Chapter 15 #2
Dante’s chest swelled with an uncomfortable feeling that was painful and welcome at the same time.
Cerys Evans was a woman who could circulate through any type of company and feel at home.
She could go into dinner on the arm of an earl’s son as easily as she laughed with a group of actresses, common women drawn from the lower orders of society.
She was as experienced at navigating different worlds as he was, but she did so as easily as silk thread drawn by a sharpened needle, making the delicate balancing act look effortless.
He started forward before the thought touched his mind, urged by an instinct as pure and strong as any he’d known. He wanted this woman at his side, and he would do whatever he could to keep her there.
The problem was, he’d never wooed a woman in his life, and he had no idea how to go about it.
“You came,” he said.
Ah, wonderful way to commence a wooing, with stupid remarks like that.
When Mame had come into the library to tell him Cerys had been dispatched to interview investors, and Mame was there in her place, Dante knew something had happened to warn the girl off him.
He’d frightened her somehow, or her friends were intervening, thinking she’d carried her flirtation too far.
But he already knew that Cerys was not the type of girl to be easily spooked, and he wanted to know why she’d pulled back.
With Bathsheba, when she’d jilted him, he’d simply gritted his teeth against the humiliation and moved on.
He didn’t follow her, didn’t beg, didn’t challenge her decision. He raged only to himself.
And he hadn’t pursued a woman since, content to take the opportunities when they came his way for a discreet liaison with a visiting widow, a neglected wife, a spinster determined not to compromise her independence for a man. He’d not been the least affected when they all moved on.
But if Cerys Evans left his life, something would vanish that could never be replaced. Her, he would follow. He would demand an accounting. If he had done something, he would amend his ways. If it were a flaw in his character, he would change.
He stretched out his palm to her, and without hesitation, she laid her gloved hand in his. “I am here,” she said, and she smiled, and that smile was an arrow that shot through his chest and pinned him into her orbit forever.
“I wanted you to see.”
She turned to look at the house. “It’s nearly finished?”
“The main block is built. Three stories and a lower ground floor. What they are building there is the service wing.”
Would she find it too plain? As at Suffolk House, he had built two symmetrical bays in the front, centering the small porch.
The windows of each successive floor descended in size, a move made for practicality as well as temperature control, but perhaps she would find the facade too plain, with the simple string course and the uncarved cornice.
“I am thinking of adding on a wrought iron verandah around the first floor, at least in the front,” he said, all but ready to roll out the designs and show her. “And there is a terrace to the sides and back, leading into the garden.”
She tilted her head to the side. “There is a sort of austere beauty to it,” she said. “I wonder if buildings take on the character of their owners, like animals are said to do?”
That was mischief in her eyes, the merry glint of the nymph who’d leaned on his arm in the Montpelier Parade to taunt Bathsheba.
That was the fire of the girl who had pressed the buttoned tip of her sword into his chest and urged him to fight her.
She’d pushed him to declare his passion for her, and he had.
What did she want from him now, the little minx? Heart and soul?
Devil’s toes, he’d give her anything she asked, and what was not within his power to give, he would move heaven and earth to procure for her.
“Austere beauty,” he repeated. Hell’s teeth, he’d become a dolt around her. This was worse than their first meetings, when he’d thought her a harpy and had been unable to find his tongue, so cut and defensive that a lovely girl would choose to heap scorn upon his head.
She reached up with her other hand and lightly touched his chin. It was a gesture both tender and firm in its mark of possession. He was hers to touch, and she knew that.
So did everyone watching them.
“You are too stern,” she said. “You do not laugh enough.”
Was that why she’d pulled away? He was too dour? He glowered too much? He’d had little enough reason to laugh before he met her. There was no time in his life, no space in his ambition for recreation, for pleasure, for mirth.
He firmed his grip on her hand. “Doubtless there are several flaws about me you will have to set about fixing.”
It was as good as a declaration. She kept her hand in his, staring into his eyes for an endless moment, weighing.
Then she smiled again, and there was a secret, self-satisfied knowing in the smile, but he couldn’t guess whether he had passed in her judgment, or failed. “Show me more,” she said.
There was that pinch at his heart again. “The grounds you see belong to the house. Everything leading down to the river, and I own a strip on the other side. There’s a pond for fishing, and beyond, the coppice I call The Grove. Imagine this all properly landscaped one day.”
“I like it as is.” Her eyes danced. “A bit wild. Not entirely tamed, much like its owner.”
First he was gruff, and now he was wild? Was she telling him, as gently as she could, that he was not to her taste?
He caught the glint in her eye and realized she was teasing. She only teased people she felt close to.
His tailor would need to let out his coats, if his chest were going to keep paining him in the company of Cerys Evans.
She turned in a circle, pointing. “Is that the stable?”
“Yes, with a dovecote behind, and a barn I might use for a dairy or a laundry house. I haven’t quite decided.”
“Cherry orchard?”
“Cherries, apples, and damsons, I think. There are some brambles against that wall lining the road, but they haven’t fruited yet for me to tell what berries I’ll have.”
“That is a good spot for the kitchen gardens,” she said. “Unless you want them behind the house.”
“I was planning flower beds for behind the house. Perhaps a vista from the road. I don’t want every passerby peeking in the window, but the terrace ought to overlook a pleasant view.”
“And your sisters will enjoy having a walk, as well as your guests.”
“Who says I will have guests?”
She lifted her brows at him. He did adore those thick brows of hers, as strong and decided a feature as her cheekbones and that nose. She looked back at the building. “How many bedrooms?”
“Eight bedrooms and two dressing rooms, altogether.”
“Reception rooms?”
“Four. A formal drawing room, a separate dining room, a morning room, and what I’m calling the conservatory.”
She studied the lines of the building, considering. “You have built a home for a large family. And their friends.”
She probed a truth he hadn’t wanted to analyze.
He’d been crafting designs for his ideal house for years, making additions, changing aspects, all based on designs he admired and wanted to try.
He hadn’t actually thought about the people he planned to live in the house, beyond providing ample chambers for his mother and sisters and the luxury of a water closet.
In truth, he’d taken what hopes he’d once had and buried them away from the light of day. After Bathsheba taught him that he couldn’t trust his heart around women, he’d pushed thoughts of companionship out of his mind. He would focus on his career, and never lose his head again.
And yet he had designed a suite of rooms on the first floor with two dressing rooms, his and hers, with a small sitting room to the side where the lady of the house could take refuge in a quiet study of her own.
He was not a man to typically fool himself, and he knew, even at the time, falling for a courtesan like Bathsheba was not wise.
He’d seen clearly her ambition and her wiles.
He’d known her for the type of woman who would sacrifice others to her own self-interest. He’d pursued her anyway, thinking—or not thinking, with the impetuousness of youth—that he could change her. That he would be different.
But he hadn’t been different, not for her, and not for any of the women who had come after. Until Cerys.
Cerys was unlike any woman he’d met. And with her, he was different, too. He could no longer hold onto that guard, that careful reserve that he’d cultivated as a boy. She plucked away all his defenses and tossed them away like a Carnival mask, leaving his bare self open to her inspection.
I like it, she’d said.
“Come inside,” he said, his voice low and gruff with a hope he dared not name. “You could tell me how a lady would do up the furnishings.”
She twined her arm around his. “I’ve told you again and again, I am not a lady.”
“If you married a gentleman, you would become so.”
She studied him. “Who says I wish to marry a gentleman?”
His heart clawed at his chest, as if it would fight free of ribcage, waistcoats, all the complicated layers that separated them, and place itself in her hands. Was he fooling himself by thinking he had anything to offer her?
And yet the way she leaned on him, brushing her breast against his arm in the most distracting manner, made him entertain the fantastical notion that she simply might like him for himself alone.
“Do not mind the dust,” he warned as he led her over the tamped-down stretch of dirt that currently functioned as his front drive.
She laughed, and the sound caught at him, plucking at the tight tethers by which he bound himself, always. Bound himself too tightly, if she were to be believed.
“Recall that I grew up in a crumbling medieval ruin,” she said. “There were parts of the building we didn’t use because the roof had gone, and we didn’t have a complete set of windows until Pen—” She caught herself. “Until my stepfather’s friend made repairs.”