Chapter 15 #4
“Give yourself a handful of years, complete a brace of admirable commissions, like our theater—” She paused to smile— “and you will be much admired. No one will quarrel if you style yourself Mr. Manelli, Esq., of Cheltenham.” She looked around again. “What will you call this place?”
“I haven’t yet settled on a name. What do you recommend?”
“You want my thoughts?”
He stood very close. They were even more exposed now, yet he couldn’t for the life of him care if anyone watched and disapproved. He was with Cerys, and she was at ease with him, and that awareness flowed always between them, that keen sense of anticipation.
“I have one thought,” he rumbled, staring at her mouth.
She smiled. “Not here, Manelli,” she said, echoing Dot’s brassy tones, and he wanted to laugh. She was an excellent mimic.
“I have a question for you.”
She glanced at the house. Her lips were damask rose, so full and kissable. “I have not seen everything.”
“I will show you the morning room. What I imagine will be my lady’s domain.” He led her through the small porch that let onto the terrace and down the inner hall, past the service stairs that curved up to the floors above, back toward the front of the house.
“Oh,” she murmured. “You intend to install a lady in the house?”
In the high-ceilinged space, quiet and full of light, and turned to face her. “This matter of being agreeable. I think we both know it is not in my nature to be excessively pleasant.”
They stood together in the sunlight falling in the windows, the scent of fresh lime breathing from the plaster. The urge to draw her into his arms was too strong to resist, so he didn’t attempt to. Her waist was supple beneath his hand, and she didn’t hesitate as she stepped close.
Her eyes danced with laughter. He had never understood that expression until he saw the way joy creased her eyes. Hell’s teeth, she was beautiful.
She traced a finger across his brows, studying him intently. “You could frown less.”
“When I have good reason.”
“You could be a little less exacting. More easy to please.”
“I have high standards.”
She sobered. “How high?”
“I aim for what is well above me, I know.” He tightened his hands, drawing her closer.
She turned wary. “Bathsheba Baeccon?”
“Who?”
And just like that, she relaxed against him. “What are you asking me?”
He drew in a breath, preparing. “Can you see yourself here?”
A small line appeared between her brows. She rested her hands on his arms, not embracing fully, but not pushing away. Her skirt drifted around his legs.
“In this house?” she asked softly.
“Yes,” he said, because he did not know how to say what he fully meant.
“That is… That is an enormous change. For both of us.”
She was not laughing with joy and amazement, melting into his arms. He knew she was the practical sort, and yet. He held himself carefully still, waiting for the knife.
“It would be,” he allowed. He couldn’t bare any more of his heart than that. Bathsheba had spurned him too easily. He was not a man women loved or doted on, too dour, too grim, too demanding.
Life without Cerys would be a wasteland, now that he knew she existed in the world. What was the point of building an enormous house without having love and laughter to fill it?
She turned and studied the clean, graceful lines of the room, her head tilted to one side. She saw what he’d been trying, all unconsciously, to achieve: a space that was grand but also welcoming. Elegant and comfortable together.
Much like the blend of grace and whimsy in the woman before him, who was built on the same strong, enduring lines. A man who won the devotion of Cerys Evans would have her loyalty forever, so long as he did nothing to prove himself undeserving.
She put her hands on her hips. “Would you ask me to give up the theater?”
He couldn’t breathe. She was negotiating with him. Testing. She was a woman who only carried her impetuosity so far.
“I wouldn’t ask you to part with anything you loved. Neither acquaintances nor—” He didn’t know what to call her work with the company.
“My career,” she said firmly.
“If that is what you wish. I will support you.”
“What about children?”
“Yes,” he said instantly, his breath caught at the notion.
She lifted her dark brows.
“Yes, I want them. Do you?”
She tapped a finger against her chin. A skylark swooped past the window, pouring out its song.
“I’ve always supposed I’ll have my own, at some point. Widow Jones says I’ve a strong impulse to take charge of others.”
He could see that. She looked after the other members of the company, in her own way. She’d have gone after her sobbing friend earlier if he hadn’t put a hand on her wrist, asking her to stay.
He was asking her now.
“So can you?” He took her hand and tugged her close again. Jasmine wafted around his nose, piercing his brain. “See yourself in this house. As its lady.” As my wife. He wasn’t eloquent enough to know how to phrase it any other way. Or say the words aloud, at last, and bare his chest to the blade.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “And you are the faithful sort?”
He stared at her, too taken back to be anything but honest. “I can’t see how a man would want any woman on earth but you.”
Her face softened, lips curving into a smile. “Oh,” she said, leaning toward him. “That is a good enough line for a play.”
She turned her face up to his, a prim request to be kissed, and he was not about to deny her anything. “Cerys Evans,” he said, his voice a dry rasp as he brushed his mouth over her, “will you—?”
She stepped away quickly, the softness falling away. “Not yet.”
He stood stunned. “No?” After he thought she was probing him, asking his terms—
“Not yet,” she said, straightening the waist of her jacket. She clutched at the dangling tassels as if holding a tether, reining herself in.
“Then when?” He followed as she stepped into the next room. “Do you wish me to talk with your father first—no, your stepfather.” His mind was crashing to a halt, gears whirring uselessly. “Is there someone else—some reason—”
“Oh.” She drew to a halt with a small puff of surprise. Her eyes grew enormous. “This is the library.”
“Yes.” He’d modeled the one at Suffolk House after his own design.
There were the cornice and the pillars, like a temple shielding the built-in cases, which the woodworkers were finishing.
The bay of windows looked out onto what would one day be the flower beds and a properly landscaped walk.
Perhaps even a hedge maze, if she wanted one.
She looked so perfect, standing in this room. As perfect as the first afternoon in the Suffolk House library, when she challenged him for calling her Lady Disdain, and she’d listened when he prated on about columns because he didn’t know how to woo a woman.
“Dante.” She clasped her hands together. “This is magnificent. All of it.”
“The books have not arrived,” he felt obliged to point out. “It will take some time to build my collection.” Every gentleman had a library, to signal to the world that he was cultured and educated in all the necessary ways.
That couldn’t be what was holding her back, was it? Did she want him to be a gentleman in truth before she conceded her hand?
The room smelled like plaster dust and the sharp finish used on the wood. He wasn’t ready for her yet, and she could see that.
As if she knew the way his thoughts were whirling, she turned. Sunlight fell across her face, brushing her light freckles with a patina of gold. “I have promised to give Dorsey’s group a theater.”
This was not, entirely, an explanation. “And I have promised to design it,” he said. “What do you mean?”
She bit her lip and turned her attention to the empty bookshelves.
He recalled that moment when she’d spotted the statue of the naked discus thrower on Suffolk’s shelves.
She hadn’t batted an eye, not the least surprised or alarmed by the nude male form, or a scaled-down representation of it.
He’d known then she was a woman who looked at the world straight on, with no fantasies and few qualms. He’d never met anyone like her.
“They expect me to leave them,” she said. “Dorsey’s group.”
He waited. He wanted, intensely, for her to turn back to him. He wanted to tug loose the ribboned bow beneath her chin, remove her bonnet and hair pins, and run his hands through her masses of hair.
“There is a contract?”
“Not really. We operate by agreement. But they have teased me, over and over, about abandoning them for a protector.”
He wasn’t following. “I would not demand you abandon them. We will live here. You can act whenever you wish.” Of course he was greedy for as much time as he could spend with her, but she wasn’t the type of woman to sit about in papered rooms and amuse herself with gossip and the decorative arts.
She had too active a mind, too restless a spirit.
Her teeth were making a groove on her bottom lip. He wanted to run his thumb over her jaw and urge her to release the grip before she drew blood.
“But I owe them, you see.”
“Owe them what?” He drew close, so he could peer into her face, but she walked to the bay of windows and stood looking outside at his makeshift cement factory, the piles of lime and the barrels of water used for slaking, the heaps of sand and ash that would be mixed into the lime putty to make mortar.
She watched the process with interest, her endlessly curious mind at work. But he still didn’t understand.
“What do you owe them?” He came to stand beside her.
“They invested in me. Dorsey took an enormous gamble, offering me work on the basis of only one show. I must repay that.”
“I should think you already have. You have enjoyed your time with them, and they have made great profits off you, according to Dorsey.”
“But I haven’t yet proven myself,” she said, stubborn.
“Not even with your Hamlet? You are the talk of Cheltenham. Dorsey is drawing bigger audiences than Watson’s theater. You have already cemented their reputation in this town.”