She nodded. “Yes. You have the right of it. Now, if you would.” Claire presented him with her back. When he remained precisely where he was, she turned back. “Please.” She tacked that on with another smile.
Cursing, he leaped to his feet with an agility no man of his size and power should be in possession of.
“Turn,” he clipped out.
It was the same military tone, as she’d come to call it, she’d heard used by her brother and his friends who’d served beside him fighting Boney’s forces. And this was the sole time she did—and ever would—comply. Giving him her back once more, she concentrated her focus on the wall ahead of her.
Caleb set to work on the row of buttons, mumbling less-than-flattering opinions about the pearl-encrusted fastenings. Which… well, at least they were not about her.
And yet…
One would think, given the passionate exchange that had occurred in this very room just minutes ago, that there’d be some… awareness. Something more than—
“There,” he muttered, and Claire caught the bodice of her dress just as it would have sagged.
Not that she need worry anyway. Caleb had already settled himself back on his bedding.
“Thank you,” she said pertly.
When she’d returned to her side of the room, she let her dress fall and stepped out of it. Claire collected a fresh night wrapper from her valise. All the while she dressed, Claire watched his side of the room. She should be grateful.
He could have been a boor—or, rather, more of a boor than usual. He could have mocked her for that explosive moment of passion, in which she’d behaved shamefully and wantonly.
But he hadn’t.
He’d allowed her that glorious bliss she’d stolen for herself and had not let it be a source of mockery between them.
Sliding her night shift into place, she lowered herself to the floor. Even with the blankets under her, the wood proved cold and unforgivable. The hearth, several paces behind her, cast a deep heat that soon managed to drive out the chill. Rolling onto her side, Claire drew a blanket across her person and stared across the room to where Caleb had just unbuttoned her dress.
Claire lowered her head, and under the bed they’d both forsaken, she squinted in the dark to easily and instantly make out his silhouette.
He’d offered her his bed. And he’d also allowed her the place nearest the fire and subsequent warmth.
Nor had he said anything about those sacrifices. He’d just made them, which seemed contradictory for a man who disliked her most fervently. That didn’t mean he liked her, per se. At all. But it did speak to the fact that he wasn’t the completely cold, unfeeling man she’d taken him for.
Claire stared off at the shadows dancing upon the empty, unoccupied bedframe. Perhaps this was the side of him that her sister-in-law saw. While Claire? Claire had been too blinded by the fact that he didn’t like her to see anything beyond her own resentment. He’d come to represent all of society who viewed her in a less-than-kind way, and as such, she’d taken that resentment out upon him. But his feelings for her didn’t speak necessarily to who he was as a person.
They were just… two people who didn’t get along. A man and a woman who butted heads over art and life and any other topic in between.
Except, you were moving in fine enough harmony, a voice taunted, her own conscience mocking Claire when Caleb hadn’t. Nor had his embrace been wielded by him as some manner of lesson.
This embrace she’d initiated and seen herself fulfilled. And he’d allowed her that pleasure, without shaming her. And that… made it impossible to hate him as she once had.
A log shifted in the fireplace, the fire hissed and snapped, and nearly an hour later, Claire gave up on sleep with a sigh.
She pushed herself upright and dragged her valise close. Opening the prettily embroidered piece, she fished out her sketch pad and pencil. She rolled onto her stomach, and licking the tip of her finger, she turned past image after image and then stopped, lingering on one—a bright porcelain vase overflowing with wildflowers. The arrangement sat framed in the center of the room with a backdrop of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked her family’s previous estates.
A memory whispered forward.
You’re dying there to show me what’s in your notebook. I don’t need to even see it. I’ll bet every last canvas I ever painted on that you’ve got yourself one of your mother’s fine vases filled with some wildflowers, and because you didn’t paint the hothouse ones, you think you’re somehow bold. Maybe you even have them outside, or next to a window to make some kind of artistic point about how the flowers deserve to be outside, but are trapped inside. You’re no artist, Claire. You’re a pastel and paint miss who has no place in an art room.
That monologue had been scathing, each word of it seared on her mind long after he’d uttered the words in his mocking, slightly raspy tones. It had been raw and brutal and… incisive.
When she’d reflexively hidden her sketch pad behind her back, his smile had said he knew he’d been accurate in his assessment of her work that he’d not even seen.
That had been the last floral arrangement she’d ever sketched or painted.
Giving her head a clearing shake, Claire resumed turning the pages until she landed on an empty one. She contemplated the empty canvas before her.
“… Paint your passion…”
She’d been so offended by his treatment of her that day, she’d failed to appreciate he’d given her perhaps the most important art lesson she could have ever received.
Claire set her pencil to work; gliding it over the page, the gray strokes filling in the previous places of white. As she worked, her mind tunneled as the memory slipped from her and into her rendering.
Passion…
Emotion of the most raw and unbridled and beautiful…
Also, ironically, a second lesson he’d taught her. Claire sketched, biting at her lip, frustrated with her fingers’ inability to keep up with that which she sought to commit forever to this sketch pad.
She’d often thought about those forbidden acts shared between men and women. However, she’d not thought to know it for herself. Why, even the marriage she’d agreed to wouldn’t involve a marriage bed.
She puzzled her brow. Or… eventually, it would? Surely there’d be a consummation of their union. She’d not allowed herself to think of that. Which, in hindsight, was silly. Her breath came in noisy little spurts, damning in the quiet of the room, and she forced herself to slow that cadence. To sketch instead.
“Now what?” Caleb asked, with such a coating of annoyance.
Startled, Claire gasped, and her fingers slid, the pencil scraping across the page and effectively marking up the form upon that page.
She glared at that line. Blast it. “I didn’t say anything,” she felt inclined to point out.
“You’re awake.”
Claire rolled onto her side and found his head turned toward where she lay. “But I wasn’t bothering you.”
“Your pencil is.”
She glanced down at the nub in her fingers and then looked Caleb’s way once more. “You’re a light sleeper, are you, Mr. Gray?”
“It appears you are.”
Too. That unfinished response hung in the chilled night air.