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Chapter Twenty-Nine
In the month that followed, James divided his days between his ordinary business dealings, the ramifications of the fire on his enterprise, and the greater civic duties related to the fire as one of the major warehouse owners.
The London Warehouse Council called frequent meetings regarding the clean-up and reconstruction, as well as proposed changes to the funding and organization of fire brigades. He and Chavers took turns rotating through the various committees, and the meetings for his own business.
The weeks of sustained demands had sapped him.
Despite the mental and physical fatigue, however, he was awake now, only a few hours after falling asleep.
Clara lay next to him. He inched closer until he shared her pillow, listening to her even breathing.
It was their first night together in over a week. Her flow had started. Then he needed to travel. His first thought upon waking in Birmingham hadn’t been that he was returning to London, or to his home, or to his countinghouse, or to the scene of the fire.
He was returning to her.
Instead of paying attention to discussions in Birmingham about the price of cotton, he’d thought of Clara back at her Mayfair townhouse.
Last week, Clara’s moans of discomfort had woken him in the middle of the night. Her flow had started suddenly, and she was experiencing painful spasms. He held her for the first few minutes, his hands over her womb, rubbing softly.
In a mad way, the comforting act felt more intimate and compelling than sex. It felt right that she hadn’t woken alone, hurting. He didn’t want for her to be back in her spinster bed, bleeding by herself.
But after a short time, she patted his hand and rose to dress. The coachman was awakened, and James risked accompanying her all the way, holding her quietly in the carriage while her servants were alerted to her arrival.
She walked up the steps to her house, rushing in without looking back, and he wanted to call out to her to come back to him.
He resented the deprivation of her company and conversation simply because she had her courses. After the last time, he’d requested that he at least be allowed to call on her, and she refused, citing the less private setting of her house. As a woman living alone, visitors attracted notice.
James didn’t care anymore about discovery, or any of the damned terms upon which he and Clara had agreed. The fire had all but burned their relevance away.
The realization that he loved her was the final straw.
Today on the train back to London, James and three high-level employees, including Chavers, occupied a first-class railway carriage built of teak and iron.
The compartment was richly appointed, but he didn’t notice the intricate patterns on the wallpaper or the carpet; he didn’t relax against the thick cushions; he didn’t appreciate the bucolic landscape.
His colleagues didn’t observe him tapping his foot or wearing a besotted grin, nor did his gaze wander lazily as he daydreamed of a perfect life with his beloved. When Chavers occasionally glanced over at him, he found James quiet and intent.
James sat as if he were alone in the carriage, willing it along the noisy tracks to close the distance to Clara. Each sway and jerk, each jolt and correction of the six cast-iron wheels brought him closer to her.
As the train transported him closer to London—nay, to Clara—James’s feelings burst from their confines.
Loving Clara was the solace he never knew he needed. Before he met her, James had thought himself brutally aware of his own imperfections and broken parts.
He misjudged.
His love for her spilled over like a warm, glowing oil. It illuminated as it crept, revealing not just cracks but crevasses, and spread like a balm, soothing the nicks and the cuts in his soul.
Her love hadn’t fixed him, nor made him whole. The scars left from the early loss of his parents remained, raised and red. The wounds from the Robertsons’ conditional affection and then total rejection ached as ever. His pride still stung from the years of judgment that his bloodline and his home country were inferior.
But strange elixir that it was, the love not only soothed his imperfections, it emboldened him to believe.
He always knew that a warm family life was possible—for others.
He didn’t doubt the existence of love; he believed it unattainable to him.
He’d seen men buoyed and supported by their women, but never expected it for himself.
Clara taught him that he wasn’t disqualified; now, he could imagine it all for himself.
