Chapter Seven
A soft, incessantly grating sound dragged Clara inch by inch to a wakeful state. Even before her eyes were open, she frowned deeply and tried to place it. A storm? A saw blade? Then, it struck her.
Snoring.
And not just any snoring.
It was a cadence of snoring to which she was rapidly becoming well-acquainted.
Clara sat up abruptly and flailed, inadvertently striking Brinley in the head with a wayward elbow.
He groaned and cursed, cupping his skull and screwing his eyes tightly shut.
Clara attempted to leap from the bed, but her legs were hopelessly tangled, and she ended up tumbling to the floor in a heap.
“Bloody hell!” Brinley cursed again.
Clara swept her hair from her face to find him looking down at her—one of his eyes still shut in a painful squint.
“Are you unharmed?” he asked, his voice raspy and raw.
His hair was sleep mussed, and his shirt gaped at the throat.
A shadow of a golden beard covered his sharp jaw, and she caught a glimpse of the strong column of his neck and the tawny flesh of his chest within the gaping front of his linen shirt.
It felt too intimate and—still sleep addled as she was—she was ill-equipped to deal with her current predicament.
She stumbled to her feet and held the quilt as a shield, though she was technically completely covered, regardless.
“H—How did you come to be here?” she stammered.
“I walked,” he replied snarkily and lay back down to cover his face with a pillow.
Clara took the opportunity to perform a rundown of her state. She did not feel any different. Amelia had told her that there would be some pain the first time she laid with her husband, and maybe even some slight bleeding. As far as she could tell, nothing had changed.
“We didn’t—that is to say…”
Brinley uncovered his face and squinted up at her. His silver eyes were a deep shade of pewter. “You’ve become remarkably inarticulate since our wedding. Had I known it would have this effect, I would have done it some time ago.”
Clara huffed indignantly. “We did not have relations?” she spat out.
He eyed her and sat up slowly, overly careful as he moved.
“I am fully clothed, am I not? I am talented, but I am incapable of magic. And, besides,” he lay back down and turned his broad back to her, the play of his muscles impressive beneath his thin shirt, “you would know if I’d had you, because it would be something you would never forget. ”
Clara seethed at his infuriating spine. The man had the nerve to make her wait up for him in anxious anticipation, then abandon her, and now mock her for things she’d never known!
She was too frustrated and embarrassed to return to sleep—not to mention she did not believe she had it in her to crawl back beside him on the mattress—but it was not long before Brinley began to snore once more.
Dawn’s pale fingers had barely begun to leech into the sky, so preparing for the day was out of the question.
For a woman used to sleeping the morning away and spending leisurely hours lying abed, this was one of the vilest of crimes Brinley had committed against her.
Clara spun in an angry circle until she spied the table near the cold hearth.
She wrapped the discarded quilt around her like a shawl and gripped the back of the chair.
She wrenched it away from the table, its legs creating a horrific squeal against the wooden floor, before she primly settled herself in the chair and folded her hands in her lap.
She couldn’t prevent the calmly satisfied smile from curling the corners of her mouth.
Brinley’s entire body jerked as he started awake once again.
“Good God, woman!” he bellowed, heedless of anyone in the adjacent rooms. Then, he moaned pathetically and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.
“Do you mind? I’ve a devil of a headache and a disposition to slay anyone who exacerbates it. ”
Clara smiled sweetly. “Not at all, dear husband.”
After counting to five, she braced her feet on the floor and slid her seat back another few inches, sending yet another squeal echoing through the room.
Another nauseous groan rose from the pile of pillows.
She spied other instruments of torture—a tin chamber pot, a porcelain washbasin, some iron implements propped up near the hearth.
She was going to enjoy this…
And she suspected she just might feel a tiny bit better when she was done.
*
Pearce fully expected to be a widower by the end of the day.
Clara had spent the better part of an hour methodically exacting her revenge in the form of ungodly noises.
She dropped the chamber pot no less than three times, waiting just long enough for him to relax in between assaults.
When clicked together, the porcelain washbasin and pitcher made a noise that was the perfect pitch to feel as if thin blades had been shoved into his eye sockets.
She seemed quite delighted when she realized the hinges on her luggage emitted a little squeak when opened and closed repeatedly.
His only reprieve had been when the maid arrived, and he’d retreated with such swiftness that he’d been forced to bolt out the inn’s backdoor and retch behind the stables.
What sort of harpy had he wed? Clara must have been a changeling—it was the only explanation for her to have such a variety of personalities.
With Society, she was the stunning beauty of great charm, able to string along a passel of admirers with just a crook of her little finger (not that she’d ever turned that charm on him, mind).
Other times, she was shy and demure and far more tolerable.
This?
This was unbearable.
He could only grit his teeth and suffer through it because he wasn’t about to apologize for his actions. He wasn’t about to explain how he’d been so at war with himself between the terror and the consuming desire to finally have her that he’d drunk himself into oblivion.
So, once they both had changed into their traveling clothes, they returned to the carriage and continued the rest of the way to Edinburgh in torturous company.
Pearce held his head in his hands, pressing the heels of his palms into his aching eye sockets in an effort to staunch the throbbing.
Clara, meanwhile, chattered incessantly in an unnaturally shrill tone, stopping only when her voice began to give out.
“Blessed silence,” he groaned, finally lifting his head.
Clara attempted to clear her throat and continue, but to no avail. She could only emit a small squeak, but he thought she said, “Serves you right.”
Uncomfortable with the small part of him that almost acknowledged the truth of her comment, he looked out the window to see that they were on the outskirts of Edinburgh.
The rural roads gave way to more continuous signs of civilization.
Though not as grand as London, Edinburgh was still a fair-sized city and boasted its own Society, fashionable neighborhoods, and even a renowned university.
It hummed with life and history. It also dealt with some of the same issues London did—poverty and illness remained an undercurrent the ton did their best to ignore.
In all, Edinburgh had all the trappings of a modern city rife with the polarities of class and fortune.
As their carriage entered the city proper, Pearce’s entire body began to break into a cold sweat; nausea overcame him for an entirely different reason.
Despite having spent much of his early childhood there with his mother, he had not been to Edinburgh in years.
Now, the city held memories for him he’d rather not revisit; it was the epicenter of what the Brinley curse meant to him.
The losses he’d endured had been more than enough to break most men, and they continued to haunt his nightmares, lurch around the periphery of his daily life, and leak their venom into his every thought and plan.
He’d known what awaited his return to this place, but he’d hoped such a visceral reaction would be tempered by time and distance—that seeing the townhouse once again would not be as dramatic as his mind had led him to believe—but he was realizing that was not the case.
Clara, unaware of the rapidly growing tide of discomfort welling within him, was pressed against the window, taking in the sights and sounds of Edinburgh—a place he imagined she found reminiscent of London, with pockets of differences.
Pearce wiped the back of his hand across his clammy forehead and then scrubbed at his face.
“Your mother was Scottish?” Clara asked in her worn and ragged voice, seeming to have decided upon a ceasefire, given her interest in their arrival.
Pearce swallowed hard. “Half. My maternal grandfather was Laird McKenna; he wed the daughter of a Northumbrian lord in an effort to influence a truce in a land dispute. He gained a fair bit of wealth and a minor English barony in the bargain—I believe both titles now belong to my first cousin, the son of my mother’s eldest brother.
The townhouse in which we will reside for the time being was one of my grandfather’s gifts to my parents when they married, though my father has never much cared to travel this far north. ”
“And you?” she asked, turning from the carriage window. “Do you like it here?”
Pearce was slow to reply. “I used to.”
He was spared from having to provide further explanation as they slowed to a stop in front of an elegant row of townhouses on Queen Street, the fashionable quarter where all the best and wealthiest in Edinburgh had their homes.
It was an address that any Englishman with a lick of connection to Scotland wished to possess.
He’d always considered himself quite fortunate to have this home free and clear from his father’s influence.
Pearce forced a deep gulp of air into his lungs as he stepped down from the carriage; it felt like forcing a blade down his constricted throat.
Needing a distraction, he assisted Clara in finding her footing on the side of the street and discovered a brief reprieve in her obvious delight.
Her deep-chocolate eyes sparkled as she drank in their surroundings, the neat row of homes with their glinting windows and tidy facades, the charm of the weathered stone buildings beyond.
She appeared to be instantaneously delighted by the home, charmed by her surroundings.
“How lovely!” she chirped in her battered voice. He suspected she might have said more were she not fearful of losing what little remained of her ability to speak.
Needing the anchor, his hand tightened around hers. She was his visual and physical mooring in that moment, when he’d much rather have been anywhere else in the world than standing in front of the home he’d avoided for years.
Rather than flinch from the firmness of his grip, she turned to look up into his face, a question in her eyes.
Bracing himself, Pearce finally turned to look at the house.
What seemed innocuous to most—no more than a well-designed and pleasingly symmetrical sandstone facade of three stories and a small entryway framed by thick Tuscan columns—contained the remembrance of some of his darkest days.
The memories assailed him. His every muscle tensed as his mind filled with the sensations he’d done everything to avoid, and he abruptly released Clara’s hand as if he’d been scorched.
This was a mistake.
He never should have talked himself into believing this would work—that it was better that Clara be as far removed from London as possible for the time being, and that he could weather a short time in this place that had once held his favorite memories before it had been replaced with only tragedy.
“Go inside,” he coolly instructed her, though he hardly recognized the hollowness of his own voice. “The housekeeper will show you around and make the necessary introductions.”