“You’d have to find some paragon who’d agree to take on the job.”
“We just have to find a woman who isn’t really looking for a husband, but for some freedom. A woman good with numbers and finances. Somebody who isn’t afraid to visit the properties and know what to do to make them better.”
That could have easily been any number of American women. But an English lady? Why, he didn’t know if even Poppy, whom he respected and trusted and was more intelligent than any Englishman, would be up to the task.
“Well?” Wade prodded.
Caleb chuckled. “Take out an advertisement.”
He’d get what he wanted. Whoever responded to the advertisement would get what she wanted. And he’d be free to go on his own way.
“That’s why I keep you,” Caleb said, heading to gather up the next painting.
“It helps that I’m the only man who will work with you.”
“Now, we just need to find the female version of you.”
Wade’s laughter followed Caleb out.
Chapter 3
By way of a future, few options existed for ladies.
That was, beyond the bounds of matrimony.
For Claire, there were even less available to her than to most women.
After all, no one wanted to marry the daughter of a murderer.
Not that her father had been a murderer. That fact, however, didn’t really matter, not when his actions had led to the kidnapping and almost death of the previous Earl of Maxwell. Scandalous stories found themselves twisted and contorted into some variation of the truth, mostly exaggerations, never managing to settle anywhere in the middle.
It was why Claire Poplar found herself a social pariah.
In the immediacy of her family scandal, she’d not really cared. She still didn’t really care about her circumstances. She didn’t mind being trapped in a world between her blissfully in-love-with-his-wife brother and her gloom-and-doom, always-weeping mother. She didn’t care about the tedium of days that rolled together, largely purposeless. Absolutely meaningless.
She was lying.
She cared very much.
Because she’d not considered that being excluded from the living would mean she’d find herself living a purposeless existence. There was no husband or family of her own, not that she equated her own existence with that of being wed. There were no invitations to respectable charitable organizations. Which had always struck her as ironic…her being shunned by supposedly kindhearted women.
And there were no art instructors or tutors. As such, she’d become a figure that floated about society, when invitations were forthcoming. And even then, she remained as invisible as those invites. No, she had been relegated to the role of younger sister, to be cared for much the way she had been as a small girl. Only now, she was a twenty-three-year-old woman staring down a future of living on the generosity of her brother and his wife. And though they were both loving, and she’d no doubt they would care for Claire until she drew her last breath, neither did she wish to be so dependent upon them.
She had pride enough to want more.
To dream of more than an existence without purpose.
“I’m intrigued,” her sister murmured at her side. “What exactly is a mail-order bride?”
A…?
That managed to gain Claire’s attention. For the first time since she and Faye had taken up a spot before the hearth—she sketching and Faye reading—she glanced over. How different they were in so many ways. Those differences extended to their appearances. Her sister, possessed hair a shade lighter than Claire’s dark strands. Faye was pixielike in height and frame, pale and ethereal. And in truth, Claire had oft secretly envied her sister for the uniqueness of her person.
Her sister had always been a tad eccentric, but there’d become a deeper layer of bizarreness to her since their family had been linked to the kidnapping of a lost—and then found—heir.
As if she’d followed Claire’s question, Faye waved the scrap of paper that had been so commanding her attention this night.
“Let me see that,” Claire muttered, plucking the page from Faye’s hand. Laying it on the wide-plank hardwood floor, Claire leaned down so she might see the tiny print and read, “‘Mail-order bride desired.’ A bride who is shipped by mail?”
“It sounds quite dangerous.”
Her sister sounded entirely too intrigued by the prospect. Claire glanced over. A peculiar light glimmered in Faye’s eyes. Her sister looked entirely too intrigued, as well.
Drawing the page closer, she angled it away from Faye’s view and returned to her reading.
Sought: A wife who is skilled in mathematics, capable of maintaining accounting of estates, and capable of running a household, hiring staff, and retaining staff.
The ideal candidate will be a woman who is skilled in mathematics… she will be a woman capable of keeping meticulous ledgers, conducting meetings pertaining to the health and wealth of the estate. Interested candidate should be a woman who is disinterested in a romantic relationship…
In short, the gentleman responsible for this advert was, in fact, looking for a business partner.
She knew she should be outraged and horrified, as any good English lady would be, but she was intrigued. Not in the same way her sister was, of course, with the macabre aspect of it. But more with the possibility of a marriage that wasn’t a marriage.
It sounded battier than the late King George.
“I’ve never heard anything so—”
“Dangerous?” her sister repeated.
“I was going to say bizarre,” Claire said dryly.
“Do you think he’s a murderer?” Faye remarked with her usual ominous outlook. Of course, they’d been shaped by their family scandal in different ways.
Their brother, Tristan, had become the martyr.
Faye had become the hauntingly eerie one with a morbid curiosity about gloomy news, and researching everything she could about criminal acts.
Christina had ceased coming around; living solely in the country with her sickly husband and children.
And then there was Claire, who wanted to live her own life, free of society’s chains and her family’s scandals. “He’s not a murderer,” she said, directing her gaze up to the ceiling, where the shadows danced ominously overhead, as if in supernatural support of Faye’s musings.
“Murderers do peculiar things.” Faye spoke in the tones of one who knew.
“I dare say, if the gentleman is a murderer, he isn’t going to take out an advertisement for a victim,” she said dryly.
Faye’s eyes went round, and she inched closer to Claire’s side. “Sometimes… sometimes, there is no reason for murder. Like the Harpe brothers.”
Wrinkling her brow, Clare searched her brain, trying to recall the family among members of Polite Society. Alas, it escaped her. “The Harpe brothers?”
Her younger sister spoke on a whisper. “You know—”
“Actually, I don’t,” Claire interrupted with an added layer of dryness.
“They were known as Big Harpe and Little Harpe, two brothers, highwaymen. River pirates.”
Even with her nearness to the raging fire, Claire shivered. Not for the first time since her sister’s macabre fascination in the most gruesome tales started, she wished she hadn’t indulged her.