A Duke in the Night(71)
That should have made him feel better. She was prepared to move on, even if she wasn’t prepared to tell him why. Except there was something that was crowding into his chest, making his heart hurt. “Oxford or Cambridge would be lucky to have you.” He looked down, staring at their entwined fingers. “If you ever need a recommendation…” He trailed off before he looked back up. “If you ever needed anything, Clara, would you tell me?”
She averted her gaze. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Just that. If you ever needed…help.” He wanted her to trust him. Needed her to trust him.
She looked at him again, her dark eyes unreadable. “That’s very kind.”
August swallowed his frustration. “My father never asked for help,” he said.
“When he went to prison, you mean?”
“Even before that. My father…” He had no idea why he was talking about this, but now that he had started, he couldn’t seem to stop. “My father was an inveterate gambler, reckless and selfish. He defied his family to marry an actress and embrace the wildly popular notion of true love. Except after they were married, he gambled away everything that they possessed and then everything that they didn’t. And when that happened, he stole from his family to cover the debt.”
Clara’s fingers tightened in his.
“My mother was a good woman. I think she believed that she could change him up until the day she died. That love would change him. But of course, it didn’t. And by the time he was finally thrown into debtors’ prison, there wasn’t anyone left who cared.”
“I’m sorry,” Clara whispered.
August shrugged. “I spent two years living on the streets,” he said. “I know what it feels like to starve. I know what it feels like to be so cold that the skin on your fingers and toes burns and peels. I know what it feels like to have to defend yourself against those who would kill you for the shoes on your feet. But would I be where I am today without living that? I don’t know.”
“And does it make you happy?” she asked him suddenly. “Where you are today?”
He should have expected that Clara would turn his question back on him, yet it caught him off guard. What was even more disturbing was that he didn’t seem to have an honest answer that he liked.
He untangled their fingers and reached out to push her thick hair away from her face. “I can’t think of anywhere else I’d want to be right now,” he murmured, dipping his head to kiss the smooth skin of her shoulder. “And you have no idea just how happy that makes me.”
He heard her sigh, and he knew that he had fooled no one. But she didn’t say anything, simply rolled onto her back, looking up at him with those knowing dark eyes. She reached out to touch his face with her fingertips, a gentle, butterfly-light touch before her lips curled into that half smile he knew so well.
“Very well, then, Your Grace. Why don’t you show me how much?”
Chapter 17
Clara used to despise dinner parties.
Her parents had insisted on having them regularly, spectacles of wealth and extravagance that caused everyone who was anyone to angle shamelessly to secure an invitation. Clara would usually find herself seated between two eligible bachelors, and her mother had always made an attempt to ensure that each of them possessed an open mind. Or at least as open as the mind of one raised in male, titled privilege could get. On almost all occasions, Clara was vastly underwhelmed.
Only once could Clara ever recall having been captivated by her dinner partner, and he, it seemed, by her. He had spent ten years working for the Hudson’s Bay Company in uncharted territory far to the north of civilized places like Boston and New York. His stories fascinated her, and he seemed to delight in answering each and every one of her pointed questions in complete, if occasionally shocking, detail.
Clara knew this dinner would be no different. Not because she already knew the conversation would flow freely, no question too improper or impractical, no answer too informed or too radical. Not because each and every person seated at the table had something fascinating to share. But because there would be a man seated at her side who took part in it all. Who knew her body, mind, and soul.
She had dressed with care that evening, or as much care as her limited wardrobe would allow. Since she had left the studio and crept silently back to her rooms, she felt a little as if she were glowing from within. She caught herself smiling and blushing at odd intervals, her skin tingling at the memory of August’s touch, aching for him to touch her again.
It was different with August. She’d had only a single lover before—a young Italian artist who had been as skilled with her body as he had been at his craft. As her teacher, he had set her body on fire under the Tuscan moon, and as his willing student, she had learned to do the same for him. Yet neither had had any expectations beyond physical pleasure. There had been respect and admiration for each other, but no deeper emotion had been involved. Nothing that had sucked the breath from her lungs in his presence and made her heart ache fiercely in his absence.
She was well aware that somewhere she had crossed a line she had never intended to cross with August Faulkner. Or maybe that line had been crossed in a ballroom ten years earlier, and this was simply the inevitable culmination. But what she felt—the unrelenting longing, the constant desire—this was something that she hadn’t been truly prepared for. It was an all-consuming, overwhelming emotion, like a cyclone that had borne down on an unsuspecting sailor. And she was caught right in the heart of it.