Something that looked very much like horror lit his eyes. Caleb took a quick step back.
Shame brought her toes curling tight.
“What are you doing here, Claire?” he asked quietly, but not with the condescension that had recently crept into his tones whenever they spoke. “Is everything all—?”
“I want you to take me to Paris,” she blurted and then flinched as soon as the words left her lips. She’d thought to come in here with a good deal more… tact. Alas, he was an American. Perhaps he’d appreciate her directness.
Caleb scratched at his high brow, stirring the several loose curls hanging there. Her fingers ached to test that texture, to see if those strands were as luxuriant as they appeared from the shimmer alone. Just so that she might accurately capture the feel for artistic purposes.
Liar…
He shook his head. “You…?”
When he let the query go unfinished, she clarified, “As Poppy will no longer be joining you, I thought you might allow me to accompany you and introduce me to the instructor whom you intended to pair her with at the university.” Her sister-in-law, who was gifted in ways where Claire had to work harder, had been presented with the greatest gift, one available to so few women—to learn and hone her artistic capabilities at an institution. Now that she was newly expecting and her husband, Claire’s brother, was set to work in London at the Home Office, Poppy had made the decision to set aside that opportunity. For now.
At the protracted silence, she cleared her throat, filling the void. “I brought my work.” She held the sketch pad out for his inspection. When he made no move to take it, she added, “To show you that it has improved since—”
“What?” he barked, his voice soaring to the thirty-foot ceilings. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Claire’s heart slipped. He’d not known. He should have. Given his close relationship with her sister-in-law, Claire had simply assumed he would have been the first to know. Instead, she’d gone and divulged a private confidence. Accidentally, but that mattered not at all. “Oh, hell,” she whispered. “Uh…” Claire let her arm fall to her side.
“What did you say?”
“I’m…” She wet her lips. She briefly eyed the door behind her. Except, if she stepped through and quit this exchange, then she would also forfeit any hope of escape. And a future different than the one she currently looked forward to. “It’s not my place.”
“No. It’s not,” he snapped. “But you came here and started spewing information, and so now I’m asking for clarification.” Caleb jammed his index finger against his opposite palm.
“I won’t say it.”
He stalked over. “But you already did.”
He was livid. Fury poured from his muscular frame. At her impertinence? Or at the discovery his great student should reject the gift he’d offered her?
Her back knocked against the door, rattling the panel and putting an end to her retreat. And she gave thanks when he stopped several paces away. Seven inches past five feet, she was taller than many gentlemen, but always managed to feel small before this towering bear of a man. Her entire body went on alert, aware of him and his nearness. She wet her lips, her unease having little to do with his outrage and everything to do with him… and the pounding of her heart in response to him.
“You talked her out of it.”
She gasped. “No!” Indignation drew that exclamation from her. “Never. I would never—”
“You didn’t write your brother and summon him back from Ireland? Warn him about an interloper…” She widened her eyes. “You didn’t go about trying to end my lessons with her?”
Claire winced.
“Yeah, I know about that.”
So… that was the reason for his animosity. Or one of the reasons, anyway. Given it was increasingly more likely his beloved United States of America would rejoin the king’s empire than she’d be joining him in Paris, she’d be better served leaving and ending this already-bad exchange. “That wasn’t my intention.” She took an even breath. “Yes, I did summon my brother home.”
“Who ended her lessons,” he bit out.
Claire frowned. “She chose to reduce her time with you and spend more with Tristan.” Giving up her spot at the door, she marched the remaining steps over to him. “They are in love.”
“Love.” He wrapped that word in the harsh rasp of his deep baritone.
She lifted her chin a fraction. “I’ll not apologize for reuniting my sister-in-law and her husband.”
He lowered his face close to hers. “No, but you should apologize to her for forcing her into a staid, dull, tedious English life,” he said with a bluntness that sent heat rushing to her cheeks, “when she could have had a real future as an artist.”
Unlike Claire. His meaning was clear. She bit the inside of her cheek.
Their breathing rose hard and fast, falling in time into the same harsh rhythm. Their eyes locked. His eyes drifted to her mouth, and then he lifted his gaze back to hers.
She spoke softly. “You’d turn me asserting myself into something bad, Caleb.”
“I’d take you maneuvering and conniving to get what you want at all costs as something reprehensible,” he said flatly.
She gasped. “I’ll have you know, Poppy’s decision, whatever it may be, had nothing to do with me.”
“No. You just lamented your tedious state to her,” he shot back, immediately knocking her off-balance again. “I’m sure that didn’t have anything to do with her suggesting she stay behind and you go.”
Claire stared at him, stricken.
She’d confided in Poppy, just as she had her sisters, about her frustration. “No,” she said, shaking her head hard, refusing to believe she’d somehow altered Poppy’s plan. “She wouldn’t do that.” Except, she would.
“Wouldn’t she?” he asked quietly, and his snapping and snarling had been easier than this echoing of her own guilty musings.
She faltered, and needing space between them, she moved away several paces. “I won’t have you make my motives out to be mercenary, Caleb.”
He shrugged, that lift of his broad, wide shoulders worse than his earlier condemnation.
Claire hesitated. “You won’t even look at my work? And consider my request?”
Caleb laughed, a rusty chuckle that grated on her last nerve. “You’re dying 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.” He approached her, and she made herself hold her ground. “Maybe you even have them outside…” he whispered in his graveled tones as he circled behind her and paused, placing his lips near her ear.
Of their own volition, her eyes slipped shut. Why should she respond so to his nearness, when his words were cruel?
“Or next to a window to make some kind of artistic point about how the flowers deserve to be outside, but are trapped inside.” He came to stand before her, their bodies nearly touching, his gaze a hot, piercing caress. His throat moved. “You’re no artist, Claire. You’re a pastel and paint miss who has no place in an art room.”