Silk Is For Seduction - Loretta Chase [99]
“Curse you,” he said. “If I’d known you’d make such a fuss, I should have taken you straight back home—I mean, to Clevedon House.”
Home. His home. He’d given her a home when she’d lost hers. Then, today, while she thought of nothing but business, he’d made her a home. Another wave of misery churned through her, making her shudder.
“It was supposed to be a pleasant surprise,” he said. “You were supposed to say, ‘How good of you to think of it, Clevedon.’ Then you were to accept it as your due. The way you accept everything as your due. Really, I hope your clients never see you carry on like this. They’ll lose all respect for you. And you know it’s crucial to cow them. You must rule them with an iron hand, or they’ll run roughshod . . .” He gave up. “Devil take it, Noirot. What’s the matter?”
You. You’re all that’s the matter. Only you.
But the storm was subsiding. She took her hands away from her face. To her amazement, they trembled. She found her handkerchief and wiped her face. It was then she saw how he stood, so stiff, his hands fisted at his sides.
He’d wanted to do the natural thing, she supposed. To move to her and put his arms about her and comfort her. But he wouldn’t let himself. What had he done? Conjured Lady Clara in his mind, and thought, for once, of her and what he owed her?
Marcelline wanted to laugh then, too. The irony was too rich.
Now, when he’d demolished her defenses at last, he’d found the moral fiber to keep away.
“You d-don’t underst-stand,” she said.
“You couldn’t be more correct,” he said.
“No one,” she said, and her voice wobbled again. “N-no w-w-one.” Another sob racked her chest. She bit her lip and waved the handkerchief at their surroundings. “In all my life. No one. A h-home. You made a h-home.”
It was true. No one in all her life had ever made a home for her. Her parents had never stayed in any place for long. There had been lodgings, places to hide, to camp, like gypsies. Never a home, until Cousin Emma had taken them in, and even then, what they had was a place to eat and sleep and work. Nothing in it had belonged to Marcelline and her sisters. Nothing in it was arranged for them. The small rooms on the upper floors of the building on Fleet Street constituted the first true home they’d ever had.
Now this. He’d done all this. He’d done it today, quietly, while she was otherwise occupied. He’d planned a surprise for her.
“Oh, Clevedon, what am I to do?” she said.
“Live in it?” he said.
She looked up at him, into those haunting green eyes, where she’d seen the devil dance, and the heat of desire, and laughter and rage. Oh, and affection, too, for Lucie.
“Someone had to think of it,” he said. “You had so much else to do. The shop was—is—the most important thing, of course. Without it, you have nothing. But you only needed me to stand about and look ducal, and I grew bored.”
And there was that, too: He understood what her business meant to her. In a few short weeks he’d gone from completely dismissive—no, scornful was more like it—to this. She’d read in novels of people who couldn’t speak because their hearts were too full and she’d always thought, Not my black heart.
But now she couldn’t speak, because it was too much, whatever it was. Everything was falling into place, a great puzzle she hadn’t realized wanted solving. Now the pieces shifted into place, and she saw.
“It seemed stupid to distract you with ordinary household matters,” he went on. “As it was, you were undertaking the impossible. But that’s so like you, to undertake the impossible. Clara’s gown. Stalking me in Paris. Who on earth would think to do such a thing? Who on earth could imagine she’d succeed? If you had asked my opinion, I should have told you it was a harebrained scheme—”
“And you’d be right,” she said. “It was a mad scheme.”
“But it succeeded.”
“Yes. Yes, it did.”
Except for one slight miscalculation. She felt her eyes filling. She blinked