Chapter 16
Clara had only seen so many books in a library. Every wall was lined with rounded bookshelves crammed with books standing upright, with more laid horizontally on top. What might be a comfortable red velvet sofa was covered with stacks of papers held down by large leather-bound volumes.
“You ridiculed me for bringing books rather than clothes, but you’re in the same situation!”
She waved her hand. “Two shirts and . . . two hundred books?”
“A fair summary,”
Caelan said, putting his hands on his hips, which emphasized how large his shoulders were. He leaned back against the door.
Clara hastily turned away, because somehow her eyes went instinctively to his waist. “You must have laughed when I said I wanted a castle filled with books.”
“Mine isn’t filled yet. Isla felt books didn’t belong in the drawing room, and they all ended up here.”
“My mother would agree with your wife,”
Clara said awkwardly.
“The same mother who would berate a scullery maid for showing a lock of hair?”
“I only have the one.”
Clara sidled away, because something in his eyes suggested . . . No, she must be wrong. “Do you have any novels amongst all these volumes?”
“My mother did. They’re over there.”
He nodded at a section on the other side of the room.
Flustered, Clara walked to the shelf and took down a battered copy of The Castle of Otranto. “She must have adored this one, as it’s so well-read. Don’t you love the scene where the helmet falls from the moon like a mountain of sable plumes?”
“How could a helmet fall from the moon?”
“You never read your mother’s favorite novel? It’s a most delightfully spooky story.”
“I suppose there’s a ghost?”
“Two ghosts, not to mention the helmet—which crushes the prince after it falls from the sky. Of course, everyone is terrified.”
She struck a pose. “‘Are the devils themselves in league against me? Speak, infernal specter!’”
Caelan gave a crack of laughter. “Was that line addressed to the helmet?”
“Yes,”
Clara confirmed.
“Does the helmet reply? Because tumbling off the moon is one thing, but a talking helmet is even better. ‘Fie, foh, and fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman—and now I shall swallow you with my rusty visor’!”
Clara couldn’t help laughing. “Unfortunately, the helmet can only make a rustling sound with its plumes. Although there is a sighing portrait.”
“My nephew, Alfie, has a chicken with a topknot of feathers. He already interprets her facial expressions for the rest of us, but if you read him this book, he might expand his interpretative abilities.”
Clara paused. “Perhaps I could become a governess! I would enjoy teaching someone to read.”
“No, because you want a castle of your own, filled with books and presumably children, who will constantly be on guard lest a suit of armor drop from the battlements. They’ll think every glass bathtub should contain a sleeping princess and every loch a talking frog.”
“I am coming to the conclusion that my being a housekeeper is not a natural fit,”
Clara acknowledged. She put The Castle of Otranto back on the shelf. “I brought a copy of this novel with me as a gift for my employers.”
He looked dumbfounded. “Why?”
“I thought the owners of a castle ought to have a copy. The author, Horace Walpole, set it in Italy, but I heard he was thinking of the Scottish Highlands.”
Caelan snorted. “You imagined that your new employers would enjoy reading about a sentient, homicidal suit of armor? You weren’t even trying to disguise yourself as a housekeeper, were you?”
“Of course I was! The kind of housekeeper whom I’d like to hire. Whom I will hire,”
she added. He looked confused, so she said, “If people didn’t have to work for so many hours, they’d take more pride in their work. If they had time to read, in other words. My mother barks at anyone she sees putting her feet up, from the housekeeper to the scullery maids.”
“Literacy and laziness will be a requirement for employment in your household,”
Caelan interpreted. “Is this the novel where the hero is an excellent conversationalist?” He strolled over and leaned against the bookshelf next to her.
Clara’s heart skipped a beat. The laird’s shirt was dingy, and he wore no cravat and no coat. By all rights she ought to find him decidedly unattractive. “No, that’s a different novel. The hero of this one has large black eyes, a smooth forehead, and ‘manly curling locks like jet.’”
“‘Manly curling locks like jet’?”
He let out another crack of laughter. “You must be jesting.”
“I am not!”
Clara took the book from the shelf again and began flipping through, but she was so flustered that she couldn’t find the correct page.
“A smooth forehead?”
Caelan pushed back the thick locks that covered his. “How am I doing? Any wrinkles? I’m coming up on twenty-seven.”
Clara’s fingers trembled to reach out and touch his face. He had a few wrinkles but would be just as handsome when his hair turned silver. His laughter gave her a disconcerting melting sensation. She clapped the book shut and jammed it into the shelf again. “We should continue our tour.”
Below the study was a room as grand as Isla’s bedchamber, hung with rotting tasseled silk drapes and crowded with equally unsuitable furniture, all of it pocked by woodworm. “My wife labeled this room the drawing room,”
Caelan said. “Before it was so grand, it was a sitting room.”
“I see.”
Clara had a strong feeling that a family of mice—a village of them—had made their home in the drawing room. Whole generations had been raised in comfort. “I’m afraid this rug will be impossible to repair.”
“It’s dirty, I suppose.”
Caelan stared around, his entire body indicative of pure disinterest.
“Holes,”
Clara said, pointing to the largest.
He grunted.
“We could try washing it and arranging furniture so that the holes aren’t as evident.”
“No, throw it out.”
His voice was uncompromising. “The furniture too.”
“That would be foolish,”
Clara said, schooling her voice to patience. “The rug must have cost the earth. I’ve never seen a round carpet, for goodness’ sake.”
“Ordered from Flanders.”
His jaw shut so tightly that she was surprised he got the words out. Perhaps Isla’s expensive tastes had bankrupted the estate?
“We could cut salvageable pieces into chair seats or ottomans and sell them,”
Clara said, inspired. “Or trade them for new sheets.”
“I have money for sheets,”
he growled, kicking at the rug—which promptly ripped straight through a field of silken flowers. “The threads are rotten.”
“The window leaks. Thank goodness books weren’t kept in this room, or they’d have mildewed.”
“I replaced the glass in the study last year.”
He grimaced. “I’ve been a fool, trying to pretend these rooms don’t exist.”
Clara’s heart pinched, and she couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to touch his arm. “Mrs. Gillan told me how much you and Isla loved each other.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He looked down at her. “Let’s talk about your marriage.” His eyes didn’t seem dark with pain, but obviously she was rubbish at interpreting men’s expressions.
“Let’s not,”
she said instantly. “We should eschew the whole subject of spouses.”
“Eschew? What housekeeper uses that word?”
She was glad that his eyes had lightened. Clara poked him in the chest. “I’m only a housekeeper until Mr. Cobbledick returns with your bath. But before that happens, I’ve made a vow to Mrs. Gillan to leave Isla’s castle shining.”
“It’s not Isla’s castle, despite Mrs. Gillan referring to it as such.”
His jaw turned stony hard again.
“Your castle,”
she amended, wondering what the problem was. She was trying hard to think clearly.
Caelan was mourning his dead wife. But Isla died two years ago.
He thought she was married. She wasn’t.
He was a gentleman. Not really.
Her mind reeled back and forth.
“If you wish me to begin with your study, I need to go downstairs for a broom,”
she said, pulling herself together.
Caelan shut the door after they both reentered the study. “My papers have to stay where they are. The piles may seem disordered, but they’re not.”
Clara firmed her lips into an obstinate line. “I can keep them in their piles, but they must be moved. This floor needs scrubbing.”
He picked up her hand. “Soft and delicate. Designed for turning the pages of a book, not wielding a mop.”
He put it to his lips. “This isn’t me kissing my housekeeper’s hand, but a lady’s hand. I seem to remember the gesture from my younger days.”
“Nonsense!”
Clara could feel herself turning pink, but she couldn’t look away from his gaze. “My hands, like yours, are capable of doing anything from washing the floors to sorting these papers into separate boxes. Ripping gray sheets into rags. Tossing rotten rugs down the stairs.”
The warmth in his eyes made her heart clench. All of a sudden, the room seemed very small and intimate. The longing she felt deep in her bones?
Madness.