CHAPTER 22
Claire woke to the chime of the breakfast bell at the bottom of the hill, a dense, brassy sound that summoned the event workers to the stalls before the merrymakers would arrive for the day. She did not immediately stir, only letting her eyes pop open, like she’d been taken directly from the scene of her dreamscape to the one that lived on Earth.
Strangely, they looked very alike.
Freddy Hightower was asleep on the pillow beside her, curled onto his side with his hand outstretched from under the pillow, still holding hers. His hair was mussed, golden and unstyled, hanging over his brow. His lips were parted. His jaw was soft.
He was, as he had ever been, the most beautiful man who had ever walked this planet.
She felt the ache of it in her chest, the glimmer of faint, cosmic outrage at how he pulled every ray of sunlight in through the window like a spotlight on his perfection. She wiggled her fingers, only slightly, to regain the sensation of them, and felt thepads of her fingertips brush the gold of his wedding band in the process.
She supposed she never considered that after giving in, she might wake up in total peace and silence. She had expected that the ground would crack open or that stones would start falling from the sky. Something!
Honestly.
And there he was, so utterly at peace in her bed.
She was careful disentangling her hand, silently slipping from the sheets. She truly did not want to disturb him.
If anything, she was a little surprised that, after inviting him to come and sleep beside her, they had actually followed through with the sleeping, and only the sleeping. As though they both weren’t still speckled with flour dust and the taste of sweetened cherries.
She tossed another glance at him as she started toward her vanity, more than a little tempted to throw the lock on the door and climb on top of him. She startled, finding his eyes open this time, painfully blue and clear and watching her.
Apparently, she had not been as silent as she thought. Or as opaque.
He smiled slowly, like he could see right through her mind and into her thoughts. Here was that smug bastard she had always loved so well, gloating at his victory, at his soft throne of linen laurels.
She hated herself for how easily she smiled back.
“I suppose I should sneak out,” he said softly, propping himself up on his pillow and lacing his fingers behind his head, making not a single move toward doing so, “before anyone catches us together.”
She blinked at him and forced herself to give a quick and elegant shrug, just one shoulder, as she turned her back to him. “If you like.”
She could feel his grin, feel the wideness of it, the flash of his even white teeth catching the sunlight at her back, and she hid her own as well as she could, ducking her head as it pulled at the corners of her lips.
She knew exactly which dress she intended to wear today, a wispy pink affair that would mitigate the heat and allow for easy movement. There had been no time to press it last night, arriving as late as they had, but as she pulled it from her valise, she was pleased to see it looked well anyway.
“That is pretty,” Freddy commented, still not moving, “but there will be quite a lot of mud down there, you know.”
“Oh,” she said with a little frown, reaching up to hang it on the door of the wardrobe and considering it. “Oh, you’re probably right after yesterday’s weather. I have never attended before. Oliver was always too small. I wasn’t sure exactly what to bring.”
“I didn’t realize it was your first time,” he said with such sharp teasing that she immediately snapped around to glare at him, which made him laugh. It made him laugh like he’d wanted that exact reaction and was delighted he’d gotten it. “Honestly, you can spend most of the day sitting and watching the games. You won’t have to do much if you don’t want to, after we ring in the procession.”
“We?” she repeated with a little sniff, knowing she was only posturing now. “What do you mean, we?”
“The earl and the countess and their little heir,” he replied, smooth as the butter he’d whipped into pie crust last night. “And Tommy, of course. Local fixture that she is.”
She smirked at him and turned back to the dress, pulling her hair over her shoulder and twisting it into one big coil with an absent tap of her foot. “Maybe I should wear something thicker today.”
“For the mud?” he asked with a raise of his brows. “Or the padding?”
“The padding?”
“For sitting,” he clarified with another grin. “Or armor.”
She raised her brows right back and then spun on her heel to retrieve her comb and fall into the vanity stool. Her dressing gown was dry now, she noted, feeling it against her back. “Armor?” she asked, glancing at him in the mirror as he finished his stretching and turned to fling his feet over the side of the bed and onto the floor. “Am I going to need armor, Freddy?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, his voice languishing in that lethal softness as he came to his feet, brushing his hands down his rumpled clothes in a way that made her want to bark at him like a feral fox.
