Page 49 of The Proposition
“True…True.” Audric smiled down at her, then carefully tilted her chin up so that their eyes met. His hand lingered playfully along her jaw. She told herself it would not be useful for their cause to kiss the tips of his fingers, and so she quashed the urge. Only just. Did he know what he did to her? How his presence, solid and serious and steady, made her feel like the rickety, trembling ground of her life might one day be still? That he made her feel weak in the stomach but strong at heart?Why did you kiss me?she longed to ask.And why won’t you do it again?
“A pity,” he murmured. “That I cannot have you there at my side.”
“Audric…”
“Yes. My mind strays from the task.” He sighed as he let go of her. That was not what she meant for him to do, but perhaps it was for the best. If he touched her again that way she might burst out of her skin. “Perhaps your brother’s wife might accompany you, and we will be but polite, having shared a brief acquaintance in Round Orchard.”
We shared and share far more than that, sir.
“Of course,” Clemency choked out. “That will be agreeable.”
It will be agony.
“Then, I will see you tonight, Clemency,” Audric said, his eyes dancing and alight. “I look forward to it with the utmost anticipation.”
—
Audric was surprised to find the Chilvers home comfortable but unexceptional, hardly the type of place to lure the most influential set of the ton, but then, he did not considerhimself an expert on the intricacies and frivolities of the exceptionally powerful. In fact, he quite eschewed them. Yet that evening he dressed for the part, taking Delphine’s cutting advice on all matters of fashion and grooming.
“You must look your very best for Miss Fry,” his sister had said as he left the house.
“I will give her your regards,” he insisted, disappearing into the carriage.
Wrapped in a thick shawl, she called out into the night, “Give her your own!”
Delphine was not being at all shy about her respect for Clemency, A long list of obstacles stood between the fantasy Delphine imagined and the far harsher reality of their lives. He had no idea if Clemency would ever consider marriage again. She had been exposed to the cruelest and most pernicious aspects, the mercenary, contractual calculations that robbed unions of all real meaning. Not all marriages were miserable, but he had witnessed the long, slow death of his mother’s spirit at the hands of his father. Elise Ferrand sang less day by day, smiled less day by day, crushed in the tyrannical fist of his father’s need for control.
And there was every possibility that Clemency would only associate him with this whole messy business. Perhaps, if she did intend to consider marriage again, she would want a clean start, and not to be constantly reminded of Boyle’s many crimes. It ate at Audric that he could even be associated with such filth, but it was he who had started the hunt, and it was he who had drawn Clemency into it.
Miss Fry.Miss Fry,not Clemency.
A subtle, welcoming glow emanated from the windows of the Chilvers home. Stanhope had come through with amiracle, arranging invitations for him, Clemency and her guest. It was a lively, warm place, perhaps not modern but filled with obviously cherished objects—faded rugs and balustrades polished by a hundred sweaty children’s fingers, greasy lamps, and rump-worn sofas, portraits of little boys in blue coats, and geraniums blossoming from the wallpaper.
The obliging maid showed him to a larger sitting room, where a dozen or so of London’s finest had gathered. The musicians and their glossy string instruments waited before a red-and-gold tapestry of a medieval maiden holding a falcon aloft. He stayed to the back of the room, surveying. Hunting. He found Clemency at once, for how could he not? His gaze was drawn to her like a dancer down a line, her red-gold hair jewel bright, her gown simple, white, and flattering to her alluring shape. She must have felt his eyes upon her, for she half-turned, spying him, a flicker of a smile flaming before she remembered their ruse and she twisted away.
At once, he missed the mischievous gleam of her gray eyes.
How he would go that entire evening without taking her hand and feeling its soft strength, he didn’t know.
Heaven help me.
Only their plan kept him rooted there and not flying to her side. The guests began to sit down, while the lady of the house rose to address them, the musicians dropping their bows and ceasing the hair-raising scratch from finding their note.
“Thank you so much, old friends and new, for gracing us this evening,” the woman, presumably Mrs. Chilvers, said. Her straw-colored hair was piled carelessly on her head beneath a black lace cap, and she wore a gown of darkest blue, a mauve lace shawl fluttering on her shoulders like daintywings as she spoke. She did not project the image of a fashionable London lady, but rather of someone’s kindly aunt. “The only person who loved music more than I was my dearly deceased husband. I know he would be so thrilled that the works of Haydn and Mozart and Beethoven still echo among these walls, and like a beacon they have drawn you here.”
Audric took a chair in the back row and stretched his legs out in front of him, realizing that there was nothing to do but wait and listen until refreshments were served later. He heard the music, or thought he did, though accepted that if questioned about it he could give only a recounting of which movements made Clemency sit up straighter, or lean forward, how one particular run of notes brought her hand to her neck, and her fingers curled into a fist, as if delicately catching a moth. It gave her such clear pleasure that it gave him pleasure too.
The music he did not remember, but her? He remembered her sharply. Like a dagger he remembered her, and she was still just there, not six rows ahead of him.
The eruption of applause at the end startled him out of a fog, and he joined in, standing, once more on the hunt.
He noted Denning Ede drifting toward the musicians to praise them, then standing off to the side while a maid hurried over to speak with him. Stanhope had given Audric a detailed description—a man of six and fifty, red hair fading to silver, tall and once a good rider but gone to fat, nearly always wearing a chrysanthemum in his breast pocket.
There was a specific thrum in the chest that came when he knew a hunt was almost at an end, and he felt it as he watched Clemency deftly draw Mrs. Chilvers into conversation. Hewatched her press a letter into the woman’s hands and saw the joy it brought the widow. As if by perfect design, the widow drew Clemency away, down a corridor, and out of sight.
Ede, meanwhile, bent his head low toward the maid. His expression soured, nostrils flaring as he adjusted his cravat, fidgeting, then followed the maid briskly down the aisle between the rows of chairs and out toward the front hall. Audric hesitated for only a moment, trusting the strange hum in his chest, giving Ede a brief head start before swiftly embarking on the chase.
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