“Yes,” Clara said again. “Yes...” She took a deep breath. “I will marry you.”
His fingers tightened on her hips.
“You will?” His voice was a breath.
“I will,” Clara told him. She searched his face, the hesitation. He was shaking with the effort of holding himself away from her, and she tightened her fingers where they rested on his arms. “Kiss me,” she whispered.
He did not need a second invitation. His lips came down on hers and he crushed her to him with a groan. His mouth pressed against her insistently and his hands crept up her stomacher.
It was then that sadness threatened to overwhelm her, for no matter the desire she could feel in his touch and the urgency of his lips, she could feel nothing at all. She was numb, cold, opening her mouth for his tongue and knowing that her eyes should be closed as his were, and her heart racing as his was.
“Clara, I have been waiting for this for years.” One of his hands went to her hair, to the pins that held it
in place, and Clara pulled herself away suddenly.
“We shouldn’t. I should go.”
“Stay with me here.”
“Someone will see,” Clara said, grasping at anything she could think of. The thought of his hands on her body as Jasper’s had been, of him pressing against her, was more than she could bear.
To her relief, he stepped back with a nod.
“I apologize. Forgive me, Clara.”
“There is nothing to forgive.” And there was not. He loved her. She could not fault him that, not when she knew what it was to have her heart set on another.
“I’ll wait,” he promised her, and he snatched up her hand to press a kiss against the fingers. “You’ll marry me?” he asked again, hardly believing it. He had seen her hesitation before. He had suspected she would say no.
No, Clara wanted to cry. I can’t do this.
However there was no looking back. What lay down that path? Nothing but loneliness and regret, and wondering what might have been. Panic was rising in her blood, but she could not think what to say.
“I will.”
She would come to terms with it, she assured herself. Her mother would be pleased. She would say it was a good choice, and she would be correct. They would be well-to-do once more, safe no matter if there was a bad season, secure in their home. Millicent would not grow old in poverty, and Cecelia would make a good marriage.
As she watched him drive away, Clara felt her breath coming shorter and shorter. She wanted to scream. I cannot do this. Every protestation that this was right, a good choice, was wiped away in her panic.
I cannot do this.
She could not go in to tell her mother what she had done, not when the woman would be so pleased. Clara could not say what she had done without confessing that she wished she had not done it, and her mother would say everything she had always said. Or something about cold feet. And honor. And staying true to one’s word.
She hardly realized where she was going until she was halfway across the field, her dancing slippers far too thin for the uneven ground. She looked over her shoulder to the dark windows. Was anyone watching? Did they see?
She did not care. She turned, hiked up her skirts, and ran for Jasper. She had been wrong, she would tell him. None of it mattered. If he could take her away from all of this, none of it would matter. Even if all he could give her was one last kiss, a moment of heady pleasure, she would take it. She had to see him again.
As she reached the cabin, she slowed. Voices sounded within, raised in anger. Clara frowned, something tugging at her memory. It sounded...
It sounded like Solomon.
It could not be. Holding her breath, she picked up her skirts and crept closer to listen.
Chapter 15
“You’re Solomon Dalton?” Jasper stared incredulously at his friend.
“Yes,” the man admitted.