“I know what you’re thinking,” Claire murmured, and he startled, having failed to hear her approach from behind.
He had to force himself to look at her.
“You’re thinking you’ll go to Tristan and offer to marry me.”
God, it was unnerving how well this woman did know him. “It was one thing before I took your virtue, sweet—oomph.”
Claire jabbed a finger hard into his chest, cutting short the rest of that endearment.
Her eyes glimmered with her outrage. “You didn’t take anything. I gave it. Freely and happily. Because I chose it. You were the one who told me I shouldn’t settle for a formal arrangement.” Like a spirited warrior princess, Claire brought her head back, sending her curls dancing about her shoulders. “So by all means, if it will ease some unnecessary sense of guilt, go meet Tristan.” She waved a hand towards the front of the room. “Make your offer.” She let her arm fall to her side. “But I’ll not accept, Caleb.”
Of course she wouldn’t. Caleb briefly closed his eyes. “But you asked me before.” And now that he’d offered, she’d turn him down?
“That was before,” she explained, wagging that same digit she’d previously planted in his chest. “When it was mutually beneficial. Not now, when you feel duty-bound to marry me.”
He prayed for patience. “That doesn’t make any sense, Claire.”
She steeled her jaw. “It makes complete sense.”
He swept his gaze over her pale features, touching his eyes upon each beautiful angle of her delicate chin and high cheekbones.
At her strenuous objection and declination, Caleb should be… relieved. So where was that rush of sentiment? Why did he continue to feel an increasing sense of hollowness inside, greater than any he’d ever known before? A chasm of emptiness deeper than when he’d found his way back to America and discovered his brother and Alicia’s betrayal?
“Claire,” he began, making one more attempt.
Gripping him by his upper arms, Claire squeezed lightly and attempted to steer Caleb. “Go.” And this time, her implacable-until-now facade wavered, and a hint of tears glimmered in her eyes.
His heart seized, and he reached for her.
Claire tripped in her haste to get away. “Go,” she repeated. “Before my brother comes in search of you,” she said, brushing the moisture back as his mind raced to make sense of the reason for those tears.
But then, withdrawing from him, shutting him out, Claire presented him with her back and proceeded to dress.
“I’ve had a bath prepared. I’ll speak to your brother and allow you some time to… ready yourself,” he said.
“Thank you, Caleb.”
Thank you.
That was it, and with her words of gratitude the last spoken between them, he quit the ballroom, too much of a damned coward to look back.
She’d rejected his offer.
And she’d been quite decisive about it.
Furthermore, she’d been entirely right in her rejection. She did deserve more than a halfhearted request for an empty future with a bastard like him.
As such, to put the offer to her brother anyway would be to disrespect Claire and her wishes. The matter was settled, and all his energies deserved to be focused on the impending meeting with the lady’s brother. A brother who was undoubtedly prepared to meet Caleb across a dueling field.
Caleb reached his offices and found the Baron of Bolingbroke pacing.
Claire’s brother spun and faced him. His face was covered with several days’ worth of beard, his eyes sunken and glittering, his face haggard. He’d the look of a man who’d run himself ragged. Not dissimilar to the first time they’d met, after the man had been abroad serving in Ireland and returned late to his own wife’s art exhibit.
Never trust a person who didn’t properly appreciate a loved one’s art exhibit—it was a motto he lived by.
“Baron Bolingbroke,” he drawled as he entered the office. “A pleasure as—”
“Thank you,” the other man rasped. Surging forward, he met Caleb near the middle of the room, and not unlike the manner in which Claire had taken him by the arms, so, too, did the lady’s brother. “I cannot thank you enough.” The baron’s face crumpled. “I…” He dragged shaking hands through his hair. “Thank you.”
“It… is fine,” he said gruffly. Having anticipated a fight, he didn’t know what to make of this show of magnanimity from a man with whom he’d never gotten on. He motioned to the pair of chairs by the blazing hearth.
When Bolingbroke headed to claim one of those chairs, Caleb fetched a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. Carrying them over, he sat and poured. All the while, the other man stared off blankly, his deadened eyes focused on the flames.
He’d known the baron for several years. After the other man had left his new wife, in service to that same military and king that had captured Caleb, the baron had returned, late to the lady’s art exhibit, and it had been all too easy to hate him for the Crown he served. God, Caleb preferred it when it was easier to not hate or commiserate with the man.
“Here,” he said, thrusting the drink under the other man’s nose.
Accepting it with a word of thanks, the baron stared at the contents a moment and then tossed them back in one quick swallow without so much as a grimace at the fiery burn. Wiping a hand across the back of his mouth, he set the glass on the arm of his chair.
“Do you know if she’s been hurt in any way?”
A memory traipsed in of Claire wandering the taproom of the Rotted Rooster, her eyes snapping as she’d taken on patron after patron, a beautiful warrior. He’d been in awe of her from the moment he’d found her there.
Feeling a questioning look on him, Caleb cleared his throat. “She wasn’t. She handled herself… quite capably.” In hopes that the other man would leave it at that, Caleb took a sip of his whiskey and studied his glass.
The baron jumped to his feet. “I do not understand why she would do this,” he said aloud, his voice unsteady. “When your letter arrived, my sister Faye confessed to an advertisement Claire had responded to.” Lord Bolingbroke spoke in a furious whisper. “A damned marriage advertisement. Why, only a madman would advertise for a damned wife, and my sister was going to tie herself to…” Shuddering, the baron gave his head a shake and let the remainder of his opinions go unfinished.
Caleb managed a sheepish smile. “Yeah, a crazy idea.”
“If it weren’t for you…” The baron’s throat moved rhythmically.
“She would have been fine,” Caleb said, unable to keep a wistful quality from creeping in. “Claire is capable and strong and clever, and she didn’t really need me.” Stop talking.
Except, he’d already said several sentences too much.
The madness eased from the other man’s eyes, replaced with something far more dangerous—suspicion.
Ever so slowly, the other man doffed his gloves and beat those leather articles against each other. “Capable and strong and clever, is she?” The baron’s gaze darkened.
Now, this was how he’d anticipated the exchange would go. And he welcomed it. Embraced the fight, because for some inexplicable reason, he felt like tossing his head back and raging at the world. Caleb quirked his lips up in a mocking grin. “If you don’t know that about your sister, then you’re not much of a brother, Bolingbroke.”