“No need, no need. My physician has me mostly drinking barley water these days. Although I would not mind some of that champagne your grandfather squirreled away, if any is left.”
“Brentworth will tell me the vineyard and vintage, and I will have some sent from France,” Adam said.
They played on. Adam stayed because to leave now would look bad. He joined in the camaraderie, but the close call with Rothborne weighed on him.
Therewouldbe another fool eventually. Even if by some miracle he cleared his father’s name, he doubted it would stop.
Chapter Twenty
Clara watched dusk fall, then the night gather outside the windows. She began to think Stratton would not return tonight.
She had only herself to blame if that happened. She had given him no promise that she would come here as originally planned. When they parted, she was not sure that she should.
Yet here she was, feeling less confident in her decision by the minute.
He had been very kind at the race. Very charming. She did not doubt his apology was sincere. Time had cleared the worst of his mood, too. She still sensed that shadow and saw it in his eyes, but not with the intensity of the morning.
Dangerous. She had forgotten that people said that about him. He had not seemed dangerous to her. Not in the ways the gossip meant. This morning, however, when he appeared in that clearing, that word fit all too well.
Had he been there that day? Had he seen the result? She suspected he had. He had been lost to her, to the whole world, while he stared at that big rock. Lost to himself too.
She looked around the chamber in which she lay. Althea had urged her not to come.If he needs you he will find you, she had said. Althea thought that like most men, Stratton would want to be alone if he lost a battle with himself.
Althea had probably been correct.
* * *
Adam entered the house near midnight. It had been a hellish day. The only good thing had been seeing Clara. Their time at the race shone as a bright spot surrounded by storms. There was a painting in the gallery like that, a landscape of a cloudy day with beams of sunlight pouring out from the clouds, illuminating a few farms in the middle.
Eventually, of course, the clouds would close in over those farms too.
It had taken two months for someone to force a challenge out of him here in England. As expected, it had not been a man who bore any responsibility for what had happened years ago. Rothborne might have known what anyone of his station knew or heard in private gossip, but he was drunk so often that his voice had no influence, and his befuddled mind could never form an argument for action.
He mounted the stairs. On impulse he approached the chamber Clara had used. In the moment before he opened the door, a soulful hope twisted in him. In the next instant it died. She was not there, of course. Why would she be? An apology did not absolve him of the cold way he had treated her this morning. He had not blamed her, not in words, not even in his mind, but she had seen what was in him and probably guessed that he did blame her family.Familiarity, even passion, does not change who we are.
He walked to his apartment, grateful now that it had been totally changed so nothing of its previous occupant would haunt him. His manservant slept on a chair in the dressing room. He wanted no fawning servant imposing on him now. He jostled the fellow awake and sent him on his way. Then he shed his coats and sat down to pull off his boots.
The second one hit the floor loudly. He stripped off his shirt.
Another presence intruded on the space. He felt it before he looked. When he turned his head, he saw Clara at the threshold to the bedchamber, wrapped in a sheet. Her bare shoulder indicated she was naked underneath.
She looked beautiful there, washed in the pale golden light from the small lamp. She seemed to be emerging from the shadows, barely visible but elegant and soft.
“I thought you remained in Epsom,” he said.
“I decided not to.”
“I cannot imagine why.”
Her brow puckered a little. “I am not sure I can either.”
He reached out. “Come here. Leave the sheet.”
She dropped the sheet and came to him, naked and beautiful. He drew her onto his lap facing him, so he could hold her against his chest. Her warmth soothed him. Contentment spread like a long, physical sigh.
Her face nuzzled the crook of his neck. “Was I wrong? Did I make a mistake?”
“I am grateful you are here.” He caressed down her back and over her hips and the round swells of her bottom while she lay against him. Her breaths quickened in the musical way her arousal sounded.
