She nodded. This was all so dreamlike. This man had confessed to the deepest, most powerful feelings for her, and now he was helping her run away from him and them. Giving her control, the one thing she’d always reached for and perhaps never really had.
He gave it like it was water or food, something to share for sustenance, not withhold for cruelty.
They stepped out and he waved off a footman waiting to help her into the vehicle. He opened the door, but didn’t move to help her up. Instead he cupped her cheeks, lowered his lips to hers, and kissed her.
He had kissed her so many times, but this was different. It was so gentle, so filled with the very love he had just declared. She found herself clinging to his arms, lifting into him like she could escape the spinning terror of her heart with him.
But at last he let her go. “I love you,” he whispered, then handed her up into the vehicle, closed the door and waved to her from the front door.
She pulled away from him, but there was no peace in escape. In fact, now that he was not there to ground her anymore, she felt more adrift than ever. And more uncertain as to how to respond to the man who offered her a life she’d never dared dream of.
A life that felt almost too good to be true.
CHAPTER 21
The moment Clarissa was brought to wait for Marianne in her fine parlor, she knew she’d made a mistake. It wasn’t proper to show up uninvited, face streaked with tears to a countess’s house. Even a friend’s house. A lady sent a card, she inquired, she planned. She didn’t invade.
And yet Clarissa didn’t leave. She needed to see that friend. To talk about this. That somehow carried more weight in that moment than what any guidebook had ever said she should do.
The door opened and she turned. When not just Marianne, but her sister-in-law Esme, the Countess of Delacourt, entered the room, Clarissa blushed.
“Oh, I’ve intruded,” she said. “I shouldn’t. I’m being ridiculous and rude and?—”
Without a word, Marianne rushed across the room to her and suddenly Clarissa was enveloped by a gentle hug. “Oh, dearest, please. Stop berating yourself. I can see you’re terribly upset. I’m so happy you’re here and so is Esme.”
“Very happy,” Esme assured her, and Clarissa looked up and saw the other woman was getting tea.
Marianne guided her to the settee and sat with her. Esme returnedwith a cup for her and then took her place in a chair across from them.
“What has happened?” Esme asked gently. “Are you well? Is there danger?”
Clarissa blinked. Danger? “Er, no. Not danger. Not the way I think you mean.”
Esme relaxed a little and nodded. “Good. Then tell us what has happened. What brought you here without warning and with your eyes so wide and wild?”
“I don’t know how to say it,” Clarissa burst out. “I don’t even know how to feel it. A lady is to have moderation, isn’t she? She isn’t supposed to have emotions wash over her like some wave that can sweep her away. It’s not right.”
Marianne grabbed both her hands. “What’s not right is tormenting yourself like this. Tell us what happened.”
Clarissa drew in a long breath, unable to fight anymore. And she told them. Everything. All of it. From the push and pull of her marriage to the confrontation with her parents to Roderick’s declaration of love less than an hour before. And though the ladies exchanged a few looks during the recitation of all the facts, they didn’t interrupt.
“How can this be true?” Clarissa ended. “After everything, all that I settled myself in for the future. How can everything be turned on its head in this way?”
“That, my dear, is life,” Esme said gently. “It’s wonderful that way, in that the moment we think we understand something, it turns upside down and we start anew in seeing it.”
“No, that sounds horrid,” Clarissa said with a shake of her head.
“Only because the changes in the past sound like they have been awful,” Marianne said. “And so change becomes fearful. Honestly, though, the question of how his heart changed and his feelings matters very little in this scenario. What matters more to me is you. How doyoufeel about him?”
Clarissa blinked. That was the question she had tried to ignore from the first moment she met him. When she’d seen him as anenemy, as an interloper determined to ruin everything out of selfishness.
That had changed, of course, but she had kept him at arm’s length regardless. She’d reminded herself, every time she felt a flutter of something beyond desire or passion or friendship, that he was not hers. She had never let her mind label herself as his, even when he demanded she claim that position in his bed.
Now she shut her eyes and Roderick’s face danced easily before her. She smiled despite herself, feeling all the small and big ways he’d ever taken care of her. She thought of his kindness and his generosity. She thought of how he warmed a room when he entered, drawing all who met him closer, including her, even when she didn’t want that.
She thought of how he took care of her. Tended to her physical needs, yes, but more than that. He watched and guarded her heart. He championed her to anyone who threatened her.
Even herself.
