Chapter 20
April 21, 1803
Friday was spent working shoulder to shoulder with Caelan in his study, sorting papers while maids scrubbed the castle top to bottom.
“What is in this pile?”
Clara asked, picking up a potato crate and bringing it over to the sofa.
Caelan glanced over. “Legal documents dating to my father and grandfather.”
She picked up an old piece of parchment and read aloud, “‘James MacCrae, Laird and Liege-lord of CaerLaven, and Helen McFee, both in this parish, gave up their names to the proclaimed in order to be married.’ Ancestors?”
He nodded.
“What does it mean to be a liege-lord?”
“It means that our crofters have sworn allegiance, or at least they did once. A great many of those papers will probably refer to judicial decisions.”
Clara chose another sheet. “The wife of John Austyn defamed one of her neighbors, calling Margaret Waryn a strumpet because she supposedly bedded John ‘in the fields.’ Your grandfather’s note says she should display penitence in the kirk.”
“I hate adjudicating that sort of thing,”
Caelan said with feeling.
“I think it’s fascinating,”
Clara said. She was still puzzling through the text. “What do you think a ‘hoorcope’ is? Also, she called Margaret a ‘strong lady.’ How is that an insult?”
“If you married me, you could attend the franchise court at my side,”
Caelan said, tossing two papers into the box they’d designated for paid invoices. “Help me adjudicate cases.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Enticing as that sounds, the answer is still no.”
“Isla refused to attend,”
Caelan admitted.
Clara got up and fetched another pile of papers. She didn’t care to hear anything else about his dead wife.
“Sorry,”
he muttered.
“For what?”
she asked, forcing herself to meet his eyes. “It’s natural that you often think of her—and that’s why you shouldn’t marry right now, Caelan, no matter whether two years have passed or no. Some love is so deep that grief follows its own timeline.”
He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“I can’t imagine the heroes of my best-loved novels taking a new wife. One of my favorite heroes, Simon Bawburgh, had to go through so much to win his bride, Anne. If she died—and I hate to even think of it—he would be crushed. Two years later, he might feel more alive, but he couldn’t stop thinking of her.”
He peered at her. “You aren’t getting tearful about a fictional man with an unfortunate name, are you?”
Clara cleared her throat. “Of course not!”
She was a bit tearful, but only about Caelan and his love story.
By the time they put the last paper in the last box, oil lamps were burning all around the room, since Caelan had removed the candlesticks and replaced them with lamps.
“Thank goodness,”
Clara said, collapsing onto the red sofa.
Caelan sat beside her. “Some of those papers hadn’t been touched since my grandfather was last in this room.”
“Your great-grandfather,”
Clara said. “Don’t forget that pile we found under the table.”
He took her hand. “We’re grimy.”
He turned over her hand to show her that their fingertips were inky black.
“When your new bath arrives, you’ll be able to pump hot water from the roof,”
she told him. “You could sink into the tub and let all this wash away.”
“Fiona reckons it’s better than a tin bath.”
“She says it’s wonderful. I might do the same when I find my own castle.”
She heard his breath hitch. Then he said, very quietly, “So you do mean to live in a castle?”
Clara nodded.
“And fill it with books?”
Her nod was a bit more tentative, as his eyes were fierce.
“I’m offering you all that and myself in the bargain, and it’s not good enough, even when I throw in the excitement of the franchise court, watching crofters berate each other for stealing each other’s cows and sometimes, their wives?”
Clara’s breath caught in her lungs. Could there be a hint of vulnerability in his eyes? Impossible. He was the Romeo of the Highlands.
“There’s Alfie too,”
Caelan added. “There isn’t a boy like him in all Scotland. The minute he learns to read, Fiona will have to confiscate all the candles in the house, or he’ll be reading under the covers and setting the house on fire.”
She managed a smile. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Seriously, can’t you see how much he needs an aunt to talk to him about books?”
he demanded. “Fiona was never one for book-learning.”
The image was so lovely she could scarcely bear it. Caelan put an arm around her shoulders and settled her head into the curve of his shoulder. He put his chin on the top of her head.
“You could read to Alfie, and then we’d send him and Wilhelmina home across the fields, and we could cook a trout that we caught earlier in the day.”
“I don’t know how to fish!”
Clara said, a hint of laughter in her voice.
“I’m teaching you tomorrow morning. But to go back to our marriage, after we sent Alfie home, we’d make love all night long.”
His thumb brushed her lips and then pressed her chin up. “I could make you happy, Clara. I would do anything in my power to give you whatever you wanted.”
Her smile wobbled, because the one thing she wanted, he couldn’t give her. “I’d like someone to fall madly in love with me,”
she said, trying to sound light.
A terrible silence followed.
Clara managed a nod. “After such a joyful union, you will never experience the same again.”
He opened his mouth, but she continued. “Still, you won’t be alone forever, Caelan. You have to promise me that you won’t allow your castle to fall into disorder again. What if it frightens off your next wife, a delicate lady?”
He was pressing kisses on her forehead. “You weren’t frightened.”
A big hand wound into the tangle of her hair. “I wasn’t frightened by your hair, even though you assured me that every gentleman in London would be appalled. I love your pouf.”
Clara’s heart thumped, but she couldn’t say that loving her hair was like loving her, especially after Prince George’s nauseating compliments about angelic curls.
“I’m sorry, but that’s not enough,”
she said, stirring. He let her go. She stood up and looked down at him. How could she have thought Mylchreest was handsome? No one’s face compared with Caelan’s.
She ran her fingers lightly down his cheekbones. “Now that you’ve woken up, every unmarried woman in the Highlands will be looking at you. Desiring you.”
Her voice was embarrassingly thick.
“Not you?”
She couldn’t make out his expression.
She didn’t want to lie to him again. She couldn’t stop a wry smile. “Oh, I desire you, Caelan. I thought I knew what a beautiful man looked like, and then I met you.”
“Well, then—”
“I want my husband to be in love with me.”
His jaw was tight, but he nodded.
“I could live not far away,”
she offered. “We could be friends, you and I.”
“And your husband?”
“Perhaps I won’t marry,”
Clara said airily. “What I’m saying is that . . . is that I would be honored to be your friend. I’ve never met anyone like you. Someone I can talk to so easily.”
His tight mouth eased slightly. “I’d rather you were my wife.”
“I want what Isla had,”
she said, the truth coming straight from her heart. “I would want you to fall to your knees and tell me that you’re desperately in love with me. And you couldn’t do that, could you?”
“Couldn’t you give us a chance?”
“It would be so lonely,” she said.
He frowned.
“I can’t imagine anything lonelier than being married to someone who was settling for second-best. No matter how close a friend he was. I couldn’t bear it, Caelan.”
Her smile was wobbly, but she forced herself to look up. His expression made her stomach clench into a knot. He understood.
In a perfect world, in a novel, he would have fallen to his knees and said that she would never be second-best. But he couldn’t say that, could he? Caelan was honest to the bone.
“I’ll teach you to fish in the morning,”
he said instead.
“Marvelous,”
Clara replied, her voice faint. “I can’t wait.”