She was… alone until the next mail coach arrived. And as this wasn’t an official posting house, there was nothing to say it would stop here, and—
Kicking the snow off a large tree stump, Claire sank onto the makeshift bench. With her skirts fanning about her, she drew her knees close to her chest.
Perhaps it is a sign. Perhaps you aren’t supposed to go and marry a man you’ve never met.
For when she did, she’d abandon all possibility of what Tristan and Poppy shared.
She wrestled back the niggling voice in her mind, the one attempting to use reason to talk her out of a commitment she’d made.
She’d come to terms with her fate… and her future.
Of course, being stranded at that miserable inn had nothing to do with any signs from the universe and everything do with him.
Claire felt him before she heard him.
This time, however, he didn’t rush to put himself before her. He lingered, allowing her the time she wanted, nay, needed.
“It wasn’t your place, Caleb.”
“I know that,” he said gravely, a stunning admission. “I am… sorry about that.”
That sent her head whipping about, and tall as he was, she had to crane her neck to search for signs of further sarcasm, but there was only a stark sincerity.
“I had an obligation to Poppy,” he said, this time joining her.
Yes, because of his undying devotion to Poppy. Bitterness had a taste, and that taste was rancid vinegar in her mouth. “I don’t need you to look after me,” she cried, storming to her feet. “And certainly not because of my damned sister-in-law.”
“She is my friend,” he said in the tone of one who thought that settled the damned matter.
“Well, you aren’t mine, and you don’t get to make decisions for me, Caleb Gray.”
“Tsk, tsk. And here I thought we’d become something more, sweetheart.”
Surely she imagined the flash of hurt that glinted in his sapphire eyes. Because that would have meant that he cared about her in some way. A delusion she’d briefly allowed herself last night and early this morn.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
Sighing, Claire glanced past his shoulder to the smoke billowing from the chimney of the Rotted Rooster. What did she want to do? Or, what did she have to do? She’d pledged herself to another. And it would not be long before her brother discovered she’d gone missing. That she wasn’t, as she’d left in her note, returning to their family’s properties in Dartmoor to conduct her art in private. Time wasn’t her friend in this.
At this point, the only thing she wanted was to finish her journey and be rid of Caleb Gray.
“Let’s go, Mr. Gray. It is time to leave,” she said tiredly.
Except, even as she marched on ahead, with him following at a slower pace behind her, she couldn’t fight the unwanted thought that even with his high-handed interference, she wasn’t going to be so eager to be done with him after all.
Chapter 12
Well, Claire had taken that about as well as Caleb had expected.
And by well, he meant not at all well.
Knowing her as he did, he’d anticipated her outrage. The woman had pride greater than all the army men he’d known combined.
He’d expected her annoyance. He could count on his hands the number of times when she’d not been annoyed with him or, to be fair, because of him. And all of those instances where she’d not been cross with him had taken place these past two days. An anomaly was what they’d been.
What he’d not, however, been prepared for was her silence. The hellcat was never without a clever retort, a biting response, or teasing repartee. So why did he miss that? Why did he miss talking with her? Hell, he didn’t like speaking with anyone.
Of course, seated on the comfortable bench of the carriage he’d had specially commissioned some years ago to accommodate his size, he should be grateful for the blessed quiet he now enjoyed. The less jabbering the two of them did, the better. He’d already shared more with her than he’d ever intended to share with another person, and it had been too much. It was harder when a person let people get too close. Hell, he’d been betrayed by his own brother and fiancée. And Caleb had endured enough misery during his time on that ship, and when he’d returned home, to ever willingly put himself through that suffering again.
He looked over to where Claire sat engrossed in her work, that place between her dark brown brows that he couldn’t stop noticing puckered in a mark of her concentration.
Nor did he want to like her more than he’d already come to. His first meeting with the lady, he’d found her availing herself to his sketches and then offering him coin to tutor her. The moment had taken him back to a time when a ship’s captain with an interest in art had tied Caleb’s ability to see the day’s light to whether he’d create the maps the British military had ordered him to make.
After that, he’d had her pegged as an entitled, self-important noblewoman. Now, it should so happen, he’d discovered a new side of her these past days. And she was, in fact, nothing like the person he’d initially taken her for. She was going her way. He was going his. Hell, he wasn’t even long for this cold, rainy, dreary country. At last, he’d be set free and by the woman he was now headed on to meet.
A woman he’d not really allowed himself to think about in too many details, beyond the business arrangement agreed upon by her and Wade.
That was the woman he should be, at the very least, wondering about now. He shouldn’t be thinking about the way Claire attended whatever sketch she devoted her efforts to.
Or the way that she, deep in concentration, hunched her shoulders.
Or even the fact that she… enjoyed art. His former fiancée hadn’t understood his love for it. She’d not asked him about his subjects or critiqued his art. Now, he found himself thinking… what would it be like to have a partner in life with shared interests? Perhaps that had been why his engagement had come to an end and why Alicia had found love with Toby. With their mutual love for social functions, they’d enjoyed aspects of Connecticut high society that Caleb had been all too glad to escape in favor of his art. What would it be like to have someone who also found their joy and passion and even misery in the same pursuits? Someone like—
Caleb blinked slowly. He wasn’t thinking that…? Caleb jolted and shook his head forcefully enough to dislodge that fleeting moment of insanity. Two people who were too alike were a recipe for disaster.
Case and point, the hellcat journeying to North Yorkshire with him.
He slid another glance her way. As the conveyance rocked back and forth, Claire intermittently paused in her sketching, but the minute the carriage stabilized, her fingers flew over that page with a zeal he’d possessed once upon a lifetime ago.
And she remained resolute in the silent shoulder she’d given him.
Not only had she not spoken to him, she’d not looked at him either. No, all her attention was firmly on the sketch pad propped on her lap, angled toward the opposite window and away from his line of vision.
Meanwhile, with her pencil scratch-scratching away, he sat here with his own damned sketch pad, open, lost in thoughts about the past and her, but the page was blank but for the lone dots left by him tapping his pencil. Blank, as he always was now.