“I’m not a circus clown to be put on display, Claire. I’m a man whose work is no less intimate to himself than yours is to you.”
That, she could understand. The enormity of that truth slammed into her, ushering in a different moment in time.
The sketch pad she’d hidden each night, a young woman hiding away her newly discovered love and the renderings she’d attempted of the human form, her own body as she’d seen it. And then the moment she’d been summoned by her mother and walked into the room to find her book—containing those mediocre, but very clear attempts—clutched in her white-knuckled grip.
Horror.
Outrage.
Embarrassment.
So many different emotions had swirled so that all Claire had wanted to do was flee as far and as fast as she could.
God help her, she’d done that to Caleb.
And what was worse… she’d gone to him all but demanding he instruct her and her sisters; she’d been commanding and insistent, and—
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I… didn’t think. I just assumed, and wrongly so, that because you are an artist who shared your work—?”
“That I want to?” he gently interrupted. “I hate it, Claire. There’s nothing I hate more. Nothing at all. I do it because it’s how I earn my money. I do it because it’s what lets me live an existence where I can keep painting other works.”
It was, in short, something she couldn’t understand. Being a woman, and a lady at that, she was expected to be a certain way. There weren’t freedoms for any woman. As such, the idea of giving lessons or taking art lessons or selling something she’d created, a rendering that the world wanted to share in, were dreams that only a small few were granted. “Then you are privileged,” she said wistfully.
He stiffened.
“I don’t mean it as an insult,” she quickly assured him. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you are. You may dislike with all your being needing to sell your work or share your talent, instead of keeping it as a gift for yourself. But me? My sisters? Any number of women would choose to lose one of their hands they use for sketching, were they to have those abilities, to teach art to others. To not be forced to suffer through some tedious lesson where floral arrangements are the expectation and any deviation is a scandal. To share their work. To be able to support themselves, instead of…” Marriage. She caught herself from finishing that. From explaining to him that a marriage of convenience was the very reason she found herself making this journey, with him even now. The last thing she needed was for a man who felt a sense of obligation to her and her family to believe she had regrets about her upcoming nuptials.
Caleb moved his gaze over her face. “Instead of marrying?”
Of course his artist’s eye missed no detail.
She forced a wry smile. “If you think having to share your work is distasteful, imagine having to share your body and mind.” Because that was the expectation among peers in the market for a wife. Women were expected to behave a certain way and be a certain bride. “Or having someone tell you that you shouldn’t sketch.” As her mother had done numerous times. Claire waggled her eyebrows. “And then telling you that you can’t sketch…” Which was the fate for so many women.
Except, instead of his lips forming a matching, commiserative grin, his mouth dropped at the corners, and his expression darkened. “Does your husband have that opinion on your art?”
Did her husband…?
Then it hit her. “You think I’m speaking about my fiancé,” she blurted, and then she couldn’t help it. A laugh bubbled up from her chest and spilled past her lips. “No. I needn’t worry about any of that.” Claire held her palms up and slashed them down at her sides. “At all,” she said, speaking in truth. Not because she’d found herself the manner of loving, supportive partner she’d fictionalized for her—and Caleb’s—benefit. But rather, because she’d have a business arrangement that granted her freedoms the majority of women were not.
Except… her laughter subsided, and her gaze locked on Caleb’s chest.
That was the assumption she made based on what she had agreed to.
But the moment she married, she would be bound to… this man, who was a stranger.
Her thoughts took off at a panicky gallop. He’d asked for one arrangement, one that allowed her freedom of his properties, while he, world traveler that he was, toured the globe. But what if he tired of that? What if he wished for an heir to inherit whatever profits her efforts yielded at his estates?
For they would be his.
Claire’s body went hot, then cold, and then hot once more.
Despite the chill in the carriage, perspiration slicked her palms, and sweat beaded on her neck.
If her husband decided he wanted an heir, she’d have no right to refuse him. None that the law recognized.
Something solid fell to her lap, and she glanced down.
Caleb had returned her sketch pad, that leather book etched with three names—with one of them about to be rearranged.
Claire Lorraine Poplar.
Of their own volition, her tremulous fingers came up and traced the three names, lingering on the last. Soon that surname would be shifted out, replaced by a new one, a name that belonged to another that she’d be forced to take on as her own, because that was just something else a woman was asked, nay, expected to surrender.
Her breath grew more labored.
A warm, strong, solid hand covered her own.
Claire locked her gaze on that appendage, familiar and caring, a lifeline. And she accepted wholly the warmth that came from that silent, compassionate show of support.
“What if he isn’t?” she whispered, unable to care what it might mean for any attempt on his part at interfering in her decision. “What if he changes and…” Claire sucked in an uneven, noisy breath and forced herself to raise her eyes to his. “What if he hates my art and attempts to forbid it, and then…” She’d be even worse off than she was now.
“Then don’t marry him,” he said with a quiet insistence. “You don’t know him well enough to say that he’s going to support you? Then you don’t marry him, Claire. You go home…”
You go home…
This time, her lips trembled in a shaky smile. “Then what? Hmm?” She quirked an eyebrow. “What is my fate beyond this? Everything for a woman is uncertain.” She looked Caleb square in the eyes. “You see, Caleb, you resent that you have to share your art and take certain jobs in order to feed your artist’s soul. But I?” She removed her hand from under his and pressed that fist to her breast. His piercing eyes followed that movement. “To my very soul, I hate that a craft that I love is something forbidden me. And this? This is something, as a male artist, that you can never understand.” Claire smoothed her palms down her cheeks. “So am I, even with my fiancé’s promises, nervous? Nervous that he’ll decide to cut me off from creating?” Or worse…? “Yes, but as a woman born without choice because of my gender, I’d be a fool not to entertain the possibility.”
With that, she opened her book once more and let herself be lost in her latest work.