The carriage rumbled along, past an open field, a familiar one she’d passed just two days ago. Had it really only been two days?
Desperate to cling to the moments that existed beyond the carriage, to the memories she’d made there with Caleb, she brushed her gloved palm over the frosty glass, and laying her head against the cold panel, she stared out at Gordale Scar.
This place was the closest she’d ever come to having everything she’d always wanted.
It was now time to let go of a child’s dreams and look to the future that awaited her.
Chapter 24
She’d been successful.
Claire had returned to the folds of her family and achieved that which she’d never thought to attain—victory over her mother.
“This is a sin,” her mother hissed, wagging a finger at Claire. “With all that we have to worry about with Christina’s husband dying, now we need worry about you, too.”
If it weren’t just like her mother to focus on such a triviality when her daughter’s beloved husband was suffering.
“She hired an art instructor, Mother,” Tristan called from where he stood in the doorway, overseeing the exchange. “I’d hardly call this grounds for upset, and,” he dropped his voice to a whisper. “If we might please show some restraint for Christina and her children?”
Alas, their mother would have to care about something more than she did their family’s reputation—their already ruined reputation. “A wicked, terrible art instructor whose work is shameless. Scandalous,” their mother called over to Tristan. “And he is a man.”
“Men are as capable of being artists as females,” Claire pointed out, pretending to misunderstand the reason her mother had mentioned Mr. Francis De Witt’s gender.
Her mother’s nostrils flared. “It’s all this one’s fault.” She shifted that shaking digit Poppy’s way. Poppy who, dressed in pants as she often was while painting, smiled in return.
The dowager baroness gasped. “Shameful is what it is.”
Claire, however, had returned to her family, not the same woman she’d been when she’d set out on her own, a woman who no longer tiptoed about her mother in a bid to avoid conflict. “I couldn’t agree more,” she drawled. “Someone with real sins on her hands daring to cast aspersions upon anyone else’s character, particularly a woman whose very generosity is the reason you aren’t in a debtors’ prison, is shameful indeed.”
Their mother clutched at her throat. Her eyes bulged. “How dare—”
“How dare I?” Claire cut her off. “How dare I defend Poppy against one such as you? I do it quite easily.
“Please, just allow me to send one more name for you to consider?” the dowager baroness implored.
Over the top of her head, Poppy caught her eye. “You decide,” she mouthed.
Yes, it was her decision.
This was the closest to independence she’d get as long as she was here. That would have to be enough. At least for now, it was.
“I’ve made my decision on who my new art instructor will be, Mother.” Claire infused a firm insistence to let the dowager baroness know the matter was at an end.
Her mother scraped a fury-laden gaze up and down Claire’s person. “You, running off as you did, aren’t fit to make any decisions. And now you’ll run off with a different male artist? There is no end to the shame you’ll bring.” With that scathing pronouncement, she stalked off.
“I’m not really running off,” Claire pointed out with an unholy glee. “I’m planning to tour the Continent in the name of art and will have a chaperone for company.”
“In the name of art,” their mother mumbled.
Tristan hurriedly stepped aside so as to not get in the way of her retreat.
“She’s leaving,” Tristan promised the moment she’d gone. “I thought it might bring Christina some comfort having her mother near.” At his wife and sister’s look, he mumbled. “I know. I know. I will see that she returns to London to join Faye.”
“No!” Claire exclaimed. She and Faye had celebrate the freedom they would have from their miserable mother and prying eyes. Claire had gone off and lived her own life these past days, and she would soon leave to tour the Continent. She’d not steal Faye’s freedom.
“No?” Tristan asked; his eyes filled with the heavy suspicion that only an older brother could achieve.
Claire smoothed her features. “That is, let the decision be for Christina…” She glanced to Poppy. “And Poppy.” After all, Poppy was Tristan’s wife, and her wishes should be considered before all.
“Of course, we shall let Christina decide,” Poppy demurred.
“And if Christina does choose to send Mother on her way,” Claire urged. “might I suggest Dartmoor?”
Husband and wife exchanged a look that existed only between a loving couple, where no words were necessary, and Claire’s heart cracked and bled all over again from her envy of what they had and the yearning that hadn’t gone away, and had only grown, following her departure from North Yorkshire.
It was too much.
Ripping her stare away from her brother and his wife, Claire headed over to the canvas she’d begun work on five days earlier, her eyes going to the pair locked in an embrace, focusing on just one form upon that page.
Caleb.
Her throat moved in a painful way.
She missed him.
God, how she missed him.
She even missed the brooding, surly side of him.
Poppy approached Claire on the other side of the canvas, a fellow artist respecting and appreciating that it was no one’s place to look until a project was completed, and only then if an artist wished to share.
She now understood why she’d so offended Caleb with her actions that day long ago.
“Are you happy with your decision?” Poppy asked gently.
“I’ve interviewed any number—”
“That isn’t the decision I spoke of,” her sister-in-law interrupted.
“Oh.” Claire stared at the brush she held in her fingers. “It wasn’t really a choice,” she said softly. “Not mine, anyway.”
Poppy sighed. “Caleb is a—”
The nursemaid appeared in the doorway; sparing Claire from having to listen to Poppy speak about the last man Claire wanted to think about. Not when her heart was already shattered.
“Beg pardon, my lady,” the young maid was saying. “The little sir has awakened.”
“Go,” Claire urged.
Poppy hesitated a moment, and then hurried off.
The moment her sister-in-law had gone, Claire devoted herself to her painting, losing herself in the image, losing herself in each stroke of her brush. Until something brushed her nose.
She blinked back the distraction and then paused, staring at the fingertip before her vision.
She turned quickly, sending several droplets of brown paint splattering.
Her heart took on a double-time beat. Surely it was because she’d been so deep in her art that she imagined a flesh-and-blood version of the subject now before her. Only, he was as she’d never before seen him, finely dressed and with his dark locks trimmed to his nape.