She’d do. Well enough. No, she was perfect in terms of what he wanted… and what he didn’t want.
Of course, there’d been no doubt Wade would have done the job well. His friend, who oversaw all the business details for Caleb, was meticulous, and as such, he wouldn’t have let Caleb down in this.
The innkeeper reappeared and set a tankard down near Caleb’s notes.
Tossing down the letter about his soon-to-be wife, Caleb traded it out for a drink. The matter of the bride he was headed to meet forgotten, he fetched a sketch pad from his bag, along with his charcoals.
Around him, the whine of a merry fiddle crested over the noise of the taproom as he flipped through unfinished sketch after unfinished sketch. All dull. All wholly lacking in inspiration. Or feeling. He’d been searching for that part of himself for four years now, turning out mediocre pieces that museum patrons were too dumb to know weren’t half as impressive as they thought they were.
Tunneling his focus on the empty page, he stared unblinkingly at it, trying to will an idea to come. A vision to inspire.
Anything.
This blankness he desperately wished to be free of was worse than the uncertainty of death hanging over him aboard that British frigate. This? This was an emptiness of his soul, which he’d never thought to know. For even when he’d been a captive, there’d been the dream of creating waiting for him at the end of it.
And a wife. There’d been that, too.
To hell with that. And to hell with her and the memories of long ago.
Once he had funds coming in and no longer had the pressure of that hanging over him, then that skill would return. Then his mind would be clear. Then he’d be able to create.
That’s what this journey to North Yorkshire and his impending marriage to some nameless, faceless English stranger came down to.
Giving his head a wry shake, Caleb edged his gaze up, eyeing the crowd, and with his focus on the village men clanging glasses, he put his charcoal to the empty page.
Chapter 5
Having been born to the privileged life of the peerage, Claire hadn’t appreciated just how luxuriant her life had been.
Until she’d lost those luxuries.
All of them.
The elegant silk and satins of her gowns.
The delicate leather of her gloves.
Claire’s enormous, four-poster bed, with its feather-stuffed mattress.
Her family’s wide, pink lacquer carriage.
In those earliest days of the discovery of her father’s crimes, they’d been forced out of their London townhouse and thrust into a smaller, darker, danker residence. At night, when there’d been enough wood for only a small fire, she’d lain curled on her side, staring at the ominous shadows as they’d flickered upon the bare plaster walls of her bedroom chambers.
Sleep had eluded her, and she could find rest only by inventorying what she missed most from her previous life. She’d go over every last detail of every last item until she’d settle upon… her bed. She’d missed that grand piece of furniture the most.
She’d been certain of it.
That was, until she’d boarded the mail coach from London to North Yorkshire in the dead of winter.
She’d been so very wrong.
It was the carriage. Definitely the well-sprung carriage.
Gritting her teeth and gripping the edge of the narrow bench, Claire held on for dear life to keep from flying into the older, balding passenger next to her.
Or mayhap it was just that with the two benches packed with a family of four across from her, and three not-so-very-small older gentlemen on the other side of her, the cramped space was responsible for her misery.
The carriage hit an enormous hole in the road, and Claire flew several inches up in the air before landing hard on her buttocks. The thin padding of her seat did little to soften her fall. Pain radiated from her tailbone and climbed her spine. And she groaned. She couldn’t help it.
It was a small, quiet expression of her misery that, after too many hours in the carriage, she could no longer hold back. Her mother would have been horrified had she heard it.
That was if anyone could hear so much as anything amidst the violent wind battering the carriage and the crunching of snow as it rolled unevenly along.
Sore as her entire body was, Claire couldn’t bring herself to care about propriety.
Though, in fairness, having run-off to the North Yorkshire countryside to marry a stranger, she was really past the point of worrying about the impropriety of a groan or moan.
From under the brim of her bonnet, she peeked at the family opposite her—a mother and her three sons—and the men beside her.
Here she was, traveling without the benefit of a maid. And at that, in a carriage with a bunch of hard-looking, life-weary men.
Until her brother had married and fortunes enough secured that they’d been restored to some semblance of their previous life. But those monies also made Claire the poor relation, the one dependent upon the charity of her brother and his wife, and though she’d no doubt they would never, and could never, see Claire as a burden, that generosity did not change the fact that was precisely what Claire found herself to be. And she didn’t want that.
Just as she didn’t want to live amidst the society that Poppy and Tristan and Claire’s mother did. Her sister, Faye, was the only one of her family who understood that. It was why, when she’d confided her plans in Faye, she’d supported Claire’s decision, and promised to keep the secret of her disappearance as long as she was able.
Because Faye understood how very desperately Claire wished to have the freedom to make a life for herself, accepting charity from none, and establishing a future of her own accounted for the perilous journey she now made.
The carriage hit another bump, and she gritted her teeth as pain shot through her back.
Soon the journey would end, and she’d be out of this carriage.
And then she’d find herself in a far-flung region of North Yorkshire, a barren wilderness, with a new husband.
The wind howled ominously outside. Shivering, Claire burrowed deeper into the folds of her cloak. Only, that chill had little to do with the effect of the storm swirling in the English countryside. Or had they already arrived in North Yorkshire?
Stop it. He wasn’t really a husband. Not in any sense she need worry about, that was. Theirs was a business arrangement. He was some ancient traveler who’d gallivant about the globe while she carved out a new life for herself. Alone. Without his interference. And away from the prying eyes of Polite Society or the pitying eyes of her family.
Except, those assurances she’d methodically given herself when she’d talked herself into this venture hadn’t proved quite so very reassuring once she’d found herself on her way to this new life. With a man she did not know…
A man who very well could be a killer. Someone who’d fashioned a clever plot to lure her to an abandoned estate, only to—
“Stop!” she exclaimed, the word bursting from her and attracting deservedly strange looks from the men and women around her.
Adjusting her hood atop her bonnet to better conceal her face, Claire slunk down in her seat.
Damn Faye for her macabre ways, and damn Claire for having allowed those thoughts in. It was fine. It was going to be absolutely, utterly fine.
Just then, the carriage jerked forward, and all the occupants of the mail coach lurched against one another. The horses took off racing, the pace they set growing increasingly frenzied in a way that sent the conveyance sliding back and forth before the team settled once again into a less-dizzying cadence.