A Passion for Pleasure(29)
“And if they aren’t there?”
“Then you are free to terminate our agreement.” Clara spoke with a bravado she didn’t feel. She spread her hands, glad that the tremors in them had eased. “Have you anything to lose?”
Except your freedom?
Sebastian didn’t speak, didn’t turn his gaze from her face.
He hadn’t rejected her. The realization shone like sunlight through her fog of anger and despair. She clung to that thread of hope and used it to force down the rage, to prevent it from boiling into her blood.
“I ask…no, I beg for your help in getting Andrew back,” Clara said, hating the desperate note in her voice. “I have no claim to him, Sebastian. My father is his sole and legal guardian.” She paused for breath. “Wakefield House is the only asset I have, and it’s one that my father wants. If I can offer it to him through you, I have a chance of getting my son back.”
Sebastian rubbed his right hand with his left, a movement that appeared unconscious. Clara watched him for a moment before he stopped and pushed his hand into his pocket abruptly. “Have you gone to the courts to seek custody of your son?”
“I considered it, but the risk is too great. It would be scandalous for my father’s reputation, not to mention my own, regardless of the outcome. We might not be a well-connected family, but gossip has never surrounded us. I certainly cannot cause any now.”
She drew in a ragged breath. The misshapen difference between society’s view of her life and the brutal reality still had the power to unnerve her, even as she recognized her good fortune in the distortion. If her behavior had caused scandal to erupt in Fairfax’s domain, Andrew would truly be lost to her forever.
“Not even my falling-out with my father caused a whisper in society,” she admitted. “Ask anyone of consequence in Surrey and you’ll hear of my husband’s tragic accident, how brilliant he would have been had he been elected to Parliament, how magnanimous my father was in taking him under his wing, and how devastated he was to have lost the young man he’d considered his second son. You’ll hear how my father dotes upon his grandson, and how fortunate Andrew is to have such a devoted grandfather.”
Clara stopped, shocked by the bitterness discoloring her voice. She turned her back to Sebastian and stepped to the windows, fighting to calm her inner turmoil.
A lengthy silence stretched, almost vibrating with tension.
“And you?” His deep voice was close. Too close. Clara could almost feel the heat of his body behind her. She wrapped her arms around her middle and struggled to contain her shaking.
“Me?” she whispered.
“What would anyone of consequence in Surrey have to say about Mrs. Clara Winter, should I ask?”
Clara stared unseeing out the window. Her reflection in the glass stared back at her. “They would tell you she was so distraught by her husband’s untimely death that she fled to London for recuperation. They would tell you that she sees her son regularly when Lord Fairfax brings the boy to London. They would tell you she has crafted a quiet, respectable life for herself in honor and memory of her beloved husband.”
Silence again, as if Sebastian were analyzing all she said, working it through his mind like a mill separating the wheat from the chaff.
“But,” he said quietly, “they would all be horribly wrong.”
“Does it matter?”
No. To anyone else, it mattered not a whit. The story was romantic and tragic, and they all loved to speak of it as if it were something from a penny novel and not ripped from the pages of Clara’s life. As if it hadn’t burned her soul to ashes.
Clara whirled around, a rush of hot anger crawling up her throat.
“It doesn’t matter at all, not to them,” she snapped, some part of her shocked by the way she allowed control to slip so easily through her fingers. “If you agree to this, you would marry a virtuous, well-bred widow, a peer’s daughter whose son lives a fine life with his grandfather in Surrey. No one would know anything of Wakefield House or my desperation to have Andrew again. Except…”
“Us,” Sebastian finished.
Us. The word flowered in Clara’s soul, pushing a fresh stalk of green through the dry, cracked dirt.
“Us,” she whispered.
No. There could be no us in a marriage of practical ends.
Could there?
Sebastian stepped closer, his gaze fixed on her. He moved with a confidence that belied his initial surprise, as if her revelations had yielded for him some conclusion. As if he’d already decided upon his response.