“Claire?” Caleb asked, a question in his voice.
Lowering her hood, she turned slowly and faced Caleb.
He eyed her warily. “What is it?”
Claire smiled. “Caleb Gray, will you marry me?”
The world liked to generalize people and lump them all together.
All men were one way.
All women were another.
Society had these expectations for everyone, how they should behave or think or live their lives. As such, people ultimately found themselves falling into one category or another that contained other versions of themselves.
During their short time together, Claire had opened his eyes to the narrow way in which he’d viewed people. He’d formed an opinion about an entire group of people based on how he’d been treated by a handful. He’d seen English ladies just like he saw their men—prim, and grim, and proper, and guided by nothing more than their own self-interest.
But Claire? She was unlike any woman he’d ever known, British or American. She had gumption. The sharpest sense of humor. And the keenest wit. She’d proposed marriage to him.
And he couldn’t help it.
He laughed.
She was—
“Oomph.” His laugh died. Cause of death: snowball.
The fire burning from her eyes would have melted the snow covering all of Yorkshire. Which could only mean… Horror dawned slowly.
“You were serious?”
As if her glare wasn’t sufficient enough to convey her ire, she bit out each of her next words. “I. Was. Serious.” She paused. “Am serious. Furthermore, I’ll have you know,” she carried on, her conversational tones better suited to talk of the fierce weather they’d been having than a request of marriage. “It is not at all as foreign as you are thinking. Why, Poppy’s own sister put a marriage proposal to her husband.”
He doffed his cap and beat it against his leg. “Let me get this straight. You’re proposing marriage to me… in the form of an argument?”
She wrinkled her nose. “W-well, you w-were the one who went and ruined it. Nor, for that matter, was I intending to be romantic.”
“Then consider your goal met.” He motioned to the stairs behind her, encouraging her to get herself indoors before she—and he—froze to death out here.
Claire began the climb, looking back and talking to him as they went. “We are passionate. We aren’t afraid to go toe-to-toe and challenge each other, to think.”
“Do you think I’m looking for someone to go toe-to-toe with?” Except, even as the question left him, an idea trickled in of him and Claire embroiled in some battle or another, followed by the two of them making passionate love—
She rolled her eyes. “You needn’t worry about it,” Claire said as they reached the main landing. “Because we won’t be t-together.”
With that pronouncement, the lady continued on ahead, leaving Caleb frozen to the spot where he stood, her valise in hand, feeling like she’d flipped him upside down and then turned him around several times for good measure.
“We won’t—?” For yet another time that day, he let a thought go unfinished. But really, he was thoroughly befuddled.
Claire paused and looked about, as if only just realizing she was alone. “Be together,” she called out. “We won’t be together.”
Caleb resumed his walk, finding his way to where she stood at the doorway into the keep. Pressing the handle, he let Claire in and followed close behind.
Warmth immediately came rushing up to meet them.
“You were looking for a wife. That hasn’t changed, has it?” She stared pointedly at him, and he made himself nod. Claire beamed. “Splendid, because I”—she touched her chest—“am looking for a husband.” She lifted a finger. “A specific husband.”
“Me.”
Claire nodded, and far more in possession of her wits than he was, she reached behind him to draw the door shut. She stared expectantly at him.
“You want to marry me?” he asked a different way, stalling for time.
“I was going to marry a stranger. One whom you pointed out might have attempted to control me and subjugate me. Therefore, I’d say you are a marked improvement.” She smiled.
And then it occurred to him. She really was serious. She was, in fact, asking him to be her husband. In sickness and in health. Through good times and bad. And all the other farcical lies contained within those vows.
“Claire,” he began, removing his damp gloves and stuffing them inside his jacket. “I can’t marry you.” Surely she saw that.
“Why not?” She lifted an eyebrow. “Hmm?”
Why not, indeed? There were a million and one reasons not to, but he knew Claire Poplar enough not to say as much. Instead, he settled for the most obvious ones. “You’re—”
“If you say I’m Poppy’s sister-in-law, I’m going to slug you,” she said with a smile. And he believed her.
Only, he’d come to care too much about her to not be honest with her.
“You want to know why, Claire? Because yes, in part, it is because you are Poppy’s sister-in-law.”
Her entire body jerked erect, and her smile grew strained, tense in the corners.
“But the real truth is, you want a real marriage,” he said.
“I do not,” she exclaimed with such indignation he almost believed her. But they’d shared so much with each other. And the blush that bloomed in her cheeks said that she knew as much, too. “I may have mentioned wanting life to be a certain way, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t made peace with what I wanted.” Her eyes pleaded for him to believe her.
“Fine.” He allowed her to that lie she likely clung to for the sake of pride and dignity. Or mayhap it was just that she, in fact, believed what she said in these moments. Which was perhaps the greatest reason of all to decline her offer.
Caleb stretched his hand out and brushed his knuckles down the curve of her cold cheek. She leaned into his touch. It was the faintest, most slight, infinitesimal angling of her head, along with a fluttering of her lashes, and watching her as he did, captivated as he’d become, he caught each of those telling details.
“You may have accepted all that,” he murmured. “But you deserve a real marriage, Claire. And someday, you’re going to find yourself coming out on the other side of the situation that brought you here, a situation you had nothing to do with,” he added with a quiet insistence. “And I won’t have you trapped in a loveless, empty marriage to a bastard like me.”
“So as some manner of honor, you’d have me trapped in a loveless, empty marriage to another?” she asked quietly, and he stilled as her words ushered in a different imagining this time.
Some fancy English gent capable of poems and smiles and not being a gruff, insensitive fellow, and…
He let his arm fall and fisted his hand at his side, wanting that future for her, but selfish enough to resent the nameless stranger anyway.
“I know you, Claire. You’re not going to settle for that. Not anymore.”
Fire flashed in her eyes. “Do not make this about protecting me from myself, Caleb Gray.”
He frowned. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Did she not realize he’d come to care about her? She’d accuse him of having some ulterior motives?