Chapter 13
Clara’s heart stuttered as the state of the kitchen jumped into her mind. “Your wife died.”
The house had fallen apart around Caelan, because he couldn’t bear thinking about her. He couldn’t live without her.
“She did.”
His voice was curt, but of course he wouldn’t want to talk about his late wife to a stranger. No wonder his eyes were so dark and his face so grumpy; he was grief-stricken. Clara’s heart skipped a beat at the thought.
“I’m so sorry for your loss. Was she lovely?”
she asked impulsively.
His expression didn’t change. “Very.”
Of course she was. He was so handsome that he could have chosen any woman in the whole of Scotland. If he took off his shirt, he could choose from all London as well.
Why had she ever imagined that a man like him wouldn’t have had a love story in his past, or present, for that matter?
“I will scrub the table while you are finding another shirt,”
Clara said, changing the subject. “Do you have a banister brush?”
“What’s that?”
“A brush with stiff bristles. How about a mopstick?”
After Caelan shrugged again and went back inside, Clara took a bottle of wine from the basket and unceremoniously yanked it open. She wouldn’t have been able to do that two weeks ago, but Mr. Cobbledick had shown her how. Then she returned to the kitchen and looked around, holding a wineglass to her nose to smother the reek of decaying onions, stemming from a bunch that had first sprouted and then moldered.
The bread oven built into the fireplace was filled with kindling that had rotted to pieces. One corner held a broom with half its bristles and another, pots and pans. A third had that suspicious pile of leaves, and a fourth had a built-in pantry holding nothing but withered carrots.
The carrots were a metaphor for Caelan’s sorrow. His suffering.
Clara couldn’t help feeling as if her heart was breaking for him. How much must he have loved his wife? It truly was like a novel. After his lady died, the laird fired his servants and let the castle fall to ruin.
Actually, it was like that story about a princess who fell asleep for a hundred years. Rosebushes entwined and grew all around her castle, until a prince cut back the overgrowth and kissed the princess awake. Clara had always wondered why the hero started cutting through all those brambles, because in her experience, nothing stung as much as a rose’s thorn. Evidently, the reward of a lovely princess was a compelling motivator.
She put a hand on her heart and took a deep breath—and instantly regretted it, given the stink coming from a disgusting bucket of dingy water with a fish tail floating on top.
Caelan could take that to the refuse heap himself, along with the onions.
Thankfully, the bowl of brown goop on the windowsill was recognizable as wood ash mixed with lye. She almost picked up the stiff brush next to it before noticing that something had nibbled the wooden handle.
Luckily her gloves were in the pocket of her pelisse, so she put them on before taking the brush and wood ash outside. She began scrubbing at one end of the wet table, precisely as housemaids scrubbed the floor. When she threw another pail of water, it rolled across the stone and sizzled into the fire since Caelan’s body wasn’t there to block the wave, but luckily the flame didn’t go out.
By the end, she’d thrown three pails at the table, scrubbing between each one, until she felt satisfied that it was clean enough to lay down her checked cloth.
Arms aching, she hoisted the basket to the table and began taking out apples and pears, delicious gingerbread, meat pies decorated with flowers cut from golden dough, as well as clean plates and silverware. When Caelan still hadn’t returned, she went back outside and cut some bluebells from the moat and put them in a glass on the table.
Feeling quite worn out by all this “housekeepering,”
she sat down and opened her new novel. A couple of chapters later, Clara was ravenous. A lady would never eat before her host arrived—but she wasn’t a member of polite society any longer. Gentlemen didn’t walk around naked, so Caelan didn’t get that label either, title or no.
As far as she could tell, the laird wasn’t even in the castle; the only sound she could hear was a bird determinedly chirping in the apple tree.
After reading another chapter, she picked up a meat pie and began eating it. An evil bailiff was threatening Felicity’s virtue, and hopefully the handsome squire would soon come to her rescue.
Felicity was hankering after the squire, but why not push the bailiff into a stream herself? Or hit him with her reticule? Clara’s stomach twisted at the memory. She could never kiss a frog, because it was probably as slimy as a seagull’s . . . at which point she began rubbing her chest and made herself turn the page.
Felicity had tamed the squire’s wild stallion and escaped the clutches of the bailiff when Caelan finally emerged from the castle wearing a shirt that was almost white.
“I’m sorry to say that I began eating without you,”
Clara said, putting down her book.
Caelan dropped a loaf of bread on the table. “I apologize for not returning immediately. I sent a groom to the village asking for a scullery maid and another to my sister asking to borrow her maids. While I was in the stables, a bullock was dropped off, and we had to find room for the beast.”
“You have stables? Where? Why do you have no household staff, but you have grooms? Where did you get the bread?”
Caelan sat down opposite her and shrugged. “The stables are out of sight to the east. We used to house staff in the south tower, but after my father died, I built a new stable with living quarters. Bread and milk are delivered there daily. Is that meat pie for me?”
“I ate two,”
Clara said, feeling her cheeks glow with embarrassment. “But the basket was large, and there’s still one left, along with a whole chicken, jam tarts, and those lovely pears, grown in a conservatory in Glasgow.” She handed him a glass of wine.
“A feast,”
Caelan said. “Are those French sweets?”
She nodded. “They’re marvelous! I was so happy to find the store in Glasgow that I bought almost everything they had.”
“In my experience, ladies avoid candies, fearing for their waistlines.”
Was he pointing out that she was plump? Humiliation washed over her. She’d eaten before him, scavenging the table, leaving him only one pie. She was—
“No.”
Caelan said it severely, his eyes holding hers. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
Clara slowly, slowly let the breath out of her lungs. Did she know it? Neither of them was as refined as they ought to be. Proper gentlemen rubbed scented lotion into their hands and wore gloves to keep their hands white. When Caelan reached for a pear, she could see that his hands were brawny, veined, brown from the sun. Powerful, not gentlemanly.
“So, you did not choose to become a housekeeper due to a lack of funds.”
She shook her head.
“You are not poor,”
Caelan clarified.
“No, I’m not. And you own two shirts, at least,”
Clara said brightly, warning herself yet again that ogling the master of the household was rude. As was brooding about the unfashionable yet surprisingly desirable qualities of large hands.
“I almost put on a cravat before I remembered that you are supposed to be my housekeeper,”
Caelan remarked. “By the way, I’m not poor, either.”
“One doesn’t wear a cravat to dine with a housekeeper,”
Clara agreed. She could feel the wine in her stomach like a dozy sweet glow.
He reached toward a jam tart—but froze. “You picked some flowers.”
“Yes, from the beautiful ones growing in the moat,”
Clara said, wondering if Mr. Cobbledick would arrive soon.
Something about this day had begun to feel a little dangerous. Caelan’s throat showed golden-brown from sun against his white shirt. Of course, now she thought of it, he had been a glowing color all over, due to running around naked.
His tumble of hair seemed thick and soft; she reached up to touch hers knowing that it looked awful, like cow parsley stuck on top of her head. More importantly, it was shameful to ogle a man, and yet she seemed unable to stop savoring the memory of his naked body.
Shameful.
Or did she mean shameless?
Covetous. Desirous. All those words that she had never considered relevant to herself, only to horrendous men like the prince. And yet here she was, thankful that her eyelashes were long enough that he couldn’t see that she was watching him. It had been a mistake to drink wine; she felt flushed, and as if she might giggle for no reason.
She had to face facts. She’d desired Mylchreest. She hadn’t wanted the actor’s approval, but the man himself. So telling herself that all of her desires stemmed from other people’s approval wasn’t honest.
Now she desired the laird as well.
“Why did the flowers startle you?”
Clara asked, scrambling to think of something to say.
“Isla, my wife, planted the moat.”
The words had an instant sobering effect, sweeping away her irresponsible daydreams.
“We call these grannie’s bonnets.”
He reached over and tapped a nodding head. “See the bonnet?”
“They smell like vanilla.”
He sniffed. “To me, they smell like flowers.”
Clara hesitated and then asked, “How long has it been since your wife passed away?”
“Two years.”
Two years during which blue-and-purple brambles had grown around the castle and around his heart, obviously. How mortifying that she had been sitting opposite a grieving man, feeling base lust. “Were you married long?”
“Three years.”
She cleared her throat, desperately trying to think of something to say. “Isla is a lovely name.”
“Aye, it is.”
Isla probably resembled a wild Scottish rose, willowy and graceful. Clara was grateful that a rasp of grief didn’t underlie his words. This particular fairy tale was like one of the novels she loathed, the ones without happy endings.
“Had you known each other long?”
“She grew up in the village on the other side of the pass.”
“Childhood sweethearts?”
She was starting to feel a little nauseated. Surely it had been six or seven hours, and Mr. Cobbledick would arrive any moment.
“More or less. I was older than she.”
“I wonder what time it is. I don’t suppose you have a sundial, do you?”
Not that she knew how to read one, but he obviously didn’t own a pocket watch.
He glanced at the sky and said, “Round about twenty past five, I’d say.”
“That’s impressive.”
“Worth a ‘bravo’?”
“Mr. Cobbledick should be here any moment to fetch me,”
she said, looking away before she started blushing again.
Caelan picked up a piece of gingerbread. “He won’t make it back tonight.”
Clara froze. “What? Why not?”
“The storm.”
The sky was a sunny blue.
“Not here. There.”
He nodded over her shoulder. When she turned, she saw that thunderclouds had piled up over the hills that lay between the castle and Inverness.
“See those blue streaks? That’s rain.”
As if the skies were listening, a breeze sprang up, ruffling Isla’s bluebells.
“Why can’t Mr. Cobbledick fetch me in the rain?”
Clara asked.
“Because of the craggy pass between here and the village, Lavenween. You didn’t notice?”
“I was reading.”
“You read straight through one of the most dangerous mountain passes in Scotland. The pass is surely closed, and your Mr. Cobbledick stuck in the village. You’ll have to spend the night here.”
“Oh.”
Her hand curled tightly around her glass. “I couldn’t.”
He spoke to her anxiety, not to her words. “Lucky you’re married, because you’d be compromised otherwise.”
She could wash with a pitcher of water the way she did in the Parrot her primary response was a wish to lean toward him and wait to be kissed.
Which was absurd.
“Time to clean!”
she said brightly.
He narrowed his eyes. He was obstinate, clearly.
So was she.