Sliding her feet off the edge of the bed, she sat up then stood up, ignoring the protest of muscles that had been slaves to tension for too long that day as she went to stand beside him.
‘Did she feel anything?’ she questioned softly.
He released a short laugh that almost strangled into a choke. ‘She died in her sleep with a smile on her face,’ he replied very dryly.
‘She went happily, then, as you wanted her to,’ Claire pointed out. ‘You have to take some consolation from that.’
‘Do I?’ He smiled that brief smile and Claire couldn’t bear it because although he was staring directly ahead the moonlight shone on the moisture in his eyes.
Without thinking twice about what she was doing, she slipped round in front of him, put her arms around him and laid her cheek against his chest. For if anyone needed physical contact with another human being right now, then it was him.
His first reaction was to stiffen at the unexpected gesture. Then, when he came to realise what she was offering him, he muttered gruffly, ‘You are too wise for your age.’
‘Age is not a prerequisite to feel what you’re feeling,’ she countered. ‘Believe me, I’ve been there, so I know.’
His answer to that was a heavy sigh, then he relaxed a little, and his hands left his pockets to link loosely around her. ‘Grigoris said you disappeared as soon as he had told everyone. Where did you go?’
‘I hid in Melanie’s room,’ she confessed, lifting her face up to wrinkle her nose at him in acknowledgement of her own cowardice. ‘I didn’t think I could have coped with their pitying looks if I’d stayed there in my bridal finery, looking about as out of place as anyone could look.’
‘You could have changed into something more—suitable,’ he suggested, refusing to let her off the hook for her desertion.
‘After all the trouble your grandmother went to, to recreate herself in me?’ she protested. ‘She would never have forgiven me!’
He smiled—he actually managed to smile! Claire began to feel dizzy at her success in teasing away his melancholy, even if it was only temporary.
‘But you changed eventually,’ he made wry note, sliding his thumbs against the silk of her robe at the base of her spine, sending a sprinkling of static washing through her.
She tried not to respond to it by concentrating all her attention on the remark. ‘After you took her to the chapel,’ she nodded. ‘I felt she wouldn’t mind if I changed then—don’t ask me w
hy,’ she added wryly. ‘Because I don’t really understand it myself.’
‘It does not need explaining, Claire,’ he murmured very softly. ‘You honoured her passing in the way you thought she would appreciate it the most. I—thank you for that.’
‘No need,’ she shrugged, and began to ease herself away from him as the moment when she could excuse her closeness to him as comfort began to fade.
But he didn’t let her go. Instead his loosely linked arms closed just that little bit tighter around her. And out of sheer desperation she spun in his arms to face the window, so he couldn’t see the kind of control it was taking for her not to show what his touch was doing to her.
‘You know, I won’t hold you to your commitment to Melanie now that your grandmother is no longer here,’ she told him.
‘I thought you understood that I want that commitment,’ he replied.
‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘But it is no longer necessary, is it?’ If it was ever necessary, she added silently. She’d never really understood his motives where Melanie was concerned. ‘Which seems to make a mockery of the whole thing.’
‘Things stay as they are,’ he decreed. ‘And I would prefer not to have this conversation right now.’
‘Oh, of course.’ Instantly contrite for bringing it up when naturally he wanted to think only of his grandmother, she spun around in his arms to offer him a small smile of apology. ‘Sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I just thought I would …’
‘Let me off the hook,’ he inserted for her. ‘When it still does not seem to have sunk in with you that I have no intention of being let off—or to let you off it either,’ he added pointedly.
‘Well, a sham of a marriage seems a bit of a wasted gesture now.’ She grimaced.
‘When is a sham not a sham?’ he pondered curiously.
Glancing up, Claire stopped breathing when she saw the dark gleam inside the hooded sombre eyes. He wants me, she realised. It’s the reason why he came in here, why he broke the rules and crossed my threshold without first gaining my permission. He did not do it to talk about his grandmother but because he needs a woman to lose himself in tonight and that woman is me!
So, what are you going to do about that? she asked herself. But even as the question was filtering through her brain she was going up on tiptoe to brush her mouth against his.
His reply was a shaky sigh against the gentle pressure of her lips. ‘What was that for?’ he asked as she drew away again, trying to sound mocking and only managing to sound dreadfully needy.