by Georgie Lee
‘I don’t have as intimate a knowledge of the house as you believe so you may choose where we hide.’ Her flat tone made it clear that the last thing she wished to do this morning was hide with Hugh waiting for who knew how long to be discovered.
He’d been eager to reach her before, but now he wasn’t so certain he wanted to be alone with her and risk her sharp words but he had no choice. He must find out why she’d changed her attitude to him since he’d seen her last night and this was the best way to do it without danger of anyone whispering about them are overhearing. ‘I have an idea. Follow me.’
He raised his hand to take hers and then thought better of it. He turned on his heels and led her away from the entrance hall. She followed in silence, as dour as if this was nothing more than another duty that had to be done before she could continue with the rest of her day.
The deeper they walked into the house, the less they heard other people, with the occasional door closing or a muffled giggle to alert them that there were a few souls around them.
‘Where are you going?’ Clara asked.
‘The large cupboard near the billiards room.’ Hugh reached the door set in the panelling in the wall just beyond the billiards room, the last one along the long corridor before the large window at the end. He pulled it open to reveal old trays of billiard balls and stands holding extra sticks waiting to be used if a number of guests wished to play at the same time. It was a small, musty room, but wide enough for two people to secrete themselves away for a little while. ‘Quick, in here.’
Hugh turned to find Clara standing halfway down the hall.
‘You want us to hide in a cupboard?’ She threw him a dubious look that he was certain had more to do with the confines of the space and how close they would be forced to stand rather than the actual hiding place itself.
‘Lord Stanhope isn’t familiar with the house and, if nothing else, it will take him some time to search the other rooms. With any luck, by the time the gong rings he won’t have come this far and we’ll still be hidden.’
‘I don’t know if I’d call that lucky,’ Clara murmured and Hugh questioned the wisdom of stepping into such tight quarters with this little tiger. He was apt to be bit, but if he didn’t take the chance he might not discover what was troubling her.
Thankfully, the deep sound of the gong marking the start of the game made her dart into the small space faster than any words he could think of to convince her to join him. He followed her inside, closing the door behind him.
While Hugh’s eyes adjusted to the dim light filtering in from beneath the door, he listened to Clara’s quick breaths, noting how they slowed as she settled herself in the darkness and waited with him to either be found or to have to reveal themselves at the end of the game. Hugh guessed she was praying they would be discovered quickly, for there were no words about winning and becoming the lead couple in the first dance and showing up people like Lady Fulton and Lord Westbook. There was only a silence as tortuous as her rose perfume. The scent of it was more potent than the dust covering the equipment and he longed to break the tension between them by reaching out and slipping his arm around her waist. He could draw her to him and bury his face in the curve of her neck and inhale the sweet warmth of her skin, leave small kisses in the hollow of her throat and make her sigh with a pleasure to drive out all her objections to him, but Hugh didn’t move. He could see in the faint light slipping beneath the door that she was standing as far away from him as she could without knocking over the stand of cue sticks behind her. It was not an inviting pose and the whole house was likely to hear her slap him if he dared to touch her so intimately. Last night she might’ve accepted his kisses, but not today.
‘What’s wrong, Clara?’ Hugh ventured in a low voice, keeping an ear out for any footsteps in the hallway. This wasn’t a particularly clever hiding place but in his eagerness to be alone with her it had seemed like the best choice.
‘What makes you think there’s anything wrong?’ Clara crossed her arms over her chest, her stance less welcoming than it had been in the entry hall.
‘After yesterday, I thought you’d enjoy this kind of game.’
‘Then you guessed wrong.’ She trilled her fingers on her bare upper arm, her fingertips brushing the smooth creaminess he wished he could caress.
‘What happened since we parted last night? You weren’t this sharp or callous with me yesterday.’
His directness made her lips form an enticing O of shock before she regained her voice. ‘I heard a very enthralling story at breakfast, one that involves you and a certain widow in London. It appears you have a fondness for intimate friendships with widows.’
‘What do you mean?’ He didn’t defend himself for there was no defence against the truth. He thought she’d already heard that story, but apparently she hadn’t. However, if she were bold enough to throw his past relationship in his face, one that had nothing to do with her, then he would see how much bolder she was in pursuing this line of discussion.
‘Lady Frances. I understand she and you were...’ She stopped, too embarrassed to say the word. She didn’t need to say it because he did.
‘Lovers. Yes, we were.’ She wanted the truth and he would give it to her and prove that he was still the honest man she once believed in despite his questionable past.
* * *
Clara struggled to keep her jaw from dropping at his blunt answer. She hadn’t expected him to so readily admit his sins and yet he’d confessed with all the frankness of a grocer telling her the price of apples. ‘I don’t know whether to forgive you for your honesty or lecture you about your vices.’
‘My past vices,’ he corrected, his words much tighter than they’d been when he’d led her to this hiding place. ‘And you needn’t lecture me. My mother did enough of that when she was alive. Trust me, she was no more thrilled by my time in London than you are.’
‘I don’t blame her.’ No doubt he’d hoped by coming here to do something more pleasurable than discuss his mistress while they’d hid. She was glad to disappoint him. ‘Is your time with Lady Frances really over?’
‘It is and it never should have happened, but things were different for me then, and like you she was free to make her own decisions.’
‘I’m nothing like her.’
‘No, you’re not.’
‘Are you disappointed?’
‘Not at all.’
This took the angry wind out of her sails, but it didn’t settle the anxiety that had forced her to speak. ‘Lord Westbook said you weren’t willing to marry her.’
‘Did he?’ He ground his jaw, his shoulders and neck stiff, so unlike the Hugh who’d charmed her into almost making her forget herself in front of everyone last night.
‘He did.’ She never would have believed that she would be quoting Lord Westbook of all people. She couldn’t stand the pompous man and yet she’d been all too willing to listen and believe him this morning, except what he’d said was true, at least the part about Lady Frances being Hugh’s mistress. The rest she still wondered about.
‘Then allow me to tell you what he doesn’t know. A few months into our relationship, I offered to make Lady Frances an honest woman. She turned me down. My title was grand enough for her, but not my income. It was the beginning of the end of our rather weak relationship.’
His unwillingness to mince words forced Clara back into silence. She should be glad that someone who’d been all too willing to marry a woman for money had discovered what it was like to be rejected because he didn’t have enough of it, but she wasn’t. Instead she was left once again to try to reconcile the things he told her with what she knew of him and decide whether to believe his words or his actions. Deep down, she should trust her instincts and not the whisperings of a well-known gossip monger like Lord Westbook or the doubt he’d tried to plant in her, but her instincts had been wrong about Hugh before.
If she chose to believe he was a scoundrel, then turning away from Hugh would be easier. Admitting he wasn’t meant admitting to so many other things that terrified her, including how afraid she was of being wronged and humiliated again and how much the longing in Hugh’s eyes matched the one in her heart.
Every bit of common sense and the awful lesson she’d learned from her previous experience with him screamed against this insanity, but still she could not dismiss it. All his supposed honesty could be nothing more than a ruse to gain her trust and then deceive her again. With troubles still facing Everburgh, he could be pursuing her simply because of her wealth, or because he did genuinely care for her. She didn’t know which and she was tired of this ambiguity. ‘What is it you want from me, Hugh?’
‘The faith you showed in me yesterday and last night.’
‘Why?’
‘Because if you can believe in me again, then the man I used to be and wish to be again is not lost.’
Clara fingered the cold, smooth top of a cue ball sitting in a tray beside her, unsure how to respond. He was giving her opinion of him far more importance than it merited. ‘Surely there are other people who can better offer you what you seek.’
‘None with heartfelt honesty like yours. You don’t play games, Clara, or ever leave me in doubt about your true feelings.’
‘Or perhaps it’s simply because I’m here and convenient, a single mistake from your past you can easily remedy on your way home in order to clear your conscience.’
‘Is that all you think you are to me?’
‘I don’t know what I am to you. I never have.’ He’d given her so many reasons for why he’d done the things he’d done, but he’d never admitted to loving her. She wanted this more than any apology or excuse, but her pride wouldn’t allow her to ask for it. She’d stood in front of him, waiting for him to ask her to be his wife, and instead he’d told her the honour would go to another. She wasn’t about stand here and demand his heart and listen to him give her a thousand reasons why it couldn’t be hers, all of them very noble. She wasn’t so hard up for love as to do this to herself.
‘You’re so much more than you realise.’ He stepped up to her, towering over her in the semi-darkness of the small space. She stared at him, the shadows beneath his eyes darkening his brow while the light from beneath the door highlighted the angle of his chin. Beneath the musty smell of old equipment and dust, she caught the faint scent of his shaving soap and the earthier smell of horse and sweat from his morning ride. It was an enticing scent that took her back to Winsome and the many days spent with him and Adam running through the garden, before their time under the mistletoe had ruined the charm of those memories. She’d come here to set the past aside and claim a new future, and so had he, yet here they were together with everything that had passed between them still hanging in the air like the fine dust they’d disturbed.
She didn’t know how to settle it, especially the quiet part of her that remembered what it was like to love him, to experience hope and possibility in his arms. If she reached out her hand and laid it on the side of his face, she could touch it all again, not the misery but the happiness, but fear kept her hands firmly at her sides. His sudden care for her might be nothing more than his old regard for her family and Adam and have little to do with the true preferences of his heart. Except the way he looked at her was more than admiration for her family, but the desire of a man to cross the darkness and take her in his arms.
Clara took a step closer to Hugh, then stopped, unwilling to give way completely to the temptation urging them closer together. If he made the first move and crossed the short distance that seemed like miles, then she would take a chance and go against every logical thought she had about him and follow him, but he must be the one to make his intentions clear in his touch, to tell her in his kiss that he truly meant everything he said to her, that it wasn’t simply the heat of the moment like it had been before and when the clouds of infatuation cleared he would walk away from her again. She held her breath as she waited for him to lean down and press his lips to hers, to reveal the truth of his intentions in his kiss. He moved slowly, closing his eyes as she closed hers, his mouth so close she could almost taste him.
Suddenly, light spilled into the room, making Clara and Hugh flinch and raise their hands to cover their eyes. They stepped back from one another, the moment lost.
‘It looks like I’ve found two more.’ Lord Stanhope stood with the door open, smiling in triumph at them. ‘At this rate the game will be over long before the gong rings.’
Clara stumbled past him and into the hallway, her heart pounding as she blinked against the shock of the light. Near misses with Hugh were quickly becoming the rule instead of the exception and if Lord Stanhope had been a moment later, he would have had quite a story for the breakfast table. There’d been nothing sordid about the encounter, no furtive clawing at one another or adjusting of clothes but there was no mistaking that Lord Stanhope’s arrival had interrupted something. It wouldn’t take much for him to guess what and for the story to be all over the house by the time the ball started, assuming he wasn’t a discreet man. She didn’t know enough about him to say if he was discreet or not. Clara pressed her hand to her chest, trying to work out the tightness sitting there. She should have known better than to have tempted Hugh and fate and yet once again she’d ignored her better senses and thrown off caution, to her detriment. It seemed like she would never learn.
She slowly turned to face Hugh and Lord Stanhope, smoothing the front of her dress with her hands while she composed herself. She tried to appear as if nothing untoward had been taking place in the cupboard, but for all her fear at their near miss, there was regret, too. If she and Hugh had kissed, her lingering questions about him might have been answered. Instead, what remained was confusion and the possibility for more humiliation.
‘Lord Stanhope,’ Hugh greeted their finder with little enthusiasm, as troubled by the interruption as her.
‘Lord Delamare. It’s been a while, but you appear well, certainly better than the last time I saw you. Where was it? Ah, yes, I remember.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘The field outside London. You’d winged Lord Cecil and secured your honour. What was it he’d called you?’
‘I don’t recall.’ Hugh glanced back and forth between Clara and Lord Stanhope, clearly not appreciating this reminiscence so close on the heels of the one he’d been forced to endure about Lady Frances.
‘I wish I could be so cavalier about a duel.’ Lord Stanhope chuckled. ‘Not that I’ve ever fought one.’
‘Shall I call you out for finding us?’
Lord Stanhope held up his hands up in mock defence. ‘I’m only doing my hostess’s bidding.’
‘And we can’t fault him for that, can we, Lord Delamare?’ Clara added, drawing his attention away from Hugh and the discomfort marring the moment. ‘We surrender and wish you luck with the rest of your search.’
‘Thank you, Lady Kingston, yours is the most gracious concession I’ve encountered this morning.’ Lord Stanhope took her hand and raised it to his lips, his eyes never leaving hers and making her swallow hard. He was a potent reminder of everything that might be waiting for her if she stopped looking back and chose instead to move forward.
‘I’m happy to be such a good sportsman.’ Clara glanced over his shoulder to see Hugh watching them, his eyes clouded with irritation.
He’s jealous. Clara inwardly smiled in triumphant delight, for she wanted him to see that she wasn’t a simple girl new to love who could be wooed away from her better sense by a gentleman capable of overawing her, but a mature woman whose good opinion he must work to secure. She also wanted him to know that he was not the only one capable of claiming her attention.
Following the line of her gaze, Lord Stanhope let go of her and turned to Hugh, his smile dimming to a more humble grin. ‘Off you both go to the dining room. Lady Tillman inst
ructed me to tell all the people I find that the noon repast is served. It seems we are to be treated to a theatrical performance by the children this afternoon.’
With a bow, Lord Stanhope turned and wandered off down the hall in search of more guests.
‘Shall we go to lunch?’ Clara asked when they were alone again, not sure what else to say.
‘You go. I have some business to attend to before this afternoon.’
She didn’t try to convince him to accompany her. They needed time apart after the confines of cupboard and everything they’d discussed, especially with them swinging from being at each other’s throats to almost venturing into a place she wasn’t certain either of them was ready to travel.
She wandered down the hall towards the dining room, glad there wasn’t anyone else about. It allowed her to compose herself before she faced the others. For the second time in less than a day she’d been tempted by Hugh and almost too weak to resist. She hoped he didn’t knock on her bedroom door tonight for she was beginning to doubt her ability to send him away. A little space to breathe was a very necessary thing.
* * *
Hugh watched Clara go, her yellow dress swaying about her legs and brushing her hips as she walked. His gaze remained fixed on her until she turned a corner and was out of sight, and then the regret rushed in. In an effort to be close to her, to answer the questions she’d asked him and the temptation he’d seen in her eyes, he’d nearly kissed her. In doing so, he’d almost opened her up to more gossip.
Except it wasn’t just his mistakes that ate at him as he made his way to the study to try to distract himself with correspondence, but Lord Stanhope. He knew little about Lord Stanhope despite having seen him on more than one occasion at the theatre or his club, but there was no missing his obvious interest in Clara. Nor had Hugh failed to notice how willing she’d been to return his smiles, reminding Hugh again of the challenges he faced where it came to her. She had every right to show interest in a man who hadn’t already wronged her and didn’t bear a rake’s reputation, at least not one he was aware of. If Hugh were willing to tolerate Lord Westbook for more than a second or two, he might sit down with the man and discover what he knew about Lord Stanhope, but he could imagine how that would set tongues wagging about Hugh sizing up the competition.
