Chapter 16
Early morning, December 24
The battlefield stretched out forever, striated with lines of marching men, dotted with canons, and hazed with smoke. Soldiers fought before the farmhouse. Others hid behind the ridge. The gate—breached. But closing, cutting bodies in two. A wind screamed across it all, every scene just out of sight of the other but somehow fitting all inside Atlas’s head, happening at the same moment instead of across the span of an entire bloody day.
The wind screamed, yes.
Or was that actual screaming? Men in pain and dying. Nature well and pissed off about it. Atlas pissed off, too, truth be told. Because here he stood again seven years later, and the battle still raged.
Fucking Waterloo.
Where was Gregory? He’d be terrified. The boy was too young for war. Too young for pants, it seemed some days. The lad should still be sporting skirts and hovering at his mother’s knee. Not dying on a battlefield.
Atlas clutched his musket. Not dead yet. At least not his body. A bit more life leaked out of his eyes every damn day. And when the boy looked so much like Atlas’s brothers, that draining light hurt in five different ways. One searing stab for Gregory himself, and four more for Raph, Zander, Drew, Theo. All of whom Atlas could well imagine at his side on the smoky battlefield. Dying.
Better Atlas than them.
A bullet whizzed past his ear.
“Bloody hell.” Atlas threw himself against the wall beside the gate. Where was Gregory? A pain, bright at his neck. He reached up. Wet. Fingers red, the prettiest shade. He’d been nicked by that flying bullet. Not badly. He’d survive. For now. If he didn’t get hit with larger more well-aimed fodder. The wooden gate rumbled beneath the French attack, and Atlas threw his weight at it once more, alongside the others. They were not men now. They were boulders. They must be or?—
The gate gave way, flew open, and a river of snarling, fear-hardened men and killing bayonet points streamed inside.
Death had come. And where was Gregory? Where were Atlas’s brothers? Where was his future? Where was his own damn heart? Where was the beauty of the world he’d been born into?
The sounds of battle roared around him, through him, and he acted, worked, without conscious thought alongside the others—slicing, not getting sliced in return. MacDonell’s voice cut through the chaos, demanding control, inspiring it, as he fought through the writing mass of conflict toward the gate, officers at his side. It must be closed. The gate must be closed. Atlas pushed toward them—slicing, ignoring the new shreds in his own body—grasped the edge of the door with other determined fingers beaten raw and bloody. He threw his shoulder into it. His soul. Had he left that in the wooden gate, then?
The slam of wood against stone. Graham snapped the wooden plank in place. Locked now. French forces still inside. Atlas turned to face them, blood trickling down his neck, soul lost to the wooden gate behind him.
A single note, sweet and sad at the same time, wavered through the darkness of Clara’s sleep. Not the deep darkness of a body truly exhausted, a body only the penetrating light of dawn can wake. She slept light as a breeze, and that single note woke her.
She sat upright, rolling to a curved position, hugging her knees to her chest and turning her head toward the curtain that separated the sleeping area from the small nook that held the pianoforte. The firelight-abandoned corner where Atlas usually slept—empty.
Had he made that note?
Her feet hit the floor, the threadbare rug not enough to keep her toes from feeling the December chill. What time was it? A full moon shone like a gold coin in the window. She uncurled her body to stand, rubbing the heel of her hand into one sleepy eye.
Another note. Sweet and sad and making her jump. The pianoforte. She was awake now, all the hazy sleep jolted from her body. She pressed her hand flat against her racing heart and paced to the curtain that divided the room, moved just beyond that veil, and clutched its velvet edge. Moonlight spilled through the window here, too, and Atlas sat tall and straight at the pianoforte, eyes closed, hands hovering over the keys. His body rigid as if he forced himself to hold an unnatural posture, to exist frozen always on the cusp of sound and music but never falling into it. Had those two lost notes been purposeful or the product of a weary body falling out of its intended space?
“Atlas?” She took two hesitant steps toward the instrument, toward him.
And his eyes flew open. “Clara. Did I wake you?” Those blue depths swam in sadness.
Oh. She decimated the distance between them, rounding the pianoforte and sitting beside him in the little space on the open bench. She had to angle her body sideways, wrap an arm around his back, and press her front against his side. She wrapped his hand in hers and rested them on his thigh, rested her chin on his shoulder. She touched him everywhere she could and all at once because she’d lost so much time touching him. Weeks where she’d allowed it only with another nearby, denying herself, denying him. But he needed touch, needed another human soul to tether him. She’d deny him no longer.
She pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “What has happened?”
He brushed a strand of hair away from her face, hooked it behind her ear, his gaze following the movement with tender care. “Go back to sleep. I did not wish to wake you.”
But the word wake sounded like it should have been worry.
“What has happened?” Her voice firm this time. She would not be put aside, and she knew how to, with the slide of softness into her demand, get wounded boys to open up, to trust.
He sighed, and his neck gave out, melting into a curve as his head fell forward. The posture did not last long, and when he lifted his head a heavy inhalation later, he wore a smile, and he changed their hands, cupping hers instead, patting the top of one. “Nothing but a nightmare. Those are common enough. Now, will you return to bed, or will I have to carry you there?”
“A nightmare is not nothing. I detest them. One in particular. It used to plague me before you brought me here. A small room growing smaller. No doors or windows. Me trapped inside. It keeps shrinking until it becomes a box made by my own hands.” She shivered. “Do you often have them? Nightmares?”
He froze once more, becoming the statue he’d been when she’d discovered him posed over the pianoforte in what seemed an eternal musical limbo. Then he broke eternity with a single head nod.
Oh. That nod ripped through her, a violent thing for a movement so small, and she threw her arms around his neck, buried her face there.
He stiffened. “It… it’s fine, Clara. I’m well. No need to worry yourself. I try not to wake you when I have them. I’ll be more careful in the future.” His arms came around her, and she knew—he would pick her up, carry her like a babe to the bed and be done with the conversation. With her worry. With her.
“No.” She broke his hold and jerked away from him, toppling backward off the bench. He caught her, one strong arm banded around her waist, righting her, setting her steady at his side once more.
“No…?” He peered down at her through the moonlight, wary.
“No, you are not fine. And yes, I will worry. How often do you have the nightmares?”
He scrubbed at his face. “It hardly matters.”
“It does!” She leapt to her feet, her hands fisting at her hips. “It matters because I have slept in the same chamber as you for two months and had no idea. If, that is, you have them often. Do you?”
“Bollocks.”
“You do.”
He wouldn’t look at her.
“How often?” Less a question, more a demand. “Every night?”
“No.” His gaze flew to her, then, brow furrowed, frustration chiseled onto his thinned lips.
“Every few nights?”
His shoulders sagged, and he looked away from her again. “Sometimes that often.” She’d won. But a hollow victory. As his body softened, hers did too, and she sat once more beside him, encouraged him on with silence. His hands made hammer fists on his thighs, and she covered them with her own hands, stroked fingers through the mountains of his knuckles. “It was shooting. The scent of gunpowder. It gets stuck in the nose. Then stuck in the mind.” His gaze swung to the moon. “So I dreamt of it tonight. I did not wish to wake you.”
She snorted. “That’s meant to sound like you’re being quite the conscientious fellow, but it’s something else entirely, I think.”
“What do you mean?” A snap in his voice, a frost.
“You did not wish to wake me for yourself, not for me.”
“That’s not?—”
“Entirely true. Oh, I’m aware you’re conscientious to a fault, unless you’re warning a lady away from you with naughty words.”
Even in the light of the yellow moon she could see his cheeks flaming red, and she gave into impulse, kissed his cheek because a blushing bull in the moonlight demanded it, truly. She had no choice. In fact, she kissed it again, draped her arms around his neck, and pulled herself up onto his lap.
“But mostly you do not want others to worry about you. Because you do not wish to bring them sorrow? Or because you do not wish to suffer their pity? Perhaps both. You’re hiding, same as I was. But London is not your dark closet—you are.”
“Bollocks.” But his arms wrapped tight around her, and he rested his cheek on the top of her head.
“I wish you would worry me. I will not pay you pity for it.”
He rubbed his cheek against her hair. “You won’t, will you.”
“Never.” Because, perhaps, this was the way to pay him back for saving her. She could be the one person allowed to worry for him, to care for him, to see his nightmares and fight them when they came.
She stroked a line down his chest with a single fingertip, learning the weft and warp of the rumpled linen shirt he wore to bed, all the way down his taut torso until she found the warm wool of the loose breeches he wore every night. She settled her hand at the warm crook of his bent hip, squeezed the thick, muscular thigh.
Silence told her everything—he would not speak further. He was a tough bough to bend. And those risked breaking if she pushed too hard. Not her desire, that. To break a lovely bit of wood so full of potential always seemed a crime. And he… Lord Atlas Bromley… he seemed the loveliest.
She swallowed, choosing each word carefully. “Would you like to speak of it? The nightmare? Sometimes it helps to reveal the fear that made it. Sometimes you can laugh at it, take away its power.”
“Ha.” A soft yet hard bark. “Difficult to do when it’s more memory than dream.”
“You do not have to tell me about it,” she said, squeezing his thigh again. “But it would not hurt me to hear about it. Should you ever wish.”
“I don’t wish. Not tonight.”
Not tonight. A victory, that. It implied some other night might bear witness to spilled secrets. Not that they had many more nights to discuss, well, anything.
“I seek”—his arms loosened around her, and his breath tickled her hair—“merely to forget.”
She pushed off his chest. “Play for me, then?”
“Play …?”
“The pianoforte. We will not wake the others. You’ve chosen your bedchamber like a hermit chooses his cave—away from all signs of humanity.” And now she knew why, didn’t she. He didn’t want anyone to hear him when he woke in the middle of the night. “Play for me. Please?”
He twisted his lips to the side, clearly close to telling her absolutely not, but then something in him softened. Who knew because who knew the inner workings of this man’s mind, but there—the softening of the edges. He’d melt.
“Please,” she said again.
He sighed. But he smiled, too. “Very well. But there’s no room on the bench. Go.”
She jumped up and rounded the pianoforte, stood on the other side of it from him, her feet cold on the bare wood boards. She danced them a bit, trying to warm up after the loss of his heat.
“Get a wrapper first, Clara.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
She darted behind the curtain, found her wrapper still resting rumpled on the end of the bed, and by the time she’d thrown it on, hugged it tight around her body, and ran back to the instrument, to the man sitting at it, a soft melody curled round her. He hummed as he played, his fingers lightly hitting the keys, barely producing a sound. But in the midnight stillness of their room, she heard every note as clearly as if he played it wild and free and loud at midday.
The humming changed into song with words sung in a deep baritone a bit like every warm thing she’d ever encountered. Better, though, because of the rough edge to it. Silk and shagreen.
“A spirited lady who caught my eye, she sings her song to call me, with milky skin and rosy lip, she sings her song to taunt me.” Then he dipped back into humming once more, mumbling a few lyrics here and there as if he no longer quite remembered the words. Who could care about lyrics, though, when distracted by the man playing. He cast shadows over the instrument. Surely making it impossible to see the keys, even in the full light of the moon. His fingers knew the way, nonetheless. His hands, arms, shoulders, all moved together. He danced more than he played, and when he could not remember a word, the tip of his tongue appeared between his lips as he raised his scrunched face to the ceiling, the lyric caught in his humming throat. She chuckled and moved with him. The incomplete song stole her away. The pianoforte. Her. Him. Nothing else. Except the joy of watching him move, watching him weave music out of nothing.
She clapped when he finished. And she mourned, too. What was he doing in a dower house with a hammer when he could do that?
She curled her hands into her belly. “You are wonderful! The song, did you write it?” She leaned over the pianoforte, wanting to see him more clearly.
He laughed and rolled his shoulders. “Yes, I wrote it. The music and the lyrics. It sold well, too. Has become one of my more popular tunes.”
She liked that note of pride in his voice. Quite a bit. But something else not to her liking. That sour feeling squirming through her? Jealousy? Ridiculous. Yet… true.
“Atlas?”
“Hm?”
“What spirited lady caught your eye? Do you still have feelings for her?”
His laughter boomed across the room.
“It is a reasonable question, Atlas Bromley. You wrote the song about a spirited lass catching your eye. I know I am not your wife in truth, but I am in the eyes of the law, and surely I should know if?—”
“I’m pining for another lady?” He spoke around his laughter. “Heartbroken and shackled to someone other than the love of my heart?”
She sniffed. “Precisely. You said yourself you were a rogue once upon a time.”
“I’m not any longer, and I’m not pining.” He stood, rounded the pianoforte, and stopped beside her. His hands found her hips and turned her until she faced him. He grinned, the devil.
She tugged away from him.
He held her tight. “Her name is Bessy. She’s quite the beautiful specimen.”
“Specimen! As if a woman is a bug pinned for your observation?”
He laughed again, tugged her closer. “Are you jealous, Clara?”
“No.” Holy Hepplewhite, what a lie!
He dipped low, pressed his hips against hers, and brushed her ear with his lips. “Bessy is a cow.”
She rocked backward, hanging her weight in the strength of his arms at her back and pressing her palms into his chest. Immediate distraction. She’d almost forgotten about that chest. She patted it, shaking away the haze of lust his muscle shifted over her like a warm blanket. What had she been about to say? What had he said?
Oh yes.
“A cow?”
“Yes, Bessy is a milk cow. Lovely old gal.”
“You wrote a song about a cow? A love song?”
“It’s a neat little trick I have. Find something pretty or interesting and describe it in vague enough terms everyone thinks it’s a lass, throw in a few words about love and—instant success. Don’t tell anyone or all the fellows will be writing songs well enough to outsell mine.” That quirk of his lip upward almost killed her.
She turned, he dropped his arms, and she already missed his touch, but said, “Playing? Did it help distract you?”
“A bit. Not entirely.”
“Play another then. This one about a, oh, I don’t know, a barn cat. Surely you have one of those, fashioned to appear to be about a tempting London lady who is both flirtatious and cold.”
“Can’t say I do, actually. I don’t like cats. Had one once. It liked my sister more than me.”
“Poor cats. Play whatever pleases you, then.”
Silence strung too long and heavy behind her. She peeked over her shoulder, found him stooped and still once more, gaze riveted on the moon.
“I don’t think,” he finally said, lips barely moving, “playing will help tonight.”
Sorrow sliced through her. How could she send him back to that mean, cold pallet after that? How could she have ever allowed it to begin with? She hated herself for it. “Another distraction, then?”
His gaze flashed to her, and those shoulders rolled back. So little linen separating her from so much skin—tanned and taut and smooth. Except where it was knotted by scars.
“Clara, go to sleep. You will not welcome the sort of distraction I crave.”
The tenor of husky need in his voice told her all. And the river of desire coursing through her matched that need.
Bravery came easily tonight.
Her fingers found his fall, flicked a button open as she marched him backward, circled him around the pianoforte toward the bench.
His hands covered hers. “Clara, what are you doing?”
“That’s evident, is it not?” She grinned up at him then licked her lips. His lips, even set in an uncertain line, looked much too tempting not to.
“Quite evident, but?—”
“Will you deny me?” Her hands stilled as she waited.
And after precisely three sharp breaths, he answered. “Never.”
She pressed him back onto the bench and dropped to her knees before him.
Only to be picked up immediately, the ground giving way beneath her knees, her feet, as Atlas swung her up into his arms, carried her as she flailed to find security by wrapping her arms around his neck, and deposited her on top of the back end of the pianoforte.
“Atlas, what?—”
His lips crashed into hers, demanding, taking, giving. Giving, giving, with each stroke of his tongue into her mouth, with each nip of his teeth at her bottom lip, with his hands caressing her breasts and tearing her wrapper down her shoulder. Giving as he nudged her knees apart and stepped between them.
Always giving, her Atlas.
“No,” she panted, pushing at his chest. Impossible to move. He merely lifted his head, blinking. She cupped his cheek. “I want to give to you tonight. Everyone is always taking from you, and you give happily, but someone should give to you as well. Let me, Atlas. Let me.”
His arms wrapped around her, his hands became fists at her lower back, settled just above the curve of her arse. Perfect spot for them, as if her curves had been made for his hands. “Do you know what I want just now, above all things?”
She held her breath. She had no idea, but she wanted to know, needed to.
“The taste of you on my tongue,” he growled. And then he hit his knees between her legs, his gaze still riveted on her face, his eyes gems set on seduction. Well, he could check that off his list. He’d quite thoroughly seduced her already. With a touch and growl and the thud of his knees hitting the floor. Her body buzzed, leapt to life wherever he touched her.
“No, no. Let me taste you. Let me give you pleasure.”
His eyes glittered. “If it’s pleasure you seek to give me, then spread your legs wide, love, and let me do this.” He cupped her calves and smoothed his hands up behind her knee, over the outside of her thighs, lifting the thin material of her shift, revealing her skin to the warming air between them. His hands swallowed her thighs, nudging them apart, and his head lowered, hiding his face. He kissed her navel and his hands moved, one to settle on her arse and the other dipping between her legs, playing with the curls there, seeking—she gasped—and finding.
“Atlas,” she breathed, threading her hands through his hair.
“Perfection.” His husky voice caressed her skin, sent shivers spiraling through her, but when he licked her, parting her sex—even better. The true meaning of that word leaping through her body. He raked his fingernails down the outside of her thighs—up and down from knee to hip over and over as his tongue parted her, explored, tasted.
The points of contact between their bodies so few, she craved more. Yet the few places where they did meet—hand and thigh and shoulder and the pulsing center of herself caressed by his clever tongue—felt so entirely alive, she dared not break the touch even to seek more of it. He wrapped his hands around her hips, squeezed, as almost delirious need shot through her, and he dragged her closer to the edge of the pianoforte, to the edge of pleasure. Those rough fingertips of his dug into the flesh just below her hipbone, and that thumb played with the curls between her legs, and she was going to come undone entirely because how could she feel delicate beneath his touch yet… yet so damn strong at the exact same time?
How could he awaken the strength and power in her very bones when he melted her, made her too weak to stand?
“Come for me, Clara.” His words a growl. He tilted his face up to her, his hands fire irons on her skin, hot and hard. “That is what I need—your moan a song in the air, love.”
And that almost did it. Her head fell back, releasing that asked-for moan as if her body was his to command. Certainly felt like it. He dragged his fingernails down her thighs and up once more and this time, as he kissed her, licked her, his thumb flicked against her nub, applying more pressure than a tongue could.
“Oh, God, Atlas.” One of her hands shot to his head, fisted in his hair as she curled her body forward around him.
“My name. Just like that.” A brief hum of pleasure in his throat that vibrated against the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. “Always.”
“Atlas.” The lust in her voice laced with frustration. There would be no damn always with this man. “Just give me right now.” She tugged his hair. “Stay here. With me. Right now.”
His hands became vises, keeping her together as he did his best to break her apart. With each swipe of his tongue and circle of his thumb, drove her higher, gathered her closer, carved her into perfection, and absolutely ruined her. Her hips bucked in time to her panting breath, and then, like a top spinning out of control, she toppled and fell, collapsing over him with shuddering breaths and a trembling body. Every muscle of her body languid. Every muscle of his taut as he rested his cheek against her belly above her curls, his caressing fingertips lazy now in their hip-to-knee journey.
Somehow, she straightened, and he looked up at her, moonlight turning his face into hard angles of shadow and light. She cupped his cheek, stroked his cheekbone. She slid to her feet and urged him upward, wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned into him. He leaned into her, too, their bodies the two legs of a compass, slanting outward from the same center. His arms locking around her, one hand at her nape and the other nestled at her lower back. Easy to stay locked in his arms, safe and cared for.
She broke the embrace, though, to weave her hand through his and tug him beyond the curtain, toward the bed. When he realized her destination, his feet took root into the floor. Still, she tugged. Pointless when a man was a mountain.
“Atlas, sleep in the bed tonight. Let me keep you company so you have no dreams but those I whisper in your ear.”
His gaze swung toward the window. “I don’t need?—”
“But you do need, and I won’t allow you to deny yourself.” She pressed her body against his, her breasts aching against his chest, her hips rolling against his shaft. His quite long and hard shaft. She pressed her palm against it, rubbed gently up and down. “Please, Atlas, come to bed.” Her hand in his again, tugging, and this time he let her uproot him, pull him with her onto the mattress as she crawled across it to the other side, shrugged out of her wrapper, and snuck beneath the blankets.
He seemed unsure what to do, sitting on the bed’s edge, body curled forward, forearms braced on his thighs, head hanging.
She knew no such hesitation. Her shift proved an easy thing to wiggle out of, and when she lay naked beneath the sheets, she drew her fingers down his spine. He shifted, peered at her over his shoulder. In the darkness, she could not see his expression, so she continued stroking that strong back, curling desire tight and high in her belly. But did she curl his?
“You’re still in need of distraction, Atlas.” She pushed the blankets down her body, past her breasts, her navel, lower, as low as her arm could reach. “Take what distraction you need from me.”
Even in the darkness, she could see the change in his eyes, how they raked across her body, lingering in all those places he seemed to enjoy touching most. Yet he did not move. Her desire waited, hanging on a shifting wind, terrified of the fall should he refuse her invitation.
She flattened her palm against his back, counting his long, labored breaths, feeling at the pad of her thumb a knotted scar raised over smooth skin. Just one of many. Take what you need. Not something Atlas did. She needed new words.
“I need more, Atlas. Please give me more.”
His hesitation crumbled, and he swept his shirt up and over his head as he rolled toward her in one fluid movement. His lips met hers in a frantic prayer, and that hard shaft she’d rubbed through wool thrust against her hip.
“I’ll give you everything you need,” he growled into the kiss. “You don’t have to ask.”
She knew. She knew. He’d give her the sun and stars, the rivers and roads and everything in between.
And if he let her, she would give him her heart.