Chapter 15 #3
There was so much he didn’t know about her.
Bathsheba’s background had been a mystery to him as well, but he’d never thought it important.
It turned out, in that case, that knowing Bathsheba’s history was essential to understanding the woman, and his eyes might have opened to the truth much sooner if he had made an effort to learn.
He brushed off the twinge of warning. Cerys would tell him what he needed to know.
What mattered at the moment was that she walked at his side, her hand on his arm, her lithe body close to his.
The scent of jasmine clogged his senses.
He would plant some near the doorway so each time he came and went from his house, he would be reminded of her.
Or perhaps—he tried to push the thought down, afraid it made him foolish, but it nipped at the edges of his mind.
Perhaps he might install Cerys in his house, and then every room might smell of jasmine, all the time.
“I see you have chosen Doric columns for the porch,” she murmured. “That scroll is called a volute, I understand.” She gave him an arch look.
He couldn’t stop himself. He squeezed his arm to bring her closer to him. “You are trying to impress me.”
She lifted her chin, tossing back her head. “I hope so.”
He held his breath as they climbed the small set of steps and crossed the threshold into the small vestibule.
Double doors set with glass stood open to the entrance hall, with its tiles of veined marble and the cantilevered stone staircase.
Cerys paused and studied every detail: the fanlight above the doors letting light spill into the hall, the enormous chandelier that hung from the ceiling, the tall sash windows that let in light above the stairs.
Her eyes followed the staircase that climbed to the first floor.
He’d commissioned a wrought iron banister, but it wouldn’t be completed for months.
There was no art yet on the wall, and the cornices and ceiling weren’t complete with the decorative touches he had planned.
She would find it too plain. Simply austere, with nothing beautiful about it.
The house wasn’t the size of Suffolk House, either.
It was him, a reflection of his deepest self, in a way he couldn’t explain.
If she did not approve… He stood torn, like a prisoner on the rack, unable to move until he knew which way the judgment might fall.
If Cerys Evans did not want him, simply him, he might never recover from the blow.
She turned in a small circle, tipping back her head to show the lovely line of her jaw and throat. He burned to trace that line with his mouth, taste again her tender skin. Feel her heat surrounding him—the warmth that was all her, an outpouring of her generous and loyal heart.
“Dante,” she whispered. “It feels so… I cannot think of the word.”
“Cold?” A tight pinch caught his chest. “Too austere? It is not yet finished.”
“Elegant,” she murmured. “Graceful. And peaceful, somehow. It feels… I know it is strange, but the only word I can think of is sufficient. This house is simply itself. It has no need to be anything other than it is. It welcomes, and it shelters, but it is not trying to overwhelm or impress. It simply…holds one, in the loveliest way.”
He couldn’t speak. It took great effort to shape words and force air through his throat. “That is a good thing?”
She turned to him with her eyes gleaming. “The best, I should think. It is the difference between a house and a home.”
He laid his palm over the small hand on his arm. She was so slender, like the stem of a water plant, and yet so strong. The currents of life might buffet this girl—had buffeted her, he sensed—and yet she would not break. She used her strength to shore up others.
“And this holding you speak of.” He was tugging her closer, but he could no more have stopped himself touching her than he could stop drinking from a cool stream of clear water on a hot day. “That is enough?”
Because he could hold her. He could do that. Shelter her, protect her, keep her as long as she would have him. All the days of her life, if she would permit it.
His brain was cloudy with the rush of emotion. He’d known this girl a handful of weeks. He was thinking of forever, was he?
Her eyes were enormous, the green glinting deep and bright against a sheen he thought might be tears. “It is the only thing that matters,” she whispered.
He was bending his head to close the distance between her mouth and his when Dot Dorsey drawled behind them.
“Not here, Manelli. Saints and angels. At least wait till you’ve got her upstairs in one of the bedchambers.”
He hauled his head back, feeling his face flush with heat. “I wasn’t— There are no beds.”
“That won’t stop a man what wants it bad,” said one of the other women, the blonde one with the rough manner of speech, as if she’d been raised in the back of an inn. “Watch out for yerself, will ye, Cerys? We’re goin’ to investigate belowstairs.”
“There’s… nothing really there yet,” Dante said, mostly to himself as the larger portion of the group trooped through the hallway leading back to the service stairs.
The other girl in the company, the dark-haired one who played Ophelia, paused on the doorstep as if she’d never entered a grand house through the front door.
A stricken look dawned over her face as she studied the details Cerys had noted.
Then, quite without warning, she threw her hands over her eyes, whirled about, and rushed through the vestibule back outside.
“Is she well?” Dante asked, while Cerys looked after the girl with concern.
She met his gaze and spoke softly. “Imagine, if you can, not ever having a home of your own, and then seeing that some people live like this.” She gazed about the room again, and he was content to watch her, fearing she saw too much when she looked in his eyes.
“She did not seem overly distressed at staying in Suffolk House.”
“Because that is a palace. Earls and lords are so far above the likes of us, they don’t feel quite real.” She stared up the staircase as if she, too, were unsure she was permitted to use it. “You are more like us.”
“Not gently born, you mean.” He would never be admitted into the ranks of gentlemen. He would never be allowed.
She nodded and glanced toward one of the open doors leading off the vestibule. “The ones in between. May I explore?”
“Of course. I will show you.” He led her through the reception rooms, trying to see them through her eyes.
In the formal drawing room, the sash windows had not yet been laid with shutters, but the view opened to the back lawn, looking down to the river and the swells of the Cotswold hills beyond.
He hoped it would speak to her as it did him.
“I have marble fireplaces coming from Italy, and the floor will be oak, with a carpet or rug—I haven’t decided. A crystal chandelier for the ceiling. The chair rail is in, as you see, but I haven’t finished the cornices. I’ll be hand-carving some of the decoration.”
She raised her brow. “You yourself?”
Was that wrong, to admit he worked with his hands? “The models, yes. I’ll send them to the workshop for the plasterer to make the length.”
“How beautiful, Dante, to be able to create something like this.” She walked through the broad doorway, not yet set with doors, to the room beyond, where another fireplace looked out at the unfinished expanse.
The windows on the side of the room opened onto a view of the workmen’s piles and the path to the churned ground he would make his kitchen garden, nestled against the wall that formed the ancient border of the old manor.
“You create beauty all the time,” he reminded her. “You cast a spell, daily, when you walk out onto the stage.”
She nodded. “But that is telling a story with my gestures, my manner, my voice. It is ephemeral. Unless the critics write about us, or the gossips in the morning papers, the memory fades. What you can do—you build something lasting. Something you create with your own two hands.”
“Labor,” he said, unable to keep the trace of bitterness from his tone. “Not the work of a gentleman.”
“Rubbish.” She waved a hand over her shoulder and walked into the next room, lined with windows, which he meant to be a conservatory. “I do not think those distinctions matter as much as you think.”
He followed. “I think they matter very much to some.”
She snorted and looked about, her eyes soft as if she were envisioning, as he was, what this room could be. “Some will claim it is a matter of birth, but I disagree. Look at the Regent sitting on the throne this moment. He has the highest birth in the land, but would you call him a gentleman?”
He smiled and drew near. That unending urge to be near her. “I hope no one heard you. You’ll be clapped in irons and hauled away for treason.”
“You’ll find many agree with me. Being a gentleman is more a matter of conduct. Dress well, uphold manners and standards of good taste, make yourself agreeable to those around you, and there will be many a one who will believe you’ve earned the right to be called a gentleman.”
He stared, the earth shifting beneath his feet. “I could never put Esquire behind my name.”
She opened the tall door to step onto the terrace, or what would become the terrace. A ray of sun fell across her, and she turned her face up as if soaking in the life-giving warmth. She was the most alive creature he had ever met in his life.
“You own this house.” She glanced his way, and her face was so radiant, he groped for the threads of the conversation. He lost his way around her.
No, that wasn’t true. He’d found his way to her. And now that he was with her, the things that had once mattered deeply fell into a different perspective. It would only matter if he were thought a gentleman so she might be respected as his lady.
“I do own this house.”
“And how many acres?”
“Fifteen, I think.”
She raised her brows. “Then you are on your way to being a gentleman already.”
“You think so?”