A blush bloomed on Claire’s cream-white cheeks, her very pale, English cheeks, and yet, lent that pale red color, she was… actually almost pretty. Not his type, necessarily. But pretty. Stunningly so.
That appreciation proved a fleeting moment of insanity.
“Nothing has changed with me?” she shot back, dropping her hands to her hips, and somehow, even with the height difference between them, she managed to impressively glower up at him. “Nothing has changed with you.” The lady hunched her shoulders forward and donned a darker scowl. “Your Majesty this, Your Majesty that,” she said in flat tones that removed her clipped British English so that she might as well have been any American woman schooling a fellow.
Caleb chuckled. “That is what you’re opting to talk about?” he drawled. “You’ve just had your purse plucked, and you’re more concerned with what I’m calling you.” But then, she’d always been infuriating like that.
“I am not having my purse plucked.” Lifting the bag he’d wager his life was lighter, she held it aloft and shook it, setting the contents ajingle.
He nudged his chin at the black velvet bag. “I’d venture you take a look inside that there sack and count your coins again.”
“Do you know, I will.” Muttering to herself, those mumblings lost to the noise of the room, Claire fished around in the purse. Her lips moved as if she silently counted, and then she gasped. “Why… why…?”
Caleb lifted an eyebrow, and the young lady immediately clamped her lips. “Problem there?”
Claire dropped her arm and held the purse behind her back. “Nothing. Nothing happened at all. It is all there.” She gritted out a lie as unbelievable as her presence here. She hurriedly stuffed the sack inside her valise.
“All right. Out with it, Your—”
The lady’s gaze flew to his, and she singed him with a glance.
“Claire,” he amended. Because she was Poppy’s sister-in-law, and as a result of his connection with the baroness, he did have an obligation to get to the bottom of why Claire Poplar was here, alone.
“Out with what?” she asked, pressing the pearl clasp of her valise shut.
She was obstinate. Infuriating. And possessed of a biting wit. What she wasn’t, however, was so naïve as to not know precisely what he was asking her. “What are you doing here?” he demanded anyway.
“Talking to you,” she said, her expression deadpan.
His mouth ticked up at the right corner in an involuntary smile, a motion so foreign and rare for his lips that the muscles strained under the unfamiliarity of it.
“A room. I’m looking for a room,” she said, tossing her hands up and inadvertently catching yet another patron. The accidental collision sent ale splashing all over the front of his shirt and floor and table.
Claire whipped about. “Oh, dear. Forgive—oh… hell.” The lady’s words faded to a whisper as she caught sight of the balding man before them.
Oh, hell indeed. The girl wasn’t going to make it out of here alive.
Recognition flashed in the other man’s eyes. “You!” he growled.
“A friend of yours?” Caleb asked dryly.
It was likely a sign of their tense rivalry that her frown wasn’t for the man calling her out, but for Caleb. She shifted her attention back to the spirits-soaked fellow.
“Forgive me, Mr. Winters. I did not see you there,” she said.
“You’ve been nothing but a pain in my arse since you boarded my coach,” Mr. Winters retorted in annoyed tones.
Ah, the carriage driver.
Caleb tensed, bracing for blubbering tears and sputtering indignation from the fine lady before him at being called out so crudely.
Claire swept out from behind Caleb. “I beg your pardon. First of all? Just now, I was entirely contrite. Obviously, I did not intend to douse you with spirits. Though given the early hour we are to depart, imbibing spirits hardly seems the wise course.”
Caleb strangled on a laugh. This was the man she was relying upon to get her… wherever the hell she was going? The lady didn’t have a lick of good sense when it came to biting her vinegar-soaked tongue. “Why, I have been nothing but pleasant the entire journey and have done nothing… noothhing,” she repeated more slowly, enunciating each syllable and somehow managing to squeeze in a third, “to show even the slightest kindness.”
“If you have to say you’ve been pleasant, you probably haven’t been,” Caleb felt inclined to point out.
The patron wearing ale all over his shirt stuck a finger in Caleb’s direction. “Precisely. This gent has it right.”
“This man is not a gent. He’s an American.”
“Well, a rude-mannered American is still better than having to deal with you.”
Claire’s eyes flared wide, her perfectly formed dark eyebrows climbed to her hairline, and then, with a hiss that cut across the revelry of the room, she lunged. “How dare you?”
Cursing, Caleb caught her lightly by the arm and drew her back.
“Release me this instant,” she demanded.
Like hell he would. The lady would find herself in even more trouble than she already did.
“How dare I? How dare I?” the driver demanded. “You delayed our travel by four hours, keeping me from delivering my mail on time.”
The lady gave a flounce of her curls. “An injured deer was blocking the path. You’d have just continued on?”
“That’s precisely what I would have done,” he shouted. “I would have moved it and been on our way, but noooo, you insisted on parking yourself in the middle of the damned English road. Tossing down your bags to keep us from traveling.”
As the other man continued his tirade of offenses against Claire, Caleb found himself reluctantly impressed by the efforts she’d gone to. Oh, he’d sooner confine himself to a British prison ship again than admit as much to the hellcat.
“Do you know anything about fixing an injured deer?” Curiosity pulled the question from him.
The quarreling pair immediately swung their attention his way.
Claire opened her mouth, but the driver beat her to it.
“Of course she doesn’t. Put a damned bonnet on his head to dress him up.”
“To blot out your caterwauling,” she gritted. “He was scared enough as it was.”
The man’s eyes bulged. “My caterwauling? Mine? This from a woman screaming like a banshee in the night, when all my passengers were sleeping on their bench.”
This time, there was a marked shift from her bold combativeness. Claire went silent, and she studiously attended the man’s wrinkled shirt.
Caleb moved his gaze over the sad lines of her face, the brittle set of her lips. This was a… new side of her. One, at least, that he’d never seen. She was usually spirited, with a spark in her eyes, challenging him and any man at any turn, but there was no hint of that willfulness now.
The driver wasn’t done with her. The man turned to Caleb. “Scared my horses witless, she did.”
Claire immediately found her voice. “You’d think if you can respect a horse, then you can find it in your heart to respect a deer.”
The lady’s opponent snorted. “I don’t eat my horse, and my horse gets my mail delivered.”