The Wallflowers To Wives Collection

And she was ready to test them. The answer came to him so suddenly he nearly tripped over a crack in the pavement. The new clothes, the desire to actively pursue her erstwhile suitor. It was all there. She was ready to break out of her self-imposed exile, a butterfly emerging from the cocoon, still somewhat fragile, still learning the powerful of its wings, its beauty. After all, she’d left early for whatever reason. She had not told him why she’d left, but since it hadn’t been to sneak off to the terrace with her beau, he could only conclude that the lack of success in that regard had encouraged her flight.

Jonathon stopped outside the window of his usual florist’s on Bond Street, studying the blooms on display. He could help her with the metamorphosis and not only with dances. The bell over the door jingled as he entered the exclusive Bond Street florist. The man behind the counter looked up from where he stood arranging a bouquet of yellow and white daisies, one of a hundred he did daily for the aspiring debutantes of the ton and their hopeful suitors.

‘Ah, Mr Lashley!’ He wiped his hands on his wide apron and hustled forward with a smile. ‘Have you come for something for your lovely girl?’

‘Yes, the usual for Miss Northam, if you please.’ He always sent a bouquet of pale pink roses, her signature colour, to Cecilia on the days she and her mother hosted their at home. ‘And the irises in the window, I’d like to send them to a second address.’ He pulled out his card case from the pocket of his coat. ‘Perhaps, you could mix in something yellow to go with them?’ He wrote a short sentence carefully in French on the back of his card. ‘Send this with it.’

Phipps nodded. If he thought anything above the ordinary about two separate orders to two separate women, he gave nothing away. ‘I have some daffodils that have just arrived.’

‘I leave it to your discretion, Phipps.’ It would be a vibrant but sophisticated arrangement, not a mere debutante’s bouquet. ‘I would like them delivered this afternoon.’

Jonathon signed the bill, feeling very smug imagining Claire’s surprise when the flowers arrived, and then the surprise of her suitor when the man realised he couldn’t take her affections for granted, that there was, perhaps, another hound at the hunt. He had expected the action to leave him with a feeling of accomplishment. He’d done something to help a friend. But the feeling eluded him. Why did he feel more like a dog in a manger than that hound at the hunt?

Chapter Nine (#ulink_9b98dfe8-b265-5127-89f6-34703b992ce3)

He was prepared for her that night at the Rosedale ball. He signed not one, but two dances on the little card dangling from her wrist, making sure that the second one was late into the evening to ensure that she stayed.

The first dance was early, a lively country romp that left them breathless and laughing. ‘I haven’t danced like that in ages!’ Claire exclaimed between gasps, reclaiming her breath afterwards. It had been exhilarating. If he’d thought, or hoped, that the waltz had been an anomaly, that he couldn’t possibly feel after a country dance as he had after that waltz, he was wrong. Incredibly so. If anything, he felt even more alive. When he was with her, some of the suffocation of his life receded.

‘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 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.