Chapter 25
The ground was hard beneath the blanket he’d haphazardly thrown on the ground, and Hector knew that his leg wouldn’t thank him tomorrow.
He didn’t care. He wouldn’t have moved for anything in the world. Not when Clio was snug against him, all soft curves and satin skin. Not when she was aimlessly tracing a pattern on his arm, where it was wrapped around her.
Taking her to bed—or, well, floor; he really was probably going to hell for that—had been the most perfect thing he’d ever experienced. Even though he knew he should hope that he’d gotten her with child, a foolish part of him hoped for precisely the opposite, if only so that they could keep trying.
He didn’t know how he was supposed to give this up.
“Hector,” Clio ventured, and he struggled not to tense. “Can I say something?”
“Of course,” he managed, throat thick with anxiety.
Horror went through him. This was where she told him that he actually had hurt her—and if she said that, he was going to throw himself into the goddamned Thames. Or, this was where she said that she wouldn’t be doing that with him again, heir or no heir. Or—
“This is the ugliest ceiling I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”
He blinked.
“What?”
She propped up on her elbow, giving him a rueful look.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t say so; that’s the kind of thing that you’re meant to never say aloud, I suppose. But we’ve been lying here looking at this plasterwork and—goodness. It’s awful, isn’t it?”
For a moment, Hector just looked at her, this unimaginable beauty, her dark hair in total disarray, her nose scrunched in apology for her own bad manners—
And he started to laugh. It wasn’t a polite, Society laugh; it was a great, wracking laugh that nearly jostled Clio away from his side.
Clio’s lips pressed together like she wanted to be annoyed with him, but then she started to laugh, too. She smacked him on his bare chest, and he grabbed her hand, holding it there.
“I’ve never looked at it,” he admitted, “but it is rather horrible, isn’t it?”
It was some Stuart monstrosity, and whoever had patched it over the years had done a terrible job, masking each discoloration or crack with increasingly ornate carvings.
And yet, right now, Hector loved that damned ceiling, because it had led to Clio, draped so limply across his chest that it was as though she hadn’t any bones at all, shaking with laughter.
“There is so much about this house that continually surprises me,” he admitted, smoothing the loose tendrils of her hair.
They were even softer than he’d ever imagined.
“I suppose if I had spent my whole life here, I wouldn’t notice it.
I can only assume that’s how it’s gone unchanged all these years. ”
Clio hummed thoughtfully at this, and he felt the vibration through his chest.
“You did spend some time here, though, as a child?” It was a gentle prod, one that invited but did not demand disclosure. And, to his surprise, Hector found himself willing to share.
“A bit,” he said. “But less than I spent in the country. My parents … They didn’t even care to look at me.”
The admission hurt less than it ever had before, and the slight remaining sting vanished at the utter outrage on Clio’s expression.
“You know that’s ridiculous, right?” she asked, poking him forcefully in the chest, in case he wasn’t paying attention with every fiber of his being. “You know that they were the ones who were wrong, don’t you?”
“Aye,” he said, but clearly it wasn’t emphatic enough, because she poked him again. “Saints, woman, don’t maul me. Yes, I know. I was a child, and they were intolerably cruel. Are you happy now?”
“I wouldn’t say happy,” Clio said sulkily, and Hector felt slightly dizzy with pleasure at knowing he could lean up and kiss that pouty lip.
When he pulled back, she had a gratifyingly dazed look about her.
“Mostly,” he went on, “when my parents went to London, they left me at the manor house. I loved it. The staff were never warm to me—I assume they feared my father’s retribution—but they were never cruel, either. And the absence of cruelty felt like a proper holiday.”
“If there’s a portrait of your father around here, I am going to carve out the eyes,” Clio threatened ominously.
“How bloodthirsty of you,” he said approvingly. “But his ghost can’t reach me here. This house … It has its own problems—"
“Yes, whoever decorated it should be brought before a tribunal,” Clio interjected.
“—but even if it doesn’t feel like home, it at least isn’t connected to any of those painful memories.”
They both paused, then. Hector took a moment to assess the room around him, to think of this house that didn’t quite feel like his yet …
But which could. It could be his home.
If Clio were here with him.
He couldn’t yet dare to hope that she might not still desire freedom.
She hadn’t said anything to that effect, after all.
But there were things that were shared without words, and she was still drumming her fingers against the muscles of his chest, and she was still languishing atop him in all her naked glory.
So maybe, maybe. Hector had never thought himself a coward, but now he felt like the most craven cur because he didn’t even dare think it, didn’t dare let that tiny little what-if form in his mind.
Because if he felt it and then lost it, he might actually die from it.
“You spent years abroad,” he said, clearing his throat awkwardly as he tried to change the subject. “Do you think of Belgium as home, then, or England?”
He tried to ask it as though he had no stake in her response.
A flicker of discomfort moved across her expression, there and gone in a flash.
“I … don’t know,” she said after an agonizing moment.
“Or, rather, I suppose neither of them truly feels like home.” She shook her head, and the silken ends of her hair danced across his shoulders.
“I feel as much a stranger here in London as I did in Belgium, I’m afraid. But that’s all right, I suppose.”
This last was delivered unconvincingly, as though she was trying to comfort him more than herself.
It didn’t work. Her words drove through Hector like a knife, because he knew what it felt like not to have a home, but he also knew what it felt like to be given one.
Ramsay had become his home, and their friendship had sustained him through many hard years.
Now, he had Jonathan, too, who wanted Hector to stay—and who treated that desire as though it was obvious, not monumental.
And, at least for now, he had Clio.
He wrapped his arms more firmly around her, then drew her into his chest so that she couldn’t see the emotion playing out across his face.
“You will figure it out,” he said vaguely.
In his heart, however, he made a vow: he would find Clio her home …
Even if that meant leaving him behind. Even if that meant destroying him once and for all.
Clio knocked at the door to Hector’s study.
He looked up, saw her, and the sun rose in his expression.
“Good morning, princess,” he said, and she made a show of scowling at the nickname just to make him laugh. “Ach, don’t give me that look. What did you need?”
Clio crossed the room, pointedly not looking at the place before the fire where they’d made love, lest she turn the color of a ripe strawberry. It had been several days since their interlude in this room, and while she and Hector hadn’t come together again, there was an increased ease between them.
Clio cradled that ease like she might hold a newly hatched bird, cupping it to her chest and determined to protect it from the world.
“Good morning,” she returned cheerfully. Feeling bold, she pressed a kiss to his cheek—though she quickly looked away before she could see his reaction. When she dared to look back, however, he was smiling at her with what looked a great deal like fondness.
She didn’t think too hard about that either, also because of the potential for blushing.
“I’ve come to see if you’re ready to go to the picnic,” she said. He didn’t look ready; he looked as though he was planning to spend yet another day hunched over his desk, working through the piles and piles of papers that his father had left behind.
When he blinked at her, she added, “The picnic in Hyde Park? With my brother? And his wife?”
Ah. Finally, there was a glimmer of recognition in his gaze—recognition and reluctance.
She slumped into the chair across from him. “You forgot.”
He winced. “I just got my days confused, princess.” Already, though, his eyes were wandering down to the paperwork before him.
“What has Matthew left you with this time?” she asked, reaching out a hand.
He pulled the papers away quickly.
“Nothing you need to worry about,” he said. “It’s just the usual nonsense. I’ll get it sorted.”
She put her hand back in her lap, trying not to reveal how this stung. That was her thought, she supposed. She was a wife—a woman. She was meant to look pretty and produce heirs, not to involve herself with things like business.
“I see,” she said as calmly as she could manage. “Are you going to dress for the picnic, then …”
She could already see the refusal in his grimace.
“Picnics hold no interest for me, Clio,” he said. “And I have far more important things to do. Give your family my regards.”
It was as clear a dismissal as she’d ever heard. She felt as though he’d licked his fingertips and snuffed out the candle flame of warmth between them with a pinch and a puff of smoke. He wasn’t even looking at her.
“Right,” she said. She looked down. If he weren’t going to look at her, well! She wouldn’t look at him, either. And she certainly wouldn’t let him see her disappointment. “Very well. I shall see you this evening.”
He made an absent sort of sound. Apparently, she didn’t even merit words any longer.