“There is, Mrs. Daniels,” he replied, calling out to her as though she were a great distance away. “It’s a bit further down the beach, I will be sure to show you shortly. We used to store boats in here, but it was too in the way of other interests on the beach all of the other days. We could not have a passel of boats obscuring all of this magnificence, could we?” He chuckled as if the idea were ludicrous.
Surely a number of boats together were called a fleet, not a passel… It did not seem so great an error to make, but surely a man who had such an interest in maintaining his beach and water access and preserving the interests of his seafaring tenants and neighbors would know such a thing.
More curious.
Walking further into the cave, her fingers trailing along the cool rock of the side, she found her attention drawn to little valleys in the bed of the cave, probably from decades of water droplets falling onto it and etching a place for themselves, and now each had created a puddle filled with water. They were scattered here and there, no pattern to them, no arrangement that could be identified, and they simply…
She paused, a flash of something in one of the puddles catching her eye. It would require her to step away from the wall towards the center of the cave, and stooping down would attract attention if she did not think of something. She cast about her for some reason to have, should she be questioned. Without pausing to check for observation, she stepped over to the puddle, stooping down and reaching in.
Her fingers closed around an object, small and barely noticeable in the comparatively deep puddle, but certainly not an object of stone. She withdrew it from the puddle and stuffed it into the hidden pocket of her skirts, then returned her fingers to the water, as though that alone had fascinated her.
Footsteps behind her assured her she had been right, and she forced her heart to steady itself in its suddenly frantic pace.
“When you said any seashore or lake, I did not think you’d consider such a small body of water worthy of your touch.”
She exhaled in relief and grinned up at Hawk easily. “I said my toes would go in the lakes and seas. I made no such claim for my fingers.” She splayed her hand out in the puddle before her. “It’s astounding that this crater is of such a size, is it not?”
“As you have very small hands,” Hawk teased, “I should not consider it remarkable.”
That earned him a scowl and she rose, holding her damp hand out to him. “For that, Your Grace, you can use your handkerchief to dry my very small hand.”
He bowed, flashing a playful grin her way. “It would be my honor, Miss Moore.” Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew a pristine handkerchief and wrapped it about her hand, then began painstakingly rubbing the fabric along her skin, his eyes fixed on hers. Somehow, what had begun as a game had become something so much more, something intimate between them, something that said so much more than what appeared.
As did everything with them, it seemed.
Would they never be frank with each other, and say what they truly meant rather than allude to it?
It was on the tip of her tongue to confess her feelings then and there, to be done with the pretense and let him know her heart.
But the murmur of voices nearby cooled her impulse, and she smiled sheepishly at them.
“Have you hurt your hand, Miss Moore?” Mrs. Browning fussed, nearly whimpering with it.
“She is quite well,” Hawk answered for her. “Miss Moore has a fascination for water and must touch it when the impulse strikes. I simply had a handkerchief at hand to dry her fingers, that is all.” He slid the fabric from her hand, drawing a gasp from Clara that she had to nearly swallow to hide. “Shall we move on, Browning?”
“Indeed, Your Grace, indeed!” came the pleased response.
Hawk inclined his head, gesturing for Clara to go before him. “After you.”
She smiled at his simple politeness, wondering what endearment might be added to such a statement if he allowed himself to do so?
She stepped carefully about the small puddles once more, smiling at Phoebe, who had reached the sand and was standing there waiting for her.
“Watch your step, Clara,” Hawk warned behind her. “There can be a drop from cave to sand in any of these.”
It was on her tongue to thank him for his care, when something about the sand in front of the cave stopped her voice entirely.
Lines. Orderly, neat, and definite. They did not go far, and anyone would have missed them, had they not been looking for what did not belong. The simple answer was that the lines would have been from boats, but, by Mr. Browning’s own admission, boats were not stored in the cave, therefore have no reason to come up so far. And the lines were the wrong direction for pulling boats into the cave in the usual sense.
This was a boat that had been turned in a horizontal direction and dragged. The planks of its construction had made impressions, and their unconventional angle in the sand puzzled her.
Why would a boat be dragged in such a way towards a cave that held no boats? Even if boats had been hidden further into the cave somewhere, they would have been turned so that bow or stern were pointing towards the sea, not the side of the boat.
But dragged like this, a boat could hide other things in the sand. Other impressions, other marks.
Such as footprints.
Clara gnawed the inside of her lip, wondering if her mind was leaping from stone to stone and clue to clue in her mind, or if, perhaps, she might have uncovered another piece to this bewildering puzzle before her.
Chapter Twenty
“It seems I shall have to go to London tomorrow.” Hawk shook his head in disgust and refolded the message he’d just received, setting it on the table moodily. “Inconvenient time to meet with my solicitor, but he says it is important, so the choice is entirely out of my hands.”
“What’s so inconvenient?”
The question caught him off guard, and he looked at the only other person at the dining table with him at present.
Clara.
“What’s that?” he asked, not sure what she meant by her question, as he had been rambling.
She chewed her present bite and swallowed quickly. “You said it was an inconvenient time to meet with your solicitor. Why so inconvenient?”
He blinked at that, then allowed himself to smile at her. “I did say that, didn’t I?”
She nodded. “Yes. Why?”
He tilted his head at her, wondering just how to answer. “I think you know the answer to that question.”
Her eyes widened, and she looked back at her breakfast with increased focus. “Oh.”
Yes, oh.
Oh, indeed.
He continued to watch her for a moment, as he tended to do when she was about. She was simply dressed, which allowed her natural beauty to speak for itself, and it had a great deal to say. The pale shade of pink in her dress echoed her natural rosiness, as though it had been designed precisely for her complexion. Gentle curls hung about her temples, the rest pulled back into a mass of plaits and curls that seemed rather elegant, though he hadn’t studied it enough to say.
He had better things to do.
“Will you stop staring, please?” Clara begged softly, shifting her eyes to him as she fiddled with the end of her unused spoon beside her plate.
Hawk smiled at the question, watching her still. “Does it trouble you?”
“It’s embarrassing,” she whispered, the rim of her ear turning a bright shade of pink. “I cannot bear it.”
“You should bear it,” he told her as gently as he could. “You should be accustomed to it. There should be nothing embarrassing about your being admired. Lord knows, I cannot help it, and looking at you is more satisfying than looking at the art you create.”
Clara’s lower lip tucked in slightly, and he smiled at the sign of nerves. She wasn’t a shy creature, but she did not think enough of herself, of that he was certain.
It was the only thing he would change about her, were it in
his power. She needed to understand just how beautiful he found her, how fascinating and marvelous, how incomparable…
She needed to fathom just how much he was coming to love her.
His eyes widened as he continued to stare at her, though at the moment his focus was lost.
Love her?
The moment he thought it, he knew he was right. That it was right. Loving her was right.
But he could not tell her so over eggs and toast, that was certain. It had to be perfect.
Perhaps he could do more in London than just meet with his solicitor. Perhaps his solicitor could, in turn, do a favor for him.
And perhaps he could find something or other to give to Clara. Accompanied by a particular question he was very close to asking.
“Have you heard from your sister at all?” Clara inquired, breaking him from his thoughts.
“Adrianna?” He shook his head, frowning in confusion. “No, not since I saw her when I arrived. Why do you ask?”
Clara lifted a slender shoulder, her color returning to its more natural state with the length of silence they had passed. “You seem particularly close, I only wondered.” She took a small, careful bite of ham. “Perhaps you should see her before you go to London tomorrow. If the suggestion is not too impertinent.”
Hawk smiled at the recommendation. “Nothing you say will ever be impertinent to me. But why should you suggest it? Anxious to be rid of me sooner?”
She instantly turned towards him, expression wreathed in concern. “Oh, no, not at all! I’d rather you not go at all, I’m not sure how I shall bear…” She stopped herself, swallowing with some difficulty, and looked down at her hands where they sat on the table linen.
It was all he could do not to beg her to go on.
He turned and reached out to take her hand, holding the trembling fingers as though they contained a precious treasure. “Clara…”
She swallowed again, then raised her eyes to his, making no move to remove her fingers from his grasp. “I only thought,” she said in a much stronger voice, “that a young woman of her age and station might desire something from London. There are so many shops there, and it is not likely that the school is in very near vicinity of shops of equal quality.”
“Did you?” he asked, rubbing the hand he still held almost absently. “When you were seventeen, did you wish for trinkets from London?”
Clara’s lips curved in a small smile. “No. I was content with what I had. Well…” She tilted her head, giving the question some further thought. “I’m changing my mind. Yes, I would have liked something from London a time or two. I’d never thought to ask, but the hope was there.” Her smile grew, and she surprised him by covering their joined hands with her free one. “Ask her if there is something, will you?”
He returned her smile, laughing to himself. “My sister is, and always has been, a spoiled child. You still think she needs a trinket of some kind?”
“Yes,” she replied firmly. “Or a new gown. A parasol. A pair of gloves. Something.” She laughed to herself, the amusement finding its way to her eyes as well. “She might say no.”
Hawk scoffed and shook his head. “It’s Adrianna. She’ll never say no.” He sighed dramatically, letting his smile fade. “Very well, I will pose the question to my sister, though it may ruin me and devastate my fortunes.”
“I’d think it would take a great deal more than that to ruin you, Hawk,” Clara scolded in a playful tone. “No girl of seventeen is that fastidious.”
“You don’t know my sister,” he grumbled, rubbing his thumb against her hand. He smiled at her for a moment more, then raised his chin a touch. “What would you have from London?”
She reared back, hazel eyes going round. “Me? Nothing, nothing at all!”
He nodded as though that answered the question. “I’m not familiar with the address of any shops that sell nothing, let alone nothing at all, so I’m afraid you will have to think of something else.”
Clara rolled her eyes and tried to pull her hands away, but Hawk refused to let her, lacing his fingers between hers and giving her a more thorough look. She only turned more exasperated. “Hawk! I don’t need anything from London!”
“Then it is a good thing that I did not ask if you need anything from London,” he shot back, “only what you would have.”
“Nothing,” she told him firmly, over-enhancing every syllable. “Not one thing.”
He shook his head slowly. “You can’t have nothing. And if you cannot have one thing, I shall have to bring you more than one thing, which could get cumbersome, and if you do not tell me what to bring you, I shall have to guess, which I would be dreadful at, which might lead to my guessing wrong, which could send me to London all over again, and—”
“Very well!” Clara interrupted loudly, laughing at his excesses, just as he’d hoped she would. “Goodness, have you been spending too much time with Nat Robinson?”
“Unquestionably,” he replied without hesitation. “It is a blessing to be relieved of his bad influence lately. So? What shall I bring you?”
He watched in fascination as her laughing smile turned into one far more shy and modest, which was a maddeningly fetching sight. She bit down on her lip, her eyes lowering to Hawk’s cravat.
But she said nothing.
After a long moment, Hawk moved a hand from its hold on hers and pressed two fingers to the underside of her chin, raising gently until her eyes met his again. He smiled, stroking the skin there softly. “White will be delighted to know my cravat fascinates a young woman of such taste, but it does not do anything for this endless cycle we are engaged in.”
Clara searched his eyes, her expression unreadable.
“What?” he prodded, stroking a finger against her skin again. “What is it?”
She shivered and took his hand, surprising him by holding it up to her cheek. He instantly scooted closer, cupping that cheek in his palm.
“What?” he whispered with a tenderness he did not know he possessed. “Tell me, darling.”
The endearment tumbled from his lips almost clumsily, yet felt so natural he could not wish it back or find any regret in it.
And if Clara’s reaction was anything to go by, she felt precisely the same.
“I cannot ask anything of you,” she murmured, her eyes soft on his. “I cannot find the words to. I cannot… wish anything of you, nor expect it.”
“Yes, you can,” he insisted, taking her unoccupied hand and kissing the back of it tenderly, even as the fingers upon her face brushed lightly against the skin. “You can, Clara. I want you to wish, and ask, and expect… Ask anything of me.”
She only shook her head, somehow near to tears, if he was any judge.
That would not do. He’d not seen her cry yet, and he felt sure he would go mad the moment he saw a single tear fall.
“Shall I tell you a very great secret?” he asked her, lowering his voice even though they were the only two in the room. “Something I swore no one else would ever know?”
“Probably not,” she whispered, laughing slightly.
He had to smile at that but sobered quickly. “I came back to Kent to attend to business with my sister.”
She nodded, no doubt recollecting that. “Yes, you were very kind to do so for her.”
He accepted that with a nod. “But I could have done what I needed there without coming to Kent at all. I used that excuse to hide my true purpose in returning.”
Clara stilled beneath his touch, barely breathing, as far as he could tell.
Reason would have had him stop there, wait for some encouragement, or maintain a polite distance that was safer by far.
He’d had enough with reason.
“I came back,” he went on, heart pounding painfully within him, “because I could not bear to be away from you any longer.”
Clara blinked once. “Really?” she half-gasped, somehow without truly moving.
He nodded more fervently than he had ever done in his l
ife. “I had been in agony since the day you left Kirkleigh. Could you not tell as you departed?”
“No,” she admitted bluntly, her air rushing out in a gust that spoke of his own struggles. “No, you were so silent and cool, I thought I had imagined… a great deal.”
Scooting to the very edge of his seat, Hawk placed his other hand on her cheek to match the first, cupping her sweet face in both hands. “You didn’t imagine anything,” he insisted. “I simply couldn’t bear the farewell, and my reserve protected me from it.”
Her hands reached up for his wrists, her thumbs moving across his skin in a way that deprived him of feeling in both feet. “Did it work?”
“Not in the slightest.” He smiled, letting his eyes trace across her features with all the adoration he’d longed to, loving the feel of her face in his hands, and this closeness between them.
Loving that he could confess such a thing to her without feeling embarrassed or ashamed. That she would take him as he was without wishing he were somehow more. That she was so completely without airs and made him feel so at home.
Home.
That was it, wasn’t it?
Loving Clara, being with Clara, was home.
It would have been the same at any of his estates, or any place at all. It would be home so long as she was there, and he could love her there.
He did not need anything else.
Footsteps in the corridor broke the spell between them, forcing him to drop his hands and focus on his long-forgotten meal, now undoubtedly cold. He cleared his throat, his face heating. “So will you let me know what it is I can bring you?”
“Yes,” Clara replied, her tone almost stiff. “I will.”
“Thank you.” He glanced at her and winked, making her giggle.
“What will you bring me?” Mrs. Daniels entered without any fanfare, her cap perfectly placed, her figure wrapped in a yellow and green striped gown that suited her perfectly. “And where are you bringing it from? I’ve really got very moderate tastes, despite what you might think.”
Hawk and Clara shared another amused look and continued to eat in relative silence.
Fortune Favors the Sparrow Page 25