Page 29 of For the Love of Clover (Breaking the Rules of the Beau Monde #4)

CHAPTER 29

H ugo stayed clear of Clover until supper, and when they retired to the drawing room, he and his father took over the chess table. Clover sat with his sister, quietly discussing the latest fashions from France, and hours later, so entrenched in the game, Hugo failed to notice when Clover retired.

He stayed downstairs, visiting with his brother-in-law until almost midnight. Corbel invited him to visit his barley farm tomorrow, and Hugo agreed as long as Clover didn’t object to him being gone for the better part of the day.

After midnight, Hugo retired, hoping Clover was fast asleep. He slowly opened the door to his bedchamber, remembering the precise point where the hinges squeaked. A glow from the fire cast across his boot, and he looked up to see Clover seated before the fire, her feet tucked under her nightgown.

“Why are you still awake?” He kept his gaze on her as he closed the door behind him.

She closed the book in her lap and twisted to see him. “I was waiting up for you. Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know. I’m not accustomed to you waiting in my room for me.”

“I can change rooms since this is not our habit. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to throw your night off.”

He scratched his ear more in contemplation than anything, walking to the privacy screen and hiding his dumbfounded features until he couldn’t be seen. “You haven’t thrown it off. I just didn’t expect it.” He washed up, looking at himself in the mirror over the basin stand, imploring his reflection to give him an appropriate response. “I like you here.” His reflection grimaced back at him.

“I suppose that’s convenient then.” She sounded confused and awkward.

He left his archetype in the mirror and joined her on the settee. “The fire is nice.”

“I didn’t start it. You can thank Mr. Gale for that.”

Hugo hadn’t felt this uncomfortable since their wedding night. He took a surreptitious look about the room, knowing there wasn’t a chess table there but checking, nonetheless. “We could go downstairs and play a game if you’d like.”

She looked at him beside her without turning her head. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“It’s a conundrum, isn’t it? I shouldn’t know what to do with a wife who makes my bed her own?” He asked her with a clear, teasing tone in his voice.

“Does the practice of sharing a room give us too much time alone together, do you think?” She bit her lip and raised her eyebrows.

“You know how I feel, sprite. It’s been two days since I’ve thrashed anyone, so I’m not speaking from an abundance of manly adrenaline raging through my veins.” He relaxed, with his arm on the back of the settee, and turned in his seat to see her fully. “Unless you like that sort of thing. Perhaps Corbel will volunteer to let me hit him. Or Gerard. I don’t think my valet would mind.”

“Don’t you dare lay a hand on Mr. Gale, or he may stop creating that wonderful cologne of yours. I like the way you smell. That’s one thing I have missed while being here.”

“And what else?” he asked, a touch more seriously.

“I missed our chess games.” She looked at him shyly. “All of them.”

They played three different kinds of chess. Real chess, seated across from each other. Ghost chess in any room of the house which sported a table, where each would move a piece in passing like a ghost. And then there was the best kind. The one that involved skipping chess altogether and making love instead.

“I did miss you, Hugo. I missed you every time I conversed with your father because the two of you are a lot alike. Your speech patterns are the same, and you look like him. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“He is a handsome devil, isn’t he? I always thought so, you know.”

She started to laugh. “Do you see? The way you say you know at the end of a sentence. He does the same thing. And your smile. So much alike.”

“I wonder what he would have been like had he not been damaged.”

“That’s our problem, isn’t it? All the not knowing and wondering what might have been. If it would have been better. If we would have made different choices.”

“If I would have had a father more involved.” He didn’t say it with daggers. He really meant it. “I credit him now with how hard he has tried, but as a boy, I had no understanding. I suppose I’m trying to make it up to him as much as he’s trying to make amends with me.”

“He’s why you work so hard.”

He quietly nodded.

“And I’ve made that more difficult.”

“Not true.”

“It is,” she said simply. “Granted, it isn’t my fault, but my being here, I’m a part of your burden now. I don’t know how to change that.”

He shifted in his seat, his arm draped across the back of the settee, leisurely tracing the sculpted frame with his fingers. “You are not a burden. Nor are you a little mouse.” He pulled his knee onto the seat, facing her profile, and then asked bluntly, “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

She shut her eyes tight. “I have never thought you an idiot. Not in truth, at least.” She peeked at him, the corner of her delightful mouth pulled into a reluctant grin. “I actually think you are the smartest man I’ve ever met.”

He raised his eyebrows, and his chest expanded with pride, even if only in his mind. It mattered to him what she thought. How she saw him.

“Why would you ask me that?” Her eyes were squinted, and her mouth delightfully askew, the telltale signs of guilt.

“Something Phoebe said to me this afternoon.”

She turned away but not fast enough. Not before he saw her squelch a giggle with her hand to her mouth.

With his hand hanging casually from the backrest, he brushed her shoulder lightly with his fingers. “Tell me one thing. Did you agree with her when she said it?”

“I can’t honestly recall what I said.” She rubbed her lips together, biting into the pillowy pink flesh.

He playfully nudged her shoulder with his hand, and she turned the force of her lethally intoxicating blue eyes on him. “Am I mistaken, or did you do something to your hair after you came up?” It looked neatly brushed and purposely manipulated into a perfect coil. He tugged a piece loose and twirled the silky strands around his finger.

Her shoulders shrugged off the tickle of his fingers, and she pulled the hair from his grip back over her shoulder. “One of the maids helped me brush it out. It’s a perfectly normal thing to do at night if you didn’t know.” There was a bit of sass in her comment, unusually defensive for something so innocent.

“All this preening.” He took another piece of her hair and tickled her ear with the soft, silky ends.

“Stop that. You’re mussing it.” She ducked her head.

“I like it mussed.” He looked behind him, searching the room. “Where’s your hat or bonnet?”

“I only brought the one you gave me before we left. You know how much I hate them.”

“Exactly.” He hopped up and examined the bureau, finding a bonnet lying on a hat box. He brought it to the sofa, and from behind her, he plopped it on her head, gave it a little playful shift, tapped the top, and then pulled it free as she reached to grab it. He tossed it in her lap.

“Why would you do that? I spent good time on this.”

“For what reason?” With his hands gripping the backrest, he leaned over her, and she looked upside down at him.

“None of your concern.”

“Really? Because I fear you did it for me and then waited up. But then you know how much I like it this way.” He took the coil, unwrapping it until she had several strands of curls hanging down her back.

“You’re a nuisance, is what you are,” she said without a hint of displeasure. She twisted and hit him with her hat.

He made a feeble grunt as if she’d cuffed him in the stomach. “What should I do with this?”

“Throw it away.” She tried to fix her hair.

He tossed the hat across the room, where it landed on a rail chair against the wall. “Leave it.” Once again, he freed the locks and kissed her forehead while she looked up at him.

She combed her fingers through the yellow strands and fluffed it. “Better?” she asked, clearly daring him.

“Actually, yes.”

She sighed. “All right. I did it for you. Are you satisfied with yourself now?”

“Not quite.”

“Hugo?” she said forcefully. He could feel a playful retaliation coming. “Where’s your music box, and why haven’t you shown it to me? Your sister… you know the one who called you an idiot?” She smiled a touch too triumphantly for her question to be anything but cheek.

He cocked a brow and folded his arms.

“She said it’s in this room.”

With his head tilted, he bounced on his toes, examining her figure and smiling wickedly. “Make me an offer.”

“To see it?” she asked in disbelief.

“See what exactly? I’m confused.”

“Hugo. Don’t be coy. It’s not manly.”

He laughed out loud. “I see. You’re trying to destroy any desire I might have to muss that hair the way I really like it.”

“No. I’m actually trying to get you to show me the music box.” She turned fully around, kneeling on the sofa and gripping the backrest. Her breasts were far too enticing to concentrate.

When his gaze met hers, she lifted one eyebrow and managed to keep from smiling while he couldn’t stop himself from grinning ear to ear. “We’ll make it a treasure hunt. It’s in full view, I assure you.”

“Where?” She looked about and struggled to right herself, then stood. “Give me a hint.”

She appeared every bit the sprite he called her, with her bare toes peeking from under her white night rail and her hair like she’d just come out of the wind. He wanted to devour her, but he put on his deepest smile and wracked his brain for a hint. “It’s in an unusual box.”

Her hands went instantly to her hips. Her head tilted adorably to the side.

“An item specific to me.”

Her gaze darted this way and that, and she searched the corners of the room. She looked in the wardrobe and in the top bureau drawer. She even flipped aside the curtain and ran a hand over the empty windowsill despite him already telling her it was in full view. Then she approached the secretary. It had two short drawers, side by side, and she pulled each open. He heard her rummaging through the paper, and he smiled. “You are getting warmer if you need any help. But I’m sure it’s not a piece of paper.”

She served him a gaping look that said idiot louder than her voice could have carried it in an echoing cave. He just chuckled. The drawers slid into place, and she examined the surface of the secretary, sliding the inkpot to the side and then pulling the quill from its base. She turned it to see the bottom.

“You are very hot now.”

She pivoted, holding out the quill stand. “It’s empty.”

“So it is.”

She sighed. “Is it worth finding?”

“I’m not the one interested. I already know what it looks like. It plays a little Irish ditty. A pleasant tinkling sound. You might like it.”

“There’s nothing else here, but the inkpot, and I’m not about to get ink all over my… hands,” she said, the last part slowly like a revelation. Holding out his hands, he waggled his fingers, ink stains and all. She snapped up the ink pot and opened the top.

The sight almost made his heart stop. She was looking at something so personal to him, so important that he’d always left it here. The tinkling music made him feel slightly melancholy, except this time, her smile and the sparkling gaze she gave him, so full of hope it crushed him, sent his soul soaring.

“Why didn’t I guess this? Of course it would be an inkpot. You’d write with your own nails if you had to.” She gave a jaunty smile, biting her lip and rocking on her toes with satisfaction. She closed the lid, stroking the pewter cast of a rabbit. “Why a rabbit?”

“Because as a boy I used to sit at the edge of the woods where I befriended a wild hare. It was quiet there and gave me room to think.”

“You’re a dreamer.” She said it with such reverence.

“I like to think I’m a doer .”

“Dream first, do later.” She stroked the carved fur and then set the box down. “I never looked very hard for it, thinking I was intruding on your life somehow.”

He walked up behind her, enveloping her in his arms, pulling her back against his chest, and resting his chin atop her head. She sighed against him. His heart picked up tempo. “You are not intruding on my life, Clover. You’re making it better.” She caressed his hands against her middle.

“Is that the truth?”

He turned her in his arms. He kissed her tenderly.

“Prove it to me?”

He took her to bed and undressed her carefully, kissing every inch as he removed her arms from the robe, her breasts from the bodice, her legs from the gown. He left the candles burning. They’d made love in the middle of the day, by God, and he wanted her to see him. There were no questions in his eyes. The panting need for her was more than attraction. When she had met her climax, and he’d poured himself into her soul, he held himself to the spot against his forearms, and he gazed down at her. “I could stay here all night.”

“You think you could hold this position?” She raised a brow. “What I mean is, I know your strength, but can you hold this position all night?” The meaning was comically clear as his structurally sound cock made a small retreat. She giggled.

“Probably not, but you’re certainly not helping.”

She wiggled her bottom. “What if we switch positions? Might that entice you again?”

He shut his eyes and grinned. “Aha, yes. Just like that, one word from you and my body responds.”

The smile left her face, and she stared at his mouth. Her throat convulsed. He challenged her, almost like a dare to even try not to love him. Their gazes collided, and she lifted her arms around his neck and pulled him down, squeezing tightly, even her legs went around him, and he held her. He felt her chest quake. “Cry, Clover. It’s all right to cry, you know.” He felt a hot tear drop on his ear and trail down the crease of his neck. “What we have is a good thing, love.”

She nodded against his shoulder. She took a deep breath. “You feel so good, Hugo. How could this not be wonderful?”

He pulled back. “We’ll just keep mixing things up. Next time, you’re on top.” He smiled down at her, and she returned it without reservation. He was winning her. He knew he was.