Chapter 21
CHAPTER 21
T he moment Clarissa was brought to wait for Marianne in her fine parlor, she knew she’d made a mistake. It wasn’t proper to show up uninvited, face streaked with tears to a countess’s house. Even a friend’s house. A lady sent a card, she inquired, she planned. She didn’t invade.
And yet Clarissa didn’t leave. She needed to see that friend. To talk about this. That somehow carried more weight in that moment than what any guidebook had ever said she should do.
The door opened and she turned. When not just Marianne, but her sister-in-law Esme, the Countess of Delacourt, entered the room, Clarissa blushed.
“Oh, I’ve intruded,” she said. “I shouldn’t. I’m being ridiculous and rude and?—”
Without a word, Marianne rushed across the room to her and suddenly Clarissa was enveloped by a gentle hug. “Oh, dearest, please. Stop berating yourself. I can see you’re terribly upset. I’m so happy you’re here and so is Esme.”
“Very happy,” Esme assured her, and Clarissa looked up and saw the other woman was getting tea.
Marianne guided her to the settee and sat with her. Esme returned with a cup for her and then took her place in a chair across from them.
“What has happened?” Esme asked gently. “Are you well? Is there danger?”
Clarissa blinked. Danger? “Er, no. Not danger. Not the way I think you mean.”
Esme relaxed a little and nodded. “Good. Then tell us what has happened. What brought you here without warning and with your eyes so wide and wild?”
“I don’t know how to say it,” Clarissa burst out. “I don’t even know how to feel it. A lady is to have moderation, isn’t she? She isn’t supposed to have emotions wash over her like some wave that can sweep her away. It’s not right.”
Marianne grabbed both her hands. “What’s not right is tormenting yourself like this. Tell us what happened.”
Clarissa drew in a long breath, unable to fight anymore. And she told them. Everything. All of it. From the push and pull of her marriage to the confrontation with her parents to Roderick’s declaration of love less than an hour before. And though the ladies exchanged a few looks during the recitation of all the facts, they didn’t interrupt.
“How can this be true?” Clarissa ended. “After everything, all that I settled myself in for the future. How can everything be turned on its head in this way?”
“That, my dear, is life,” Esme said gently. “It’s wonderful that way, in that the moment we think we understand something, it turns upside down and we start anew in seeing it.”
“No, that sounds horrid,” Clarissa said with a shake of her head.
“Only because the changes in the past sound like they have been awful,” Marianne said. “And so change becomes fearful. Honestly, though, the question of how his heart changed and his feelings matters very little in this scenario. What matters more to me is you. How do you feel about him?”
Clarissa blinked. That was the question she had tried to ignore from the first moment she met him. When she’d seen him as an enemy, as an interloper determined to ruin everything out of selfishness.
That had changed, of course, but she had kept him at arm’s length regardless. She’d reminded herself, every time she felt a flutter of something beyond desire or passion or friendship, that he was not hers. She had never let her mind label herself as his, even when he demanded she claim that position in his bed.
Now she shut her eyes and Roderick’s face danced easily before her. She smiled despite herself, feeling all the small and big ways he’d ever taken care of her. She thought of his kindness and his generosity. She thought of how he warmed a room when he entered, drawing all who met him closer, including her, even when she didn’t want that.
She thought of how he took care of her. Tended to her physical needs, yes, but more than that. He watched and guarded her heart. He championed her to anyone who threatened her.
Even herself.
“You love him,” Esme said softly.
Clarissa opened her eyes. “How—how do you know?”
“I see it in every bit of you,” Esme said. “I feel it coming off of you in waves. And I understand the fight against it. The belief that it couldn’t be because of…” She frowned. “Because of things out of your control. Actions that were taken that weren’t your own, but have plotted the course of your life so far.”
Clarissa nodded. “Yes.”
“You want to run because it’s so much to look at someone so magical and wonderful and know that he would fold you into himself and love you for all you are. Even the parts you don’t yet love yourself. It feels too much.”
“Yes.” Clarissa felt herself crying again. She didn’t even try to stop it.
“It is too much,” Esme said, and then she smiled and she was so beautiful then. “It’s too much and it’s everything and it’s worth the fear that makes it so hard to accept. Trust me, I know quite a bit about it. ”
“Oh, Esme,” Marianne said with a gasping sob of her own. “I’m so happy you and Finn are happy and together. That you overcame everything. You both deserve the light you’ve brought to each other.” She smiled at Clarissa. “And you deserve that too. It sounds like Kirkwood truly adores you. To reform a rake is very worth it. They do make the best husbands. Since he’s already yours, since you do already love him and he declares he loves you, why throw away everything that could mean for you? And him? And your children?”
Children. It was impossible not to think of those imaginary children now. With Roderick’s smile and her eyes. Impossible not to picture him becoming the kind and caring father he’d lost and wrapping their future family in the same love he now offered to gift her.
“It is better than you could ever dream, to be truly yourself with another person. To be loved in all your faces and expressions,” Esme said.
Clarissa shivered. She’d spent so much time trying to be someone palatable. “The very idea is almost too much.”
“Are you willing to take the risk?” Esme asked.
“He did. He did so bravely by declaring it tonight. And then letting me go, giving me the space to think about it.” She dropped her head. “But it’s different for us. A lady isn’t meant to make these kinds of emotional decisions.”
“Do you despise him for his grand emotions?” Marianne asked, her brow wrinkling.
“No,” Clarissa said immediately. “When I see those emotions on his face, all I see is how beautiful he is.”
“Yours are beautiful too,” Esme said, and motioned to the mirror angled above the fireplace. “Look.”
Clarissa set her cup down and moved to the mirror. She stared up at herself and drew in a breath. She almost glowed after talking about her love for Roderick. She’d never seen that on her face before.
She’d never felt it, either. But when she let it in, let it be there, it felt so right .
“I need to go to him. Gracious, I’m the rudest visitor, showing up, pouring all this out and running off into the night.”
“I don’t know,” Esme said with a laugh as she stood. “It all seems very exciting to me. I do adore a good love story.”
“So do I,” Marianne said, rising to ring the bell. “I hope you’ll let us know how it goes. And let us support you on this wonderful journey you’re about to take.”
“I will,” Clarissa said, and smiled at them as the servant who arrived at the countess’s call then ran off to have her carriage brought back. She didn’t feel like she’d burdened them with her feelings at all. She felt closer to them for pouring a part of herself out. For allowing them to give something of equal value back. That was what Roderick meant when he said that just because something was proper it didn’t mean it was right.
This felt right. Just as he felt right.
She stepped up into the carriage when it arrived and blew a kiss to her friends, who waved with excitement as she made her way back to Roderick. To the future she was about to grasp with both hands, if she could only find a way to fully surrender to it.
R oderick knew he had done the right thing by letting Clarissa go to give space to her feelings. She’d been so controlled for so long, the freedom was what she deserved. But he paced his study nearly two hours after she’d left and couldn’t settle himself. All he could do was think of her shocked expression when he declared his heart.
There was a light knock on his door and he pivoted toward it. Stevenson stepped in. “Lady Kirkwood returned about half an hour ago, my lord.”
“Half an hour!” Roderick burst out as he launched himself from the chair where he’d been brooding .
“Yes. She asked that I wait to tell you so she could ready a few things. Now she has requested that you join her in your chamber.”
Roderick blinked aside the shock and took in the facts. Clarissa was back. Quite soon, too, when he took into account the travel time between Ramsbury’s and his own home. What did that mean?
“My lord, are you well?” Stevenson asked with a concerned expression.
“I am,” he declared, though he didn’t know if it was true. “I am. My apologies. Thank you.”
The butler appeared uncertain as he stepped from the room and Roderick took a moment to look at himself in the mirror. “You must allow her whatever time she needs with this. It’s a war and there will be battles lost and won for her heart,” he said.
The words didn’t make him feel better.
He straightened his jacket and then stepped into the hall. He made his way upstairs to their chamber and stepped inside. The door to his room was closed, but hers was open and when he locked the door behind him, she called out to him. “Roderick, I’m in my chamber. Please join me.”
His heart was pounding so hard, he wondered if she could hear it. He drew in a few ragged breaths as he stepped into her room. And then he stopped breathing at all. She stood at the foot of her bed and she was wearing the pink dress he’d chosen for her. He staggered at how beautiful she looked in color, how she shone as she smiled at him gently.
But she said nothing. She simply picked up her copy of The Mirror of Graces from its place on her side table. She walked around the bed to the fireplace and then turned. Never breaking her stare from his face, she tossed the book into the flames.
He rushed forward a step, watching with her as the tome slowly burned.
“Clarissa,” he breathed.
She moved toward him. “I clung to those rules because I never thought I could be enough. But—but then I see myself in your eyes and that’s who I am. Who I want to be.” She moved closer. “Yours.”
He nearly buckled. “Mine?”
She nodded slowly. “You told me earlier today that you loved me. The fact is that I-I love you too.”
The way she stopped talking and her breath became shaky made it clear that this idea was as terrifying to her as it was to him. How he loved that they could support and navigate the unknown territory together. Together because she loved him.
“Could you truly love me?” she whispered. “It seems a dream.”
“It is a dream,” he said, and now he came to her, drawing her against him, loving the feel of her, the look of her as she stared up into his eyes with such adoration. Such love that she no longer hid. “But we’re both awake. I love you with all I am, Clarissa. All I am and ever shall be.”
“Good,” she said, and lifted up toward him. “Then there is nothing in the world that could ever break us apart.”
They kissed, their arms tightening around each other, their soft sighs of pleasure and love and surrender merging as they fell into her bed and into each other.
And all the lightning he’d ever desired struck all over again. It would strike every time he touched her, he realized. For as long as they both lived.