Unbuttoning the Innocent Miss (Wallflowers to Wives)

by Bronwyn Scott

  ‘Perhaps. I’ve never been out on the terrace or the garden during a ball.’ She gave a little laugh, making the statement sound like a joke.

  Then her suitor was either a prude or a dolt. ‘No stolen kisses?’ Jonathon teased, ‘Your suitor must be the epitome of manners.’ And her last one as well. Not a single purloined kiss between them.

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s not the epitome of manners?’ He was completely unprepared for the shadow that crossed her face.

  ‘No.’ Claire laughed, a musical, magical sound when her guard was down. ‘I can claim no stolen kisses, as you’ve already divined. My life isn’t very exciting, Mr Lashley, despite your persistence in believing the contrary.’

  ‘Jonathon,’ he corrected. ‘I thought we’d decided to be Jonathon and Claire this afternoon.’ According to social protocol it was a bold decision. First names were definitely reserved for those of privileged standings with one another, as was this discussion. He knew it was beyond the pale to discuss kisses, but he had very little toleration for the rules these days. It suddenly mattered greatly to him that he be Jonathon to her, not mere Mr Lashley who stopped in for an hour or two a day for French lessons. What would happen when those lessons ended? They would end, whether he failed or succeeded in them. August loomed like a big red X on his mental calendar. If they were not friends, what happened then? Would ‘they’, Jonathon and Claire, simply end? The thought sat ill with him.

  She turned to face him, her jaw set. ‘Listen, Jonathon. My life is hardly adventurous, as embarrassing as it is to admit.’

  ‘Why is that, Claire?’ he asked in soft challenge, sensing he was on to something important. It was the question he’d wanted to ask since that first day in the library. If he knew the answer, he might have the key to unlocking all the mysteries of her. What had she spent the last three years doing and why?

  ‘What’s the most exciting thing you’ve done in the recent past?’ he prompted when she said nothing more.

  ‘The truth? You’re the most exciting thing that has happened in ages.’ Giving French lessons to a desperate man was the highlight of her day. The thought made him cringe.

  ‘Perhaps we should change that.’ Jonathon gave her one his charming smiles, trying hard to keep his eyes from drifting to the vee of her bodice, but the dress had been designed by a witch. She’d worn peach chiffon tonight and it looked stunningly feminine and softly appealing where it curved over the swells of her breasts. ‘We should make your life exciting.’ It saddened him to think that ‘exciting’ might very well be limited to bringing the as-of-yet anonymous suitor to heel who hadn’t even tried to kiss her. Surely a girl who knew four languages was entitled to more excitement than that.

  ‘I know how you feel,’ he found himself saying to fill the silence. ‘Sometimes I think nothing will change, that this is my whole life, that every day will be the same, every spring in London, every fall at the hunting box, every winter in the country.’ He paused, casting around for the right word. ‘I feel like I’m waiting for something to happen and nothing does. The sameness is suffocating and I can’t shake it. I can’t do anything about it.’ No variety, no spice, just going through the motions and yet he should be grateful. ‘I’m being buried alive.’

  Had he said that out loud? There was pain in Claire’s eyes for him confirming that he had indeed. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what possessed me.’

  ‘You don’t have to apologise.’ Her eyes held his, searching for something. ‘If that’s how you feel. We might all be better off if we told each other how we really felt, what really haunted us, instead of always pretending everything is fine when it’s not.’

  A strange kind of relief poured through him. She hadn’t mitigated his impotence with false, bolstering phrases like, ‘You have Vienna to look forward to, a marriage to look forward to.’

  ‘I’m a cad to complain about my life.’ He tried for a winning smile. ‘I have so much more than many.’ So much more than the woman standing before him. There would be changes for him, small as they were. For Claire? There would be nothing, not even a husband and family to share the sameness of her days with if her suitor didn’t come up to scratch. He wondered if she equated sameness with helplessness like he did. He’d come home from war without Thomas and the guilt had become paralysing.

  ‘Claire, I’m tired of prowling ballrooms, waiting for the future to happen. I need Vienna. I need my life to start.’ He’d never dared to tell another person any of this and yet tonight it was pouring out of him. He’d like to blame it on the night, the pretty decorations, the scent of early summer flowers in the air, but he couldn’t. He could only blame it on the woman. This was the second time he’d taken such liberties in conversation with her.

  ‘Then it will happen because you’ve chosen it.’ Her eyes were solemn as she held his gaze and it seemed to him that the world fell away in those moments, narrowing itself down to just the two of them in this empty garden as she spoke her soft words. ‘But this is what I believe, Jonathon. We are the authors of our own destinies intentionally or otherwise. Need, want, it’s all up to us. Nothing will change until we do.’

  She could have no idea how seductive those words were. He wanted to believe her, wanted to be a man who wrote his own destiny, intentionally, not a man to whom destiny happened by accident. It was just that the future he was intent on seizing had a cost. Looking at Claire, here in the garden with her back against the bark of a tree, the light of party lanterns shining on her hair, he was struck by the enormity of that cost.

  She was a cross between the wisdom of Athena and the beauty of Aphrodite in those moments. He wondered if it was her words, or the realisation of her loveliness that had him under her spell. But it didn’t change what he wanted to do in those moments. He wanted to kiss her.

  He gave her no warning, leaning in and taking her lips, slowly but firmly at first, letting her mouth accustom itself to the press of his, letting her open to him and she did. Beneath the hesitancy was a curiosity, a slow blooming eagerness as she moved into the kiss, into him, their bodies coming together effortlessly as the kiss deepened. He had not been wrong. She was ready to be awakened.

  He held them there together with his hands at her hips, his thumbs pressing gently through the delicate fabric of her gown. He ran his tongue along her lip, delighting in her soft sigh. He took her mouth again, this time with more insistence. She was ready for him, willing for him, her arms about his neck, her body pressed so close to his he could feel the heat of her. God, he wanted to devour her, to lose himself in her. A moan escaped her as his mouth moved to her throat, part pleasure, part...regret? Dismay?

  ‘Jonathon, don’t. You don’t have to.’ She broke the kiss, her eyes wide. ‘It’s too much.’

  ‘What’s too much?’ He nuzzled her neck, determined not to let this moment slip away, wanting her mouth back.

  ‘The dancing, the flowers, which were beautiful by the way, too beautiful. You don’t have to be my excitement. It would be easy for a girl to misunderstand.’

  She meant Cecilia, of course. Cecilia had no claims on him. But under the grounds of Claire’s argument earlier today that men and women couldn’t be friends, Cecilia and her self-made claims would be jealous. She shouldn’t be envious of flowers and a dance. Still, he knew the kiss was not well done of him, even if it was one kiss to weigh against a lifetime spent doing his duty.

  ‘Claire, I...’ He should apologise but he didn’t want to. He wasn’t sorry and wasn’t that what apologies were for? He wanted to kiss her again.

  ‘I should go.’ She stepped around him and he let her by, knowing he wouldn’t get that second dance. If he let her go now, she would be gone from the ballroom when he returned inside.

  He had no right to have taken such a liberty. He couldn’t even justify it as an act to inspire her suitor. He’d asked far too much of her today
: friendship, a kiss in the Rosedale garden that had inflamed him far more than a simple kiss should have. She knew nothing of him other than what she saw at parties, that polite social mask he kept carefully fixed in place. Cecilia would never look beyond that mask; would never feel the need to or the want. She was perfectly happy with the smiling, charming Jonathon Lashley. But Claire would not settle for such a façade.

  Claire had glimpsed beneath that mask. He’d let the façade slip for just a moment tonight and she had filled that moment with prophetic words: this is what I believe...nothing will change until we do. Cecilia would be an easy wife in that regard, never pushing him to expose himself. He could spend his life walking around pretending he was happy, like he had been before the war, before Thomas.

  He pulled a leaf off the tree and twirled the stem between his fingers idly. He’d once believed he could masquerade himself back into happiness. If he pretended he was happy, eventually he would be. So far, the façade had fooled everyone except himself. Well, if he couldn’t be happy, he could at least make Claire happy. He would help her with her reluctant suitor whether she wanted him to or not. It would be easier if she’d just tell him the man’s name. But everyone was entitled to their secrets. Secrets were secrets no matter how big or small, his being larger than most.

  He drew a breath. He needed to return to the ballroom. Just in case. But he knew when he stepped inside that Claire was gone. He scanned the perimeter any way for good measure. There was no sign of her. He might as well leave. There was no reason to stay. He made his excuses to the hostess and left, pretending urgent business had come up.

  The strains of music and merrymaking followed him out from the ballroom into the hall. What would all those people inside think of him if they knew the truth? What would Claire say if she knew he’d been the one who’d made the decision to leave Thomas behind?

  * * *

  That night he dreamt of Thomas...

  Cannon fire sounded down the road, the rumble still in the distance, but nearer than it had been before. His horse moved uneasily beneath him as he argued with his brother. ‘You cannot deliver the dispatch, it’s too dangerous.’

  ‘Someone has to and it sure as hell can’t be you. You’re the heir. Everyone is counting on you to come back.’ Thomas was being obstinate while the rest of his men cast nervous eyes down the road and with good reason.

  ‘The entire French corps could be out there,’ he insisted, urging Thomas to see the impossibility of the task.

  ‘All the more reason for me to go.’ His brother’s jaw was set and Jonathon recognised intractability when he saw it. ‘There are officers waiting for what’s in that bag.’

  ‘Headquarters didn’t know the road would be blocked when they sent us out. Those officers are capable of making their own decisions.’ Another cannon fired and Jonathon struggled with his horse. ‘We will not make it through, Thomas, don’t you understand? We have to retreat.’ He was angry now. He was not risking the lives of his men for a dispatch bag. But this was classic Thomas, the stubborn hero, and Jonathon worried that war was still very much a game to his younger brother.

  Thomas wheeled his horse around, a big, strong bay gelding, and peered down the road. ‘A single man could do it. A good rider could make it through. Of the two of us, I’m the better rider.’ That was debatable, depending on one’s definition of ‘good’, Jonathon thought. If one defined it as reckless, then Thomas had the right of it.

  ‘Let me go, Jonathon.’ Steely grey eyes met his, reminding him that while his brother was younger than he by two years, his brother was no longer a child. ‘Dithering with me any longer puts the lot of you at risk and it diminishes my chances.’

  ‘We can’t wait here.’ Jonathon prevaricated one last time. The ride might take only an hour, but an hour was an eternity in battle.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You know the meeting point? We’ll stay there as long as we can.’ He reached over and gripped his brother’s arm. ‘No heroics. You come straight back and meet us there.’

  Thomas laughed. ‘I’ll probably beat you there, slowcoach.’ He wheeled his horse around one last time in a brave circle and was gone.

  ‘Thomas, no!’

  Jonathon woke up in a sweat, heart pounding. Even in his own dream, he couldn’t change the outcome, couldn’t stop Thomas from riding off into the unknown.

  Thomas hadn’t met them at the checkpoint even though Jonathon had held it far longer than anyone required. It had been bloody work, too. How would Thomas find them if they left that last point of contact? Even when they were forced to move out, he hadn’t been ready to give up. There were so many reasons Thomas was late. The most harmless reasons were delays—the roads were full of fighting, he couldn’t get through, someone else had needed a rider and Thomas had volunteered. Or perhaps the big bay had thrown a shoe, or taken lame on the road and couldn’t ride. Thomas loved that horse. He’d never leave him behind.

  But there were darker explanations, too. The longer Thomas was gone, the more seriously Jonathon had to contemplate them: the big bay had been shot down, Thomas thrown, as absurd as that seemed. It was impossible to throw Thomas. Knowing how improbable that was only made the other scenarios worse: Thomas shot from the saddle, wounded in a ditch without help. Thomas dead.

  Jonathon got out of bed and poured himself a brandy. He poked up the fire in the grate, any activity to keep the black thoughts at bay. His body was starting to recover from the dream; his pulse slowing, but his mind was still racing. To this day he couldn’t bring himself to believe Thomas was dead.

  He took a seat in the chair closest to the fire. There was no point in going back to bed. He wouldn’t sleep now for a while. Even if he did, he’d only dream again. He knew this routine well. The farewell dream was always accompanied by the searching dream—the one where he wandered the battlefield looking for Thomas. He’d done it, too, in real life. The dream was no fantasy.

  He’d combed the fields afterwards, looking at body after body, hoping each one he turned over wouldn’t be Thomas. He hauled wounded men to the surgeries, asking them if they’d seen a tall brown-haired man who looked like him. When those efforts had failed, he turned his attentions further out to the woods and roads near the fighting, to places where a rider on a long-distance mission might have met with trouble. There was carnage there, too, in the ditches and in the trees, but none of it was Thomas.

  There was danger in those places still and that danger gave him hope. Perhaps Thomas had been captured and was being held for ransom. He took his searches further and into more treacherous places. He’d been warned not to stray from English protection for fear of French renegades or deserters. He’d been warned to wait. But he had no patience for waiting when his brother might be out there hurt and minutes, let alone a day, could make a difference.

  He should have listened to cooler heads. If his first mistake had been letting Thomas go, this was his second. A single man absorbed in a task made an easy target and that was what he became. Jonathon took a long swallow of his brandy, remembering. He’d gone back to the road where he’d last seen Thomas and walked every inch of it again and been shot for his troubles—a nasty wound in the shoulder courtesy of a bullet with enough rust on it to give him an infection and a fever that got him shipped home in the midst of his delirium.

  He remembered nothing of the trip home or even that the trip was being made. His men told him he raved two days straight in fluent French. It was the last time he’d been able to speak French with the same acumen with which he wrote it—yet another secret he kept. It was too embarrassing to admit to.

  He’d woken up, lucid and aware, back home in England, and he’d been furious. How dare someone send him home, send him away from Thomas? How dare he be safe when Thomas wasn’t? But he knew the answer. He was the heir. Perhaps Thomas had known the answer, too, when he’d yanked that dispatc
h bag out of his hands on the road. His parents would survive losing Thomas, but not him.

  Jonathon pushed a hand through his hair and blew out a breath. Seven years gone and he wasn’t sure he would survive losing Thomas. He couldn’t even accept Thomas was lost to begin with, a thought he only voiced to Owen and to Preston these days.

  He finished his drink, thought about pouring another and decided against it. Brandy this late would only make the morning worse. It was going to be hard enough as it was. He checked the mantel clock, squinting in the half-light. On top of a sleepless night, in just six hours, he’d have to find a way to casually speak French with a woman who’d run from a ball after he’d kissed her. Having no past experience with such a thing, he had no plan for how he’d deal with that.

  He toyed with the idea of skipping the lesson off and on for the next three hours until he dozed in his chair. It would be easy to send a note with his excuse, but it would also be cowardly and Claire would know it. He didn’t want her thinking it was because he regretted the kiss. No woman wanted to think a man would rather not have kissed them.

  * * *

  When he woke shortly before nine o’clock with a crick in his neck and sore muscles, he knew there was no getting around it. He’d go and face the awkward consequences. Besides, he’d eventually have to go back. For whatever reason, whether it was the unique teaching methods, he was making progress. He could hear his fluency and pronunciation growing stronger each day. He couldn’t quit now that he was finding success after all these years.

  Fate had other ideas. Jonathon had just made his decision and rung for his valet when the urgent note arrived from Owen Danvers, giving him his reprieve.

  Chapter Ten

  Owen Danvers stood before his long windows, hands clasped behind his back in classic military stance. Jonathon recognised the posture, a sure sign there was trouble or, if not trouble, at the very least, a situation. ‘I trust I didn’t disrupt your morning?’ Owen enquired without turning from the window.