“Yeah, that was kinda what I just said.” There was the faintest hint of his usual drollness, but there was a hesitancy that she’d never heard from him.
Was it that he felt guilty? Or ashamed? Or… regretful in other ways?
She hugged her arms tighter to her middle, hating herself for desperately wanting the answer to be the latter.
She felt him near her shoulder. The heat emanating from his broad, powerful frame spilled out, enveloping her, chasing away the cold. Go. Just go, she silently pleaded, needing to be alone and away from him so that she didn’t recall that she’d come to like him and… care.
Alas…
He rested his palms along the stone wall. His fingers brushed her sketch pad, and much the way she’d done earlier, he sucked in a deep breath. “Another visit from your muse?”
That’s why he would think she was out here. She had her book, and he knew the hours when she found her greatest joy of creating. Because that was just one more part of herself that she’d shared with him.
“My muse is gone, Mr. Gray,” she said, unable to keep the bitterness back. At least in this moment.
“I know the feeling.”
He’d said as much at the Rotted Rooster and yet… “Do you really, though?” she snapped, finding solace in her fury. She whipped to face him. “Do you truly know anything about it?” He and his great masterpieces, and his adoring crowds. Even his mediocre work was greater than anything she’d ever put to paper.
“I told you, Claire, I do know what it is to struggle with this craft. I’ve been searching for my muse for several years now.” His somber admission was directed out, as it had been at the North Yorkshire hills.
She thought of how little she’d detected his hand move while he’d had his own sketch pad open.
“Yeah, it happens to every artist.” With his face still in profile as it was, she caught the pull of his muscles into a grimace. “Or, that’s what I’ve told myself to ease some of the panic. I was looking for this place to provide some income so I can go out and do my work. Find myself.”
“Oh.” That soft little exhale slipped out. And suddenly, she hated herself for questioning that great struggle he now faced. “One would never know from the pieces you’ve created, Caleb.”
“You mean, you can’t take a look at my paintings and tell they are empty?” he drawled.
She remembered that volatile exchange they’d had, when she’d gone to put one more appeal to him for lessons, and also when she’d called out his work for being passionless.
He faced her. “I think that’s been part of my resentment of you, Claire. It wasn’t fair, and it was petty and wrong.”
“You will find yourself again.”
“You don’t know that,” he said sadly. “All I catch are fleeting glimpses of her.”
No. She didn’t.
She wanted to hate him. She wanted to let her resentment fester and her anger linger. What she didn’t want was to feel this… this connection to him. A need to erase the worry not even the dark night sky could conceal.
Claire presented her back to the countryside and perched herself on the stone balustrade. “Sometimes, when you’re searching too hard for something, you direct your gaze outward so much that you miss what is right before you, the beauty to be captured.”
“It’s hard not to look when you’re searching to find something.”
“No,” she murmured. “That is true.” And also something that resonated on so very many levels.
Just like that, he dragged them back to the very reason she was out here in North Yorkshire, with him now.
“I didn’t know, Claire,” he said quietly. “Until at the inn,” he conceded. “When you handed me the directions, but by that point, I was trying to figure out how to tell you.”
And she found herself… believing him.
She sighed. What could he have said, though? No matter the timing of that admission, it would have always been terrible. That detail didn’t change anything. It didn’t resurrect the arrangement that had brought her out on this, the most daring, outrageous moment in her life. One that would have seen her independent.
A little fleck of white appeared before her vision. And then another. And another.
Stretching a palm out distractedly toward them, she attempted to catch one of those tiniest of snowflakes. Each one, however, proved as elusive as happiness was for her.
“Snow,” she murmured. “I used to love snow, but it is… so rare here.”
“Snows all the time where I’m from.”
She wondered about the place of his birth, a place he’d left… Was he searching or running? “Do you plan to return ever?” she asked, rubbing at her arms.
“Here.” Caleb shrugged out of his jacket and swung the article over her shoulders, and she was instantly enveloped in the warmth left by him. The faint ashy smell of charcoal contained within the folds of the fabric so perfectly suited this man, unlike the citrusy bergamots and sandalwoods of the lords in London.
“I never gave it much thought,” he confessed. “When I returned and learned… everything I did”—that his brother and fiancée had betrayed him in the worst of ways—“I first buried myself in my art, losing myself in my work. Locked myself away in a room for nearly a year, rarely coming out and then only when I could be assured that most of my family wasn’t around. When I’d finished, there were thirty-five canvases complete.”
“And a legacy built,” she said, admiring him even more for what he’d managed to accomplish amidst such grief.
“A legacy that brought with it an opportunity.” He glanced out, but his gaze was directed inward. “And pressure.”
There it was again. That struggle he faced, the most intimate of details for an artist to confess, and he’d shared it with her. What did that mean, exactly? For surely it said… something about them?
“Wade’s gonna escort you home tomorrow morn,” Caleb said casually, so jarringly that he effectively cut across her whirling thoughts.
“W-Wade?” she repeated blankly.
“He’s my man of affairs. A friend from America. We were impressed together. I trust him with my own life.”
And so he knew she’d be safe in his care. That was supposed to bring her solace? Or comfort or… or… what?
Claire sank her lower teeth into her lip to steady a tremble that had nothing to do with the cold. “A-and what of y-you?” she brought herself to ask, praying he’d mistake that tremor in her voice as a product of the winter air.
He rocked on his heels. His eyes briefly went to hers before shifting away to take in the night-covered countryside. “I’ll head on to Paris.”
For his art.
Only, that wasn’t what she was asking. Not truly.
It wasn’t Caleb’s immediate future that she wondered about, but rather, now that he’d not landed the bride he’d thought he had, had he simply given up on his advert? Claire wouldn’t be his bride or the mistress of this great household, but eventually another would. Given her quest for freedom, it should be the latter thought that hurt most. It was, however, the former that threatened to cleave her chest in two.