As wild and necessary as the vegetation serving as his backdrop.
“Ara.”
He opened his arms to her, and she caught her skirts in both her hands, running until she reached him and threw herself into his chest. His embrace was sudden and strong, keeping her pressed tight to him. He kissed the top of her head, for she was not wearing a hat either. The warmth of his mouth infused her with a fresh throb of longing. She was glad she had wandered to him. And she did not care if his men could see her embracing him. All she cared about was being in his arms.
He felt like home. His scent filled her—leather, musk, soap, and man. She wrapped her arms around his lean waist, holding him for a moment, savoring the freedom to touch him as she wanted. Savoring him. Savoring life and the possibility for the future.
Mayhap, just mayhap if she dared.
Sheneededto dare.
“What are you doing out here, Clay?” she asked. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“Taking the air. Walking. Thinking. What areyoudoing out here, my dear?” he asked, the sweet, low rumble of his voice sending a shiver through her. “You ought not to be wandering about, unescorted.” His arms tightened even more over her. “I will have Farleigh’s hide for allowing you to flit away from Harlton Hall without accompaniment.”
“You will have no one’s hide.” She took another surreptitious inhalation of his shirt and sighed. “I browbeat your men into allowing it, and they knew I was coming to find you.”
“You browbeat them?” He chuckled, the velvety timbre sending a spark of pure desire shooting through her. “Darling, you are smaller than a dunnock. They are trained and armed. They are not meant to be browbeaten by you. They are meant to hold firm.”
“Nevertheless, here I am,” she said, feeling quite pleased with herself. Clay had called herdarling, and she liked it far too well. Wrapped in his hold, his warmth burning into her, his scent filling her senses, and the quiet cover of the trees around them, it seemed almost as if they had stepped back in time. Here, she could forget—if even for only a short while—all the ugliness in her life. “I had them quivering in fear.”
“Of course you did.” He pressed another kiss to the top of her head, his hot breath fanning over her part like a benediction. “You have me quivering in fear as well.”
She swallowed, her smile deepening as hope sparked deep within her. “What if I told you I felt the same?”
He inhaled, his chest expanding beneath her cheek. “I would say it is only fair that you must be tortured as well.”
Ara closed her eyes, reveling in this quiet moment, in the unfettered tenderness. Perhaps he had been avoiding her all day. Perhaps he was as shaken by their newfound circumstances and the revelations between them as she was. But everything about this felt as right as drawing her next breath.
“I do not know where we are,” she confessed softly.
“We are here, standing beneath the trees together.” A smile permeated his voice.
His gentle teasing put her at ease. “Yes. You have a beautiful estate, Clay.”
“I bought it because of the forest.” His voice was a low rasp. She almost had to strain to hear him. “And then I could not come here for the same reason. The forest was you, Ara. It still is, but now you are here, and you are in my arms where you belong. You are here at Harlton Hall.”
Yes.Precisely where she belonged. She wanted to say it. Wanted to ask him. But even as close as she felt to him in that moment—physically as well as emotionally—she was uncertain of herself. This was all so new to her. He was new to her. Old and beloved yet new and different. Clayton Ludlow had changed in the eight years since she had known him. He had lived life, fought battles, traveled. Perhaps he had fallen in love. So much of the time denied her was a mystery, just as she must be a mystery to him.
“Thank you for welcoming me into your home,” she forced herself to say then before shifting to a different subject—the reason she had sought him out in the first place. “I had dinner last night with your mother and breakfast with her again this morning.”
“I am aware.”
When he said nothing else, she continued, the question that had been nettling her ever since breakfast returning. Needing to be answered. “Does she know, Clay?”
He was silent for some time, the only sound between them his steady inhale and exhale, almost as if he were asleep. “Elaborate, if you please,” he said at last.
Ara sighed, her arms tightening around him, wishing she could stay thus forever, connected to him. That they could never again be torn apart. “About us…our past?”
He took his time answering once again, leaving her waiting, staring into the sunlight-dappled forest with nothing but the thrum of his heart for comfort. “She knows I wished to court you all those years ago. That I was denied. She knows what happened that day and why.”
“Does she know about Edward, Clay?” she asked. His mother had seemed to know far too much, but she could not be certain whether it was her guilty mind at work or Lily Ludlow truly did know all.
“She has surmised.” His voice was decadent and low, a delicious rumble. “I could not deny it. The lad is my image, and my mother and brother both took note. You need not fear, however. She is aware that Edward does not know I am his father, and that we are waiting until the timing is right.”
The timing would never be right for her to reveal to her son that she had lied to him for his entire life. That Freddie had not been his father by blood, but that he had been his father by choice and deed.
The thought of revealing everything to her son continued to fill her chest with a gripping, tight anxiety. But her earlier realization stayed true and firm, unwavering as ever. As did her determination to begin the process of undoing all the wrongs her family had perpetrated upon herself, Clay, and Edward.
