Pleeeeease. We are herrre… Let us ouuuuut…
A hand, satiny soft and delicate as a butterfly’s caress, covered his own, and Caleb jolted. Her touch was a lifeline that pulled him back from the abyss of memories that had haunted him since that night.
Caleb stared at her fingers, paint-stained as his own. Marred with charcoal. He cleared his throat. “It’s fine,” he said quickly.
“It isn’t. And you don’t need to say it for my benefit, Caleb. What was done to you was a sin as evil as the one my family is responsible for on the Earl of Maxwell.”
A sin as evil as the one my family is responsible for…
He puzzled his brow. “You do know you’re not at fault because of your parents’ actions or decisions?”
Except—Caleb trailed his gaze over those features that were her tell—she didn’t know as much.
He saw the answer in her eyes before she even spoke. “It is my blood. Society holds me at fault. As they should.”
Gripping the underside of his chair, he dragged his seat closer until their knees touched under the table. “How old were you?”
She hesitated. “It doesn’t matt—”
“Don’t be so stubborn, Claire,” Caleb cut her off. “How old?”
The lady’s pert, perfectly formed nose scrunched up. “I was three or so.”
“And you somehow think you had any control over their decisions? Or their actions? You didn’t do what they did.” He drove a finger against the top of the scarred oak table. “Your mother and father were the ones who acted in evil.”
Claire leaned in. “Do you intend to tell me, Caleb, that you haven’t despised the entire British people for what you endured?”
He opened his mouth to speak, but then stopped. For, Claire… wasn’t wrong. He’d done precisely that which she suggested. He hated the British, and it was hard—nigh impossible—to separate out what had been done to him at the hands of their military and a few among the people who lived in this cold, rainy country. “That’s fair enough. You’re right. It’s taken me some time to see that not all English are bad.”
Claire drifted closer, dropping her elbows precisely as his were so they were matched in the positioning of their bodies. “And what made you see it?” she asked softly.
“Poppy.”
Claire didn’t blink for several moments, and then she cocked her head. “Poppy,” she echoed, her voice peculiarly vacant.
“I had it in my mind how all you people were. But she was opinionated. And not proper and very… American in her ways.”
“I… see.” Claire let her arms fall and rested her hands upon her lap. “Poppy has that powerful effect on people, doesn’t she?”
In some ways, yes. In other ways, he and Poppy had been entirely British, not diving at all deeply into each other’s pain. Letting the other find a way to deal. “I didn’t have the realization until you just pointed it out, Claire. That I’ve… softened in some of the views, the harsher, more blanket ones I carried toward all the British.” There’d been the men and children who’d helped him, an outsider in their country, with his art exhibits. “And so I can tell you, in truth, you don’t have to blame yourself for what your family did. You can only live your life and be the person you want to be.”
They locked gazes.
“Thank you,” she said in soft tones. “Now you know. That is one of the reasons I…” Her response fell away, and Caleb probed her with his gaze, searching for whatever she’d been about to say.
Claire coughed into her fist. “That is one of the reasons I fell in love with the… man I did,” she substituted. “Because he is an honorable man.”
An honorable man.
Before, he’d have argued until he drew his dying breath that there wasn’t such a thing, until this conversation with Claire had opened his eyes to how unfairly he’d judged an entire population.
Now, however, he was forced to think about… the man she spoke of.
A proper, fine lord. Some insidious emotion slithered like a serpent around his belly, something that felt dangerously like… jealousy.
Yeah, Caleb had made some concessions where the British were concerned. Claire, however, could sing the bastard’s praises until the cows came home, but Caleb wasn’t going to be filing that fellow in the ranks of “one of the good” anytime soon. Not when the man had left her to make a long journey without any protection.
“You don’t want to marry this guy,” he said gruffly.
Fire blazed to life in her eyes, a rebellious glimmer that set those blue depths a-sparkle. “I said I did.”
She was spoiling for a fight. As someone who’d perfected that evasive way, he recognized it all too well. And any day before they’d met up by chance here at the inn, he’d have been all too happy to give her that which she craved. Because it was easier going head-to-head with a person and being at odds than letting them in and close. “Yeah, you did, Claire. Several times now,” he said with all the gentleness he could manage.
The fight seemed to go out of her, and he hated this deflated version of her always-spirited self.
“Either way, it is too late. It will soon be learned that I’ve run off.” And with nothing more than a note left to assure her family she was well and a promise to write again when she was settled. The discovery of her whereabouts had been delayed by her brother, mother, and Poppy’s journey to help Christina and convince her to return to London with them. But soon they would learn…along with the rest of the world. Faye wouldn’t be able to hold the servants off from sending for Tristan. “As I said, secrets aren’t secrets forever. If I returned, unwed, someone would eventually find out, and there’d be shame brought upon my family.” She bit her lower lip. “More of it, that is. That is something I cannot inflict upon them.
“I don’t much like your brother, and I don’t really know your sisters, but do you really believe they’d want you to worry about all that, Claire?”
“No. But that doesn’t mean that I should accept that for them.” She spoke with an air of finality, indicating she’d struck the death knell on any more of this conversation.
The matter was settled.
She was on her way to the wedding.
Claire removed the napkin from her lap and neatly folded it, laying the stained scrap atop her unfinished food. “I have… enjoyed our time together.”
And… he had, too. More than he’d have ever thought possible. Even so, with all the earth-shaking realizations he’d been brought to here, he couldn’t, however, bring himself to admit that intimate truth.
Claire glanced about, her features a study in perplexity. “Do you have the time?”
He pulled out his watch fob, the gift his father had given him when he’d left for London. “Ten past six.”
She frowned. “The driver and other riders are usually arisen by this time. If you’ll excuse me?” Claire climbed to her feet. “I should see to where he is.”
Oh, hell. Yes, well, there was that matter. One sure to shatter this fragile truce they’d struck. “About that, Claire,” he called, freezing the dark-haired imp before she could seek out the innkeeper.