After that, he’d not held back; he took great relish in needling the lady. No, Caleb didn’t find himself blameless for their coming to heads at every meeting. In fact, it wasn’t even that he didn’t enjoy being with her. That was the whole befuddling thing of it all. He found a good time in baiting her. And now, it would seem, kissing her, too. The last thing he needed, however, in his life was a proper English lady with a heightened sense of privilege and entitlement.
Caleb reached the framed painting he’d had her pinned beside. The same one she’d offered to purchase… and he froze, his eyes locked on the scene of destruction and despair. He’d painted this one so many times. Over and over. The crimson was never quite red enough. The waves not quite turbulent enough. It was a scene so real still and so vivid in his mind, and yet, he couldn’t bring himself to ever accurately re-create the moment that had seen him captured, torn from his brothers-in-arms, and, for two years, ripped from his family. And… the woman who’d loved him.
“You should’ve sold it to her,” Wade said from behind him, startling Caleb from the unwanted memories. “The painting,” his friend clarified as he moved to take another one of the frames down. “You don’t even like that one.”
Caleb grunted. “I like her even less.” That hadn’t always been the case.
“Yeah, well, you know what both of us don’t like?” the other man shot back, easily hefting the painting from the wall. “Empty bellies. And that’s what you’re going to get both of us if you don’t swallow your pride and do something to make yourself the money you can.” With the painting in hand, Wade headed back toward the workroom.
Actually, Caleb was well aware of that. He knew how fast his earnings were dwindling. After all, a man couldn’t simply travel and create without taking on some work to sustain those passions. And yet… “I get to say no and yes to whatever I want.” And as miserable as he was suffering through exhibits with patrons… “I don’t do students.” And certainly not self-entitled, self-absorbed, self-centered English misses.
Wade sighed. “All right, well, it’s that time again.”
He blanched. “It was just that time two weeks ago.”
“It’s actually been three months since we last had the finance talk.”
The finance talk meant it was that time when he relied on Wade to sort out just what obligations Caleb had to agree to in order to fund his ability to craft and create.
Fuck.
“Now, if you were interested in taking on students,” the other man began as Caleb carefully filed his masterpiece, as Claire had called it, into a crate.
“I’m not,” he said tightly, cutting Wade off at the pass.
“You could do a good deal worse than that one.”
Which…? He could do a good deal worse? Than Claire Poplar? “If by ‘worse’ you mean cutting off my fingers and losing the ability to hold the paintbrush, then yes, I could always do worse,” he muttered.
He and Wade had been together since they’d both survived and escaped an impressment ship. Since then, Wade had served as a loyal assistant. Seeing to anything that fell outside the scope of Caleb’s painting. Which was, really, everything. The other man took over the headache of everyday finances, and he found the exhibitions and museums to house Caleb’s work. He coordinated the sale of Caleb’s paintings. As such, between their business relationship and their shared past, Wade also had a greater sense of entitlement to voicing his opinion. Which Caleb tolerated because of their history.
He returned and found Wade packing up Caleb’s brushes and equipment. “You know we have to have this talk,” his friend said, rolling up the packed case and tying it off.
Oh, God. He wouldn’t let it go. But then, what kept Caleb able to survive was that one of them stayed on top of Caleb’s lack of interest in anything that wasn’t painting.
“You’re not listening,” the other man charged.
“I’m… listening.”
Wade gave him a look.
“Reluctantly,” Caleb allowed.
“We’re out of money. Nearly. This exhibit netted you one hundred pounds, but when you partition that out for your replacement equipment, rent, travels, and my salary, of course, you’re back to the job of finding the next job. Which isn’t teaching, that is.”
“Which isn’t teaching.”
“As I see it, you’ve got few options. One, take on the students.”
“Not an option. Next?”
“Yeah, well, with your miserable personality and your lack of prospects, you certainly aren’t going to find some fancy heiress and her fortune.”
Caleb chuckled at that blunt and entirely accurate assessment. “You’ve only given me one option.”
“Night’s Keep.”
He snorted. What a ridiculous name for any place. “You think the solution is some desolate, run-down property?”
“No, I think it is some desolate, fixed-up property.
“It’s been fixed up since we last journeyed there?”
“No, that’s my point. You get in there and fix it up so you can let it out for a steady income.” Wade paused. “And then you get out.”
And then he got out. He continued his travels and was free to pursue his work. It was nothing short of a tantalizing prospect. An English property sustaining him and his future would be the ultimate irony. A place that had taken so much from him would sustain the one true joy he found in life.
“You can stay there and see—”
Wade already had his hands up. “Don’t look at me. Nothing is going to keep me in this godforsaken country. Not even you.”
Caleb couldn’t and wouldn’t blame him. Neither would he ask him to make that sacrifice. That wasn’t the nature of their relationship. They had both endured an everlasting hell, and that was the bond that bound them.
“What else do you got?” Because for the other man to have raised the possibility, he would also no doubt put an equal effort into the plan.
“You find yourself some woman you can leave behind, at the property we came here to look at in the first place. Leave her in charge of it, and you’re both free to go your own ways. She manages the estate. You get the money so you can continue painting, never having to do any of these exhibits or shows… unless you want to. On your terms. A mail-order bride.”
The other man left that there to dangle in the air. The possibility that should be an impossibility. After all, the last thing he wanted was marriage. He’d gotten close enough to that state, only for the woman he’d loved to up and marry Caleb’s brother when Caleb had been rotting on a British prison ship.
Except, what Wade spoke about wouldn’t really be a marriage. It’d be a business arrangement like any person born to America would know all about. Such partnerships had helped form a country. The woman could be old. The woman could be young. All she needed to be was agreeable to having a husband who was happy to travel the globe and see to his work while she remained behind at that British property.
It couldn’t be sold.
But it could be exploited.
And if there was one certainty, it was that Americans knew things about exploiting land.