A Passion for Pleasure(98)

Weary, she set the book aside. She hadn’t slept well since the confrontation with Fairfax, her thoughts a confusion of memories and fear. Now a vast, black void had opened inside her heart. The lamp on her bedside table flickered, shadows twisting across the ceiling.

The fear that had lived inside her for so long, the despair she had believed would vanish like a puff of smoke the instant she held Andrew in her arms again…it was still there. Slithering into her blood, coiling in the pit of her belly.

Would she never be free of it? And now that Sebastian was inextricably tangled in their circumstances…God alone knew what the future held.

She pushed the covers aside and tugged on her dressing gown, then padded down the corridor to his room. She knocked and pushed the door open when he bade her enter.

He sat beside the fire, still clothed in trousers and a white linen shirt, his long legs stretched out before him. A tingle swept down Clara’s spine at the sight of him—the reddish glow burnishing his dark hair, the V of skin revealed by the unfastened buttons of his shirt, the rough whiskers covering his jaw.

“Am I disturbing you?” she asked.

“Yes.” His gaze moved over her, a long slow sweep like the glide of his fingertips. “You’ve disturbed me since I first saw you carrying Millicent’s head.”

Clara smiled faintly at the memory. She approached him with caution, but there was nothing forbidding in his expression. She lowered herself into the chair across from him, glancing at the paper he held. The penmanship was scrawled, uneven.

“Is that to your brother’s solicitor?” she asked.

“Yes.” Sebastian set the paper and pen on a small table. “He’ll likely feel obliged to explain the situation to Alexander, but my hope is that things will be settled by then.”

Clara hoped so too, though she had no idea how. Perhaps a different solicitor could offer a solution. She nibbled on her thumbnail and stared at the leaping flames of the fire.

“Will you not dissolve our marriage?” she asked, her voice steady but quiet. She could not bring herself to utter the words divorce me.

“No.” Sebastian’s hand curled into the material of his trousers. “I told you when we first agreed to wed that I would not tolerate even the possibility of separation.”

“But surely that would be less troublesome for you than having to contend with our current situation.”

“No. There will not be another divorce in my family.”

Clara kept her attention on the fire. All that had occurred in the past week had forged a question at the back of her mind, one she had struggled to ignore because she was afraid of Sebastian’s answer. Yet now she forced herself to voice it.

“Do you regret it, then?” she asked. “Agreeing to my proposal? I fear the cost to you has been far greater than you anticipated.”

He didn’t deny it.

Her heart tightened. She felt his gaze on her, but could not face him.

“No,” he said. “I do not regret our marriage.”

She looked at him. A deep and abiding love swelled beneath her heart. She pressed a hand to her chest, feeling as if her body could not contain all she felt for him.

“I’m so sorry for what I did,” she whispered. “Please know it wasn’t because I don’t love you. I have loved you for years.” She rose, hesitant, and went to lower herself into his lap, willing him not to reject her.

He didn’t. She tucked herself against him. The heat of his long, muscular body eased the tension from her, like steam smoothing wrinkles from a swath of silk. He lifted his left hand to touch her neck, resting his fingertips in the hollow of her collarbone. Warmth brewed in his eyes behind a shield of guardedness.

“I am no longer the man you once loved,” he said.

“Yes, you are.” She spread her hand over his chest. “People don’t transform completely into someone different. We change, yes, but we remain the same at our very core. You lost the use of your hand, Sebastian. You didn’t lose your talent or your kindness. You didn’t lose your love of life.”

“If that is true”—he tucked his hand beneath her chin and turned her face to his—“what about you?”

“Me?”

“Are you also the same as you once were? During those Wakefield House days when you were happy and filled with hope?”

A warm glow filled Clara’s chest as she looked into her husband’s beautiful dark eyes. “With you, yes,” she whispered. “I am.”