A Passion for Pleasure(61)
“That’s fine if you’ve got the ideas to begin with.” Irritation prickled Sebastian’s spine as he thought of the courage he knew it cost her to confront her father. “I thank you for your thoughts on the matter.”
“No, you don’t.” Her eyes burned with determination. “This is the first true obstacle you’ve faced, isn’t it? Not even the scandal of your parents’ divorce affected you the way it did your brothers. In fact, if it weren’t for Alexander’s renunciation of your mother, you wouldn’t have resisted seeing her, would you?”
Sebastian slammed his fists onto the keys with such force that Clara jumped. The resounding crash vibrated through the room in a distortion of dark colors. He shoved away from the piano and stalked to the sideboard, where a decanter of brandy sat. He downed a glass, appreciating the burn as it seeped into his blood, then poured another and strode to the hearth.
“You know you can do it, Sebastian,” Clara said, her voice quiet but resolute. “You’re just afraid to.”
Bloody hell. Sebastian hated the shame crawling up his throat, the bitter taste of truth. Self-directed rage speared through him.
He clenched his hand on the glass and threw it at the flames. The glass shattered against the stone hearth, the liquor bursting into a fireball as the shards crashed against the logs and began to blacken.
Clara’s hand settled on his back, the heat of her palm burning through the linen of his shirt. No apology appeared forthcoming from her, and for that, oddly enough, Sebastian was glad. He did not want his wife to apologize for speaking the truth.
“You’re not a coward,” she murmured, sliding her hand beneath the loose shirttails to touch the naked skin of his lower back. “Don’t let anyone believe you are. Don’t believe it of yourself.”
She let out a long breath and shifted behind him. Her warm hands curved around his waist to interlace across his stomach. She pressed her forehead against his back and tightened her arms, her body locked soft and warm to his. Sebastian covered her hands with his left hand and stared at leaping flames.
A humorless laugh rose in his throat. He had anticipated none of this when he agreed to marry Clara Winter. And he was not at all comfortable with the realization that she could illuminate the darkest corners of his soul and reveal things he didn’t even want to acknowledge to himself.
“Rather than concerning yourself with me, we should concentrate on reaching an agreement with your father,” he said, leveling his voice into a flat, practical tone. “That’s the reason we married.”
He felt her stiffen against his back, and then her warmth left him as she stepped away. Her hand slid across his torso in a lingering caress.
“That isn’t the only reason we married,” she murmured.
Sebastian’s chest constricted. An odd recollection pushed at the back of his mind—a memory of the day he’d encouraged Alexander to do something that would make him happy. Sebastian had known that something meant pursuing Lydia Kellaway. At the time, he had been happy with his own life, performing in both concert halls and taverns, courting pretty women and attending social events as if their family had suffered no scandal whatsoever.
He wanted that again, though he knew it had nothing to do with the accolades and everything to do with the fact that his music had once brought people pleasure. It had once brought him pleasure.
Sebastian turned to face Clara, forcing his right hand to the side of her face. He didn’t like the way she was looking at him, with a soft admiration that he no longer deserved.
“Do not imagine I am the man you once admired,” he whispered, his voice rough. “I am not. If you thought you were marrying that man, then you’d best rid yourself of any romantic notions immediately.”
She covered his hand with hers. “I once thought I loved you. And I did, from afar. I loved everything I thought you were, loved everything that was bright and glowing about you, but I never really knew you. Not the way a woman should know the man she loves.”
A foreign sensation threaded through Sebastian’s pounding heart. The strength spilled from his right hand, his fingers stiffening against Clara’s smooth cheek. He tried to pull away. She tightened her hold.
“I know you now,” she whispered. “I know the sorrow you’ve locked inside your heart. I know the depths of your loyalty. I know you are still the man you once were, but also that you’ve irrevocably changed. I know you the way a woman knows the man she loves.”