Just she had done it.
The door swung open, and an immediate blast of heat and noise enveloped her, both welcome.
A pair of men stumbled out and brushed past her. Taking advantage of the door still hanging open, Claire collected the handle of her trunk once more and dragged her things inside. She drew the door shut behind her, and out of breath from the winter cold, and the effort it had taken to drag her things inside, she searched about for the innkeeper; and easily identified him as he moved between tables.
Going up on tiptoe, Claire lifted her hand, in a bid to capture his attention. Alas, her efforts proved futile. She sank back on her heels.
At last, he started towards her.
“Hullo,” she greeted loudly; to be heard over the swell of noise from the revelry. “I require a room.”
“Don’t have any,” he said, and made to step around her.
She immediately hurled herself into his path. “But…”
“Look around you, lass. Do you see a spot to be had here?”
Slowly, with an ever-growing dread and sense of helplessness rooting in her belly, Claire scanned the crowded floor. Every wooden table and every wooden chair, over by the fire, at the tap. Patrons filled every last nook and cranny of the stone establishment. And every last one of them was… male.
And for the first time since she’d set out, she felt the overwhelming urge to cry.
“I can pay.”
“Take it up with one of the patrons, lass. Ain’t my problem.”
Ain’t my problem.
It was an entirely curt, dismissive response that, had it been directed Claire’s way during the first twenty years of her life, would have both horrified and shocked her. Now, however, she’d grown accustomed to disdain.
This, however, wasn’t disdain. It was indifference.
Blinking back the damned useless moisture stinging her eyes, she set her bag atop her trunk and did another survey of the room, of the men clanging tankards and drinking down their ale.
“You are being rude,” she said to the innkeeper.
“I’m being rude? I am? You’re the one who waltzed in here and demanded a room like the fine lady you are.”
“I didn’t waltz. A waltz is a dance. And, hunched over, I dragged my own trunk.” Alas, the implacable proprietor proved a good deal too indifferent to her accomplishment. One that suddenly felt very small with the way he looked at her. And suddenly, the thin thread of control she’d managed to hold on to snapped. “And I didn’t demand anything. I asked.”
“Asked, and I said, ‘Don’t have any.’” With a shrug that added a finality to the exchange, he made to step around her.
Heart racing, she slid herself into his path, inadvertently knocking into a patron, with the legs of his chair precariously tipped back.
His seat went toppling down, along with him in it. “Wh-what now!” the fellow bellowed.
She winced, as the young, pock-marked fellow found his feet, and furiously righted his chair. “My apologies,” she said quickly, striving to be heard over the din of the taproom, before turning her attention to the proprietor.
The now-glaring proprietor. “Now you’re upsetting my patrons.”
“I’m not…” She flashed a smile meant to charm. “That is, not intentionally.”
Alas, she’d the same ill luck in terms of charming this person as she had anyone else in England. Arms folded, a dirty rag hanging from his hand and a pitcher in the other, he gave her another hard look. “Step out of the way, lass.”
There was no way she could. There was no place to step. “I have no place to stay.”
“Not my problem,” he shouted, either to be heard over the revelry or because he was displeased? She opted to let herself believe it was the former, because the last thing she could afford was to be a woman, alone and with no protection, angering a man, who by his flushed cheeks might or might not have been consuming spirits.
“No, it is not your problem. But surely there is someplace I might s-stay?” Panic and desperation lent her voice a slight tremble, and perhaps he wasn’t heartless, after all. For there was a slight faltering in the man’s skin-roughened features.
“Got the stables,” he said gruffly. “Yer free to claim those. No cost to ye.”
“The staaaables!” she croaked, her voice climbing an octave, and that shock served to sever whatever brief generosity she’d managed to secure from the proprietor.
His thick eyebrows snapped together. “Too good for ye, aye? Then take it upon yourself, lass, to go ask one of them out there to give up their room instead.” He slashed a hand over the crowd, and the moment she looked off, he took advantage of her distraction. Stepping around her, he rushed off.
Well, that was fine. She’d gotten herself this far, and she’d gotten her trunk inside. Granted, it was in the middle of the tavern entryway, but regardless, it was in. And there had to be someone amidst the crush of bodies present who was decent enough and… well, not rude.
Lowering her hood and shoving her bonnet back, Claire did a sweep of the taproom, angling her head to look around the men who stood closely, quickly scanning past those sloppily clanging tankards, searching for…
She froze as the crowd parted slightly, revealing a lone figure seated at a table in the middle of the room.
No.
Absolutely not.
Impossible.
She’d gone from being the daughter of an earl to being the daughter of a criminal. She’d lost everything. Not once had she sought to reckon with the universe. But this? This, she absolutely forbade.
The impossibly large, bear of a broad-shouldered man stared boldly back, a tankard in his hand, his pose relaxed, the boredom to his posture at odds with the tension thrumming through her. Caleb Gray.
And then, he grinned.
Wonder of wonders, as she’d believed the bounder impossible of such a feat.
Bloody hell on Sunday. “You have to be jesting,” she whispered.
He would prove the one person she knew who should be here.
The one person in the world who she disliked, and who disliked her, surprisingly, with an even greater intensity. But who hadn’t disliked her so much that he hadn’t minded kissing her, of course.
And though in need of help she might be, in search of someone to give up their rooms in exchange for payment, hell would freeze over before she went to him. Nay, after the last time, when he’d pinned her against the wall and kissed her until her toes curled and ached, only to mock her for that passion? Absolutely. Not.
With a toss of her head, she grabbed her valise in one hand, and leaving her trunk where it lay, she set out in search of a patron who’d be good enough as to give up his rooms.
Chapter 6
Caleb didn’t smile.
It wasn’t a rule, per se. But rather, a habit.
Life hadn’t really given him much reason for that upward tilt of his lips.
But this? This was too much to not manage a whole damned laugh.
Of all the people to find their way inside this godforsaken tavern, it would be her.
When he’d arrived in Europe, hoping to escape the betrayal that had met him in America, he’d singularly failed to find it, in his work, in this new place… until Poppy. Just recently married—and, at the time, unhappily at that—and wholly uninterested in impressing him with her artwork, she’d been the first distraction he’d found. And he’d be forever grateful for it. That distraction had also brought her peculiar family… and the very lady here now.