As You Are (25 page)

Clara smiled, wondering what mischief Charlie had gotten himself into. That was, she felt certain, the reason for his banishment from Lampton Park. She liked Charlie and had a feeling it was not a mischievous nature that was his undoing but youth and undirected energy. Time in the stables would do him good.

She had intended to avoid him, but Charlie caught sight of her. He joined her approximately where the property line ran.

“Good day, Mrs. Bentford,” he said with an appropriate bow. Clara could see in that gesture that he would be very much like his brothers when he was fully grown: genteel, well mannered, and kind. He would probably break a whole string of hearts.

“Good day to you, Mr. Jonquil.”

Charlie winced at the name.

Clara laughed lightly as they began walking again. “If you are to be a Cambridge man soon, you must grow accustomed to being addressed formally and as an adult.”

“I know.” He sighed with a smile. “But there are a lot of
Mr. Jonquils
.”

“You all are very much alike,” Clara acknowledged. “And yet, as far as I was able to observe, you are also quite different from one another.”

“Yes,” Charlie answered, though there was the tiniest hint of bitterness in his voice. Clara wondered at it. “The earl who cuts a dash through Town. The widower who has found love again. The most successful horse breeder in the midlands. The famously successful barrister. The youngest in the Dragoons to reach the rank of captain. The top-of-his-class vicar. And Charlie.”

So that was part of the problem—he hadn’t yet found his place in the world or in his family. “Have you thought about what you would like to study when you reach Cambridge?”

Charlie shrugged. “What’s left?”

“Have you spoken with any of your brothers about this? I imagine they might have some advice for you.”

“They’re busy,” Charlie answered.

They walked for a time in silence. Clara wished she could do more for Charlie. She knew how it felt to be lost and wandering without direction. She’d felt that way in the short interval between the announcement of her betrothal to Mr. Bentford and their wedding. She’d felt that way between Mr. Bentford’s death and his brother’s arrival at Bentford Manor. She’d felt that way the past weeks without Corbin.

“So why do you never come to Havenworth anymore?” Charlie asked after a moment.

Clara was too caught off guard to do anything but stare at him. Why did she never come to Havenworth? What made Charlie think she was expected there?

“Corbin’s miserable, you know,” Charlie said, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Miserable?”

“He tries not to be.” Charlie shrugged. Then he laughed a little. “I don’t think any of us thought he’d ever talk to a lady enough to actually fall in love with her.”

“Fall—?” That was all she got out.

“Guess even the Jonquils can be wrong.”

In love? Corbin is in love with me? Enough that he misses me when I’m gone? Misses me to the point of misery?
The realization struck her with unexpected force. No one had ever mourned her absence or wanted her in his life enough to miss her. She stopped on the spot, her thoughts spinning. “Are you certain?”

“That Jonquils can be wrong?” Charlie asked, genuinely surprised.

“That Corbin is in love with—”

“You,” he finished for her and nodded. Then his mouth dropped open in sudden understanding. “Ah, Lud. I probably wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

Clara focused on Charlie. “Do you really think so?”

Charlie nodded, looking evermore uncomfortable. “It’s rather obvious.” He spoke almost apologetically.

Suddenly, Clara found her courage returning with force. “Thank you, Charlie,” she said, moving quickly in the direction of Havenworth. “Thank you.”

* * *

“I think that’s good for now, Edmund,” Corbin said. Johnny stayed nearby as Edmund rode Happy Helper to the side of the paddock. The boy was riding better every day. “Dismount and take him to his stall. Don’t forget to brush him thoroughly.”

Edmund smiled and nodded.

“I’ll come check in a few minutes,” Corbin added.

If Edmund was surprised that Corbin wasn’t following him, he didn’t let it show. Corbin waited until Edmund, with Johnny’s supervision, led Happy Helper from the paddock. He turned quickly and walked out toward the back grounds of Havenworth. He needed a few minutes’ respite.

Edmund had done so many things that afternoon that reminded Corbin of Clara: expressions on his face, phrases that belonged to her. It had been acutely torturous.

He’d take a few minutes to clear his head.

“Corbin!”

Now he was hearing things. He’d imagined Clara’s voice saying his name over the past few weeks. It had simply never been so realistic.

“Corbin!”

Twice in a row seemed very unlikely. Corbin turned toward the sound, and his heart stopped. Clara. Hurrying toward him. His first fleeting feeling was that she’d come back to him. Then he realized she looked distressed.

Something had happened. Gracious heavens! Alice? Was Alice ill? Or hurt? Was Clara unwell?

Corbin didn’t hesitate a moment longer. He ran to meet her partway. Without a word, Clara threw her arms around his neck and buried her head against his shoulder. Corbin wrapped his arms protectively around her.

“What is it, Clara?” he asked, alarmed. “Has something happened? Is . . . Is someone ill or . . . or injured?”

“Oh, Corbin!”

“What is it?” Corbin pulled her away from him enough to study her. “Tell me, Clara. Please.”

“I saw Charlie when I was walking—”

Something had happened to Charlie. From the look on Clara’s face, something drastic. Taking hold of her hand, Corbin instantly headed in the direction she’d come.

“Corbin.” Clara tugged at his hand.

“Was he . . . was he hurt?”

“No, Corbin.” She tugged again. They were at the edge of the trees. “Charlie was quite well.”

“Then what has you so distressed?” Corbin turned back to her. “You cannot tell me you aren’t. I can see it on your face.”

“Not distressed,” she insisted, her eyes never wavering from his. There was a nervousness, an anxious anticipation there that Corbin could not possibly interpret.

“But you’re upset.” He touched her face as he spoke. “Did Charlie upset you? Did he . . . did he say something—”

Clara shook her head. “Nothing unkind.”

That was a very good thing for Charlie. Corbin would not have tolerated any unkindness toward Clara. And yet, she was still teary. She was almost never teary.

Corbin instinctively reached up and ran a soothing finger across the worry lines that creased her forehead. She closed her eyes and seemed to sigh, as if his gesture had relieved some of her tension.

“I have to know, Corbin. The not knowing is killing me.”

“Know what?” He caressed her cheek with his hand. She leaned into his hand.

“Charlie told me that you love me,” Clara whispered.

Corbin froze. A kick in the gut from Devil’s Advocate certainly couldn’t have caught him more by surprise. He couldn’t formulate a response, could barely register what she’d said, even as it repeated in his brain.
He told me that you love me.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “Do you?” she asked, her voice even quieter than it had been and far more uncertain.

Corbin swallowed.
With all my heart. Absolutely. Forever.
No words escaped his mouth.

A look of pain crossed her features, and she stepped back, away from him. “Why not?” Then, as if suddenly realizing she’d uttered the pain-ridden question out loud, Clara clamped her mouth shut and stepped back farther. She shook her head. “Please, don’t answer that.”

Corbin hadn’t seen such a look of anguish on her face. Even Mr. Bentford’s appearance hadn’t brought such pain to her expressive eyes.

She thought he didn’t love her.

Clara turned and began to walk quickly away from him. Before she’d even taken two steps, Corbin took hold of her arm. He turned her gently to face him. She was weeping.

“Oh, Clara,” he said.

She seemed to crumple right there in front of him. Corbin wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him. Each breath she took shuddered.

“Clara.” He breathed her name, his face directly beside hers. “I . . . I don’t say things—” Corbin stopped and took a breath, trying to force his thoughts into some semblance of order. “Clara. I do love . . . I have loved you from the first time I met you.” He had dropped to the level of a whisper by the time the final admission came out.

He felt her shift against him and watched as she turned her face up toward him. Even shining with tears, her green eyes were spectacular.

“You truly do?”

“Truly.”

Corbin kissed her tenderly on the forehead. “I have missed you, Clara,” he whispered. “Every minute since you left.”

“But you never came.”

“I didn’t think you wanted me to.”

“Oh, Corbin.” She sighed, leaning against him. “I have been miserable without you. I love you, Corbin. I love you too much to live without you any longer.”

He closed his eyes and let those words settle over him. She loved him. Clara,
his
Clara, whom he had loved in silence from almost the first moment he’d seen her, loved him.

He felt her slender fingers gently touch his jaw near his ear. “Corbin?” she asked, coaxing his eyes open once more. She was watching him closely.

“I have misunderstood you, misjudged you. So many times, Corbin. I thought you disliked me or thought yourself above me or—” Clara’s color deepened with each sentence. “I never dreamed I would find a gentleman who was kind and gentle and everything I always dreamed of but never thought I would find.”

He was what she’d wished for? Corbin kept Clara in his arms, pulled up close to him. “You don’t mind that . . . that I—” He stopped for a breath and to order his thoughts. “I don’t express myself well. I will never be as well known as my brothers. Or as commanding or fashionable or—”

“I love you, Corbin,” she said, looking intently into his eyes. “Just as you are. Precisely as you are.”

He held her ever tighter. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes bright, her lips smiling.

My Clara.
The thought repeated in his mind.
My Clara.

He shifted one hand to her face and lowered his head until their lips met. Their first kiss had been a nerve-racking experiment in intuition. While Corbin hardly felt himself skilled in the art of kissing, there was not the uncertainty he’d felt before. He gently pressed his lips to hers, then more fervently, feeling, in a way, that his mouth was finally communicating what he never seemed able to make it say.

“Clara,” he whispered when their mouths parted, though he remained a hair’s breadth away. “My Clara.”

“I love you,” she whispered in reply.

“I love you,” he answered, and he kissed her again.

They, of course, would tell the children, would send word to Lampton Park. But that moment, that one moment, was theirs.

Corbin leaned against the doorframe of his library, his smile firmly in place. Edmund sat on the floor near the fireplace, drawing with a charcoal pencil on a piece of parchment. Alice was near him, spinning in a circle, her tiny hand firmly gripping the doll Corbin had given her a fortnight earlier, on the day she had become his stepdaughter.

He’d gone from being a bachelor, alone and lonely, to having an instant, beloved family. The children had made the transition from Ivy Cottage to Havenworth smoothly and cheerfully. Most important of all, Clara seemed genuinely content.

Alice abruptly finished her spinning game. She stumbled around a bit, eyes wide and still turning about in her head. Corbin held back a chuckle. She made a very indirect path to Edmund and stood a moment, her dizziness slowly decreasing.

Edmund glanced up at her but returned his gaze almost immediately to his papers.

Alice held her doll up on level with Edmund’s downturned face. “Dolly kisses,” she said.

A look of alarm passed over Edmund’s face. “I don’t want any dolly kisses,” he insisted.

“Give dolly kisses!” With that declaration, Alice went about making a very valiant attempt to force her doll upon the poor boy.

Edmund’s efforts to thwart her did not prove the deterrent he likely thought they would be. Alice climbed over and on him, pressing her doll’s face against him wherever she could reach. Edmund was summarily kissed on the shoulder, arm, face, and hair. Alice’s continued command for dolly kisses melded with Edmund’s pleas that she stop. The two children were soon laughing.

Corbin allowed his own chuckle to escape. Both pairs of eyes turned to him. Edmund reached his side first.

“She is making her doll kiss me,” Edmund told him, his tone both that of a much-put-upon young man and an amused older brother.

Sure enough, Alice ran toward them both, her doll held out threateningly as she giggled. “Dolly kisses for Mister!”

“I am done for, Edmund.” Corbin made the observation quite dramatically, earning a grin from the boy. “Look after the horses, and tell your aunt Clara I . . . I was brave right to the end.”

Edmund nodded seriously but with an amused twinkle in his eyes.

Corbin scooped Alice up. When she accosted him in the same way she had Edmund, he pretended to be desperate to escape, though he held her to him lovingly. With her in his arms and Edmund trailing after them, Corbin danced her about the room. Alice forgot entirely about her kissing game and simply wrapped her arms around his neck, squealing in delight when he spun.

After several minutes, their game left Corbin more than a little dizzy but chuckling right along with the children. He dropped onto the sofa, lying against one arm. Alice curled up on his chest. Edmund sat on the sofa’s far arm.

“Mister tired?”

“Yes, love. Mister is tired.”

She patted his cheek. “G’night, Mister.”

Corbin closed his eyes, playing along with her latest game. The room grew quiet and still. After a moment, he felt an arm, small but too long to be Alice’s, laid across him. He opened one eye a sliver and saw that Edmund had come to kneel beside the sofa. He rested his head against Corbin’s chest near where Alice lay, with one arm draped over Corbin in something of an embrace.