Page 71 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
“Will you be here in spring, then?” he asked, so softly that the only reason the words reached her ears was because the wind carried them in her direction.
“I think I would like to be,” she said. She chafed her hands together, rubbing away the chill that had settled, stinging, into the tips of her fingers. “I don’t want a ready-made dream,” she said. “I don’t want to be kept in a cage purpose-built for me. Do you understand?”
“I do.” He slid his fingers through his dark, wind-tousled hair. “Istopped listening to you,” he said. “All those years ago.”
Yes. And then he had been so intent upon garnering her attention, making himself understood at last, that he’d still not heard her. Perhaps she had been entirely too stubborn, too formed by the ghosts of her past to grant him a grace she had long learned had no use. Perhaps he had gone about what approximated a courtship entirely the wrong way. But now, at last, she thought they understood one another.
He’d found a way to give her the choice he’d denied her. Without agenda, without manipulation or coercion or expectation. Regardless of the cost to himself. And once she had had it, there, laid neatly into her hands—it had been such a simple one to make.
She had only needed to make it for herself. And now she could smell in the air beneath the tang of sea salt the long-awaited spring waiting to bloom after a decade of deepest winter.
“I love you,” she said, tipping her head against his shoulder. “But I need you to love me in my way. And that is not in extravagance or luxury for its own sake. The things that mean the most to me are small but precious. Like—”
“Beef pasties,” he said. “And planting daffodils in spring. Together.”
“Yes. Exactly that.” Relieved, she turned her face against his chest and breathed deeply of the scent of washing soda which still clung to his collar. A testament to the competence of his staff, she thought, who could keep his clothes so scrupulously clean that the scent persisted through a full day or better. “There’s so much more love in being known like that than there is in a fine house or a vast, immaculately-tended garden.”
“I need the same from you,” he said, pressing his lips to the top of her head. “I need your time, your attention. I don’t begrudge you your time at the school, but I could not bear to be strangers sharing the same house. And I also need you to let me love you in my way. Not as a replacement for yours, but in addition to it.”
“What does that look like?” she asked.
“It looks like seeing you off in the morning. And perhaps retrieving you in the carriage in the evening, to be certain you’re safe on your way home in the dark. And sometimes…”
Her coat fell off her shoulders as his hands seized her waist, lifted her straight off her feet as if she weighed no more than a sack of flour, and carried her bodily back inside. He paused only long enough to nudge the doors closed behind him, banishing the breeze.
He set her down once more at the edge of the bed, tumbled her back to tuck her legs beneath the rumpled covers. “Sometimes,” he said, “it looks like taking care of you, even if you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself. And making certain you don’t freeze your toes clean off out of sheer stubbornness.”
“I was coming in!” she blustered.
“You weren’t,” he said as he settled beside her. “And your lips were turning blue.”
“EventuallyI was,” she said as he chafed her hands between his own, rubbing some warmth back into her cold fingers. Beneath the counterpane, her toes tingled as the numbness that had afflicted them began to cede to that queer pins-and-needles sensation. “All right,” she allowed, half-resentfully. “Perhaps not soon enough.”
A faint snicker fell from his lips. “I don’t want you to fret over problems I can easily solve,” he said, and once he had judged her hands sufficiently warmed, he laced his fingers through hers. “As long as I’m alive, you will always have someone to turn to,” he said. “But I need you to do it. Sometimes, I need you to tell me what you need from me. In so many words, so that I don’t misunderstand you when it’s most important.”
She swallowed back a ragged little sound, blinking away the sudden sting of tears. “You may find yourself sorely tested in that regard,” she said. “And sooner than you know.”
“How so?”
“I want Grace to stay here with us,” she blurted out. “She—she needs somewhere to belong.” Just as she had. But Grace had not grown up with a sister as she had done. Grace had had no one at all to look out for her, to be on her side. “She needs a home. A family.”
Ian sighed. “Felicity—”
Her fingers clutched his. “Please. I know it is an imposition, but she is my sister.”
“You misunderstand,” he said. “You don’t need to ask my permission for that. This is your home. Your family is mine, now, too. They’re welcome whenever you like.” He managed a rather weak smile. “Even if a fair few of them would prefer to take strips from my hide with the sharp sides of their tongue than engage in civil conversation.”
“They’ll come around,” she said, stifling a sniffle. They would, she was confident, once she made it clear to them that the difficulties they had faced in their marriage had been resolved to her satisfaction. She dabbed at her eyeswith her sleeve. “What will we tell people?” she asked. “About Grace, I mean to say.”
“That she is your sister,” he said. “That is all anyone need know. People tend not to ask questions when one gives them no reason to suspect that there is something worth questioning—and Grace is just a girl, entirely unknown to society. We can tell the truth, and it will not reveal on its own any particular suggestion of impropriety. Lots of people have sisters.”
She supposed he had something of a point, there.
“Frankly, I had assumed that Grace would be staying,” he said. “Her social graces are lacking, as is her formal education. I thought we might hire a tutor for her—at least until she is fit to attend your school. It would be good for her, I think, to be around girls her own age.”
“Yes. Yes, that sounds perfect.” A giddy little laugh rolled up her throat. A problem solved before she had even given voice to it—she had only had to tell him. “I love you,” she said, and she flexed her fingers loose of his to grasp the wrinkled fabric of his cravat lying loose still about his neck, grasping the ends to pull him closer. “I love you,” she murmured once more, and pressed her lips to his.
Chapter Twenty Seven
