Page 67 of The Proposition
Most vividly she would remember the flashing halo of light around his silhouette as he came riding toward her, up the lane leading to Claridge. She knew him from his shape, his height, the slant of his shoulders, and the tilt of his hat. She knew him as a moth recognizes flame, as a tree knows sunlight and bends innately toward it, seeking and seeking, and then rewarded with indelible warmth.
She had hardly made it ten paces out of the garden when she saw the dust rising from the hell-bent rider. Then came a spray of gravel as he pulled up the reins short and his horse veered and stamped, prancing in a circle before coming to a halt. With the light in her eyes, Clemency could only see the outline of his suit as he leapt down to the ground, and his hat as he swept it off and tossed it aside.
Somehow her feet carried her forward, and she kept going, and at last they met and she felt his arms lift her, hold her, encircle her…
“The bells,” he murmured into her quickly unspooling hair. Audric kissed her cheek, her temple, the corner of her lips. “I heard the bells. Tell me, Clemency, tell me you are not married to him.”
He set her back on the ground, and Clemency slid partlyaway with a ragged laugh. “He is not here, Audric. He’s gone. Gone. Imprisoned. All of his secrets go with him, and I am blessedly free.”
Audric stared at her, then steadied her by the shoulders, staring down into her eyes with his particular ferocity. “But how? I have heard nothing of this….”
“Lady Veitch,” she said simply. “Boyle tried to toy with her daughter and paid for it with his freedom. She has met with Ede and spent dearly to silence him, and I can never repay her for it.” Clemency hooked her arms around his neck and pulled him close. “Oh, you must know I never wanted to marry him! I could not say a thing without risking Delphine’s secret, and my own sister’s love for Mrs. Chilvers. He would have ruined them both, even if I so much as wrote you! I would never—but of course—you must believe me. You must.”
“With all my heart I believe you,” Audric replied, smoothing her hair back and leaning down to kiss her once more, and on the lips. “I suspected you might be acting out of affection for my family, but I had no inkling of your sister’s predicament. That you would hold my sister’s happiness above your own…but of course you do not know! She has taken matters into her own hands on that score. Against my advice she has admitted to the entire business with Boyle. What happens next I cannot say.”
“She is brave,” Clemency murmured. “So unspeakably brave. But that she should be forced into this position! And by the man who caused all of her pain!”
“She made the choice. I think she has found her peace and now she does not fear him or the whispers, and I can do nothing but try to protect her from the worst of it.” Audricsighed. He shook his head and then pressed his face to hers, a pained gasp escaping his throat. “But what of your family? Do they know about Boyle?”
Clemency gestured to the house behind her, where an explosion of flowers still waited to celebrate someone’s nuptials.
“They are all waiting. Waiting for a groom that will not come and a bride who loves another.”
Audric dragged his fingers through her red-gold hair, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he chewed his lip and then nodded his head once. “Then shall we send up to the house for Delphine and Ralston? There could still be a wedding in the church today.”
“But all of your plans! All of your anger and your vengeance, what becomes of it?” Clemency asked, holding desperately to the lapel of his jacket.
“It is all forgotten. The hunt is over, and we have played our part.”
“Yet—”
“Listen to me, Clemency—we lived well and loved each other, and lost track of time and revenge. Perhaps this is the unexpected reward.” Audric drew back, clasping both of his large hands over her small, warm, shaking ones. “Delphine has found her peace and let me find mine. He cannot harm us any longer, that I was not responsible for his end is meaningless beside the…the joy, the unbelievable relief and joy I feel in this moment. Damn it all, so that I can try to be better for you. To know I have you.”
It didn’t seem possible, that in one moment she could be so full of dread and fear, and in the next overcome withperfect happiness. “Joy, yes! Joy. But do we deserve it? Haven’t we been wicked? Planning and plotting as we were?”
Audric kissed her again gently, and then not gently, and Clemency forgot all about words likedeserve.
“Perhaps.” Audric smiled, his lips still pressed to hers. “And if so, then let us be wicked together.”
She did not have to remember the warmth of his embrace or the comforting strength of his arms—those sensations had never left her, though she had walled herself off from the memory. There was a remembrance sunk deep inside her of every dark hair on his fingers, every scar, every rough callus. There was a remembrance of his frank green eyes and the black waves of his hair, the dimples carved through his cheeks, the serious lips that now seemed so suddenly prone to smiling.
Her face fell for a moment. “But marriage…I had resolved never to consider it again.”
Audric sighed, his smile collapsing. “Ah. That.”
Clemency chewed her lower lip fiercely, worried that the desperation of the moment was leading her into a hasty decision. Yes, the church was decorated for a wedding, but she could still be the master of her fate. A few wasted buntings were nothing when compared to her lasting happiness. Marriage or solitude? When she glanced at Audric’s face, the thought of being without him opened a hopeless pit in her stomach.
“Marriage is a compromise,” she said slowly. “But we are clever enough to bend it to our needs. Delphine and Honora, they may need our protection to have the lives they deserve, and if we vow to embrace them as family and support themno matter what challenges they might face, then marriage is a compromise I am willing to make.”
His eyes lightened, his smile returning. “That is an easy vow to make, almost as easy as the one I hope to make to you when—if—we are married.”
Clemency had thought him a hard, impenetrable man, but something in him had softened, a sweet blurring around the edges of the gruff stranger who had approached her those weeks ago at the Pickfords’ assembly. The man before her, enveloping her hands, hardly seemed like the same person, or maybe the light had shifted and she was no longer looking at him in the dark.
“The suspense, Clemency, is terrible.” Audric laughed and scrunched up his eyes. “Have pity.”
She looked again at the house and the flowers, then turned toward him with a crooked grin. “Then I have a proposition foryou,sir, if you will hear it.”
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