A Groom of Her Own (Scandalous Affairs Book 1)

by Christi Caldwell

  “It wasn’t your place, Caleb.”

  “I know that,” he said gravely, a stunning admission. “I am… sorry about that.”

  That sent her head whipping about, and tall as he was, she had to crane her neck to search for signs of further sarcasm, but there was only a stark sincerity.

  “I had an obligation to Poppy,” he said, this time joining her.

  Yes, because of his undying devotion to Poppy. Bitterness had a taste, and that taste was rancid vinegar in her mouth. “I don’t need you to look after me,” she cried, storming to her feet. “And certainly not because of my damned sister-in-law.”

  “She is my friend,” he said in the tone of one who thought that settled the damned matter.

  “Well, you aren’t mine, and you don’t get to make decisions for me, Caleb Gray.”

  “Tsk, tsk. And here I thought we’d become something more, sweetheart.”

  Surely she imagined the flash of hurt that glinted in his sapphire eyes. Because that would have meant that he cared about her in some way. A delusion she’d briefly allowed herself last night and early this morn.

  “What do you want to do?” he asked.

  Sighing, Claire glanced past his shoulder to the smoke billowing from the chimney of the Rotted Rooster. What did she want to do? Or, what did she have to do? She’d pledged herself to another. And it would not be long before her brother discovered she’d gone missing. That she wasn’t, as she’d left in her note, returning to their family’s properties in Dartmoor to conduct her art in private. Time wasn’t her friend in this.

  At this point, the only thing she wanted was to finish her journey and be rid of Caleb Gray.

  “Let’s go, Mr. Gray. It is time to leave,” she said tiredly.

  Except, even as she marched on ahead, with him following at a slower pace behind her, she couldn’t fight the unwanted thought that even with his high-handed interference, she wasn’t going to be so eager to be done with him after all.

  Chapter 12

  Well, Claire had taken that about as well as Caleb had expected.

  And by well, he meant not at all well.

  Knowing her as he did, he’d anticipated her outrage. The woman had pride greater than all the army men he’d known combined.

  He’d expected her annoyance. He could count on his hands the number of times when she’d not been annoyed with him or, to be fair, because of him. And all of those instances where she’d not been cross with him had taken place these past two days. An anomaly was what they’d been.

  What he’d not, however, been prepared for was her silence. The hellcat was never without a clever retort, a biting response, or teasing repartee. So why did he miss that? Why did he miss talking with her? Hell, he didn’t like speaking with anyone.

  Of course, seated on the comfortable bench of the carriage he’d had specially commissioned some years ago to accommodate his size, he should be grateful for the blessed quiet he now enjoyed. The less jabbering the two of them did, the better. He’d already shared more with her than he’d ever intended to share with another person, and it had been too much. It was harder when a person let people get too close. Hell, he’d been betrayed by his own brother and fiancée. And Caleb had endured enough misery during his time on that ship, and when he’d returned home, to ever willingly put himself through that suffering again.

  He looked over to where Claire sat engrossed in her work, that place between her dark brown brows that he couldn’t stop noticing puckered in a mark of her concentration.

  Nor did he want to like her more than he’d already come to. His first meeting with the lady, he’d found her availing herself to his sketches and then offering him coin to tutor her. The moment had taken him back to a time when a ship’s captain with an interest in art had tied Caleb’s ability to see the day’s light to whether he’d create the maps the British military had ordered him to make.

  After that, he’d had her pegged as an entitled, self-important noblewoman. Now, it should so happen, he’d discovered a new side of her these past days. And she was, in fact, nothing like the person he’d initially taken her for. She was going her way. He was going his. Hell, he wasn’t even long for this cold, rainy, dreary country. At last, he’d be set free and by the woman he was now headed on to meet.

  A woman he’d not really allowed himself to think about in too many details, beyond the business arrangement agreed upon by her and Wade.

  That was the woman he should be, at the very least, wondering about now. He shouldn’t be thinking about the way Claire attended whatever sketch she devoted her efforts to.

  Or the way that she, deep in concentration, hunched her shoulders.

  Or even the fact that she… enjoyed art. His former fiancée hadn’t understood his love for it. She’d not asked him about his subjects or critiqued his art. Now, he found himself thinking… what would it be like to have a partner in life with shared interests? Perhaps that had been why his engagement had come to an end and why Alicia had found love with Toby. With their mutual love for social functions, they’d enjoyed aspects of Connecticut high society that Caleb had been all too glad to escape in favor of his art. What would it be like to have someone who also found their joy and passion and even misery in the same pursuits? Someone like—

  Caleb blinked slowly. He wasn’t thinking that…? Caleb jolted and shook his head forcefully enough to dislodge that fleeting moment of insanity. Two people who were too alike were a recipe for disaster.

  Case and point, the hellcat journeying to North Yorkshire with him.

  He slid another glance her way. As the conveyance rocked back and forth, Claire intermittently paused in her sketching, but the minute the carriage stabilized, her fingers flew over that page with a zeal he’d possessed once upon a lifetime ago.

  And she remained resolute in the silent shoulder she’d given him.

  Not only had she not spoken to him, she’d not looked at him either. No, all her attention was firmly on the sketch pad propped on her lap, angled toward the opposite window and away from his line of vision.

  Meanwhile, with her pencil scratch-scratching away, he sat here with his own damned sketch pad, open, lost in thoughts about the past and her, but the page was blank but for the lone dots left by him tapping his pencil. Blank, as he always was now.

  Miserably, and emptily, and infuriatingly blank.

  “Are you going to stop that?”

  “And here I thought you were never going to talk to me again,” he drawled.

  “I shouldn’t. It would serve you right.”

  Caleb couldn’t fight the muscles of his mouth from forming a grin. “And you think it would be a punishment?”

  “I know it would, Caleb.”

  She was calling him by his Christian name again. Caleb didn’t care to sort out the bewildering reason for the lightness that filled his chest at that concession. Lowering his sketch pad onto his lap, he leaned across the carriage. “Oh, yeah, sweetheart?”

  Beautifully bold, the hellcat matched him in movement. “Yeah, darlin’,” she drawled in such a perfect, toneless American accent that this time he didn’t even try to stop the grin. “Because for someone who dislikes me, you can’t seem to stop yourself from talking to me.”

  “I like you. Fine enough,” he added gruffly.

  Claire smiled at him with a sickeningly sweet, arcane grin. “Aww, how sweet you are.”

  “I don’t like anyone.”

  “Except Poppy, as you never hesitate to point out.”

  Time and time again, she brought up her sister-in-law. “I…” His words trailed off, and he peered at the enigmatic woman before him as something occurred to him for the first time.

  “What?” she snapped.

  “Why, you’re j—”

  Claire was already giving her head a shake rapidly enough to make Caleb dizzy watching her. “Don’t even—”

  “Jealous,” he finished, squeezing several more syllables into that word.

  The
lady snapped her pad shut. “That is utterly preposterous. I’m not jealous of your feelings for Poppy.”

  His feelings for Poppy?

  “I’m annoyed that you’ve elevated a single person to this mythical status, while being rude and disdainful to anyone else who falls short of her ideal.”

  “I don’t have feelings for Poppy,” he said with a frown.

  Claire snorted. “Sure, you don’t, Caleb.” And with a little, knowing look, she snapped her book open, presented him her shoulder, and—

  “What are you doiiiiing?” she cried when he plucked that sketch pad from her fingers, and when she grabbed for the leather book engraved with her name, Caleb tucked that cherished article behind his back so that she was forced to either touch him or relinquish her hold.

  Her full, pouty mouth tensed, and she instantly sat back in her seat, opting for the course he’d known she’d take.

  “Now,” he went on. “You don’t just get to throw out charges like that about a man and not let him respond.”

  “There is no response necessary, Caleb. None. At. All.” She clipped out each of those single syllables.

  Perhaps not for one of her fancy English gents.

  He narrowed his eyes warningly her way. “You think I’d act on some feelings for your sister-in-law?”

  “No,” Claire allowed.

  The tension dissipated from his shoulders.

  “Because Poppy is desperately and hopelessly and completely in love with my brother.”

  By the way she tossed those words, she expected that barb to land some kind of mark. Which it didn’t. He respected Poppy. Liked her. He’d even enjoyed instructing her, when he’d been certain teaching art students was a hell second only to impressment.

  “Either way, I think the focus isn’t on some imagined jealousy you think I have for your brother, but on some very real jealousy on your part, toward Poppy.”

  Claire’s heart pounded in her chest.

  Oh, God.

  She was jealous.

  And what was worse? Caleb saw.

  He knew it.

  Claire dampened her mouth and strove for breezy. “Why would I be jealous of my sister-in-law?”

  “I don’t know, sweetheart. You tell me.”

  Her heart sank. Unable to meet his eyes, Claire slid her focus out the window at the grimly gray landscape.

  Because… her jealousy was about him. It defied all reason and all sense and was a puzzle with missing pieces that, therefore, could never be sorted. And to her very core, she hated that he might, that he did, have romantic feelings for Poppy. Why should it matter to her?

  Because she liked him. Because he was talented and unrepentant and as honest in his criticism as he was direct in his like or dislike of people. There was none of the false facade worn like a masquerade mask by peers of Polite Society who’d smile to her face and shred her with their tongues the moment she walked way. He was passionate and devoted to work, earning what was his fairly without being handed either accolades or funds for his birthright. She admired him for that and for so much.

  He… fascinated her.

  And he could not be bothered in any way with her. That was, beyond the chore of hand-delivering her to her soon-to-be husband because of his friendship and loyalty to Poppy.

  “Claire?”

  “I thought it was a rhetorical question,” she murmured, smoothing her fingers over the cold windowpane.

  “I don’t waste my time with rhetoricals. If I have something to say, I say it.”

  Which was something else she admired so very much about him.

  Claire resisted the urge to knock her head against the window, except it was his face reflected back in the glass, which only served as a reminder that he was watching. Waiting. Expecting an answer that she didn’t want to give because she didn’t know how to. It didn’t make sense.

  Caleb’s dark brows drew together. “It’s because of that lesson, isn’t it?”

  That lesson?

  She slowly picked her head up.

  That was what he thought this was about?

  The rush of relief was dizzyingly strong. Her body briefly sagged before she caught herself.

  He knew she was jealous, but attributed it to the fact that he’d given Poppy the very thing Claire had tried desperately to secure from him—art lessons. That was safer than these emotions she’d sooner jump out of his rapidly moving carriage than confront head on.

  “You didn’t think me talented enough to teach.” Unlike Poppy. This time, she managed to look his way. “You thought my work unworthy and inferior, and the thing of it was, Caleb?” Claire pressed a fist to her breast. “I did, too. That was why I sought you out.”

  “You expected I’d teach you,” he said without his usual vitriol, a calm, matter-of-fact statement that gave her pause. “You came and believed that because I was teaching Poppy, I’d teach you and your sisters, too.”

  In fairness, she’d thought he wouldn’t reject her for that very reason. However, even as she thought as much, she recognized the semantics there.

  “You helped yourself to my artwork, some of the most intimate things a man”—he nodded her way—“or woman can do. And you just looked.”

  She stared at him, stricken. “I…” She’d not thought of it in that way. “You were… are an artist. I just assumed…” Her words were weak to her own ears.

  Caleb lifted a single dark brow. “You just assumed I would happily and willingly share any part of myself?”

  God forgive her, she had.

  “I’m not a circus clown to be put on display, Claire. I’m a man whose work is no less intimate to himself than yours is to you.”

  That, she could understand. The enormity of that truth slammed into her, ushering in a different moment in time.

  The sketch pad she’d hidden each night, a young woman hiding away her newly discovered love and the renderings she’d attempted of the human form, her own body as she’d seen it. And then the moment she’d been summoned by her mother and walked into the room to find her book—containing those mediocre, but very clear attempts—clutched in her white-knuckled grip.

  Horror.

  Outrage.

  Embarrassment.

  So many different emotions had swirled so that all Claire had wanted to do was flee as far and as fast as she could.

  God help her, she’d done that to Caleb.

  And what was worse… she’d gone to him all but demanding he instruct her and her sisters; she’d been commanding and insistent, and—

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I… didn’t think. I just assumed, and wrongly so, that because you are an artist who shared your work—?”

  “That I want to?” he gently interrupted. “I hate it, Claire. There’s nothing I hate more. Nothing at all. I do it because it’s how I earn my money. I do it because it’s what lets me live an existence where I can keep painting other works.”

  It was, in short, something she couldn’t understand. Being a woman, and a lady at that, she was expected to be a certain way. There weren’t freedoms for any woman. As such, the idea of giving lessons or taking art lessons or selling something she’d created, a rendering that the world wanted to share in, were dreams that only a small few were granted. “Then you are privileged,” she said wistfully.

  He stiffened.

  “I don’t mean it as an insult,” she quickly assured him. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you are. You may dislike with all your being needing to sell your work or share your talent, instead of keeping it as a gift for yourself. But me? My sisters? Any number of women would choose to lose one of their hands they use for sketching, were they to have those abilities, to teach art to others. To not be forced to suffer through some tedious lesson where floral arrangements are the expectation and any deviation is a scandal. To share their work. To be able to support themselves, instead of…” Marriage. She caught herself from finishing that. From explaining to him that a marriage of convenience was
the very reason she found herself making this journey, with him even now. The last thing she needed was for a man who felt a sense of obligation to her and her family to believe she had regrets about her upcoming nuptials.

  Caleb moved his gaze over her face. “Instead of marrying?”

  Of course his artist’s eye missed no detail.

  She forced a wry smile. “If you think having to share your work is distasteful, imagine having to share your body and mind.” Because that was the expectation among peers in the market for a wife. Women were expected to behave a certain way and be a certain bride. “Or having someone tell you that you shouldn’t sketch.” As her mother had done numerous times. Claire waggled her eyebrows. “And then telling you that you can’t sketch…” Which was the fate for so many women.

  Except, instead of his lips forming a matching, commiserative grin, his mouth dropped at the corners, and his expression darkened. “Does your husband have that opinion on your art?”

  Did her husband…?

  Then it hit her. “You think I’m speaking about my fiancé,” she blurted, and then she couldn’t help it. A laugh bubbled up from her chest and spilled past her lips. “No. I needn’t worry about any of that.” Claire held her palms up and slashed them down at her sides. “At all,” she said, speaking in truth. Not because she’d found herself the manner of loving, supportive partner she’d fictionalized for her—and Caleb’s—benefit. But rather, because she’d have a business arrangement that granted her freedoms the majority of women were not.

  Except… her laughter subsided, and her gaze locked on Caleb’s chest.

  That was the assumption she made based on what she had agreed to.

  But the moment she married, she would be bound to… this man, who was a stranger.

  Her thoughts took off at a panicky gallop. He’d asked for one arrangement, one that allowed her freedom of his properties, while he, world traveler that he was, toured the globe. But what if he tired of that? What if he wished for an heir to inherit whatever profits her efforts yielded at his estates?

  For they would be his.

  Claire’s body went hot, then cold, and then hot once more.