There’d been a time Claire had secretly envied her that closeness. Solely because of that artistic connection they shared.
Liar, a taunting voice needled in her head.
Claire did another unnecessary sweep of the empty room. “He’s not here.” And it was the last day of the exhibit. She’d expected, in the month-long display of his work at the exhibit, that he would’ve spent at least one day here.
“Who isn’t here?” Faye asked, still riveted upon the brightest red on the canvas.
Oh, bloody hell. Not that she need worry, too much. If one was going to be caught speaking aloud to oneself, Faye was the perfect person to be doing it with. It still did not mean, however, that she willingly wanted to speak about Caleb Gray with even Faye.
“The driver,” Claire said quickly. “We should be…”
Her sister was already starting for the door. “Such a shame. I really would have liked to buy it.”
Then came the tinny, forlorn sound of the bell ring as Faye let herself out and left Clare alone.
“Going,” Claire finished dryly to herself. She reached for her hood to draw the fabric up and stopped, as in the glass windowpanes, she caught the figure behind her.
His face bronzed as if by the sun, his jaw too large, his nose too hooked, he would never, ever be considered handsome in the traditional sense of the word. It was perhaps that incongruity that lent him an air that made a lady look. All that unfashionably long hair, with so much texture and curl to those dark strands; it made a lady’s fingers twitch with the need to touch. And those eyes. Those eyes gave a woman pause, too. A blue so dark it flirted with blackness, adding to the air of mystery that was Caleb Gray.
Which was the sole reason she found herself fixed to the floor, unable to move.
Furthermore, who, at nearly a foot taller and surely seven stone heavier than Claire, was capable of walking about so stealthily?
Either way…here he was. At last. She’d been deliberately searching him out for weeks now. To no avail. As such, his unexpected presence should be met with only a grand relish and excitement. Her patience had paid off. Only, unease warred with nervousness and not the expected triumph.
Caleb Gray. So he wouldn’t speak first. That was fine. She might be a social outcast now. But her mother had forced Claire to suffer through enough deportment and propriety lessons to face anyone, in any setting.
“Mr. Gray,” she greeted him, with a slight inclination of her head.
A cool smile creased his lips, and when he spoke, he didn’t even acknowledge or bother with pleasantries of his own. “Telling people what they should like and not like, are you, Your Majesty?”
Blast him and that infuriating moniker he affixed to her whenever they crossed paths. Where he called Poppy princess, an entirely too familiar endearment, there could be no doubting that his form of address for Claire was intended only as an insult.
“You were eavesdropping on me?” Outrage pulled that question from Claire.
“While you told your sister what she should and shouldn’t like?” Caleb Gray dropped a hip against the wall. He didn’t come any closer, and she far preferred it that way. Not that she was afraid of him. She wasn’t. She just didn’t much like how she couldn’t sort out her thoughts whenever he was near. “Yeah, I heard that.”
Yeah.
Those lazy American speech patterns. She couldn’t sort out whether she liked them. Hated them. Or whether she was intrigued by them. Not him. She was certainly not intrigued by anything about the man before her. Other than his work, that was.
“Very well, Mr. Gray. Your work here is outrageously gloomy,” she remarked, smoothing the pockets along her cloak. “More so than—” His usual work. Claire bit her lip lest she reveal just how much she’d been examining his work. And looking for him.
“You’ve come to offer me artistic tips?” Mockery laced every syllable of those seven words, and she felt her cheeks heating up with an aggravating blush. As if he worried that his insult hadn’t been clear enough, he chuckled.
Hmph. Yes, well, he’d made no effort to conceal just how little he thought of her artistic abilities. “I don’t think you take guidance from anyone,” she said in the haughtiest tones she could manage. “Even if you could use it,” she added, just because she’d never been able to not bait him.
“Oh?”
She’d gone too far.
He pushed himself away from the painting of an anchor as it fell toward an ocean filled with drowning and struggling men, and she could well connect with the unlucky fellow on whom the anchor was bearing down. He took a long, slow step her way. “Got a problem with my work, do you, Your Majesty?”
There was a warning there.
She dampened her lips. Now she’d gone and made a muck of it. What was it about this man that made her lose control of her own tongue?
Caleb stopped before her.
She edged back several steps, just so she didn’t have to crane her neck quite so much. “Not all of it.” She paused. “This particular display, yes.”
He folded those enormous arms across an even more enormous chest. “And yet, even though you don’t like my work, it hasn’t stopped you from coming to visit my exhibit every day for the past month.”
Claire froze.
He knew that? How…?
And then it hit her! Why, he’d known she’d been seeking him out and had made no attempt to meet her. The bounder. Claire sputtered, “Why, you have been avoiding me.”
“Successfully, too,” he said in his flat, sarcastic, and very boorish way.
But then, he was an American. What else could one expect?
Refusing to let him get his usual rise out of her, Claire gave a toss of her head. “Well, I wouldn’t say ‘too successful,’ as we are meeting face-to-face now.”
“I started to take the hint that you weren’t going away.” The absolute absence of a smile, or a wink, and the overwhelming amount of sarcasm disabused her of any possibility that he was jesting.
Claire gasped. “You’ve known I’ve been searching for you,”—it had actually been longer than a month, but she’d sooner lop off her painting arm than admit as much—“and you’ve made no effort to see me.”
“No.”
She waited for him to clarify. When it became abundantly clear he had no intention of doing so, she tapped her slipper. “No, you didn’t know? Or no, you did know and made no intention of seeing me, Mr. Gray?”
“The latter,” he said flatly and with such a rapidity that Claire gritted her teeth.
This was a mistake. She’d known it the moment the idea had come to her that it was a terrible one. They despised each other with a like intensity. They didn’t get along. They didn’t understand one another’s humor. Though, in actuality, he didn’t have a sense of humor. Not in any sense. But he was best of friends with Poppy. And as such, there had to be something redeeming about him. From what Claire had worked out, that one thing was his artistic ability. And that was the only reason she was here. She had witnessed Poppy’s growth as an artist under his tutelage. For that, Claire could swallow her pride.
Getting back to the entire reason she had come in search of him, she made herself smile, keeping the expression in place even as he gave no outward reaction to her attempt at a truce.