Page 22 of Goodbye, Earl (Ladies’ Revenge Club #4)
T he departures started in earnest on the morning of the third day, but it wasn’t until the fourth that the carriages for London were set to leave.
Claire had always hated goodbyes.
“You could come with us to Chipping Camden,” she was saying to Ember, holding her hands like she could keep the other woman in place from the sheer strength of her own fingers. “You might have a good time!”
“I’m certain I would,” Ember replied apologetically, “but with Silas staying, Joe has to get back to the firm. There’s still half a Season to go of ne’er-do-wells and upstarts causing legal mischief, and my man has made himself the center of their particular anchors.
Besides, I’ve a new business to launch, and it’s ready for furniture. ”
“Oh, bother,” Claire tutted, frowning.
Millie and Abe had delivered much the same excuse. It was still mid-Season, the high months for their own business in private investigations, and they could not allow to be gone for much longer if they wanted to meet their margins for the year.
“Besides,” Millie added quietly, leaning in so as not to be overheard, “I think I should be in London before I start to show.”
“To … to show?” Ember repeated, her eyes falling to Millie’s midsection with a little gasp.
“Millie!” Claire shouted, drawing attention from servants and guests alike and immediately coloring. She lowered her volume, cleared her throat, and corrected her posture before adding, “You should have said something.”
“Well, I wasn’t entirely sure,” Millie said with a little smile. “But now I am.”
“I bet you told Dot,” Claire replied testily, only to be met with a little flush and flattening of Millie’s mouth that confirmed that she indeed had. “Shameful!”
Dot arrived at exactly that moment, sighed, and said, “I told you she would know.”
As the servants began to mill about, stacking trunks and bags and valises into carriages, Freddy arrived.
He launched into his own farewells to Ember and Joe, to Abe and Millie, all while Claire glowered at him with her arms crossed, hoping to maintain the illusion that she still expected him to have gone with them today, back to London.
“You will love the games,” Silas was saying to his wife. “They are perfectly absurd. It was the only thing Freddy and I ever agreed was worthwhile when we were small.”
“They are the highlight of the year,” Freddy called, turning from his conference with Abe and Joe to agree. “I cannot wait to see them again.”
Claire narrowed her eyes.
“Is there another Hightower home in Chipping Camden?” Dot wondered, looking from one brother to the other. “Or shall we stay in the inn?”
“We have an old hunting box outside of town,” Freddy answered her, flashing a smile, “and a series of cottages dotted around it. We don’t take up the already limited space at the inn for the event of the year.”
“The hunting box is too decayed to stay in, but you and I will have one of the cottages,” Silas explained, taking his wife’s hand. “You will love it.”
As the gathered group spilled out onto the green to say final farewells, Claire lingered just a little behind, long enough to catch Freddy before he could fully crest the threshold of the front door.
She touched him lightly at the bicep, trying not to feel the warmth of his skin through his clothes.
He turned, surprise in the pale blue of his eyes as they caught hers.
“You are not coming to the games,” she said softly, her lungs squeezing at the whiff of his scent that floated around them when he moved, at that sparkle of bergamot and lavender in the air.
He hesitated, something like a grin looking like it was boiling beneath the surface of his expression as his eyes flicked down to her hand on his arm and back up to her face.
She withdrew her touch, snatching her hand away like he’d burned her.
“You are not coming,” she pressed, setting her jaw as she rubbed her hand with the other. “You’re not invited.”
“Oh?” he said, rubbing his jaw on the smile that kept threatening to erupt there. He inclined his head ever so slightly toward the spot on the lawn where Oliver and Tommy were delivering their goodbyes. “I think you will find that I am.”
“I don’t want you there,” she said, her heart lurching and thumping beneath the still facade of her demeanor. “You can stay here or go back to London instead.”
“Oh, my dear wife,” Freddy replied, glancing once more at the lawn before stepping back into the house, the air around him pushing her a few steps backward in the process, until they were alone in the foyer. “I think you do.”
She gaped at him, her reversing steps bringing her up against a wall. “Of course you think that,” she hissed. “You’re almost always wrong, Freddy.”
The grin finally surfaced, spreading over his face like magma flow. He closed more of the gap between them, his height forcing her to tilt her head back to keep his eye. “Almost always,” he acknowledged, looking down at her, “but I’m not wrong this time. I’m certain of that.”
She grimaced, heat pooling fast and deep in her belly. “It was only a kiss, Freddy. Get a hold on your arrogance.”
“Only a kiss?” he murmured, his fingers coming up to ghost over the curl of her hair that hung over her ear. “Is that what you’re telling yourself?”
“It’s what happened,” she insisted, resisting the urge to close her eyes, forcing herself not to lean closer. “A kiss. Nothing more.”
He chuckled and managed to lean in a little closer, somehow, as though she were not already flattened against the wallpaper.
“You keep saying that, if you must,” he whispered, “like we both don’t know that I was only half a second away from being buried inside you.
If we’d been anywhere else, Claire. If it had lasted even a moment longer … ”
Her breath caught. Her body erupted in heat. She could not move for the blaze of it, whipping over her skin featherlight and boiling.
He made a pained little sound, shaking his head, and dipped his face down to kiss her again, this time without any sort of question or hesitation. He pushed his tongue into her mouth, sampled what he did to her, his fingers still only a breath away from touching her face.
She might have resisted it if she’d had even a moment to consider the possibility that he was going to do such a thing, that he would dare to do it in this room, where anyone might walk past at any moment.
As it happened, she was taken completely off guard, and could not help but to react on instinct, to taste him back, to let a bit of the steel in her spine drip away in heavy, molten dollops, never to be reclaimed.
To her credit, she did not touch him. She did not lift her hands and explore the delicious planes of his chest or tease at the flesh of his throat with her fingers. She did not grip his hair. She did not run her thumbs along his cheekbones.
She only let it happen. Only that.
And when he broke apart from her this time, when he pulled back with wet lips and burning eyes, she did not beg him for more. She stared, yes. She burned. But she did not beg.
He indulged in looking at her, in admiring the mess he’d made, and he sighed. “You are killing me,” he told her. “You are a torment.”
“Me?!” She was struggling to pull air into her lungs, struggling to stay standing. She ducked under his arm and paced backward, holding up a hand like it would stave him off, should he decide to follow.
Strangely, he didn’t. He stood where he was and watched her, something faintly curious in his expression.
“You,” he agreed steadily. “What’s the matter, Claire? It was only a kiss.”
“I … I …” She glanced at the door again, glanced at the congregated people there that she needed to go say goodbye to and wave off like a countess ought. “I am busy, Freddy.”
“All right,” he said, still not moving.
She turned, gesturing in the direction she must go, and said one more time, “You are not coming to Chipping Camden. You are not invited!”
He only smiled at her, one last flash of smug defiance, and let her storm off in the complete and infuriating knowledge that her decree had been utterly disregarded.
“I can’t wait,” he called, just as she stepped onto the lawn.
Because apparently, the torment was destined to be mutual.