She shivered.
Night’s Keep.
There was no more apt name for the soaring keep outside the carriage window.
It was in the sorriest state of disrepair on the outside, so she could only begin to imagine the sad conditions on the inside. It was a contrast to the home she’d lived in for the better part of her life, those stolen estates that had been perfect in every way, but for the stain of sin attached to them. This was a place that had been stripped to the bottom and left empty.
It was… a blank slate.
A clean canvas.
Those words whispered in her mind, tantalizing, hopeful. And they managed to dry up her tears, clearing her vision so she could see—truly see—what was before her.
Just like that, some of the sadness at missing those she’d left behind dissipated.
“Miserable-looking place, no?” Caleb murmured, an almost hopeful quality to his tone. “This ain’t a place you’d want to stay.”
She frowned.
She wanted to resent him for passing judgment on her new residence, but couldn’t. Because she, too, had seen what he had. Nor was he wrong. It did look miserable. “I think it magnificent,” she said softly.
He strangled on a laugh. “What?”
“It is a place in need of attention and resurrection, for sure.” That was something she knew all too well. “But you don’t just abandon something because it isn’t what it once was. You don’t forget about it and leave it to rot alone.” Claire touched a finger to the windowpane. The cold penetrated the fabric of her glove. “There are stories in the stone, Caleb. There is beauty in the wilderness and rawness. The kind that makes an artist take note. It’s not a perfect floral arrangement-type place.” She smiled. “And it is perfect for it.”
In that moment, she knew everything would be all right. She might not have the future she’d dreamed for herself, or love, or even the connection she’d forged these past days with Caleb. But it was still going to be… all right.
She felt Caleb’s gaze on her and looked over.
His stare penetrated her as he moved his gaze over her face in the same way she’d observed him eyeing paintings.
Energy filled every corner of the carriage, sucking her breath and leaving her frozen.
“Finished, sir,” the driver called out, and the moment was shattered.
The driver had had to stop to drag a downed branch from the path.
A moment later, the carriage resumed rolling along the drive toward her future, and the husband who awaited her.
“Claire, we’re gonna need to talk,” Caleb began, his voice strained.
“You can’t change my mind, Caleb.”
The carriage rocked to its final stop, and there came a flurry of activity. With a handful of servants streaming out of the immense keep, along with a tall, wiry, blond fellow close behind, sprinting down the steps and toward the carriage.
Oh, my God. Her heart pounded. This was him. The man she’d marry.
Possessed of deeply tanned skin and a decisive nose, this broad-browed man was… not whom she’d been expecting. In her mind, he’d been aged. With at least two decades on her, heavy wrinkles, and graying hair.
Not this man, handsome in a classical way and strong in a non-Englishman kind of way, and yet, she found herself preferring the rougher, heavier features of the man across from her.
Claire looked to Caleb once again. “I am doing this. Unless you have reasons that I should not?” she ventured. Reasons that mayhap included… her and him?
Her breath hitched painfully. Good God, where had that mad thought come from?
“Yeah, that’s the thing I really need to talk to you about, Claire,” he said quickly. “You see—”
The driver drew the door open.
“Just a minute!” Caleb snapped, and the servant immediately fell back.
“What is it?” Claire asked softly.
Except, it appeared they were out of time, after all.
“You’re late,” the gentleman—her husband-to-be—called up.
Claire frowned. Well, this was a rather auspicious beginning that highlighted all the reservations Caleb had and the ones she likely should have carried.
And then she registered another peculiar detail—the upward inflection of his tone, which wasn’t quite the King’s English, with shades of nasality.
“I said I need a minute,” Caleb barked.
Her heart knocked around her chest at that possessive display on Caleb’s part, even as she should worry about how this looked and the questions her fiancé would likely have.
The panel was again drawn open, this time by Claire’s husband-to-be.
“Yeah,” the gentleman shot back. “Well, ye don’t have many minutes—oh.” His gaze landed briefly on Claire, and a frown furrowed his brow before he glanced Caleb’s way. “Your bride—”
His bride?
“—is yet to arrive, but likely due any moment. I’ve had the household readied as much as possible given the constraints I’m—”
“For the love of God, Wade, this is not the time for this,” Caleb hissed.
And then all manner of peculiar details began to assemble themselves. This man was not her husband-to-be, but rather, Wade Harrison, the man with whom she’d corresponded. And he and Caleb knew each other. And they were speaking about a bride—
Claire’s heart forgot its function, and she felt her eyes drifting wide as she stared unblinkingly at Caleb.
A guilty-looking Caleb.
Your bride is yet to arrive, but likely due any moment.
Maybe it was the length of the journey she’d undertaken, or the muddled state of her emotions and thoughts since she’d met up with Caleb at the Rotted Rooster, but none of this made sense.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered, her voice threadbare.
The gentleman, Wade, looked at Claire, then Caleb, and then promptly drew the door shut.
“What is happening?” Her pitchy question echoed around the carriage.
The moment Wade had gone, Caleb spoke. “I was trying to tell you,” he said gruffly. “The man you were headed to meet and marry… may have been me?” He flashed a grin that could be described only as sheepish.
No. It was… impossible. She was coming to meet an English, landholding gentleman who would turn the management of his estates over to her and allow her a new future. “Is that a question?” she demanded, her voice climbing several decibels.
Caleb grunted. “Not a question. It’s me. I’m the fellow.”
Claire rocked back on the bench as her mind tried to play catch-up with all the terse words he’d spilled. “What game are you playing?” she demanded. “If you’re doing this to prevent me from meeting the man I’ve agreed to wed because of Poppy—”
“This isn’t because of Poppy,” he interrupted. “And it’s not some ploy.” Fishing a note out of his jacket, he handed it over.
Claire stared blankly at the folded velum, and then ripping it from his fingers, she snapped it open and read the handful of sentences.
Your bride is due to arrive at the coaching inn the first week of the month. For the love of God, man, this time don’t be late.
~W
Claire recoiled, and a shocked hiss of air spilled from her lips. Her body went hot, and then cold, and then back to hot again. Energy whipped through her. She needed to escape. To run. To flee.
Reaching past him, she shoved the door open, and ignoring his calls, Claire grabbed her valise and jumped down.
Except, the long carriage ride had done her muscles no favor, and as the graveled ground rushed up to meet her, she stumbled. Tightening the death grip she had upon her belongings, she took several steps forward to put distance between herself and Caleb Gray and his carriage and this… sudden mess that was her life.
Nay, not sudden. Her life had been a mess for some years now.
She stared blankly at the horrified servants staring back at her, the stone keep framed perfectly beh
ind them, and Claire came to an abrupt stop.
Wade, whoever the hell he was, said something to the staff, and the small collection of men, women, and children rushed off.
“In fairness, you didn’t use your name,” Caleb called after her.
In fairness… he’d somehow pin this on her?
“To protect my identity until I was wed,” she cried, shaking the page at him. “And you concealed yours.”
“I didn’t need to be some source of gossip for the British.”
Well, they’d been alike there.
Claire’s eyes slid shut. Her bag slipped from her fingers, and just like that, the light she’d found from the dream that had sustained her these days went out. There was no Night’s Keep. There was no husband. There was just Caleb Gray. The man who didn’t like her, and who might or might not love Claire’s sister-in-law, and who’d deceived her. After all they’d shared…
Oh, God. Those latter details were the silliest, most wrong ones to focus on. What he felt or didn’t feel about Claire was second to just one sobering, staggering truth—she’d come all this way to begin a new life, and now there was nothing.
Claire forced her eyes open, aware of Caleb, silent and brooding, staring at her, his gaze as unreadable as it had always been—nay, as it was before these past days together.
Bringing her shoulders back, Claire collected her valise and then stalked toward what would have been home. She had to figure out just what in hell she was going to do now.
Chapter 17
Caleb had known Wade for almost all of his adult life. They’d been best of friends, through the worst of hells. That friendship had continued beyond the moment they’d been sprung from the British prison ship and continued to this day.
To this very exact one.
He was going to kill him.
Pacing back and forth across the floor of what might have been an office—it was nigh impossible to tell with all the coverings draped over the room’s furnishings—Caleb paused periodically to glare at the other man.
Tugging the fabric from some furniture and tossing it into a heap on the floor, Wade looked way more focused on righting the damned household than fixing this damned mess.
“This is who you picked?” Caleb raged. “The Baroness of Bolingbroke’s sister-in-law?”
Wade caught two ends of a dusty cloth and yanked it off with a crisp snap, revealing an enormous mahogany desk. “She wasn’t listed as a Poplar.” His friend lifted his shoulders in a shrug and then tossed the white sheet atop the mound in the corner of the office.
A shrug?
Caleb growled.
His friend would just… shrug?
“I should replace your ass.”
His only friend in the world snorted. “You couldn’t find someone.”
Caleb stopped midstride and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Yeah, that’s fair enough,” he muttered. “Where’s the damned file?” And why hadn’t he paid more attention to it? All blame fell squarely with Caleb, who’d been too busy to attend those important details.
Wade rushed to fetch a brown leather folio from a sheet-draped sofa. “I had no idea, Caleb,” he said when he returned with the folio in hand. “None. Nothing in her application mentioned anything about her family or her birthright, or any of it.”
Either way, being irate with Wade, who couldn’t really be blamed, wasn’t going to fix this mess of a situation he found himself in.
Caleb plucked the file from the other man’s hand, and reaching inside, bypassing the actual advertisement, he withdrew the notes and sheets of paper about his business arrangement.
A business arrangement that all this time had involved, of all people, Claire Poplar. As farcical as the situation was, it’d almost be laughable if it weren’t so damned miserable.
Caleb unfolded a note and read the words written in a delicate, careful scrawl.
Dear Mr. Harrison,
I have never done anything like this before, and given the circumstances, I trust neither have you. As you will see in the attached pages, I meet a number of the criteria listed in your requirements for a wife. I would also mention, though I’m not an artist, I spend much of my time alone sketching and painting, and will relish the opportunity to have the freedom to do that without the usual constraints placed upon me as an unmarried woman.
Caleb paused and glanced squarely at his friend.
“I… thought another solitary artist might be the way to go,” his friend murmured sheepishly, knowing precisely the part Caleb had stopped upon. “She likes her time. You like yours.”
“You were hoping to partner me with someone who possessed shared interests,” he said tersely.
Color splotched Wade’s cheeks, and he moved back and forth on his feet. “There might have been that, too.”
Of course there had. Giving his head a furious shake, Caleb finished reading.
I know this isn’t the most romantic of arrangements, for either of us, and yet, what it potentially offers has a different romantic allure.
Yours, C Ralpop
Ralpop? Her damned name backward. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
His friend held out a hand. “Surely you see from looking through that file that she was a perfect match for you and what you were looking for.”
Oh, hell. It’d all been there. Not that it was Claire, per se.
“I don’t see that,” he snapped. Caleb folded the note along its neat crease and pointed it his friend’s way. “I said no shared interests.”
Except, he’d had a responsibility to take more of a role in all of it. He’d have seen what Wade had failed to note, the wistful quality of the author, the veiled hints of romanticism contained within these lines. And he’d have run as far and as fast away from this applicant as his legs could have carried him, and then he’d not be here, and neither would she.
You’d also not have known these past days together either.
Yeah, that was true, and it probably would have been for the best. No, it would have been. Strangely, though, he found himself oddly bereft at thinking of these days having never happened.
Cursing, Caleb reorganized the pile and made to stuff all those damning papers back inside the folder, but paused. Holding on to that note, he stuffed it inside his jacket pocket and returned the rest to their proper place.
Wade was already there, waiting with an outstretched hand, readily anticipating Caleb’s need to be free of the file.
“What the hell am I going to do?” he demanded, his voice entreating to his own ears.
“Yeah, there’s the exhibit in France,” his friend said. “As it is, you’re going to be late.”
The exhibit in France?
Caleb lowered his brow, and then it occurred to him just what his friend was saying and what he’d thought Caleb had been speaking about. Because yes, that should be and would be the expectation—his art was his everything, and this marriage was to have freed him up. He was to depart soon for Paris.
Only, that wasn’t what he’d been thinking about or talking about.
Her face flickered to his mind’s eye, as she’d been upon their arrival, her blue eyes almost luminescent as she’d studied the keep with a mix of sadness and hope. And then the sight of her as she’d come to the same horrifying realization Caleb had. Before she’d stalked off as proud as if she were, in fact, the owner of this crumbling pile of stone.
“I meant about the damned need for a wife to oversee this property,” he said, scrubbing his hands up and down his face. This land was supposed to fill his pockets so he could live freely for his art.
How damned… callous it all sounded as he repeated those words silently in his mind.
“You can always marry her,” his friend ventured.
Caleb snorted. “Yeah, right. Next?”
“Hear me out,” Wade persisted. “She’s in the market for a husband. You’re in the market for a wife. She fits all the requirements you and I put forward. So… why not? She’s
—”
He cut him off this time. “She’s Poppy’s sister-in-law, and worse…”
She was a romantic. She might claim to be content with a business arrangement, but the woman he’d come to know these past days had spoken about love and had dreamed of it. She wanted more for herself. As she should. She deserved it.
But he couldn’t give her any of that.
“What?” his friend pressed him.
“There’s also the matter of the fact that we’d kill each other.” Even if they got along some of the time, they were oil and water.
“But—”
“It’s done,” Caleb clipped out between clenched teeth, effectively putting an end to Wade’s attempts at marrying him off to Claire.
“All right.” Wade inclined his head. “Now, what are you gonna do with her?”
Yes, there was that, because she was now his responsibility. Caleb frowned. For some reason, it felt wrong to think of Claire in that way. Yes, that’s what this had started out as. But over these past days together, she’d become something of a friend—and a lover. As such, her well-being and his need to see her settled was about far more than her connection to Poppy or any sense of obligation Caleb felt to her sister-in-law.
“I’d sent word for her brother, but that was before I realized—”
“That you were the prospective bridegroom?” his friend interrupted, a laugh bursting from the other man’s lips. “Why, it was as though, even subconsciously, you were trying to stop yourself from marrying the girl.”
He lifted his middle finger. “Go to hell. I was going to say before she confirmed that her brother is looking after their other sister.”
Understanding dawned in Wade’s eyes. “Ahh. I got it. So there’s no one coming, then.”
“No.” Which meant they were going to have to find another way to get Claire back to London and the comfortable life awaiting her there. “At least, not yet.”
I would see me as a burden, the poor, unwed, spinster aunt, and I don’t want that, Caleb.
A life she didn’t want.
It’s not your problem. She’s not your problem. You’re not in a position to sort out her happiness or unhappiness.
A Groom of Her Own (Scandalous Affairs Book 1) Page 17