She propped up on her elbow, giving him a rueful look.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t say so; that’s the kind of thing that you’re meant to never say aloud, I suppose. But we’ve been lying here looking at this plasterwork and—goodness. It’s awful, isn’t it?”
For a moment, Hector just looked at her, this unimaginable beauty, her dark hair in total disarray, her nose scrunched in apology for her own bad manners?—
And he started to laugh. It wasn’t a polite, Society laugh; it was a great, wracking laugh that nearly jostled Clio away from his side.
Clio’s lips pressed together like she wanted to be annoyed with him, but then she started to laugh, too. She smacked him on his bare chest, and he grabbed her hand, holding it there.
“I’ve never looked at it,” he admitted, “but it is rather horrible, isn’t it?”
It was some Stuart monstrosity, and whoever had patched it over the years had done a terrible job, masking each discoloration or crack with increasingly ornate carvings.
And yet, right now, Hector loved that damned ceiling, because it had led to Clio, draped so limply across his chest that it was as though she hadn’t any bones at all, shaking with laughter.
“There is so much about this house that continually surprises me,” he admitted, smoothing the loose tendrils of her hair. They were even softer than he’d ever imagined. “I suppose if I had spent my whole life here, I wouldn’t notice it. I can only assume that’s how it’s gone unchanged all these years.”
Clio hummed thoughtfully at this, and he felt the vibration through his chest.
“You did spend some time here, though, as a child?” It was a gentle prod, one that invited but did not demand disclosure. And, to his surprise, Hector found himself willing to share.
“A bit,” he said. “But less than I spent in the country. My parents … They didn’t even care to look at me.”
The admission hurt less than it ever had before, and the slight remaining sting vanished at the utter outrage on Clio’s expression.
“You know that’s ridiculous, right?” she asked, poking him forcefully in the chest, in case he wasn’t paying attention with every fiber of his being. “You know that they were the ones who were wrong, don’t you?”
“Aye,” he said, but clearly it wasn’t emphatic enough, because she poked him again. “Saints, woman, don’tmaulme. Yes, I know. I was a child, and they were intolerably cruel. Are you happy now?”
“I wouldn’t sayhappy,” Clio said sulkily, and Hector felt slightly dizzy with pleasure at knowing he could lean up and kiss that pouty lip.
When he pulled back, she had a gratifyingly dazed look about her.
“Mostly,” he went on, “when my parents went to London, they left me at the manor house. I loved it. The staff were never warm to me—I assume they feared my father’s retribution—but they were never cruel, either. And the absence of cruelty felt like a proper holiday.”
“If there’s a portrait of your father around here, I am going to carve out the eyes,” Clio threatened ominously.
“How bloodthirsty of you,” he said approvingly. “But his ghost can’t reach me here. This house … It has its own problems?—"
“Yes, whoever decorated it should be brought before a tribunal,” Clio interjected.
“—but even if it doesn’t feel like home, it at least isn’t connected to any of those painful memories.”
They both paused, then. Hector took a moment to assess the room around him, to think of this house that didn’t quite feel likehisyet …
But which could. Itcouldbe his home.
If Clio were here with him.
He couldn’t yet dare to hope that she might not still desire freedom. She hadn’t said anything to that effect, after all. But there were things that were shared without words, and she was still drumming her fingers against the muscles of his chest, and she was still languishing atop him in all her naked glory.
So maybe, maybe. Hector had never thought himself a coward, but now he felt like the most craven cur because he didn’t even dare think it, didn’t dare let that tiny littlewhat-ifform in his mind.
Because if he felt it and then lost it, he might actually die from it.
“You spent years abroad,” he said, clearing his throat awkwardly as he tried to change the subject. “Do you think of Belgium as home, then, or England?”
He tried to ask it as though he had no stake in her response.
