F
lowers bloomed from vases around the drawing room of the Mount Street town house. The morning sun lanced through the curtains, glinting off the rose tucked into the lapel of Sebastian’s dark blue morning coat. Clara kept her attention on the flower as the minister blessed their union, his voice deep and solemn.
“Be pleased, O Lord, to regard in much mercy and goodness the parties now before Thee…”
Clara lifted her eyes to find Sebastian watching her. Her heart thumped. A slight smile curved his mouth, the reassuring promise that they had both chosen wisely and well.
“You will please take each other by the right hand,” the minister requested.
Clara, her gaze locked to Sebastian’s, reached for his right hand. She expected him to hesitate for fear that his muscles would falter, but his long fingers closed around hers without wavering. Relief spilled through her, her own anxiety eased by the warmth brewing in his dark eyes and his absolute lack of uncertainty.
“I do,” he said, before Clara realized the minister had moved on to address her.
She gripped the folds of her pearl-gray gown with her other hand in an attempt to still the nervous shudders elicited by the gravity of the minister’s words—
“a wife shall
love her husband”
—but her right hand, the one tucked securely in Sebastian’s large, warm palm, did not tremble.
“I do,” she whispered when the minister stopped speaking.
Her fingers tightened around Sebastian’s. Memory flashed through her—the elaborate spectacle of her wedding to Richard, also a union based on practical ends but one launched with a display of wealth and celebration.
The numerous guests, the music, the extravagant feasting—it had been the opposite of this quiet ceremony in Sebastian’s drawing room with only Lord Rushton, Uncle Granville, and Mrs. Fox in attendance, all sitting with twin lines etched on their foreheads.
Clara avoided looking at them until the minister had pronounced her Sebastian’s wife. Her heart caught when he bent to brush his mouth against hers. She allowed herself to feel the pleasure of the contact for an instant before turning to her uncle. Granville moved to embrace her. She gripped his arms and swallowed past the tightness in her throat.
“I promise you I’m doing what is best for us,” Clara whispered.
“Should you need anything,” he murmured in her ear, “you know where to find me. I will do whatever I can to help you. I regret that I have not done more.”
Sadness swelled in Clara’s chest.
“You gave me a place to live,” she said. “You tried to help with Andrew. There was nothing more you could have done.”
“I only hope that this decision”—Granville glanced at Sebastian—“will yield the result you desire.”
So did Clara. The portent of failure loomed before her. She’d devised no strategy for what to do should she encounter it. She couldn’t. Black as oil, impenetrable, failure would swamp her under and take her last breath.
She looked to where Sebastian stood speaking with Lord Rushton. The earl glanced her way and approached. “Congratulations, Mrs. Hall. I wish you and my son much happiness.”
“Thank you, my lord.” Although Clara had no idea how Lord Rushton truly felt about this union, the fact that he approved of their marriage made the idea of having an earl as a father-in-law less intimidating.
Sebastian moved beside Clara, cupping his left hand beneath her elbow with easy grace. “If you’ll all join us in the dining room, I believe there’s quite an elaborate breakfast waiting.”
For Clara, the next few hours passed with rabbitlike speed, although they lingered over breakfast and then, at Granville’s suggestion, went for a walk in the garden of Grosvenor Square to benefit from the brisk autumn day. Rushton returned to his Piccadilly residence, while the rest of the party took some air.
Clara, knowing quite well what awaited her upon their return to Sebastian’s town house, proposed they take the carriage to visit the Regent Street shops for a few hours. They had lunch at Verrey’s restaurant, then went to the Portland Gallery to view the array of paintings and sculptures, an excursion that Clara hoped would take the remainder of the afternoon.
Embarrassment still scorched her when she remembered her behavior in Sebastian’s carriage, the way she’d thrown herself at him with an utterly wanton lack of restraint. Although Sebastian had given her no reason to feel ashamed, Clara knew well that her behavior fell far outside the bounds of decency.
She couldn’t fathom how Richard might have reacted, had she conducted herself in such a manner with him. Then again, nothing about Richard and his detached, stoic presence had ever inspired so much as a modicum of desire in Clara. She hadn’t even wanted to kiss him.
But Sebastian? He was a man who could turn her insides into molten heat with one brush of his fingertips, one intent look from his dark eyes. All she needed to do was gaze at his beautiful mouth, and she was seized by the urge to press her lips to his, feel the sweep of his tongue, drink the hot sweetness of his breath.
Clara shivered at the very idea, turning to study a landscape painting as she attempted to entrap all her wild, furtive imaginings.
Lock your heart,
she reminded herself even as she slanted a glance toward her new husband, so disarmingly handsome in a crisp morning coat and a cravat the color of a sweeping, cobalt-blue Dorset sky. The breeze had mussed his unruly black hair and a corner of his cravat had escaped the lapel of his coat, the loose edge rumpling his appearance just enough to remind the world he would not be contained like other men.
A sudden and sharp ache of tenderness constricted Clara’s chest. She averted her gaze from him and tried to focus on the painting.
Lock your heart lest you give him the power to damage it.
And with Sebastian, Clara knew, the damage would shatter her beyond repair.
She hurried to fall into step beside her uncle as they left the gallery and went back outside. The sunlight was beginning to dim and the shadows to lengthen by the time Mrs. Fox remarked that she ought to be returning home, and Granville summoned a cab for her. After she’d gone, he glanced at Sebastian before turning a worried gaze on Clara.
For whatever reason, her uncle’s concern eased Clara’s own apprehension. After all, it wasn’t as if she’d wed an ogre. Quite the opposite, in fact. She became acutely aware of Sebastian beside her, his tall, quiet presence comforting rather than fearsome.
She kissed Uncle Granville’s cheek. “I’ll call on you tomorrow, yes? I’ve still the sewing to finish for your dancing couple, and I’d like to start on the adornments for the next birdcage.”
“You needn’t—”
“I’ll be there at ten.”
Sebastian stepped aside to open the door of another cab. Granville squeezed Clara’s hands in farewell. Before Granville entered the cab, Sebastian lowered his head and spoke to the other man.
A breeze whisked the words from Clara’s ear, but Granville nodded with what appeared to be satisfaction, then clapped his hand firmly on Sebastian’s shoulder in a gesture of approval.
“What did you say to him?” Clara asked when Sebastian returned to her side.
“That I’ll contact your father tomorrow to discuss the matter of Wakefield House,” Sebastian said.
“Already?”
Sebastian nodded, brushing a coil of hair away from her forehead. “My brother’s solicitor has already started to draw up the papers. I told him to do so the day you proposed.”
“What if I hadn’t found the plans?”
A warm, wicked light flared in his eyes. “Then I would have devised another way to make you my wife.”
Darkness fell. Clara watched the curve of the moon melt against the sky. Her pulse shimmered through her veins, settling into the nervous beat of her heart. She slid her hand across the worn, wooden box resting on the table beside her and unfastened the catch. The tangle of ribbons inside gleamed incandescent, like a pearl embedded in an oyster.
Clara lifted the ribbons from the box, pooling them in a colorful mass on the table. The door clicked open behind her, and then she was no longer alone.
She turned. He wasn’t looking at her. His dark head was bent, a swath of thick hair covering his forehead, his attention on the knot of his cravat as he tugged at it with his left hand. His right hand remained at his side, the fingers curled toward his palm.
Clara allowed her gaze to wander over him—the breadth of his shoulders and length of his strong legs, the way his waistcoat hugged his lean torso, the drape of his coat, which had managed to collect numerous wrinkles over the course of the day.
A slight smile pulled at her mouth. Good thing she hadn’t expected him to deck himself out in all sorts of finery for their wedding night.
Not that she had, either. Until this moment she hadn’t considered he might expect her to wear a fashionable peignoir of silk and lace. Unnerved, Clara tugged her dressing gown more securely over her plain cotton shift and waited.
He twisted the catch of the pin holding his cravat in place. The fastening gave way, allowing him to tug again at the knot close to his throat. As the folds of cobalt-blue silk spilled into his hand, his eyes met hers. He pulled the silk from his collar and dropped it to the floor before approaching.
“From the studio?” He scooped the ribbons into his left hand and let them stream through his fingers.
“They were my mother’s. She had very beautiful dark hair and she loved to wear colorful ribbons.”
A cherry-red ribbon trailed from his hand as he held it against her burnished hair. “Do you wear them?”
“Sometimes. More often when I was a girl.”
She remembered that her mother had liked to tie the ribbons into Clara’s hair as well, how perfectly she was able to shape the bows. Clara cupped her hand beneath Sebastian’s, catching the tangle of fabric as it fell from his fingers. She dropped the ribbons into the box and closed the lid.
Sebastian’s dark gaze swept her from head to foot and back, lingering on the neckline of her gown, which exposed a shallow curve of bare skin. He was close enough that she could see the gleaming dampness of his hair, his smooth, clean-shaven jaw that she wanted to stroke with her lips.
A tremble coursed through her blood. She’d be lying if she said she had not imagined this moment, the taut, fevered space just before the consummation of their union. But her speculations had been pointlessly twisted with memories of Richard, tangling the fearful, young virgin she’d been with the woman she was now. No longer young. No longer a virgin.
But fearful…?
Sebastian cupped his left palm around her nape, his fingers warm and strong, then reached to loosen the pins restraining her hair. In moments, her hair uncoiled in long skeins around her shoulders. Warm appreciation glowed in his eyes. Her heart hammered.
Fearful still, yes. Not because the dire portent of physical intimacy stretched between them and the bed, but because he aroused such a flurry of emotions, like butterflies spiraling and cascading through her very soul.
Because she
wanted
him.
Clara still didn’t understand it. She didn’t know its source or its end, this desire sparking in her blood, at once exhilarating and terrifying. All she knew was that it made her crave his lips, his hands on her bare skin, made her yearn with the need to touch him in return.
Sebastian dragged his fingers through a swath of her hair, softly pulling the tangles free. His brows drew together.
“Did he hurt you?” He spoke in a gentle voice, but the implications of his question corded the words with anger.
Clara shook her head, unable to speak past the knot in her throat. No, Richard hadn’t hurt her. Not physically. He’d been dispassionate and methodical and she’d felt like a vessel rather than his wife, but he’d hurt her only after he died.
And never once had he made her feel like
this
—restless and hot and wanting more, wanting something she couldn’t name.
Before she could speak, Sebastian captured her fingers in his and, with unmistakable intent, brought her hand to the buttons of his shirt.
Clara skirted her gaze to her husband, her pulse jumping at the heat already brewing in his eyes. No swift rut beneath the covers for this man. She steeled her courage, though her hands shook as she unfastened the first button to reveal the triangle of skin at his throat.
If she didn’t look directly at him…she forced her fingers to work as she slipped each button from its entrapment. When the folds of his shirt began to part, she stepped back, her breath quickening in pace as she watched his long fingers release the final two buttons before he pulled the shirt over his head. Mesmerized by the dexterity of his movements, the graceful lift of his shoulders, she could hardly muster any shock as his shirt pooled to the floor.
A riot of sensations fluttered inside her as she gazed at his half-naked form. So utterly different from Richard’s slender torso, which Clara had seen bare only several times during their six-year marriage.
She stared at the expanse of Sebastian’s flat stomach, the layer of dark hair over the sculpted planes of his chest, the smooth musculature of his shoulders. A strange, urgent pulse flared in her belly.
Dear God, but the man was beautiful.
He closed the scant distance between them, his hand moving to cup her face and draw her closer.
“I promise,” he murmured in the instant before his lips touched hers, “I will only bring you pleasure.”
And then she was in his arms, his mouth crushed to hers, her hands trapped between their bodies. Clara breathed in a gasp and sank against him, opening her mouth to allow him access, drowning in the flood of sensations that swept over her. She unclenched her fists and let her hands spread tentatively over the expanse of his naked chest.
Warm, taut skin and soft hairs tickled her fingers as she pressed her hands against him and slid them upward. The steady beat of his heart quickened against her palms, delighting her with the knowledge that her touch could inspire his reaction.