the heat of his body behind her. She wrapped her arms around her middle and struggled to contain her shaking.
“Me?” she whispered.
“What would anyone of consequence in Surrey have to say about Mrs. Clara Winter, should I ask?”
Clara stared unseeing out the window. Her reflection in the glass stared back at her. “They would tell you she was so distraught by her husband’s untimely death that she fled to London for recuperation. They would tell you that she sees her son regularly when Lord Fairfax brings the boy to London. They would tell you she has crafted a quiet, respectable life for herself in honor and memory of her beloved husband.”
Silence again, as if Sebastian were analyzing all she said, working it through his mind like a mill separating the wheat from the chaff.
“But,” he said quietly, “they would all be horribly wrong.”
“Does it matter?”
No. To anyone else, it mattered not a whit. The story was romantic and tragic, and they all loved to speak of it as if it were something from a penny novel and not ripped from the pages of Clara’s life. As if it hadn’t burned her soul to ashes.
Clara whirled around, a rush of hot anger crawling up her throat.
“It doesn’t matter at all, not to them,” she snapped, some part of her shocked by the way she allowed control to slip so easily through her fingers. “If you agree to this, you would marry a virtuous, well-bred widow, a peer’s daughter whose son lives a fine life with his grandfather in Surrey. No one would know anything of Wakefield House or my desperation to have Andrew again. Except…”
“Us,” Sebastian finished.
Us. The word flowered in Clara’s soul, pushing a fresh stalk of green through the dry, cracked dirt.
“Us,” she whispered.
No. There could be no us in a marriage of practical ends.
Could there?
Sebastian stepped closer, his gaze fixed on her. He moved with a confidence that belied his initial surprise, as if her revelations had yielded for him some conclusion. As if he’d already decided upon his response.
“It could…it could be a marriage in name only,” Clara stammered, voicing the thought that had twisted her dreams, the condition she already knew he would never accept.
“Name…” Sebastian stared at her for a moment, then gave a short laugh. “That’s what you think, is it? That I would assent to a marriage in name only?”
“Well, a p-pragmatic union is one that…”
Her remark faded as he stepped closer, studying her in that unnerving way he had, as if she were some unusual species of insect that he’d happened to find flitting about the house. She stared at his cravat, the perfect knot nestled at the base of his throat.
“Make no mistake, Clara,” he said, a low warning rippling beneath his words. “I desire neither a marriage in name only, nor one that holds even the faintest possibility of separation.”
Her heart throbbed. “I…I understand.”
“Five days, then.”
“Five…?”
“My brother wants the plans by Tuesday next,” Sebastian said. “If you find them by then, I will consider marrying you.”
“You will consider marrying me?” Her spine stiffened. “Why should I agree to help you without any commitment on your part?”
“Because this gives you time to reappraise your request,” Sebastian said. “If you conclude that my conditions are unacceptable, you may change your mind and withdraw your proposal.”
He stepped away from her and turned to the door. “You must be very certain you know what you ask of me, Clara. And what I shall ask in return.”
Chapter Six
Smoke and noise coated the air of the Eagle Tavern. Tankards thumped against the wood of the trestle tables, voices rose in argument over card games, the fire hissed and snapped. The familiarity of the disorder eased some of Sebastian’s apprehension over Clara’s proposal earlier in the day. Despite all she had revealed, he couldn’t prevent the sense that she had not told him the entirety of her story.
He sat hunched over the piano, trailing his left hand over the keys without thought or pleasure. He put his right hand into position on the keys and sounded a C-major chord, then waited for the strings’ reverberations to cease. He played the chord again in its first inversion, then again in its second. He imagined a melodic line in the bass, something dark and menacing like the advance of gray fog at twilight.
For as long as Sebastian could remember, sound had been infused with color. Voices, noise from the street, the crackle of a fire. In music, every note