by Mulry, Megan
In Love Again
by
Megan Mulry
Copyright © 2013 Megan Mulry
Editor, Lisa Dunick
Proofreader, Regan Fisher
Cover Designer, Kimberly Van Meter
E-Book Formatter, Ross Beresford
Print Book Formatter, E. M. Tippetts
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form—except in the case of brief quotations in articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. The author is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Megan Mulry
www.meganmulry.com
ISBN-10: 0989997510
ISBN-13: 978-0-9899975-1-5
I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.
—Emma Goldman
Being a princess isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
—Princess Diana
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1
Claire looked across the table at her perfectly turned out sister-in-law and then beyond to the wet streets of Mayfair. To the uninformed observer, both women were perfectly turned out, she supposed, sitting there lunching at C on a rainy June afternoon.
“It’s just so hard to believe, I guess,” Sarah said. Her American voice always seemed animated and vivacious when she spoke to other people, but Claire got the feeling that Sarah—and, lately, everyone else for that matter—chose words carefully when speaking to her. Claire Heyworth Barnes, the Marchioness of Wick, had become fragile.
“What is?” Claire brought her attention back from the passing taxis on Davies Street.
“Just that after so many years—what has it been? Twenty years? You and Freddy are no longer you-and-Freddy. You were just so…established.”
Claire smiled, but it wasn’t anything—her lips lifting up, nothing more. “Established, yes, that’s exactly what we were. My mother made sure of that. By royal decree.”
“Well, you were married by royal decree, weren’t you?” Sarah made a tentative reaching motion with her hand, as if to comfort Claire, but she didn’t end up making contact. Nobody touched her, not really. She had withdrawn so many years ago that it had become a habit, the physical and emotional isolation. Years of behaving a certain way, just because that was how she always behaved—without wondering about the why of it—meant that even genuine affection felt awkward now, like false intimacy. The human touch was foreign to her.
Claire tried. She reached her own hand across the white tablecloth and patted Sarah’s. “No need to worry, darling. I was eighteen when I got married, so I’m still—perhaps—able to reestablish. Thirty-eight isn’t horribly over the hill these days, is it?”
“Over the hill?” Sarah grabbed Claire’s hand and laughed. “You’re gorgeous.”
Claire was embarrassed by the younger woman’s effusive praise. Did people actually say things like you’re gorgeous and mean it? All those years of silence and lies with Freddy had unhinged her. Claire knew she was unstable—or at least Freddy had always told her she was a wreck—but maybe she wasn’t all that bad. Maybe she was just out of practice. Or had never been shown that type of emotional generosity in the first place. Except perhaps that one time, the summer before Freddy.
She had seen the hints of what it meant to touch, and be touched by, someone. Not just the physical contact, but to laugh when he laughed, to see things and turn to face each other at exactly the same moment, to see that the other person saw the same thing. Not just the landscape or the Roman ruins or the herd of galloping wild horses across the Camargue, but really saw life in the same way.
“What were you thinking just then?” Sarah asked, releasing Claire’s hand. “You had the softest look on your face.”
Claire waved her off. “Oh, nothing, just an old memory from a summer vacation when I was a teenager. Let me get this.” Claire picked up the leather case holding the astronomical lunch bill and reached for her credit card.
A few minutes later, the maître d’ returned to the table sporting a doleful expression.
“I’m sorry, Lady Wick, but there seems to be a hold on this card.”
Sarah started to reach for her wallet.
“No,” Claire said quickly. “It’s my treat.”
Claire paled. He had actually done it. The solicitor had warned her that Freddy’s legal team could freeze her assets—depleted as they were—temporarily. Or indefinitely. Or permanently.
She recovered, reaching into her purse. “Very well.” She slipped four crisp hundred-pound notes into the leather folder and handed it back to the maître d’. “Thank you, Guillaume.” The Frenchman bowed slightly. Claire retrieved her useless piece of plastic and resituated it carefully into her immaculate—equally useless—wallet.
“Come to the shop for a few minutes, will you? I’ve got all the summer shoes in stock,” Sarah suggested.
“Oh, I don’t know…” Claire’s sister-in-law owned several boutiques that sold exorbitantly expensive shoes. Sarah had married Claire’s brother, Devon Heyworth, six months ago, and they spent most of their time in London, occasionally returning to the United States to visit Sarah’s family or to check on her other two stores in New York and Chicago.
Usually, Claire would have leapt at the chance to take a stroll through the boutique and look at some of the high-fashion stilettoes or sandals from Sarah’s newest collection. Not that Claire really had a clue about high style, especially compared to the two fashionable American women her brothers had married. Claire’s style was more what her mother described as classically unassailable. Practical. Living in northern Scotland with the usually absent Marquess of Wick for twenty years had not done much to foster any sense of fashion. She stuck to Harris tweeds and soft Pringle cashmere sweaters.
“Oh, please!” Sarah beamed. “There’s a pair of strappy heels I would love for you to try.”
“I just don’t think—”
“Let’s go!” Sarah declared.
“Oh, all right.” Claire picked up her (practical) Mowbray canvas purse and followed Sarah out to the sidewalk. The rain had stopped and some of the lights around Berkeley Square were beginning to sparkle in the dusky evening of early summer.
Sarah slid her arm through Claire’s and started walking. “This is really ridiculous, you know.”
“What’s that?” Claire turned to face her as they crossed Davies Street and walked along the northern edge of Berkeley Square.
“This not being able
to say what everyone is thinking. I mean, what happens if Freddy goes to jail?”
Claire didn’t reply.
“As well he should,” Sarah added, “for all of his treachery!”
Claire winced. She loved these American women and all their brave honesty, but sometimes it was simply too much. Was it really necessary to be chatting idly about treachery and prison as they strolled past the dappled plane trees of Mayfair? It was so grim.
“Really, Claire.” Sarah stopped them both at the corner of Bruton Place.
“What?”
“Everyone in your family is so afraid that you’re just going to smash into little pieces if we talk openly about your situation. What are you going to do? You’re a thirty-eight-year-old woman. Your finances are…a shambles. I simply won’t allow you to move back in to your mother’s Mayfair townhouse after your bastard husband squandered your massive fortune. As Devon would say, it’s just not on!”
Claire felt the all-too-familiar press of tears, then reached out and hugged Sarah. The younger woman squeezed her hard in return.
“He’s just not worth it,” Sarah mumbled into Claire’s ear. “Fuck him.”
“You sound like Bronte!” Claire laughed as she wiped at her eye with the tip of one neatly trimmed pinkie and pulled away.
“I know.” Sarah laughed too, but kept her hands gripped on Claire’s upper arms. “But even I see the occasional use of the warranted epithet. Freddy warrants more than the occasional epithet.”
“I can’t just walk away, Sarah. If I were on my own, of course I would have left him years ago, but there was Lydia, and I thought…” Claire paused. “At the very least, I owe it to Lydia to fight for her portion. I just don’t believe he could have burned through all of it.”
“You think he’s hiding it somewhere?”
Claire took a very deep breath. “I don’t know. But that’s what the lawyers are trying to figure out. Do you have wine at your shop?”
“Of course!” Sarah put her arm back through Claire’s, and they continued down the narrow lane to the lit-up Sarah James boutique. The little bell over the door jingled with old-fashioned cheer as the two women entered. The salesgirl, a recent graduate of Central Saint Martins, stood up quickly to greet them.
“Oh, please sit down, Shelly. This is my sister-in-law Claire.”
Sarah never bothered with formal introductions, since she’d never been able to get her mind around the difference between a marchioness and a March hare in the first place. Dukes, earls, and viscounts were as interchangeable as spaniels and corgis.
Claire was finally starting to see the wisdom in such an approach. After decades of her mother’s incessant drilling about the importance of royal forms of address, who was related to whom, and who didn’t deserve the slightest attention, Claire was starting to think that Sarah might be on to something.
“Hello, Shelly. Nice to meet you.” Claire reached out and they shook hands. Claire wished her own daughter Lydia had an ounce of the commitment and ambition that this young woman seemed to possess. Oh, Lydia.
Sarah must have caught a glimpse of Claire’s dwindling cheer.
“We’ll be upstairs getting drunk,” Sarah proclaimed and swept out of the retail portion of the shop and up the industrial metal stairs at the back that led to her atelier on the floor above.
Claire shook her head at Sarah’s audacity. As she followed her up the stairs, she realized she was actually jealous. What must it feel like to say what you think without the constant second- and third- and fourth-guessing about the ramifications of every syllable? If Claire asked Freddy where he was going, she was accused of smothering him. If he showed up with a shooting party of twelve men, unannounced, and she wasn’t prepared with a cellar of port and boxes of Cuban cigars, she was accused of being an inattentive layabout. Claire had spent the past twenty years trying to please someone who had been lying to her from the day he met her.
Nobody could have known, Claire finally conceded. Even his own mother, the Dowager Marchioness of Wick, one of Claire’s mother’s closest friends, had recently pronounced that her son was a rotter.
Sarah pulled open the hidden refrigerator and whipped out a bottle of champagne. “I feel like celebrating!”
“Really? I feel like crawling into a hole and never coming out.”
“Claire! Stop it! You’re free! Free! Think about it. When was the last time you were really free?”
Damn if that image of a nineteen-year-old Ben Hayek holding her hand as they looked out over the Roman ruins in Arles didn’t pop into her head again. They’d known each other for a grand total of three measly months. Twenty years ago. That was probably the last time she felt free.
“Well?” The abrupt POP! of the champagne cork served as a loud prompt.
“Well, what?” Claire asked, stalling.
Sarah poured two flutes of champagne as she spoke. “When was the last time you felt free? Just totally spin-in-the-sunshine, kick-off-your-shoes freedom…”
“Oh, I don’t know…”
“Yes, you do.” Sarah handed her the champagne flute. “You just got that same look in your eyes that you got at the end of lunch. There was someone before Freddy, wasn’t there?”
“Well, not in the way you mean.”
“You mean, you didn’t sleep with him?”
Claire cringed. “Must you be so graphic?”
Sarah burst out laughing. “Graphic? Sleep with? Let me get Bronte to stop over on her way back from work and give you a little graphic.”
Claire started laughing too. Her other sister-in-law, the Duchess of Northrop, also known as plain old Bronte, preferred a four-letter word to any other, whether the situation called for it or not.
“Oh, fine!” Claire smiled. “Call her. Let’s get drunk and put the pieces of my fucked up life back together.”
Chapter 2
“Yay!” Sarah squealed. She pulled her cell phone out of her purse and hit the speed dial for her best friend’s number.
“Hey, it’s me. Can you come over to my office after you leave Mowbray’s? … How much longer? … Okay…mm-hmm…” She took a sip of champagne while she listened. “Okay, perfect. Yes, I’m here with Claire, and we’re going to get her back on track. Roll up our sleeves and tell her what’s what…mm-hmm…yes, she even said the word fuck…” Sarah burst out laughing. “Okay, see you soon, sweetie.” She clicked off the cell phone and turned back to Claire. “Okay, first things first. Who’s the dream man?”
Claire set the champagne flute down on the glass tabletop in front of the Breuer chair she was sitting in. “He was nobody. Just a summer…thing.”
“Like a swoony, oh-my-god-I-can’t-believe-I-met-my-dream-man-while-backpacking-through-Europe thing or…just a thing?”
Claire smiled. It was impossible not to. Sarah had the strangest combination of raw innocence and infectious mischief. “I guess, at the time, I thought he was just a thing. But it stuck. Does that make sense?”
Sarah stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the southern wall of her office. “I don’t know if it’s wrong to talk about your brother in this way, but yes. After I met Devon, it just never stopped. I tried to forget him and get over it and move on, or whatever. But he just stuck.” Sarah smiled. Now that she was happily married to the devil, it wasn’t worth wondering why he had stuck. He just did, and it had all worked out. But Claire?
“I don’t know,” Claire began, twisting her champagne glass and trying to speak honestly for maybe the first time about her ruinous marriage. “Everything was as it was supposed to be with Freddy. His mother. My Mother. The marquisate. I was the daughter of a duke. He was a marquess. Everything was as it should be.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, don’t pretend that your stepmother didn’t have…hopes…for you and Eliot. You know exactly what I mean. It just all fit together, for the families, for both of us.” Claire sighed. “I know it sounds antiquated and stupid to your modern
ears, but it was just the thing. To obey.”
Sarah looked at the woman she had come to think of as her older sister. Claire was technically her sister-in-law, but being an only child, Sarah had wholeheartedly embraced her husband’s family as her own. She thought of Abby and Claire and Bronte as her sisters, and Max as her brother.
“All right. I won’t pretend to be clueless about the power of parental approval. I’m sure your father and mother encouraged you to get along with Freddy. But seriously? He’s just so lame.”
Claire snorted. “I guess he looks that way now, but twenty years ago, he was pretty debonair. He wasn’t all slithering and slick like he is these days. He had the occasional nice thing to say. But you’re right. I knew he was all wrong for me. Yet, my mother convinced me that I was too young to know what was right for me and that I needed to rely on my elders to point me in the right direction.”
“How awful.”
“Oh, stop. What’s done is done. I married the Marquess of Wick. He has a castle. I thought he was charming and rich. I suppose at the time, he was rich. But that’s all come to a finish now. Even so, let’s not pretend that he didn’t have something to offer back in the nineties. As my mother would say, moving on!”
Sarah took a deep breath. “Okay. Moving on. Tell me about Mister Summer Vacation.”
“What’s the point?” Claire asked.
“The point is, I need to know what type of man actually piqued your interest when your mother and everyone else in the world weren’t watching. Was he quirky and academic? Tall, dark, and handsome? Smooth? Bumbling? What?”
“Oh, I don’t know. When you say it like that, it’s hard to describe. He was just, so kind, but sort of adamant too.”
“Oh, Claire. You really liked him.”
“I think I loved him.”
Sarah watched as Claire tried to repress a shudder of pleasure. Even after all these years, apparently the mere thought of him still brought on a physical reaction.
“What happened to him?” Sarah pressed. “Was he just some backpacking ne’er-do-well?”