Highland Bachelor 02 - This Laird of Mine

by Gerri Russell

  The shopkeeper’s smile slipped as he looked about his cluttered shop. “Hmmm.”

  “Well, if you have nothing else,” she said in a calm and even voice as she turned toward the door.

  “Wait,” he called. “The ring is all I have with rubies. If you would just take another look. It is an exquisite ring.”

  Claire sighed. “I had my heart set on a pair of earrings to wear to the Davisons’ ball this Saturday . . .” She strung the words out, hoping the shopkeeper would bargain with her. She had nothing to lose.

  “Forty shillings Scot.”

  “Thirty.”

  He released an audible sigh. “All right, my dear. You drive a hard bargain, but I agree. Thirty shillings Scot.”

  Claire nodded. “Hold the ring for me. I will return on the morrow with the funds.”

  He agreed, and Claire left the shop before she either cried out her delight, or swooned. She had a feeling the latter was far more likely. Once outside, she leaned against the first wall she came to, and pressed trembling fingers against the cool stone.

  She had found Jules’s mother’s ring—the only link she would ever have to Jules or his family. Once she saw the ring in the window, she knew she had to do anything and everything to possess it.

  Her breath caught. And she had made it her own. Now all she had to do was figure out some way to get the funds by the next day, or all her efforts would be for naught.

  When the initial exhilaration of bargaining for what she wanted so desperately wore off, she realized she had the answer to her problem already. The lie she had concocted about Lady Davison was not entirely false. The woman had asked her to attend a ball at her winter home in Argyll the following year, after Claire painted a ceiling for her that would make her the envy of her friends.

  Claire had met the woman in the ballroom of Kildare Manor, at the party Jules’s friends had planned. Perhaps it was time for Claire to agree to hire out her talents. Lady Davison had said she would agree to any terms. Would she be willing to advance Claire her fee before she had even started, and allow the girls to come along with her?

  There was only one way to find out.

  At the thought of heading to Argyll, Claire began to feel light-headed. Lady Davison lived within walking distance of Kildare Manor. If Claire went to Argyll, she would be close to Jules.

  She drew a deep breath, forcing herself to be calm. Jules would never have to know she was there. She could paint the ceiling and be away from Argyll long before Lady Davison’s ball.

  Her decision made, Claire headed toward Amberly Place, Lady Davison’s Edinburgh home, where the woman was fortunately in residence.

  Across the street, Agatha slipped from the apothecary shop. Her hand closed around the small bottle of poison the young girl had created for her. It was a pity that Agatha had had to dispose of the girl, forcing her to drink her own concoction. Agatha had to be certain the poison was not only lethal, but fast.

  The time to strike was coming nearer. She had to be prepared for when the opportunity presented itself.

  It would eventually arrive, and the bottle in her hand would serve her purposes well.

  Three weeks later, out of need to find some connection to the woman he missed so desperately, Jules climbed the stairs to the tower room, hoping and praying that the room still smelled like her. He entered the chamber and froze at the sight before him.

  Everywhere he looked, the ceiling, the walls, even the floor, had been painted to resemble a garden in springtime. She’d painted the ruins of an ancient Greek temple that was surrounded in lush ivy and a riot of flowers. Beneath the shade of a willow tree was a fountain that looked so real Jules could swear he heard the soft trickle of water.

  And to the side of the fountain, resting in a bed of violets, were two figures, their bodies entwined. He moved closer, and recognition flared. His heart stopped.

  She’d painted the two of them as they had been by the loch. Their bodies glistened with drops of water, their skin vibrant and alive beneath the sun’s light. The lines of their nude bodies were obscured by a sheer white cloth, yet the very covering only made what the viewer did not see more explicit. The very portrayal was as realistic as it was exotic and sensual.

  His entire body burned. He groaned at the painful loss that filled him. How would he ever forget her, when she had made Kildare Manor such a part of herself? Everywhere he went, he was reminded of her, from the tower to the stable, the loch and the kitchen. There was no safe place in his own house where memories did not consume him.

  He often wondered how she fared. If the girls had fully recovered from their ordeal. He wished he knew where she was, what she was doing, and if she missed him as much as he missed her. Wearily, he lay down on the small bed in the center of the chamber and looked up at the clouds she had painted on the ceiling. He tried to close his eyes, but as was usual these past three weeks, he could not sleep. He never slept anymore, not unless he had exhausted himself in the fields with his tenants, or he imbibed the family whiskey.

  Quite often he lay awake as he did now, wanting her with a passion that transcended all reason. They had to stay separated. It was for her own good. Until Agatha could be found and locked away for the rest of her life, Claire would have to remain a stranger to him.

  “Why are we in Argyll?” Penelope asked from the bottom of the ladder Claire stood on. She was painting the first quadrant of the ballroom ceiling in Lady Davison’s country home.

  “We are on a grand adventure as far as Anna and Eloise are concerned,” Claire answered as she applied a final swoop of gray to a mass of blue-gray clouds.

  “That’s not what I mean,” Penelope said, “and you know it.”

  “What do you mean?” Claire asked with a frown as she stepped down the ladder. She needed to clean her palette and brushes, then start on the cherubim and seraphim. She was making excellent progress on the ceiling. At this rate, she and the girls could be back in Edinburgh before the end of the year.

  “Why are we in Argyll, so close to Lord Kildare, without going to see him?”

  Claire smiled sadly. “He’s not part of our lives any longer. But we wish him well with his.” She poured turpentine on a rag and wiped the gray off the wooden board in her hand.

  “But you are still married to him,” the young woman cried.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you think he misses you?” Penelope asked.

  Claire shook her head and drew a stilted breath. “No. I hurt him too badly. He will never trust me again. Besides, he can’t miss something he never loved.”

  “He loved you,” Penelope said, her voice choked with sorrow. She stepped toward Claire and, ignoring the palette and the odorous cloth, wrapped her in a supportive hug.

  “Not enough.” Claire turned out of Penelope’s arms, grateful for once that the mention of his name did not bring an agony of pain. She’d grown numb over the last month. That numbness helped her now as she moved to her paints and refilled her palette with white and brown, and just a hint of red, yellow, and green, to create the flesh tones she needed.

  The two words echoed in her mind as she blended the paint.

  Not enough.

  The following morning, Fin entered the drawing room, where Jules was standing, staring at empty space. “Milord,” Fin interrupted.

  Jules turned toward the door, expecting to have to reassure his worried steward, when he saw an unexpected sight. “Peter Kirkwood?”

  “Good morning, milord,” the older man said, making a small bow before coming into the room.

  Jules frowned as anticipation edged with worry. “What brings you to Kildare Manor?” Jules waved him toward a seat on the settee.

  “A startling discovery I felt you should know,” he replied, settling into the cushions. His voice was quiet and even, but there was an undercurrent to his words.

  Jules remained standing as the unknown tightened his chest and made it hard to breathe. “Is it Claire?” he blurted out, needing to
put words to the fear that was always there, taunting him. Had leaving her alone with David been the appropriate action?

  “Nay, milord. I have uncovered new information about your father’s last days.”

  The revelation startled Jules. “Go on.”

  Kirkwood leaned forward. “I could not leave things the way we did in Edinburgh. I decided to take things upon myself to dig deeper, to understand your father’s motives for bribing Grayson to do something that was so beyond his character.”

  Jules raised a brow. “What did you discover?”

  “In Grayson’s notes, I discovered that your father did not pay the ransom to release you from gaol, but that he paid the warden to keep you incarcerated.”

  Jules strode across the chamber, no longer able to stand still. He paced back and forth. “He kept me in? Why? Did he hate me that much?”

  He had not realized he had spoken aloud until Kirkwood answered. “I think it is quite the opposite. I went to the warden and spoke with him. He said your father was worried the last time he went to the gaol to make a payment. He had no idea you had been released the week before. The news brought him to his knees, the warden said. When he asked Lord Kildare what was wrong, he said he could not let her get to you. Do his words mean anything to you?’

  “Yes, they mean everything.” What Agatha had told him was true.

  “There’s more.” Kirkwood interrupted. “From the financial trail your father left behind, it appears that he sold everything in the manor a few weeks after that encounter, and that was the money he used to pay Grayson to arrange your marriage to a Miss Claire Elliot.”

  Jules stopped his pacing as a realization he could no longer avoid crashed over him. His father had cared, at least in the end, what happened to him. “It still doesn’t make sense as to why he did what he did.”

  “From what I could discover, he seemed determined to find you a bride. I talked with several carriage drivers who said they escorted your father around town as he sought out women with the name Claire who were single, available, and somewhat down on their own luck.”

  “He chose my bride?” Jules echoed his previous sentiment, still not quite believing the words.

  Kirkwood nodded. “It appears your father’s last act upon this earth was to make certain his younger son would have a future, and if I might add my own sentiment, a reason to live.”

  A reason to live.

  Jules smiled. He wasn’t certain if it was because of the proof of a father’s love, or knowing that his father had chosen a woman for him based entirely upon her name, or both.

  Claire had given him a reason to live. She had helped him settle into his role as laird. Such a thing would have been unbearable without her. She was his life, his heart, his soul. And he suddenly wondered why he’d felt it necessary to keep her at arm’s length, because without her he was barely alive.

  At Jules’s continued silence, Kirkwood rose. “I hope the information is reassuring, if not somewhat inspiring.”

  Jules nodded. “Inspiring, yes.”

  The older man nodded. “I will continue to investigate and let you know if I discover anything further.”

  His enthusiastic tone made Jules smile all the more. “You seem to enjoy these forays into investigation.”

  Kirkwood nodded. “After a lifetime of papers and law, your queries have lent some spice to my rather mundane existence, milord.”

  “Thank you, Kirkwood,” Jules said with a nod of his head. “Your efforts have been extraordinary.”

  Now it was up to him to do something with that information.

  Later that afternoon, Jules finally found the nerve to walk the short distance from the manor house to the family crypt where his father, mother, and brother were buried.

  Jules entered the chamber. He held his lantern in front of him. The light cast leaping shadows on the pinkish-gray marble walls and shimmered off the effigies of his kin. His mother’s grave was dusty. With his hand he cleaned it off, revealing the image of the woman he remembered—a heart-shaped face, high cheekbones, and kind eyes. Even set in stone, her eyes still held that softness he had once felt gaze upon him in life.

  Beside her was the image of his father. His father’s likeness stared up at him. His face had held an expression of pride and a warmth Jules never witnessed again after his mother’s death. Had death brought him the peace he had searched for all those years? Jules hoped so. As he continued to study his father’s features, other questions crowded his thoughts. Had his father truly loved him? Had he kept Jules in gaol as a means of protecting him from the monster who had latched herself to their family? Had his father really known Agatha was still alive?

  Jules’s thumb caressed his father’s brow. “For whatever happened between us, for all the unspoken words, and the words that were spoken in anger, I apologize. I had no idea what kind of monster had entered our lives. I should have talked to you. I should have trusted you. I should have done so many things. For that, and for your untimely death, I apologize.”

  His own spirit lightened at the admission of his own failings. His father might never hear the words, but at least Jules knew he had finally said them.

  He would never know the truth about his father’s actions or inaction toward the end of his life, but he wanted to believe that the man had actually loved him and tried to protect him instead of shutting him out and leaving him in that hellhole for dead.

  Jules slid his gaze to the right, to the effigy next to his father’s. The heavy lid sat slightly askew, as though it had been moved then shifted back into place. She’d tricked them all, staging her own death and then having assistance in her resurrection from her tomb and this crypt.

  For a heartbeat he wondered if that kind of evil could ever die. She was still out there, still a threat. She had robbed him of his freedom for over a year, and now she was robbing him of his happiness.

  It was then that the realization hit him. That was exactly what Agatha wanted. She wanted him to be miserable without Claire. She had ruined the lives of his father and brother, and now he was allowing her to do the same to him. Jules’s eyes ached with unshed tears while his chest filled with hope. He had turned his own home into a prison, instead of rotting away in one.

  But what was he to do about it? He returned his gaze to the images of his mother and father. “What do I do?” he asked, not really expecting an answer, but hoping that one would be provided all the same.

  Encouraged and defeated at the same time, Jules returned to the manor, where he prowled the hallways and paced the drawing room, searching for an answer. It wasn’t until late afternoon that an answer was provided in the form of another visitor.

  “Milord.” Fin cleared his throat as he entered the drawing room, stopping Jules’s trek across the newly restored carpet for the hundredth time. “There is someone to see you.”

  Jules’s heart hammered with a mixture of hope and dread as Fin stepped back and Penelope entered the room.

  She bowed. “Lord Kildare.”

  “Penelope, what a surprise,” Jules said coming forward and taking her uninjured hand in his. “How did you get here?”

  “’Tis only a short walk from where I am staying.”

  “The exercise agrees with you. You look well.” Color had returned to her cheeks. She wore a pink glove on her injured hand that matched the color of her dress.

  She blushed and pulled her hand from his. “’Tis the country air.”

  He studied her face, then lower, his gaze moving to her missing finger. “Does it still pain you?” he asked.

  She shrugged and looked away. “At times. Sometimes I feel as though my finger is still there, even though I know it is not. I feel sensations. I know it sounds strange . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Not at all,” Jules said, bringing his gaze back to hers. “I have heard it said from others who lost limbs in battle. The phenomenon is quite normal.”

  Penelope gripped her hand, held it gently against her chest. “I was
not in a battle.”

  “Yes,” he said tenderly, “you were. A battle of the worst kind because it doesn’t make sense at all what happened to you.”

  She gave him a partial smile. “Thank you for saying so. I often wonder if this is just punishment for some horrible sin I commit—”

  “You did nothing wrong. Do you hear me?” Jules interrupted, his anger rising that the young woman even considered that she was at fault for Agatha’s maniacal actions. “You were innocent. And I hope you will realize that someday soon.”

  “I am trying.”

  “Good,” he said softly, then regarded her curiously. “Might I ask what brings you to Argyll? And more particularly, my house?”

  She laughed. “Yes, it must seem rather strange that I show up out of the blue. But in reality I have been here for two weeks.”

  He frowned. “Two weeks? Who? Where?”

  “All of us,” she said, emphasizing the first word, “are staying at Lady Davison’s while Claire works on a commissioned ceiling.”

  “Claire is here?” Just the sound of her name brought a tightness to his chest and an image of her to his mind—her wide golden eyes staring up at him, the wind tugging at the loose strands of her copper hair. He missed her with every fiber of his being.

  “She’s made mistakes,” Penelope said. “But then, everyone makes mistakes. If we are not making mistakes, then we aren’t really living, wouldn’t you say?” She looked up at him expectantly.

  The thought haunted him, tormented him, surprised him. “I can only agree.”

  “Then wouldn’t you say if someone made a mistake, like Claire perhaps, that they might deserve a second chance at making things right?”

  With an effort he ignored the leap of hope that flared to life inside him. It was unfair to put her in that kind of danger. She deserved someone who could give her a normal life. She deserved someone who would not bring death and pain into every day of their lives. Not someone like him.

  At his silence Penelope continued. “She hasn’t been the same since you left. She never smiles. Her paintings are all in grays and greens. She never sleeps. She hardly eats. She’s slowly killing herself.”