‘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 her mouth back.
‘The dancing, the flowers, which were beautiful by the way, too beautiful. You don’t have to be my excitement. It would be easy for a girl to misunderstand.’
She meant Cecilia, of course. Cecilia had no claims on him. But under the grounds of Claire’s argument earlier today that men and women couldn’t be friends, Cecilia and her self-made claims would be jealous. She shouldn’t be envious of flowers and a dance. Still, he knew the kiss was not well done of him, even if it was one kiss to weigh against a lifetime spent doing his duty.
‘Claire, I...’ He should apologise but he didn’t want to. He wasn’t sorry and wasn’t that what apologies were for? He wanted to kiss her again.
‘I should go.’ She stepped around him and he let her by, knowing he wouldn’t get that second dance. If he let her go now, she would be gone from the ballroom when he returned inside.
He had no right to have taken such a liberty. He couldn’t even justify it as an act to inspire her suitor. He’d asked far too much of her today: friendship, a kiss in the Rosedale garden that had inflamed him far more than a simple kiss should have. She knew nothing of him other than what she saw at parties, that polite social mask he kept carefully fixed in place. Cecilia would never look beyond that mask; would never feel the need to or the want. She was perfectly happy with the smiling, charming Jonathon Lashley. But Claire would not settle for such a façade.
Claire had glimpsed beneath that mask. He’d let the façade slip for just a moment tonight and she had filled that moment with prophetic words: this is what I believe...nothing will change until we do. Cecilia would be an easy wife in that regard, never pushing him to expose himself. He could spend his life walking around pretending he was happy, like he had been before the war, before Thomas.
He pulled a leaf off the tree and twirled the stem between his fingers idly. He’d once believed he could masquerade himself back into happiness. If he pretended he was happy, eventually he would be. So far, the façade had fooled everyone except himself. Well, if he couldn’t be happy, he could at least make Claire happy. He would help her with her reluctant suitor whether she wanted him to or not. It would be easier if she’d just tell him the man’s name. But everyone was entitled to their secrets. Secrets were secrets no matter how big or small, his being larger than most.
He drew a breath. He needed to return to the ballroom. Just in case. But he knew when he stepped inside that Claire was gone. He scanned the perimeter any way for good measure. There was no sign of her. He might as well leave. There was no reason to stay. He made his excuses to the hostess and left, pretending urgent business had come up.
The strains of music and merrymaking followed him out from the ballroom into the hall. What would all those people inside think of him if they knew the truth? What would Claire say if she knew he’d been the one who’d made the decision to leave Thomas behind?
* * *
That night he dreamt of Thomas...
Cannon fire sounded down the road, the rumble still in the distance, but nearer than it had been before. His horse moved uneasily beneath him as he argued with his brother. ‘You cannot deliver the dispatch, it’s too dangerous.’
‘Someone has to and it sure as hell can’t be you. You’re the heir. Everyone is counting on you to come back.’ Thomas was being obstinate while the rest of his men cast nervous eyes down the road and with good reason.
‘The entire French corps could be out there,’ he insisted, urging Thomas to see the impossibility of the task.
‘All the more reason for me to go.’ His brother’s jaw was set and Jonathon recognised intractability when he saw it. ‘There are officers waiting for what’s in that bag.’
‘Headquarters