Chapter 12
Clara disentangled the puppy’s claws from her ripped bodice, unsurprised to find that another of the gowns ordered by Hortense had ripped. She felt unsettled. The laird’s voice had poured through her like rich, dark coffee. No, like sweet port wine.
“My breasts are too heavy for French gauze,”
she told her favorite puppy, the one with different colored eyes.
Behind her, the laird cleared his throat. “Here.”
She turned her head and found him staring at the hallway while holding out her pink pelisse. She felt a flash of embarrassment that he’d overheard her description of her breasts . . . but honestly, the evidence was overwhelming. He had described her gown as little more than tissue, and he had been right.
She scrambled to her feet, a puppy squeaking as he rolled off her knees onto the bricks, righted himself, and attacked one of her slippers.
“Are you clothed?”
the laird asked a moment later, when she was wrestling her hair out from under her buttoned-up pelisse.
“Yes.”
She turned around, a little afraid that his eyes would show the nasty appreciation Prince George and his cronies always leveled at her bosom, but the laird was scowling. Definitely not appreciative. Thankfully—because of course she was glad!—he now wore a billowing shirt made of clean, if slightly grayish, linen.
Dingy shirt or no, he was blazingly handsome, even more so than the actor Mylchreest. Oddly enough, she had started talking with Caelan MacCrae as easily as she might with her friend Torie, whereas if she ever met Mylchreest, she would have been silenced by shyness.
Likely it was because Caelan thought she was married. She didn’t have to worry about him making improper advances.
She hesitated, but it had to be said. “I covered my eyes when I arrived at the loch, but I didn’t do so immediately. I apologize.”
“My sister would say that I deserved it, being out of doors without a fig leaf covering the important bits.”
She laughed. She had been told that men loved to boast of their private parts, but he called them “bits.”
By rights she should be shocked to the bone by the conversation, but instead she found herself respecting his honesty as regarded his own measurements.
“My puppies led to the destruction of your fancy gown,”
he said. “Would you like to wait until tomorrow to begin housekeepering?”
“‘Housekeepering’? Is that a word?”
He shrugged.
She looked around again. “I suppose I could help you, but only until Mr. Cobbledick returns with your bathtub. After that, I shall hire him for myself. He’s bringing his daughter to act as my maid, and I’ll need a carriage and a driver. It’ll be the start of my own household.”
“My housekeeper will have her own maid?”
“Strange, isn’t it, since you haven’t even one of your own? If Elsbeth is anything like her father, she’ll lend me a hand. They should be back with my clothing in a few hours.”
His jaw twitched. “You don’t have any clothes? I mean, you can’t change out of that ruined gown?”
“Not until Mr. Cobbledick returns. I’ll keep my pelisse on.”
She turned around once again, examining the kitchen. “I have a basket of food. Would you like to have luncheon, perhaps outdoors?”
He sighed. “I’ve never contracted dysentery, no matter what my sister thinks. I usually eat in the courtyard. We could have the trout.”
“I love picnics,”
Clara said. Something was living in that pile of withered cabbage. She could see leaves trembling out of the corner of her eye.
“I still don’t know what to call you.”
“What do you think of Mrs. Fialasco?”
“I don’t like it.”
“Then I’ll remain Mrs. Potts.”
“We’re more informal in the Highlands than in British society.”
His voice was so deep that it melted her bones, and she could scarcely follow his words. Or maybe it was because of his accent. Would living here give her a lovely burr like a Scotswoman? It seemed doubtful.
“I’ll call you Clara,”
he announced.
Clara? Like a housemaid?
“Do I address you as Laird CaerLaven?”
He shook his head. “Caelan.”
So he wasn’t thinking of her as a housemaid. A friend?
His eyes sharpened. “Are you insulted if I call you by your given name? Does it make you uncomfortable?”
“No,”
Clara said instantly, though she wasn’t certain why. It wasn’t merely because she was wearing a wedding ring.
Maybe it was because he seemed aware of her as a person. Gentlemen usually kept their eyes fixed on her bosom or glanced past her to see if a prettier lady with a bigger dowry was waiting for their attention.
Whereas this laird—Caelan—was looking at her intently, as if he could see her inadequacies but also who she truly was.
“You must address me as Mrs. Potts after the scullery maid arrives,”
she told him. “As for the trout, going over menus is not the same as cooking. I wouldn’t have any idea what to do with it other than pot it like a mackerel.”
He seemed entirely unsurprised by this revelation.
“I do own a copy of The Frugal Housewife—which is a good thing, given your financial situation—but I left it behind with my other books.”
He frowned at that. A bigger frown, she meant, because he was awfully prone to frowning.
“I’m not even certain I can make potted mackerel,”
Clara added in a rush. “I watched the cook make it, because my mother said . . . well . . . Never mind. I’m a fraud, and Mr. Cobbledick can leave me at the nearest village, and I’ll be out of your way.”
His eyes darkened. “Some things you said are true. You’re married, and a man accosted you, presumably your husband. I would guess that you haven’t been married long.”
She should confess, obviously. But she was an unmarried lady, and he was an unmarried gentleman, and never the twain shall meet, at least when alone.
And she didn’t want to leave.
It was an odd thought, because she rarely paid attention to her own desires, other than in a small way, such as desire for a new novel. Her wishes were subsumed under large categories that required someone else’s approval. She wanted a gentleman of high rank to fall in love with her. She wanted Prince George to forget that she existed. She wanted her mother to be proud of her.
Staying in the castle as a housekeeper wouldn’t be approved by anyone, particularly her mother.
“I ran away,”
she said, telling him the most important truth.
“Aye, I guessed as much.”
The laird folded his arms over his chest, and she couldn’t help seeing how his forearms bulged. “I’ll be going down to England to take care of that spouse of yours in time, but not yet.”
Clara’s eyes widened. “Ah—”
“Nothing to worry about now,”
he said, turning away. “I’m so hungry that I could eat a horse.”
He moved back toward the dirty dishes, but she let out a little squeak. “Not those! I have dishes in my basket.”
The very idea of eating off those greasy plates was revolting.
Clara ran back out the front door and bent to pick up the basket, grimacing as her nipples brushed against the wool of her pelisse. She was tired of clothing that fell to pieces; the very idea of putting on another dress that covered her breasts with no more than a stretch of gathered gauze caught in her throat like a fish bone.
Once her trunk arrived, she would toss out her small French corsets and return to wearing stays over a sturdy chemise. Perhaps she would use her comfortable traveling gowns, designed to be worn without stays, allowing her to lie down on the seat of a carriage without shaping her breasts into twin mountains jutting into the air, or even worse, smashing them into her armpits so that she appeared more fashionably slim.
When she turned around, she discovered that the grimy building had morphed back into a fairy tale: charming, flowery, sweet, gleaming in a puddle of bluebells.
Caelan definitely qualified as the dark, brooding laird of a novel. He seemed sincere about slaying her abusive husband, so it was a good thing that she didn’t have one.
Perhaps Melliora hadn’t been as lucky as Clara had thought, since after all her adventures, she married a broody man who had chased several women. Caelan seemed more like the type who would fall in love once and stay in love for his whole life.
She slipped a new novel into the pocket of her pelisse and carried the basket into the kitchen. The laird was nowhere to be seen, but fresh air was blowing through an open door leading to a courtyard. Before she followed him outside, she knelt down again by the fireplace. A mama dog had appeared, and all the puppies were lined up next to her stomach, blissfully suckling.
Curious, she leaned over and poked the round, tight belly of a suckling puppy. When its mother raised her head, Clara withdrew her hand but hovered for a moment longer, watching the satisfied puppies fall asleep. Perhaps someday she could nurse her own children, even though ladies employed wet nurses.
The courtyard was generously sized, with an elderly crab apple tree covered in blossoms shading a slab of stone that had been fashioned into a table. Caelan was crouched down, building a fire on a stone hearth.
The castle was so odd: horrible inside, but appearing charming out of doors. Yet when Clara approached the table, she saw brown stains on the granite, as if fiends had been sacrificing maidens on its surface. Which—obviously!—they had not. All the same, dried blood turned her stomach.
It was time to prove her worth as a housekeeper. She marched back into the kitchen, pumped a pail of water, staggered back, hoisted up the bucket, and threw it at the table.
The water slapped the stone and then plunged straight off, the wave striking Caelan’s back. He flinched at the cold water and uttered a curse that Clara hadn’t heard before.
Bugger.
It sounded like bollocks, but meaner.
“I’m sorry!”
she called.
He didn’t turn around, just added another log to the fire he had going. “Don’t throw any more water at me.”
His linen shirt clung to his back in an extremely attractive fashion. Clara forced herself to look away. “You oughtn’t to curse so often . . . So what does that word mean?”
“Says the lady who knows ‘bollocks’!”
“Is ‘bugger’ the same as ‘bollocks’?”
“No! Don’t repeat it.”
He stood up and turned.
Clara had never felt smaller than when this particular laird loomed over her. She was delicate in comparison. Or rather, she felt delicate, because of course she was herself: short and sturdy.
“We’ll wait for the griddle to warm,”
Caelan said. “Then I’ll throw on the trout.”
“I think I have enough food in the basket. You could save the trout for your supper.”
“Our supper,”
he corrected her. “I shall eat with my housekeeper, because it makes no sense to prepare a separate meal.”
He liked to stand with his hands on his hips, and when she glanced away from his burly arms, she caught sight of his unclothed legs. She had noticed them in the stream, of course, but now? Framed by the fire crackling behind him? They resembled tree trunks.
Why were tree trunks attractive? Romantic heroes were never praised for that sort of thing. D’Elmont was praised for the “gaiety of his air.”
Caelan had no “gaiety” in his air. For one thing, he was glowering at her again.
“Sorry, what did you say?”
she asked hastily.
“I said the trout will be our supper, because you can’t cook,”
he said, exasperated.
“I suppose we could eat together until you hire a cook and a few maids,”
Clara said. “After that, I shall eat with the household staff until I depart.”
“Why do you look as if you’re about to burst out laughing?”
Normally she’d never tell anyone the truth, but normally no one asked her what she was thinking. “From the outside, this castle resembles one in a novel.”
“So?”
“That would make you the hero.”
He seemed appalled.
Clara couldn’t help grinning. “One of my favorite heroes, D’Elmont, was celebrated for the ‘unequaled charms of his conversation.’”
Caelan let out a crack of laughter. “I’ve heard about my deficits in that area from other women.”
The sentence stung Clara’s heart like a needle, but that was merely because she liked him. As a person. Not because she was jealous of those women.
He turned away and poked the fire, sending roaring sparks up the stone chimney and giving her another close look at the way his wet shirt outlined every muscle in his back. All right, she was jealous.
“Do you have another shirt you might wear, or was that your only one?”
Clara asked, pulling herself together.
“Of course I have more shirts.”
When he was annoyed, his voice dropped to a deep rumble.
This was one of the moments she had prepared for, when she had to stand up for herself. “Luckily for your clothing, I was hired as a housekeeper, not a laundry maid. Who’s been washing your clothes?”
“I drop them in the village,” he said.
“The village laundress is not doing a very good job,”
Clara pointed out.
He glanced down at the dingy fabric and shrugged.
“Put on another shirt, if you please. One sees a hero’s chest in a single act of a play, if then.”
She couldn’t help smiling at his grimace. “If we drank hot chocolate every day, we wouldn’t desire it as much, would we?”
Oops. That sentence rushed out of her mouth, and the sentiment was entirely inappropriate. Plus, she had the feeling that most women would be entirely happy to examine this laird’s anatomy every single day. Many times a day.
“What’s hot chocolate?”
Clara felt her eyes widen. “The best drink in the world. I’ll ask Mr. Cobbledick to fetch some, and I can leave it with you as a farewell gift.”
Caelan appeared about to say something, but instead he strode by her. “I’ll put on another shirt.”
“You might wash your hands too.”
And then, when he turned back: “Because you had them inside a fish.”
“I rinsed my hands in the loch.”
“That’s not the same as soap.”
Her mouth fell open. “Don’t tell me . . . you haven’t a bathtub until Mr. Cobbledick returns. You just wade into the loch!”
He rolled his eyes. “Cleaner than washing with a pitcher of water.”
“I take a bath. Every day. With soap.”
“Not here, you don’t.”
Clara felt a wash of pure panic. She had been fighting back her memories of the prince’s grope, but a daily bath was key. Every single day. Dots appeared in her vision, and she swayed, catching hold of the wet edge of the table.
She heard a curse, and then an arm wrapped around her waist. “Bloody hell, Clara. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,”
she gasped. Caelan had pulled her against his chest—and he smelled so good. Better than anyone she’d ever been close to. Like fresh air and fresh lake.
Like a man who was so clean he didn’t need soap.
Apparently.
She leaned against him until her breath calmed. Then she moved away. “I’ll happily eat with you, but I must leave later today.”
He was scowling at her yet again. “I know I owe you a housekeeper, but I cannot . . . You don’t have a bath. Or soap. I can’t.”
His arm tightened for a moment, and then he said, “My wife used to—”
“You had a wife?”