Chapter 30
The last carriage had barely rounded the corner before Clara slipped away.
She did not say goodnight to anyone. She simply moved through the thinning crowd in the hall, past Richmond, who was already directing the footmen in the clearing of glasses, past the orchestra packing away their instruments in the music room, up the stairs, and through the first door that opened onto a balcony, out into the dark.
The rattle of carriage wheels on the sand road drifted up as guests departed, a burst of laughter from a group of men walking to theirs mingled in.
But the house itself had finally gone quiet, and she stood in that quiet and breathed it in and let herself stop performing for the first time in five hours.
Her face ached from smiling.
She heard the door behind her and did not turn around. She knew his step by now. She had known it for weeks.
Julian came and stood beside her at the railing. For a moment, neither of them spoke. They looked out over the dark street together, the gas lamps throwing long orange shapes across the wet cobblestones below.
“We succeeded,” she said at last.
“We did.”
“By morning, all of London will be speaking of the Duke and his bride. Whatever they were saying before, this will replace it.”
“I spoke to Mrs. Westchester,” he said with a smile. “She gave me her word she would have the story to three separate people before her carriage reached home.”
“Then it is done.” Clara set her hands on the railing. “Everything we set out to do tonight is done. And we know who the man is who threatened Arabella. That is a new problem.”
“It is a problem and a solution at once, I daresay.”
“Yes. Your man, Stanhope…”
“Will follow him and find out all he can. We will find out where he stays. Arabella is closer than ever.”
“And with her, decisions we must make,” she pointed out.
Julian nodded. He did not say anything further, and the silence that followed was not the comfortable kind they had found in the library two evenings ago. It was the other kind. The kind that had too much in it.
“You kissed me without asking,” she said.
“I know”
“In front of a hundred people.”
“It was effective.”
“You keep saying that.” She turned to look at him. “As though effectiveness is the only thing that matters. As though I am simply a piece on a board that you move when it suits the game.”
“That is not what I think of you.”
“Then what do you think of me?” she said.
“Because I confess, I cannot work it out. You are warm, and then you are cold. You are present, and then you are distant. You held me in Dover and then came home and spoke to me as though we had never been to Dover at all.” Her voice stayed level.
She had promised herself it would stay level. “I am tired of it, Julian. I am tired.”
“I was trying to keep us both focused on what matters. Arabella. David. The danger that Devereau’s presence tonight confirms we are still in.”
“That is a very tidy explanation.”
“It is the truth.”
“It is part of the truth,” she said. “The part you are comfortable giving me.” She looked back out over the street. “You became cold the moment things between us began feeling real. I noticed it. I noticed exactly when it happened, and so did you, and we have both been pretending otherwise
He said nothing.
“You look at me,” she said, “as though I am still the girl I was before. The one who wrote terrible poetry and nearly fainted over a ball gown and thought herself in love with a man who did not deserve it.” She turned to face him fully.
“I am not her. I have not been her for some time. Scotland saw to that rather thoroughly.” She held his gaze.
“I am not weak simply because I once believed in love. I am not fragile simply because it cost me something when I was wrong about it. I survived a great deal on my own, and I did not need rescuing, and I do not need protecting now, least of all from you.”
“Clara…”
“I need you to stop confusing me,” she said.
“That is what I need. I need you to either admit that you regret this marriage and leave me to manage my feelings in peace, or I need you to stop pulling away every time we begin to understand one another. What I cannot bear is the middle. The warmth and then the cold and then the warmth again.”
“I know it. It is my weakness, not yours.”
He had stepped closer. She was not sure when. The balcony was not large, and he was close enough now that she could see his expression clearly in the low light from the street below, and what was on his face was not pity, and it was not the careful politeness he had been wearing all evening.
“Why is it weakness?” she asked. “Why do you pull back every time? Why does it have to go cold the moment something real passes between us? Why can you not simply…”
He reached out and took her face in his hands and kissed her.
She gasped against him. The shock of it went through her completely, every argument dissolving at once. His hand tightened at her waist, and she stopped being shocked and kissed him back.
When they finally broke apart, she was breathing hard. His forehead came down to rest against hers, and for a moment, neither of them moved.
Below, a carriage rattled past.
“Well,” she said at last. Her voice came out steadier than she had any right to expect.
“Yes,” he said.
Neither of them said anything further. But he did not let go of her waist, and she did not step back. And the silence between them was, after weeks of being the wrong kind, entirely the right one.