Clara laughed lightly as they began walking again. “If you are to be a Cambridge man soon, you must grow accustomed to being addressed formally and as an adult.”
“I know.” He sighed with a smile. “But there are a lot of Mr. Jonquils.”
“You all are very much alike,” Clara acknowledged. “And yet, as far as I was able to observe, you are also quite different from one another.”
“Yes,” Charlie answered, though there was the tiniest hint of bitterness in his voice. Clara wondered at it. “The earl who cuts a dash through Town. The widower who has found love again. The most successful horse breeder in the midlands. The famously successful barrister. The youngest in the Dragoons to reach the rank of captain. The top-of-his-class vicar. And Charlie.”
So that was part of the problem—he hadn’t yet found his place in the world or in his family. “Have you thought about what you would like to study when you reach Cambridge?”
Charlie shrugged. “What’s left?”
“Have you spoken with any of your brothers about this? I imagine they might have some advice for you.”
“They’re busy,” Charlie answered.
They walked for a time in silence. Clara wished she could do more for Charlie. She knew how it felt to be lost and wandering without direction. She’d felt that way in the short interval between the announcement of her betrothal to Mr. Bentford and their wedding. She’d felt that way between Mr. Bentford’s death and his brother’s arrival at Bentford Manor. She’d felt that way the past weeks without Corbin.
“So why do you never come to Havenworth anymore?” Charlie asked after a moment.
Clara was too caught off guard to do anything but stare at him. Why did she never come to Havenworth? What made Charlie think she was expected there?
“Corbin’s miserable, you know,” Charlie said, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“Miserable?”
“He tries not to be.” Charlie shrugged. Then he laughed a little. “I don’t think any of us thought he’d ever talk to a lady enough to actually fall in love with her.”
“Fall—?” That was all she got out.
“Guess even the Jonquils can be wrong.”
In love? Corbin is in love with me? Enough that he misses me when I’m gone? Misses me to the point of misery? The realization struck her with unexpected force. No one had ever mourned her absence or wanted her in his life enough to miss her. She stopped on the spot, her thoughts spinning. “Are you certain?”
“That Jonquils can be wrong?” Charlie asked, genuinely surprised.
“That Corbin is in love with—”
“You,” he finished for her and nodded. Then his mouth dropped open in sudden understanding. “Ah, Lud. I probably wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”
Clara focused on Charlie. “Do you really think so?”
Charlie nodded, looking evermore uncomfortable. “It’s rather obvious.” He spoke almost apologetically.
Suddenly, Clara found her courage returning with force. “Thank you, Charlie,” she said, moving quickly in the direction of Havenworth. “Thank you.”
* * *
“I think that’s good for now, Edmund,” Corbin said. Johnny stayed nearby as Edmund rode Happy Helper to the side of the paddock. The boy was riding better every day. “Dismount and take him to his stall. Don’t forget to brush him thoroughly.”
Edmund smiled and nodded.
“I’ll come check in a few minutes,” Corbin added.
If Edmund was surprised that Corbin wasn’t following him, he didn’t let it show. Corbin waited until Edmund, with Johnny’s supervision, led Happy Helper from the paddock. He turned quickly and walked out toward the back grounds of Havenworth. He needed a few minutes’ respite.
Edmund had done so many things that afternoon that reminded Corbin of Clara: expressions on his face, phrases that belonged to her. It had been acutely torturous.
He’d take a few minutes to clear his head.
“Corbin!”
Now he was hearing things. He’d imagined Clara’s voice saying his name over the past few weeks. It had simply never been so realistic.
“Corbin!”
Twice in a row seemed very unlikely. Corbin turned toward the sound, and his heart stopped. Clara. Hurrying toward him. His first fleeting feeling was that she’d come back to him. Then he realized she looked distressed.
Something had happened. Gracious heavens! Alice? Was Alice ill? Or hurt? Was Clara unwell?
Corbin didn’t hesitate a moment longer. He ran to meet her partway. Without a word, Clara threw her arms around his neck and buried her head against his shoulder. Corbin wrapped his arms protectively around her.
“What is it, Clara?” he asked, alarmed. “Has something happened? Is . . . Is someone ill or . . . or injured?”
“Oh, Corbin!”
“What is it?” Corbin pulled her away from him enough to study her. “Tell me, Clara. Please.”
“I saw Charlie when I was walking—”
Something had happened to Charlie. From the look on Clara’s face, something drastic. Taking hold of her hand, Corbin instantly headed in the direction she’d come.
“Corbin.” Clara tugged at his hand.
“Was he . . . was he hurt?”
“No, Corbin.” She tugged again. They were at the edge of the trees. “Charlie was quite well.”
“Then what has you so distressed?” Corbin turned back to her. “You cannot tell me you aren’t. I can see it on your face.”
“Not distressed,” she insisted, her eyes never wavering from his. There was a nervousness, an anxious anticipation there that Corbin could not possibly interpret.
“But you’re upset.” He touched her face as he spoke. “Did Charlie upset you? Did he . . . did he say something—”
Clara shook her head. “Nothing unkind.”
That was a very good thing for Charlie. Corbin would not have tolerated any unkindness toward Clara. And yet, she was still teary. She was almost never teary.
Corbin instinctively reached up and ran a soothing finger across the worry lines that creased her forehead. She closed her eyes and seemed to sigh, as if his gesture had relieved some of her tension.
“I have to know, Corbin. The not knowing is killing me.”
“Know what?” He caressed her cheek with his hand. She leaned into his hand.
“Charlie told me that you love me,” Clara whispered.
Corbin froze. A kick in the gut from Devil’s Advocate certainly couldn’t have caught him more by surprise. He couldn’t formulate a response, could barely register what she’d said, even as it repeated in his brain. He told me that you love me.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “Do you?” she asked, her voice even quieter than it had been and far more uncertain.
Corbin swallowed. With all my heart. Absolutely. Forever. No words escaped his mouth.
A look of pain crossed her features, and she stepped back, away from him. “Why not?” Then, as if suddenly realizing she’d uttered the pain-ridden question out loud, Clara clamped her mouth shut and stepped back farther. She shook her head. “Please, don’t answer that.”
Corbin hadn’t seen such a look of anguish on her face. Even Mr. Bentford’s appearance hadn’t brought such pain to her expressive eyes.
She thought he didn’t love her.
Clara turned and began to walk quickly away from him. Before she’d even taken two steps, Corbin took hold of her arm. He turned her gently to face him. She was weeping.
“Oh, Clara,” he said.
She seemed to crumple right there in front of him. Corbin wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him. Each breath she took shuddered.
“Clara.” He breathed her name, his face directly beside hers. “I . . . I don’t say things—” Corbin stopped and took a breath, trying to force his thoughts into some semblance of order. “Clara. I do love . . . I have loved you from the first time I met you.” He had dropped to the lev
el of a whisper by the time the final admission came out.
He felt her shift against him and watched as she turned her face up toward him. Even shining with tears, her green eyes were spectacular.
“You truly do?”
“Truly.”
Corbin kissed her tenderly on the forehead. “I have missed you, Clara,” he whispered. “Every minute since you left.”
“But you never came.”
“I didn’t think you wanted me to.”
“Oh, Corbin.” She sighed, leaning against him. “I have been miserable without you. I love you, Corbin. I love you too much to live without you any longer.”
He closed his eyes and let those words settle over him. She loved him. Clara, his Clara, whom he had loved in silence from almost the first moment he’d seen her, loved him.
He felt her slender fingers gently touch his jaw near his ear. “Corbin?” she asked, coaxing his eyes open once more. She was watching him closely.
“I have misunderstood you, misjudged you. So many times, Corbin. I thought you disliked me or thought yourself above me or—” Clara’s color deepened with each sentence. “I never dreamed I would find a gentleman who was kind and gentle and everything I always dreamed of but never thought I would find.”
He was what she’d wished for? Corbin kept Clara in his arms, pulled up close to him. “You don’t mind that . . . that I—” He stopped for a breath and to order his thoughts. “I don’t express myself well. I will never be as well known as my brothers. Or as commanding or fashionable or—”
“I love you, Corbin,” she said, looking intently into his eyes. “Just as you are. Precisely as you are.”
He held her ever tighter. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes bright, her lips smiling.
My Clara. The thought repeated in his mind. My Clara.
He shifted one hand to her face and lowered his head until their lips met. Their first kiss had been a nerve-racking experiment in intuition. While Corbin hardly felt himself skilled in the art of kissing, there was not the uncertainty he’d felt before. He gently pressed his lips to hers, then more fervently, feeling, in a way, that his mouth was finally communicating what he never seemed able to make it say.
“Clara,” he whispered when their mouths parted, though he remained a hair’s breadth away. “My Clara.”
“I love you,” she whispered in reply.
“I love you,” he answered, and he kissed her again.
They, of course, would tell the children, would send word to Lampton Park. But that moment, that one moment, was theirs.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Corbin leaned against the doorframe of his library, his smile firmly in place. Edmund sat on the floor near the fireplace, drawing with a charcoal pencil on a piece of parchment. Alice was near him, spinning in a circle, her tiny hand firmly gripping the doll Corbin had given her a fortnight earlier, on the day she had become his stepdaughter.
He’d gone from being a bachelor, alone and lonely, to having an instant, beloved family. The children had made the transition from Ivy Cottage to Havenworth smoothly and cheerfully. Most important of all, Clara seemed genuinely content.
Alice abruptly finished her spinning game. She stumbled around a bit, eyes wide and still turning about in her head. Corbin held back a chuckle. She made a very indirect path to Edmund and stood a moment, her dizziness slowly decreasing.
Edmund glanced up at her but returned his gaze almost immediately to his papers.
Alice held her doll up on level with Edmund’s downturned face. “Dolly kisses,” she said.
A look of alarm passed over Edmund’s face. “I don’t want any dolly kisses,” he insisted.
“Give dolly kisses!” With that declaration, Alice went about making a very valiant attempt to force her doll upon the poor boy.
Edmund’s efforts to thwart her did not prove the deterrent he likely thought they would be. Alice climbed over and on him, pressing her doll’s face against him wherever she could reach. Edmund was summarily kissed on the shoulder, arm, face, and hair. Alice’s continued command for dolly kisses melded with Edmund’s pleas that she stop. The two children were soon laughing.
Corbin allowed his own chuckle to escape. Both pairs of eyes turned to him. Edmund reached his side first.
“She is making her doll kiss me,” Edmund told him, his tone both that of a much-put-upon young man and an amused older brother.
Sure enough, Alice ran toward them both, her doll held out threateningly as she giggled. “Dolly kisses for Mister!”
“I am done for, Edmund.” Corbin made the observation quite dramatically, earning a grin from the boy. “Look after the horses, and tell your aunt Clara I . . . I was brave right to the end.”
Edmund nodded seriously but with an amused twinkle in his eyes.
Corbin scooped Alice up. When she accosted him in the same way she had Edmund, he pretended to be desperate to escape, though he held her to him lovingly. With her in his arms and Edmund trailing after them, Corbin danced her about the room. Alice forgot entirely about her kissing game and simply wrapped her arms around his neck, squealing in delight when he spun.
After several minutes, their game left Corbin more than a little dizzy but chuckling right along with the children. He dropped onto the sofa, lying against one arm. Alice curled up on his chest. Edmund sat on the sofa’s far arm.
“Mister tired?”
“Yes, love. Mister is tired.”
She patted his cheek. “G’night, Mister.”
Corbin closed his eyes, playing along with her latest game. The room grew quiet and still. After a moment, he felt an arm, small but too long to be Alice’s, laid across him. He opened one eye a sliver and saw that Edmund had come to kneel beside the sofa. He rested his head against Corbin’s chest near where Alice lay, with one arm draped over Corbin in something of an embrace.
He closed his eyes once more. A feeling of peace like he’d never known before had settled over him and the house since Clara and the children had come to live there.
“Mister sleepy.”
Would Alice always call him Mister? he wondered. Maybe someday she would come to think of him as Papa. Corbin gently stroked her hair without opening his eyes. “Very sleepy,” he said. He allowed the briefest of moments to pass before producing an overly loud snore that set Alice to giggling. Thoroughly enjoying her reaction, he snored again.
“I happen to know that you do not snore.”
When had Clara entered the room? He opened his eyes on the instant. She knelt beside Edmund, very near Corbin’s head.
“I was . . . just—”
“Loving my children,” she finished for him.
“Our children,” he whispered back. Surely she knew he thought of them as his own.
She tenderly smiled at him before turning to look at the children. “Jenny is waiting to take you to the nursery to wash for dinner. Hurry along.”
Edmund obeyed more swiftly than Alice. She took a moment to pat Corbin’s cheek once more and say, “G’night, Mister.”
As she scrambled off of him and made her way to the door, where the nursemaid, Jenny, stood waiting for her, Corbin shifted upright. Clara still knelt beside the sofa, her gaze once more on him.
His heart dropped. “There are tears in your eyes.”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
“No.” He held out his hand to her. “Your tears aren’t ever nothing.”
She took his hand and allowed him to help her to her feet and willingly sat on the sofa beside him.
He held her hands in his. “What has upset you?”
“I am not upset, really. Merely contemplative.”
He kept her hands in one of his, freeing the other to stroke her hair. He loved the silkiness of it, loved that he now had the right to that gesture of affection. “Are you . . . contemplating something . . . unpleasant, then?”
“The children are so happy.” More moisture gathered in her eyes. “Only a year ago we were
living in misery and fear. I cannot think back on that without—” Her voice broke.
“My Clara.” Corbin took her face in his hands and pressed a kiss to her forehead, lingering over the caress. He hoped that time would someday lessen the pain of her past. He loved her too deeply to bear the pain he too often still saw in her eyes.
She leaned into his embrace, resting her head against his shoulder, her hands pressed to his chest. Corbin had discovered quickly how very much she needed the reassurance of being held, though at first she’d been reluctant to allow him to do so.
“You have said how . . . how happy the children are.” He rubbed her back as she lay silently in his arms. “Are you happy, my Clara?”
From within the circle of his arms, she answered quietly. “I used to think good men did not exist. But then I met you, Corbin Jonquil, and discovered I was wrong. All my life I kept hoping you were out there somewhere and that when I found you, you would love me.”
“You were . . . hoping for a . . . stuttering, awkward . . . ?”
She pulled back from him enough to give him the glare with which he’d become very swiftly acquainted over the preceding fortnight. Corbin stopped his teasing protest and kept his smile firmly tucked away. He ought not rib her as he did, but her fierce defense of her bumbling husband never failed to touch him. He felt unspeakably blessed that the lady he loved returned his regard despite his lack of polish.
Clara’s look remained severe. “You will not insult the man I’ve dreamed about all my life.”
He held back a grin. “These dreams of yours sound like nightmare—”
Her fingertips pressed to his lips cut off his words. “Do not, Corbin.” She slipped her fingers to his cheek. “You are wonderful, and I will not have anyone, including you, say otherwise.”
“I am the man of your dreams?” He smiled a little at the thought.
“Of every”—she pressed a kiss to his lips—“single”—she kissed him again—“dream.”
She’d so often seemed burdened and unhappy those months after she’d moved into the neighborhood. Her happiness had quickly become essential to him. She smiled more lately. The haunted look had left her eyes. Tension no longer pulled at her mouth or creased her forehead.
As You Are Page 20