Claire made her way over to the place setting that had been set out across from the still-standing Mr. Harrison. As she took her seat, she glanced around the long, mahogany table, but there were no additional place settings, just the two.
Not three, which indicated there would not be another joining them this night.
This, her last night. And it appeared then that there wouldn’t be any more opportunities to steal time with Caleb here at Night’s Keep. That the moments had come… and gone. There would, of course, still be the carriage ride back to London, because he was too honorable to let her return on her own. Tears stung her eyes, and she stared down at the silverware, blinking several times in a bid to rid herself of those useless crystalline drops.
Feeling Mr. Harrison’s stare on her, she made herself attend the one person who apparently would be her dining companion that night. Claire drew forth from a lifetime’s worth of agonizing training in decorum and smiled at Caleb’s man of affairs.
Several maids came forward with the evening fare, which they proceeded to dish onto Claire’s and Mr. Harrison’s plates. The experience here was so unlike the formal dining her mother had insisted on over the years, with courses brought out one at a time in slow succession, turning what should have been a functional experience into a tedious, interminable one. As Claire sliced into the tender shoulder of roast beef, she briefly paused. She could have been so happy here… together with Caleb. Without all the ceremony of London.
“Disappointed, I take it?” Mr. Harrison called across the table, bringing Claire’s head snapping up.
“On the contrary. The meal is quite perfect,” she assured.
His narrow lips twitched. “I was talking about the company. As in… finding me here.”
And not Caleb.
What he was saying registered, and Claire felt a mortified rush of heat splash her cheeks. “I don’t know what you’re suggesting, Mr. Harrison,” she said in a brusque manner intended to put him off.
Except, he only grinned. “I meant you were hoping to find Caleb, and not me, here.”
Oh, good God. Under the table, she curled her toes tightly into the soles of her slippers. She’d been so very transparent in her feelings for Caleb that this man—a stranger—had seen it.
“No,” she blurted. “Not at all.”
He snorted.
And it was that rude little intake of air that snapped her patience. “Tell me, Mr. Harrison, is bluntness a trait of all Americans?”
Taking his glass of claret, he held it aloft. “Only in the good ones,” he toasted, following that declaration with a wink, startling a laugh from Claire.
Just like that, the gentleman managed to diffuse both the humiliation of getting caught pining for Caleb and the misery of finding him absent on their last night together. And Claire did the only thing one could do when being called out so spectacularly. She lifted her glass in a mock salute, as well.
“It’s not you, you know,” he explained after he’d returned his glass to the table. Grabbing his fork and knife, he proceeded to cut a piece of roast beef. “He finds himself lost in his art… all of the time. It has nothing to do with you.”
“You mean it has nothing to do with him disliking me?” she countered drolly. For whatever bond they’d forged, they still, as he’d pointed out, remained at odds over so much.
Wade pointed his fork her way. “Absolutely he does not dislike you. No way. He’s a surly bastard with everyone—”
“Ahem.”
They looked to the end of the table to where the maid glanced pointedly at Mr. Harrison.
When Wade spoke, he dropped his voice. “He’s a surly bastard with everyone, but he’s also singularly focused on his work. Everything is about his art. Or it was until he was late to arrive because he was helping you.”
“Because of an obligation to my sister-in-law,” she said softly. Anything else the man before her interpreted from Caleb’s escort was wrong. It had all stemmed from her relationship to Poppy.
“Wrong. Caleb Gray doesn’t make himself obligated to anyone. That’s how he’s gone through life. Everything falls second, third, and never first to his work. But then, there he is frolicking in the snow with you.”
“You’re making more out of it than there is.” Caleb who couldn’t even bring himself to consider a formal arrangement with her. He’d rather go marry another woman and set her up as mistress of his household. Oh, God, the pain of that threatened to cleave her in two.
“Why? Because he won’t marry you? I suspect he won’t marry you because he’s afraid. He knows he cares about you, and it’s… it’s something he’s going to have to figure out for himself.”
Mr. Harrison spoke only as one who truly knew a person well might. And that reminded Claire that for everything Caleb had revealed to her, for all the pieces he’d shared, there were even more shrouded in mystery.
“How do you know one another, Mr. Harrison?” she asked.
“I’ve been friends with him longer…” He gripped the side of the table. “We were prisoners aboard the same ship.”
Her heart buckled under the hell that both this man and Caleb had endured.
Wade offered an agonized smile. “You knew that.”
She hesitated a moment. Admitting as much felt like a betrayal, and yet, this was a man closer with Caleb than anyone. Claire nodded.
“That’s my point exactly, Miss Poplar. He confided that in you. He doesn’t talk about that with anyone. Never even spoke to his own family about what happened. Hell, I lived that experience with him, and neither of us ever speak about it with each other.”
And yet, he’d revealed those painful parts of himself to Claire. Surely that meant… something? Surely it meant he did care about her, as Wade suggested. Except, it could mean all number of things about the bond they’d developed, but that did not change his unwillingness to make them anything other than what they were. Just two people briefly thrown together who’d discussed their demons. And as such, the time of learning more about Caleb Gray was nearly at an end. That did not, however, mean she couldn’t still gather some more of those pieces of him that she craved.
Determined not to let melancholy ruin her last evening at Night’s Keep, Claire rested her elbow on the arm of her chair and dropped her chin atop her hand. “I trust you know all manner of stories about Mr. Gray.”
Wade grinned. “Tons.”
With that, they began to share.
He’d had no intention of eating that night.
When his craft beckoned, Caleb heeded that call. The failure to do so only left an artist with a spiteful muse who refused to cooperate. One either sketched when the moment spoke, or one would be left to forsake whatever fleeting inspiration had come—and then gone.
Following his return from outside with Claire, he’d been gripped by an overwhelming hungering to paint. It had been such an acute need, the kind that overtook a person’s thoughts. The same one that had sent him to his rooms after his return home from the British prison ship and that had left him there for days and then weeks on end. It was a feeling he’d begun to despair of knowing ever again. And so, the moment it had stirred to life within him, Caleb had not even bothered to head to his room to change. He’d gone straight to the converted art room, ground his pigment into oil, found his brushes, and begun creating.
It had been a liberation, almost as freeing as the day the French had broken through that hatch and pulled him to freedom.
And yet, it also proved fleeting. Wiping his forearm across his brow, he stared at the partially completed canvas, the explosive color and vague shadowing that concealed traces of a human form within.
He’d been so close.
So close he’d tasted it and been moved by it.
If your muse is lost, you cannot bring yourself to stay in whatever place you happen to be residing.
Claire’s accusation whispered in his mind.
Slamming down his brush, Caleb cursed his frustration aloud into
the enormous ballroom. “Damn it.” Being unable to create had nothing to do with running. A damned block had paralyzed his work.
At this particular moment, however, the only thing that had stopped him from working hadn’t been the demons that haunted him, or the blank void he’d been unable to fill these past years.
It was her—Claire Poplar. Claire, who’d come to him long ago for art lessons and whom he’d rejected at every turn. Claire, who would be leaving tomorrow morn. Maybe that was why his muse had just vanished, because she would be here for only a short while more, and perhaps his muse recognized that this posed his last opportunity to give Claire that which she’d sought. Granted, she could teach him more in the ways of finding inspiration. The only support he could proffer was the technical kind.
His muse would eventually return after Claire left and Caleb was free to devote himself to his work.
Only, as he grabbed his jacket and quit the art room to go change for dinner, it wasn’t his absentee muse he worried about, or righting past wrongs. As Caleb made his way to the dining room, there was a genuine eagerness to see Claire… and talk about art with her, and—
Laughter spilled out of that room and into the corridor, the tinkling sound of Claire’s amusement rushing up to meet him.
Then came a deeper, booming expression of mirth. Wade’s.
What the hell?
Caleb stepped into the entryway and found Claire and Wade engaged in a full discussion. Framed as Caleb was in the doorway, if Wade picked his head up, he’d see Caleb standing there. That was, if he wasn’t wholly engrossed by Claire and what she was telling him.
“I was a deplorable child,” Claire was saying. “When I was just five, my mother insisted I become proficient in French, but I was adamant that I’d not. I quite despised the French.”
“Why?” Wade asked.
“Because Boney was bent on world domination. Even as a small girl, I understood that.”
That gave Caleb pause. He’d never thought much about Napoleon’s march across Europe. To him, he’d viewed the British only as the oppressors. It was strange to think that the same people he’d come to admire for their hand in helping his country gain its independence, and who had gotten him back his freedom, had not been unlike the British in their attempt to take over that which wasn’t theirs.
“Then, my brother, Tristan, was abroad to fight the French,” Claire continued. “Every day, I lived in fear of him being hurt or dying. I was quite rebellious and insisted I’d never do something as unpatriotic as learn the frog’s tongue.”
Wade laughed, and Claire’s tinkling amusement joined in.
Dropping his elbows onto the table, Wade leaned forward. “How’d she handle it?”
“A defiant daughter?” she returned. “How do you think a prim English mother would handle it? She forbade the lessons I enjoyed.” Claire spoke quietly, as if only to herself, as if she’d become lost in the past and the memory that dwelled there. “If I were to resume my work with my art instructor? Well, then I would need to become proficient in French, and not only that”—Claire delivered a perfect capture of that stodgy British woman whom Caleb had the misfortune of knowing through his connection with Poppy—“demonstrate a proficiency in the French language, which would be conducted publicly for Father’s most noble, most disssstinguished friends.”
Even as his friend laughed at her impressive impersonation, Caleb’s chest tightened as he thought of Claire as a small girl, with those same dark curls and longing even then for art lessons. He found himself filled with regret that he’d been the one to turn her away, and in such a spectacularly rude way. The efforts she’d gone to didn’t seem like such a very big deal now, after all.
“So what did you do?”
Because the other man had already gathered Claire was the manner of woman who acted, and the fact that he’d gleaned that about her after her short time here sent annoyance rippling through Caleb.
Claire matched Wade’s positioning, planting her elbows on the table and framing her face with her hands. “I did what any dutiful English daughter would do,” she said solemnly. “I learned my French as Mother wished and became proficient almost overnight.”
That wasn’t the whole of the story. Caleb knew her determined spirit, and he also had witnessed it firsthand during their time together in London and then at the Rotted Rooster, and she could and would go toe-to-toe with anyone.
“So… I gave a demonstration of just how well I’d mastered the language by sharing a litany of opinions and grievances of the French with some rather… creative”—Claire dropped her voice to a teasing whisper—“and, one might even say, naughty words.”
The dining partners laughed, and Caleb found himself bereft at being excluded. Granted, it had been a deliberate choice to not take part in dinner, and now he found himself wondering that he’d sacrificed these last moments of her being here for… anything.
“I trust I’ve shocked you with how deplorable I was,” Claire called over, and for a moment, Caleb thought at last she’d finally caught him there, captivated by her and her storytelling.
“On the contrary, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart? A growl started low in Caleb’s chest and rumbled noisily. That ominous sound, however, was lost to the chattering and continued laughter between the amicable dining pair.
“I wouldn’t call that deplorable. You’ve got yourself some American spirit. Or, as we say, you’ve got spunk.”
Caleb gritted his teeth. Charm. The other man had always had it in spades. It had never grated before now. Before this moment of watching her and Wade engrossed in each other and their discourse.
Caleb hadn’t been privy to that story she’d revealed to Wade. Granted, there wasn’t a reason he necessarily would have been aware of it. Yes, they’d shared all number of stories and exchanges, but the time they’d spent together had still been short. But knowing Wade was now in full possession of that little detail about Claire’s life, while Caleb stood there with the remnants of a half telling, he for the first time found himself besieged by less-than-friendly sentiments toward Wade.
As if he’d sensed those unkind thoughts, and Caleb’s presence along with it, Wade glanced over. “Oh, hell,” his friend muttered. “Got company, we do,” his friend drawled for Claire’s benefit, nudging his chin Caleb’s way. “Evening, Gray.”
Claire’s head swung toward the front of the room, and the radiant smile she’d been wearing dimmed. A smile she’d been wearing for Wade, that was.
Caleb’s brows snapped together. “Oh, hell? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he snapped, directing his ire at the safer target.
Wade reclined in his seat. “It is just that Miss Poplar and I were wagering if you’d come to dinner. I was of the opinion no, that you’d stay at that easel until the sun set. But Miss Poplar expected you’d make an appearance.”
Caleb slid his eyes over to Claire. She’d known he could not stay away from her on this, their last night together. “Did you?” he murmured.
Claire inclined her head. “I did.”
The fact that she knew him even better than he knew himself in this should have terrified the hell out of him. And oddly… it didn’t. It felt… strangely… right.
That romantic drivel in his head vanished at Claire’s next words.
“I explained that your responsibility would prove even greater than your muse, and you’d not be able to resist putting in an appearance.”
“And the lady was right.” Reaching into his bag, Wade withdrew a small purse, and coming half out of his seat, the other man deposited that sack near Claire’s fingers. Close enough that those hands brushed.
Caleb sharpened his gaze on that faintest of touches that, he’d make his own wager, was deliberate. “What the hell are you doing?” he barked before he could call back the surly question.
A long awkward silence met his question as Claire and Wade shifted their focus Caleb’s way. Even the fact that their movements were
in such harmony added to the red-hot anger brewing inside Caleb.
Wade grinned. “I’m paying my debts.”
“You needn’t,” Claire said quickly. “It was just in good fun.”
“No. I insist.” This time, Wade took the velvet pouch and placed it deliberately into Claire’s palm, curling her fingers around it.
The heat of that fury grew several degrees hotter, and Caleb gritted his teeth to keep from calling out again. He made his way over to the table, and ignoring the servant who rushed forward to draw out the chair at the head, Caleb availed himself to the one directly to the right of Claire.
Ignoring the strange look Wade shot his way, Caleb instead sharpened his gaze on Claire.
Claire, who would have had to be looking at him to have noted that stare. Alas, all of her attention was trained squarely on Wade, and just like that, the pair resumed speaking.
As a servant came forward and filled his plate, Caleb sat there, an outsider to the latest exchange taking place between Claire and Wade. Claire and Wade, who’d only just met yesterday, and only briefly at that, but who got on degrees better than he and the lady had at their first meetings. Grabbing his knife and fork, Caleb gleefully massacred his slab of roast beef. Or, for that matter, better than Caleb and Claire ever had.
Laughing at the start with Wade?
Caleb and Claire had gotten into it at their first meeting, her raising her voice, him taunting her with his words.
He forked a piece of meat and all but yanked it off the end of his fork with his teeth, chewing furiously.
Claire paused midway through speaking to Wade and sluiced a questioning glance his way. “Are you all right, Mr. Gray?”
Mr. Fucking Gray is what he was again?
“You seem surly.”
“That is more surly than usual,” Wade, his traitor of a friend, offered.
Claire and Wade joined in laughing once more, and all through that camaraderie, Caleb offered his darkest glare to Wade.
A Groom of Her Own (Scandalous Affairs Book 1) Page 21