“Good day,” came a deep voice of greeting before she could say a single word.
Heart skipping, Clara’s eyes darted to the staircase, and her lips parted in utter astonishment as a gloriously handsome figure stood at the top of the stairs, grinning unreservedly down at her.
Hawk had returned to Kirkleigh.
Chapter Seventeen
She was more beautiful than he remembered, and it was a crime to admit it.
From the moment he’d set eyes on her again, swinging her bonnet around as though it were a child’s toy and smiling at the maid with some inner joy he longed to know, he’d felt himself swept away as though on the tide itself, and they’d barely spoken a handful of words to each other.
Clara did not seem eager to do so, and Hawk, admittedly, could not think of many to say.
Wretched beginning, that.
Blessedly, Mrs. Daniels had no such restriction, and she had seemed truly delighted to see him again. The prim formality he had known in her before had relaxed, and he found himself thinking what a pleasure it would be to sit in comfortable conversation with the woman.
Not as enjoyable as it would be to do anything and everything with Clara, but Mrs. Daniels had an intelligence that made him curious and a steadiness he envied. He could see her as the perfect confidante for anyone, male or female, and did not have to be all that observant to see how she cared for and protected Clara.
Even now, she was keeping her niece from the trouble of having to converse, yet she did not ramble. She engaged with Hawk creditably, and somehow still included Clara in everything she was saying. It was an illustration in the mastery of the art of conversation, which would have served her well at any level in society, and in any situation.
It did not necessarily stop him from wishing she would be absent from this dining room at the moment, but that was not a personal attack on her.
It was only a reflection of the intensity of his feelings for Clara.
Whatever those feelings were.
Gads, it would have been easier if he could have just admitted he loved her, but he could not do it. His mind rebelled at the idea with as much passion as it embraced it. He was of two minds, and neither of them seemed willing to back down. All he knew was that he wanted to be alone with her in this room, or in any room, even if no words were exchanged and they did not touch. It would be enough to simply look at her with the freedom and frankness he craved, and to smile at her without fearing someone might see.
He wanted to walk along the seashore with her, perhaps even remove his own shoes, and take her hand again. His fingertips tingled even now with the memory of the touch of her skin against them, and that heady moment where her own fingers had squeezed his back.
Was his cravat too tight, or was the room simply growing steadily warmer?
He craned his neck, whatever the reason, and reached a slightly trembling hand out for his wine, being sure to sip carefully.
How could all of this happen so quickly, and yet feel so real? How could it exceed the depths of his soul and consume his thoughts when he had not even known her a month? Where was the logic in any of this?
He chanced a glance at Clara as he returned his wineglass safely to the table, only to find her looking at him, her eyes luminous, her lips settled in a soft, incomparable smile that seized his chest in a tight grip.
Instinctively, he smiled back, very slightly, but just enough.
He saw her shoulders move on an exhale, or was it a sigh?
Please, God, let it be a sigh.
He drummed his fingers against the linen of the table as he warred within himself, and Clara’s eyes lowered to them.
Intriguing. Was she as intent on him as he was on her? To test the idea, he drummed them again, this time slowly, first forwards, then backwards, keeping the pattern going again and again, a simple and unobtrusive action that somehow kept her transfixed.
Her throat bobbed on a swallow, which somehow created a jolt of sensation in the little toe of his right foot. Then her eyes rose to his, the green of her hazel eyes so pronounced, he would have sworn it was the color of the earth itself. He could not look away, could not do anything but drown himself in their depths and let the warmth of them wash over him.
He would die where he sat if something did not happen soon.
What exactly could, or should, happen was almost irrelevant.
Almost.
“Clara, shall we go through?”
Long lashes blinked over brilliant eyes, and the magic in them faded just enough for him to catch his suddenly uneven breath. “What?”
Mrs. Daniels cleared her throat, bringing Hawk back to the moment, and the recollection that there was another person in the room with them. Hastily, he slid his hand back from the surface of the table as though his intentional drumming of fingers had somehow been inappropriate and focused his attention on the handle of the fork nearest him.
“I said, ‘shall we go through,’ in order to keep with the politeness of things,” Mrs. Daniels said in her crisp way. “His Grace likely wants his port and a few minutes of silence and privacy.”
The idea of Clara leaving his presence was one that did not sit well with him, even if they did nothing but avoid speaking to each other directly.
Hawk shook his head calmly. “I’ve never cared for port, Mrs. Daniels, and I’ve had all the silence and privacy a man could need at Elmsley Abbey. I’ll happily go through with you ladies, if you don’t mind, and perhaps we can find the companionable relationships we enjoyed before.”
His eyes darted to Clara as he finished, and the smile she wore prompted one of his own.
“If you like, Your Grace, of course,” Mrs. Daniels demurred, rising gracefully from her chair. “We’d welcome your company.”
“In his own house,” Clara murmured with more than a hint of laughter in her voice as she rose herself. “We’d welcome him, of course.”
Hawk hid a laugh with a brief cough, pushing to his feet and gesturing towards the drawing room, belatedly remembering that they had been living here for much of his absence and would know exactly where to go.
How had he turned into such a bumbling fool lately? Especially when he wanted to be the collected man he always had been. To be anything else at a time like this was all that was irritating in life.
Clara moved past him with a duck of her chin, her cheeks tinged with a shade of pink that made him mad to keep it there somehow.
What could he do? What could he say? With so much in his heart, so much on his mind, how could he possibly…?
He grinned as he recalled a token he had brought back with him from the extensive Elmsley library. He stepped closer to a footman and paused a step. “David, could you see that the book I had packed in my trunk is brought to me in the drawing room in the next few minutes?”
“Of course, Your Grace,” the lad said with a firm nod, keeping his eyes forward in the perfect form of a footman.
Hawk returned the nod. “Thank you. Much appreciated.” Feeling a little more comfortable, he strode into the drawing room and situated himself on the sofa.
Less than six feet from where Clara herself sat.
It was not intentional, only the most obvious choice. Mrs. Daniels had taken a chair, and her niece had chosen the side of the sofa nearest her. There was another chair in the room, situated similarly on the other side of the room, but the distance would have been more awkward than the close proximity. He could not have awkwardness, not now, not with her.
So perhaps his choice in seating was slightly intentional.
Or blatantly intentional.
He fought back a sigh of contentment, smiling as he allowed himself to be a little more relaxed in his position now, though he was still the picture of a gentleman. In fact, a gentleman in his own home ought to look and feel so at ease.
So content.
“It is a pleasure to be back here,” he said as he looked at them both. “I hope it does not inconvenience either of you that I
have returned unexpectedly.”
“It is no inconvenience,” Mrs. Daniels assured him, her smile gentle and far more natural than anything he’d seen of her before.
Perhaps she realized hers was not the voice he was listening for.
Then, blessedly, it came.
“Why are you back?” Clara asked, her voice soft yet unwavering.
Hawk looked at her without shame, the truth of the matter on the tip of his tongue, ready to admit that she had been the motivation behind a great many things he had done of late.
But the time was not right. Not yet.
“I had to make a visit to Miss Masters’ Finishing School,” he told them with some honesty. “My sister is in her final year there. Adrianna needed a guardian’s permission for a particular venture, and there were some documents to sign, as well. As we are nearing the end of her term, I thought I might stay on at Kirkleigh until she is finished, then we would go to Elmsley together for Christmas.”
“That sounds lovely,” Clara murmured, her eyes darker and more captivating in the light of this room than they had been before. “Tell me about Elmsley Abbey. Where is it?”
“Wiltshire,” he replied. “Very nearly in the center of it.”
Clara bit her lip, a maddening distraction at a time like this, then shook her head. “I don’t know Wiltshire at all. I’ve not been many places in England. What’s it like?”
He hesitated, not out of reluctance, as he’d have talked about the virtues of toast had she requested it, but only to attempt, in his way, to do the subject justice. To romanticize the county first, and then Elmsley itself. After all, it would behoove him to incite within her a desire to see the place, to visit at first, and then, perhaps…
Well, he would not venture that far into madness without some encouragement.
“Rustic,” he finally told her, smiling as he envisioned her there. “Charming. Peaceful. It is the very image of the countryside one dreams of when it is mentioned. Rolling hills in varying shades of green, and charming villages that all seem to be quaint yet bustling. The county is filled with chalk, which seems to give its nature a slight pallor that is simply fascinating.”
“It sounds beautiful,” Clara said without any hint of patronization, her smile the warm, easy one he had known before he’d left. “And picturesque.”
He returned her smile without thinking. “I actually thought about you a great deal during my time there.”
Her eyes widened, and he felt heat racing into his cheeks, his mind scrambling to add anything to the thought that would make it coherent and still flattering.
“The artistry of it all,” he hastily continued, “which was something I had not truly noticed before, made me wonder what you could capture in a drawing or painting. You’ve trained my eyes to see things in a different way, Clara, and I don’t believe they will go back.”
She blinked at his words, and then, impossibly, she beamed with the glories of sunrise. “I would apologize for altering your vision, Hawk, but I am not sorry in the least.”
He laughed, far more breathlessly than he’d intended, and found himself turning towards her more fully on the sofa. “Nor should you be. It is far more enjoyable to see things with more dimension and to notice their details. How else would one appreciate a simple field after it has been harvested?”
“Precisely,” she quipped, her hands sitting almost childishly in her lap, “and you’ve got my fingers positively itching to draw all of Wiltshire now, just from your description alone.”
“I think you’d have quite enough to be getting on with in Kent.” He chuckled, then caught sight of David in the doorway, the book Hawk had requested in his hand. He gestured for him to enter and rose from the sofa quickly. “And to assist you in those efforts…”
He strode over to the footman and nodded his thanks as he took the book. Turning, and with Clara’s eyes on him, he drummed his fingers on the cover of the book, which set Clara’s cheeks to flushing slightly, much to his delight.
“I have brought you something from the library at Elmsley,” he confessed as he made his way back to her, feeling rather playful now. “As per your request, I might add.”
Her brow furrowed slightly, her deep golden brows knitting nearly together with it. “My request?” she repeated. “I don’t recall…”
He handed the book to her, their fingers brushing with the intensity of lightning and the sensitivity of fire.
His throat tightened, forcing him to attempt a swallow. After three attempts, he succeeded, and gestured at it. “Take a look.”
Flicking her eyes up to him quickly, Clara opened the cover, her gaze darting back down. Her brow smoothed, and her lips formed a delicate smile that encouraged him more than anything else that day.
Clara looked back at him, those full lips almost dancing as they struggled to decide on the exact nature of the smile they would form. “This is perfect.”
Yes, it was. He knew it, and she knew it.
And they were not talking about the book.
“A Collective History of Kent?” Mrs. Daniels read aloud, coming over to see the title page, her tone expressing all the confusion of one not hearing the true nature of the conversation occurring in spite of the spoken words. “What in the world was that doing in Wiltshire?”
Hawk shared an amused smile with Clara, his heart seeming to spring into bloom within his chest. “Waiting, Mrs. Daniels. For the perfect opportunity to be of particular use.”
Sleeping was utterly impossible. She’d been trying for two hours and had only managed to form a headache somewhere above her left ear.
Why that should be, she could not have said; nor, she supposed, did it matter.
What did matter was that she could not, would not, sleep. Not yet, and not for some time.
Her mind refused to give her a reprieve, and she could not blame it.
When there was so much to consider, how could she possibly rest?
Clara sighed heavily, her eyes as open as they’d been at any point in the day and staring up into the darkness of the canopy above her. What was the point in this? If she was going to be awake and thinking, she might as well embrace it and make some use of the process.
Slipping from the bed, she padded over to her bureau, pulling out her wrap and a pair of thick stockings. She donned both, then ventured from her room down the corridor, the path familiar and well-trod by now. She’d taken several walks in the night while she had stayed at Kirkleigh, and each had proven worth her time, whether it be discovering more about the house or giving her time and space to ponder.
Tonight would be different, in a way. Her thoughts were competing with each other with a viciousness that spoke of the strength of her feelings for each. The determination to discover what was occurring over at Barcliffe and what part the Brownings played in it all was underlying everything. It occupied the corners of her mind and circled about with a repetition that was distracting, and the idea that there was a clue missing, or several of them, irritated her more than anything else.
And then there were thoughts of Hawk.
She’d barely managed a concise thought in his presence, which made speaking nearly impossible. He was even more impossibly handsome than she’d recollected, the dark of his eyes bearing the depth of the night, the shape of his lips one that would send any artist into insanity of delight. His voice rumbled pleasantly through her with every word, and the sheer cacophony of emotions in her body had rendered her nearly senseless.
Her heart had been wild within her, galloping freely about and sprinting madly when he’d said he’d thought of her in Wiltshire, when he’d spoken of how she’d changed his sight, when he’d smiled…
The moment he’d handed her the book on the history of Kent, she’d been sure a shower of sparks had begun to rain down across her entire body.
It could have been a confession of love for all the delirium it rendered. She’d not presume anything so extraordinary, but in that moment, she had learned someth
ing.
Felt something.
Hawk felt something. For her.
How was she to fully function when such a truth now lived within her? She had never been a girl prone to flights of fancy, and had certainly never been considered silly, but suddenly she had no control at all over her heart. It darted here and there at the very thought of the man, and her palms began to moisten, her toes tingled, and her neck burst into flame.
She had a mission to accomplish and having Hawk about had not been part of the plan for that mission. Yet she could not wish him away, and would not. She had longed for him to return, and now he had.
What could she do?
What should she do?
That was, perhaps, the more appropriate question at this moment.
What she could do opened up an infinite world of options. What she would do was uncertain. What she should do was entirely unclear.
Exhaling slowly, folding her arms about her in the chill of the house this late, Clara found herself arriving at the gallery, the large windows at the far end streaming in the light of the moon and casting stark shadows along the floor. It seemed she ended up in this room frequently on her nightly outings, and the windows there were large enough to allow her to partially sit on the ledge of one. It was a spacious yet simple room. Less of a corridor than one might have predicted for a gallery, but she could appreciate that.
Art was not something to simply be glanced at while passing through.
Still lacking in its art, the gallery was her favorite of all the rooms in Kirkleigh, partially because it had been the first room where she had seen Hawk. But also because her attention was ever and always drawn to the simple, childish watercolor proudly framed and hung within it.
What would Alexandra Moore have made of any of this? What had her feelings on Hawk been when she had known him? What had been her favorite room in Kirkleigh?
Fortune Favors the Sparrow Page 21