Chapter 15 #5
“I need to give them something solid. Something concrete by which to remember me. Otherwise, what value will I have had to them?”
“It must be an exchange?” he asked, trying to follow her logic. “I expect they all want you to be happy. They will support any choice you make. And you do not need to turn over a theater to prove your worth. Surely they value you precisely for who you are. Not what they can gain from you.”
She faced him. The bonnet framed her artless face, her wide eyes, the brows nearly touching her hairline. “Of course it is a matter of what they can gain from me. That is how the world works. No one has value for simply existing.”
“Everyone has value all their own,” he said. “Do you suppose a child is supposed to earn their way in the world by pleasing and flattering? That they don’t deserve care for simply being one of God’s creatures?”
She blinked at him. “Everyone has to work. Everyone has to give what they can. Otherwise, how will the family go on?”
His chest tightened. “So far, I have been given credit for few of my building designs. Suffolk House is the only real accomplishment I can point to. Do you suppose I have no value because of this?”
Her brows knit together, her lovely mouth turning down at the corners. “Of course not. You have great talent and a decided skill.”
“And so do you.”
She hugged her arms about her waist, a small blue reticule dangling from her wrist. It was the same blue silk as the lining inside her bonnet. So smart she was, every piece of her ensemble artlessly lovely, and she looked completely lost.
“You don’t understand.”
“I don’t.”
“I am not sure I entirely understand either. I only know…” She turned her face away, staring out the window, but the unfocused look in her eyes suggested she stared into the distance.
“If it was all a lark—if it was all an amusement to begin with, and I never actually make something—then what was the point all along? How can I justify that?”
Again he stepped near, and she did not pull away. He put his hands on her upper arms, gently cradling her. She was so slender yet strong, and she fit against his body so perfectly. He bent his head to draw in a long breath, absorbing the warmth, the scent of her.
With Cerys Evans in his arms, he needed nothing else. The world was complete and perfect.
“I know what it means to want to make something. To have your contributions seen and valued.”
His voice was a low hum between them. She leaned back slightly, yielding.
She wanted him after all. Him, with all his flaws. He resisted the urge to clench his hands and haul her against him, never let her go.
“But I think you mistake something if you do not understand you are loved simply for being you. Because you are impossible not to love.”
She let her shoulders brush his chest. He tilted his head so he didn’t get a face full of bonnet.
“That is not how the world works,” she said again, softly. “You must give something in return.”
“In a profession, perhaps. But not in love.”
She trembled in his arms, and he felt they stood on the edge of something. A surrender to something enormous, that would set the course of both of their lives irrevocably. A fall into something that would demand everything from him, every part of his being.
And yet she was worth every sacrifice, every risk. When he stood next to her, he was unafraid. Cerys made him stronger.
She tilted her head to look up into his face. Her voice was hesitant, almost a whisper, most unlike her usual assertive self.
“I have never had…a decided preference for a man before. Not like this.”
A decided preference. He wanted to whoop with joy. He wanted to kiss her until they both could not breathe. Cerys Evans loved him, was nearly ready to give her heart and her hand to him, and he could pick up a solid piece of unhewn marble and carry it a league if she asked.
He pressed forward so she leaned against his chest, and the length of her body fit to his.
“I have never asked a woman to marry me.”
She narrowed her eyes in suspicion, and he shook his head. “I have not.”
Her entire face softened then, her lips parting in a small, shy smile. The skylark swooped past the window again, spilling heavenly notes into the air.
Her mouth against his was perfection. She tasted of plums and sweetness.
He turned her about so he could press her fully against his body.
He was demanding too much, too soon, yet he wanted everything from her.
And she surrendered, leaning against him, opening to his kiss.
He pushed his fingers into her hair, dislodging the bonnet, but he wanted to cradle the back of her head in his hands, he wanted to taste the very depths of her, and he wanted to mold her to him so completely that they could never be separated.
From somewhere behind him, an unfinished doorway, an intruder cleared their throat loudly.
“Mind your manners, you two,” Mame said. “Andover’s servants have the things set up. It’s time for our picnic.”
Cerys pulled back her face and stared at Dante, her eyes dazed, her lips rose-pink. An enormous tenderness bit through him to his bones.
He felt humbled and pierced with awe. “Cerys has agreed—”
“Not yet.” Swiftly she stepped away from him, drawing her hands from around his shoulders, and the warmth of her body dissipated in a rush. “I have agreed to nothing yet.”
That marble block he had imagined earlier fell on his chest as she turned to Mame. “A picnic sounds delightful.”
And she left.
She kissed him like a divinity, like a siren, but she wouldn’t come to him until she had finished something she felt she owed her acting company.
What would it take to win this woman? To have and to hold her once and for all, and win her heart completely?