now, with daylight and judgment closing in, she could not pretend it had meant nothing.
“I did mean it. Every breath, every touch.”
“Then what are we doing?”
“You tell me.”
She opened her mouth, but her lips parted only to press shut again. Her gaze dipped for half a second, her throat tightening with words that refused to surface.
“Do you want this to be real?” he asked, his voice a low murmur barely cutting through the birdsong and breeze.
Clara’s breath stuttered, her lips parting as if to speak, then stilling. A tremor bloomed at the base of her spine, rising like a wave she could not quite hold back.
The question lingered, thick with unspoken truths. Clara’s heart pounded, a frantic drumbeat of hope and hesitation. Why couldn’t she say yes? Or no? The words tangled with fear and longing. This was not a game anymore. Nevertheless, she hesitated.
He reached for her hand.
Her breath hitched, heart thundering beneath her ribs. She hesitated, eyes on his lips, everything unspoken surging to the surface. Then, driven by hope more than certainty, she rose onto her toes and kissed him.
Not a desperate kiss.
Not a reckless one.
But deliberate. Certain.
His hand came to her waist, steadying her as her fingers curled into the lapels of his coat. Her body leaned into his, and his mouth claimed hers with slow, aching reverence. His thumb stroked the line of her jaw, and she shivered—half from desire, half from the terrifying wonder of it.
He kissed her back, with the same slow ache, the same longing.
It was not a proposal.
But it was something dangerously close. An unspoken understanding, the kind that carried the weight of a vow. A silent pledge that said more than words ever could.
And this time, she did not pull away.