‘I need some air, would you come out with me?’ Jonathon asked, struggling to get his own breath back. The floor hadn’t been as crowded as it would be later. There’d been plenty of room to whirl and turn, and they had with his hand firm at her waist, holding her tight, her face turned up to his, laughing, and for a few minutes he stopped worrying about everything—about French, about Vienna, about Cecilia—and it seemed she had, too.
He noticed, because he missed that sense of relaxation as soon as they stepped outside. She was tense again. ‘Tu es nerveuse?’ he asked in low tones, moving them down the shallow stone steps into the Rosedale garden.
‘Perhaps. I’ve never been out on the terrace or the garden during a ball.’ She gave a little laugh, making the statement sound like a joke.
Then her suitor was either a prude or a dolt. ‘No stolen kisses?’ Jonathon teased, ‘Your suitor must be the epitome of manners.’ And her last one as well. Not a single purloined kiss between them.
‘No.’
‘He’s not the epitome of manners?’ He was completely unprepared for the shadow that crossed her face.
‘No.’ Claire laughed, a musical, magical sound when her guard was down. ‘I can claim no stolen kisses, as you’ve already divined. My life isn’t very exciting, Mr Lashley, despite your persistence in believing the contrary.’
‘Jonathon,’ he corrected. ‘I thought we’d decided to be Jonathon and Claire this afternoon.’ According to social protocol it was a bold decision. First names were definitely reserved for those of privileged standings with one another, as was this discussion. He knew it was beyond the pale to discuss kisses, but he had very little toleration for the rules these days. It suddenly mattered greatly to him that he be Jonathon to her, not mere Mr Lashley who stopped in for an hour or two a day for French lessons. What would happen when those lessons ended? They would end, whether he failed or succeeded in them. August loomed like a big red X on his mental calendar. If they were not friends, what happened then? Would ‘they’, Jonathon and Claire, simply end? The thought sat ill with him.
She turned to face him, her jaw set. ‘Listen, Jonathon. My life is hardly adventurous, as embarrassing as it is to admit.’
‘Why is that, Claire?’ he asked in soft challenge, sensing he was on to something important. It was the question he’d wanted to ask since that first day in the library. If he knew the answer, he might have the key to unlocking all the mysteries of her. What had she spent the last three years doing and why?
‘What’s the most exciting thing you’ve done in the recent past?’ he prompted when she said nothing more.
‘The truth? You’re the most exciting thing that has happened in ages.’ Giving French lessons to a desperate man was the highlight of her day. The thought made him cringe.
‘Perhaps we should change that.’ Jonathon gave her one his charming smiles, trying hard to keep his eyes from drifting to the vee of her bodice, but the dress had been designed by a witch. She’d worn peach chiffon tonight and it looked stunningly feminine and softly appealing where it curved over the swells of her breasts. ‘We should make your life exciting.’ It saddened him to think that ‘exciting’ might very well be limited to bringing the as-of-yet anonymous suitor to heel who hadn’t even tried to kiss her. Surely a girl who knew four languages was entitled to more excitement than that.
‘I know how you feel,’ he found himself saying to fill the silence. ‘Sometimes I think nothing will change, that this is my whole life, that every day will be the same, every spring in London, every fall at the hunting box, every winter in the country.’ He paused, casting around for the right word. ‘I feel like I’m waiting for something to happen and nothing does. The sameness is suffocating and I can’t shake it. I can’t do anything about it.’ No variety, no spice, just going through the motions and yet he should be grateful. ‘I’m being buried alive.’
Had he said that out loud? There was pain in Claire’s eyes for him confirming that he had indeed. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what possessed me.’
‘You don’t have to apologise.’ Her eyes held his, searching for something. ‘If that’s how you feel. We might all be better off if we told each other how we really felt, what really haunted us, instead of always pretending everything is fine when it’s not.’
A strange kind of relief poured through him. She hadn’t mitigated his impotence with false, bolstering phrases like, ‘You have Vienna to look forward to, a marriage to look forward to.’
‘I’m a cad to complain about my life.’ He tried for a winning smile. ‘I have so much more than many.’ So much more than the woman standing before him. There would be changes for him, small as they were. For Claire? There would be nothing, not even a husband and family to share the sameness of her days with if her suitor didn’t come up to scratch. He wondered if she equated sameness with helplessness like he did. He’d come home from war without Thomas and the guilt had become paralysing.
‘Claire, I’m tired of prowling ballrooms, waiting for the future to happen. I need Vienna. I need my life to start.’ He’d never dared to tell another person any of this and yet tonight it was pouring out of him. He’d like to blame it on the night, the pretty decorations, the scent of early summer flowers in the air, but he couldn’t. He could only blame it on the woman. This was the second time he’d taken such liberties in conversation with her.
‘Then it will happen because you’ve chosen it.’ Her eyes were solemn as she held his gaze and it seemed to him that the world fell away in those moments, narrowing itself down to just the two of them in this empty garden as she spoke her soft words. ‘But this is what I believe, Jonathon. We are the authors of our own destinies intentionally or otherwise. Need, want, it’s all up to us. Nothing will change until we do.’
She could have no idea how seductive those words were. He wanted to believe her, wanted to be a man who wrote his own destiny, intentionally, not a man to whom destiny happened by accident. It was just that the future he was intent on seizing had a cost. Looking at Claire, here in the garden with her back against the bark of a tree, the light of party lanterns shining on her hair, he was struck by the enormity of that cost.
She was a cross between the wisdom of Athena and the beauty of Aphrodite in those moments. He wondered if it was her words, or the realisation of her loveliness that had him under her spell. But it didn’t change what he wanted to do in those moments. He wanted to kiss her.
He gave her no warning, leaning in and taking her lips, slowly but firmly at first, letting her mouth accustom itself to the press of his, letting her open to him and she did. Beneath the hesitancy was a curiosity, a slow blooming eagerness as she moved into the kiss, into him, their bodies coming together effortlessly as the kiss deepened. He had not been wrong. She was ready to be awakened.
He held them there together with his hands at her hips, his thumbs pressing gently through the delicate fabric of her gown. He ran his tongue along her lip, delighting in her soft sigh. He took her mouth again, this time with more insistence. She was ready for him, willing for him, her arms about his neck, her body pressed so close to his he could feel the heat of her. God, he wanted to devour her, to lose himself in her. A moan escaped her as his mouth moved to her throat, part pleasure, part...regret? Dismay?
‘Jonathon, don’t. You don’t have to.’ She broke the kiss, her eyes wide. ‘It’s too much.’
‘What’s too much?’ He nuzzled her neck, determined not to let this moment slip away, wanting
