examined an illustration of a knight on horseback. Clara curled her fingers into a fist, suppressing the urge to reach out and stroke the lock of hair back.
“Do you still like the King Arthur tales?” she asked, desperate for any topic that would reconnect her with her son. “I remember we read them often when we were at Manley Park.”
Andrew nodded and turned a page. Clara placed a tentative hand on his leg, and experienced a rush of relief when he didn’t pull away from her touch.
“Andrew.”
He glanced up.
“Whatever…” Her voice tangled into a knot. She took a breath. “Whatever your grandfather has said about me, it’s not true. Do you understand?”
Andrew returned his attention to the book. Clara’s hand tightened on the bedcovers.
“I never wanted your father to be hurt. I never wanted to leave you. And I certainly never wanted to give you up to the custody of your grandfather. Will you please believe me?”
He didn’t look at her, but gave a nod so slight that Clara might have missed it had she not been gazing at him so intently. She patted his leg and stood. A small reassurance was better than none at all. She bent to kiss his forehead and whisper good night, then returned to her own bedchamber down the corridor.
While she was glad to her bones that Sebastian and Andrew had developed a quick and strong friendship, Clara could not dispel her pervasive sorrow that Andrew had become so unreachable to her.
She stripped out of her clothes and washed, then unpinned her hair and brushed out the tangles. She crawled into bed with a book of poetry. The words dipped and swam before her unfocused eyes.
Weary, she set the book aside. She hadn’t slept well since the confrontation with Fairfax, her thoughts a confusion of memories and fear. Now a vast, black void had opened inside her heart. The lamp on her bedside table flickered, shadows twisting across the ceiling.
The fear that had lived inside her for so long, the despair she had believed would vanish like a puff of smoke the instant she held Andrew in her arms again…it was still there. Slithering into her blood, coiling in the pit of her belly.
Would she never be free of it? And now that Sebastian was inextricably tangled in their circumstances…God alone knew what the future held.
She pushed the covers aside and tugged on her dressing gown, then padded down the corridor to his room. She knocked and pushed the door open when he bade her enter.
He sat beside the fire, still clothed in trousers and a white linen shirt, his long legs stretched out before him. A tingle swept down Clara’s spine at the sight of him—the reddish glow burnishing his dark hair, the V of skin revealed by the unfastened buttons of his shirt, the rough whiskers covering his jaw.
“Am I disturbing you?” she asked.
“Yes.” His gaze moved over her, a long slow sweep like the glide of his fingertips. “You’ve disturbed me since I first saw you carrying Millicent’s head.”
Clara smiled faintly at the memory. She approached him with caution, but there was nothing forbidding in his expression. She lowered herself into the chair across from him, glancing at the paper he held. The penmanship was scrawled, uneven.
“Is that to your brother’s solicitor?” she asked.
“Yes.” Sebastian set the paper and pen on a small table. “He’ll likely feel obliged to explain the situation to Alexander, but my hope is that things will be settled by then.”
Clara hoped so too, though she had no idea how. Perhaps a different solicitor could offer a solution. She nibbled on her thumbnail and stared at the leaping flames of the fire.
“Will you not dissolve our marriage?” she asked, her voice steady but quiet. She could not bring herself to utter the words divorce me.
“No.” Sebastian’s hand curled into the material of his trousers. “I told you when we first agreed to wed that I would not tolerate even the possibility of separation.”
“But surely that would be less troublesome for you than having to contend with our current situation.”
“No. There will not be another divorce in my family.”
Clara kept her attention on the fire. All that had occurred in the past week had forged a question at the back of her mind, one she had struggled to ignore because she was afraid of Sebastian’s answer. Yet now she forced herself to voice it.
“Do you regret it, then?” she asked. “Agreeing to my proposal? I fear the cost