Chapter 9 - Michael
The following week found them riding through the park in Michael’s new phaeton.
It was a lovely day, sunny with just a hint of coolness.
The sky was a breathtaking, endless blue.
His companion was witty and beautiful; her maid sat on the rear-facing rumble seat behind the carriage, offering them an appropriate level of privacy.
The beautiful horses held their heads high and proud as the expensive livery jingled in time to their steps, and the springs were comfortable.
All in all, Michael thought it was very nearly the perfect outing. Or it would have been, if the lady at his side weren’t intent on discussing other gentlemen.
“I hadn’t thought it would be quite so much work to find a boring husband,” Claire admitted. Today she wore a fetching day dress in striped muslin; the green brought out the color of her eyes.
“They do seem to be a bit scarce,” Michael said. “Perhaps the demand for Tweeds is high this year.”
Claire slid him a scowling glance. “You speak as if they’re a commodity.”
He laughed. “You’re the one who’s treating gentlemen as if they’re some sort of interchangeable cog in the machine of your life.”
“I am not.” She frowned, then nibbled her lip.
“Even the tedious set are still people,” he said. “They will all have their own ideas about what they want for their futures. I doubt many of them would be happy to find out their wife selected them because she thought they were boring.”
“Well, of course I’m not going to tell them that,” she said. “And I know that they’re people, with their own wants—not only for the woman they marry, but also for their future.”
Michael looked at her. “Tell me, Claire, what is it that you want?”
She blinked at him. “I’ve already told you.”
“You’ve told me what you intend to have, not what you actually want,” he argued.
Claire frowned and turned her head, ostensibly to watch the swans in the nearby pond, but Michael thought it was more likely she didn’t wish to answer. Or look him in the eye, for that matter.
“What about children?” he asked.
“What about them?”
“Do you want them?”
“Of course.” Her tone told him she found his question idiotically obvious. She was still staring at those blasted swans—he couldn’t see which expression she wore, though her tone hinted at her irritation.
“But you’d see them raised by a man you don’t love?” he pressed.
“I’d see them safe. I’d see them well fed and warmly clothed.”
He frowned. “The two aren’t mutually exclusive, you know.”
She turned back to him and tilted her head. “Pardon?”
“You can have both.”
Claire scoffed. “Some people have that luck, certainly. However, I don’t. If I must choose, I choose security, warm fires, footmen to keep the riffraff out, no heartless bill collectors threatening to…”
“Threatening to what?” he growled.
She shook her head. “It hardly matters.”
“It matters to me.”
Claire sighed as if hearing the seriousness in his words, as if knowing that he wasn’t going to let the subject drop until he had some answer on it. “My brother Richard wasn’t just a rake. He left us, essentially.”
“What do you mean?”
She sat stiffly and said, “He took lodgings across town. He ignored our letters when we told him we couldn’t pay the bills. In those early days, Margaret saw him once on the street. He turned and walked the other way.”
“Are you certain he saw her?” Michael’s eyebrows drew together. He couldn’t imagine any man, let alone a gentleman, acting in such a fashion towards his own sisters.
“She was certain. We kept asking him to come home, to deal with the creditors, to do something. But he shut himself away in that tenement house and proceeded to drink the last of the estate’s funds.”
“Claire, I’m so sorry.”
She lifted her elegant chin and blinked rapidly. “It was a long time ago.”
“Not that long. Besides, I doubt there’s any span of time that will heal the pain of a brother turning his back on you like that. What a coward.” His hands tightened on the reins, and it took great effort for him to loosen his hold so that he wouldn’t tug at the horses.
“Thank you for saying that.” She paused, then cleared her throat. “I went down there once.”
Michael’s wide eyes flew to hers.
She gave a wincing smile. “A terrible part of town. At the time, I didn’t understand why he would choose to live in such a place. Not when we still had the house. He could have come home.” Her voice sounded like it threatened to crack under the weight of that last word.
Michael didn’t know what to say. He waited a few moments, then asked, “What happened?”
“I knocked on his door.” Her green eyes were filling with tears now, and Michael quickly steered them off of the main road onto a smaller path that was less traveled, to offer her whatever privacy he could.
“He was so drunk he didn’t even recognize me. He thought I was one of his…his women.”
Michael’s eyes went wide with the horror of it even as he plucked the clean linen handkerchief from his jacket and pressed it into her hands. “Did he—?” He didn’t even know what he was about to ask, didn’t know how to finish the question.
Claire shook her head, a jerky, almost violent motion, and dabbed at her eyes.
“No, he was too drunk to even open the door. He just bellowed at me to come in. I recognized his voice, so I obeyed. He was on the couch, surrounded by empty bottles. The smell of the place…” Her lip curled in remembered revulsion.
“I wish you hadn’t had to see that.” Michael wished he could go back in time and trounce the late Lord Cavendish himself.
“That’s when I went home and started selling the furniture.
” She tilted her head. “It’s interesting…
I never knew how to sell things before. How to buy them, yes.
But I’d never had to sell anything.” Her fingers tightened around her reticule.
“I’d never thought myself a prideful person, but that experience changed my opinion of myself. I found it all so humiliating.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you for saying that, but it’s hardly your fault,” Claire said.
“There was a time when I could barely look at Beatrice. She was so ready to forgive Richard—she kept talking about him returning home. She didn’t see him that day, didn’t realize what he truly was.
Even now, she says he must have stayed away because he was frightened.
” Claire shook her head. “That’s not the case.
He wasn’t frightened. He wasn’t embarrassed. He just didn’t care.”
“It doesn’t matter what his reasons were.” Michael frowned. “Not when his actions were wrong.”
“That’s precisely what I’ve told her this entire time,” she said triumphantly.
Michael chose his next words with care. “However, though your sisters went through the same events, they experienced them differently because they are different. You cannot control how Beatrice feels about Richard.”
“I’m not trying to control—” Claire began, but then she frowned. “Or perhaps I am, I don’t know. All I know is that when she forgave him, it made me feel like she was calling me the liar.”
“Have you ever told her that?” he asked gently.
Claire shook her head and stared down at the handkerchief twisted in her fingers. “Now that I’ve said it out loud, I realize how foolish it is. She was just trying to get by. We all were.”
He nodded. “You’re justified in feeling how you do, but it’s only natural that she doesn’t see things the same. You are two very different people. Besides, how can you blame your sisters for not fully understanding the scope of things when you shielded them from much of it?”
“You’re right.” Claire wrinkled her nose as if the words had a foul odor.
“It happens all the time, me being right.”
Claire rolled her eyes, and he chuckled. He was glad that they were comfortable enough with one another to speak so honestly. He was even more glad that Claire’s momentary tears had stopped. The sight of her crying had made him feel sick inside.
“I’ll talk to Beatrice,” she said. “I shouldn’t have let my anger towards Richard spill over onto her.”
“I’m sure there was enough anger and hurt to go around.”
“What about you?” Claire turned to him with a smile. She seemed lighter than she had even moments ago, and he was happy to see it.
“What about me?”
Heaven help him if she turned his own line of questioning back at him and asked what he truly wanted. In that moment, he wasn’t sure he trusted himself to lie, and the truth would frighten her off, would put an end to things before they truly began.
“You and your sisters, do you never quarrel?”
“Of course we do,” he said, relieved. “Sylvia and I, especially. There were periods of our life where it felt like that’s all we did. But we love each other, and we get along very well now. I couldn’t ask for a better sister. She’s grown up to be a kind young woman.”
“She is. It was wonderful to see your mother, too. I admit I’m surprised she seemed so…” She trailed off.
“Happy?” he supplied.
“Precisely.”
“She has very few regrets about her life. She loved my father. She was devastated when he passed, and she mourns him still. But she still has her friends. She still has me and my sisters.”
Michael knew Claire well enough to see that she was considering his words. He supposed that was all he could hope for at this juncture. Their path had circled back to the main road overlooking the other side of the pond.
“Oh, look. There’s a prime grouping of Tweeds now.” He nodded toward the cluster, who seemed to be discussing the waterfowl. “Let’s pull over.”
Claire’s eyes widened. “Whatever for?”
“To speak with them, of course.”
“Why would we?”
“You do realize that in order to marry a boring man, you’re going to have to speak with at least one of them, don’t you? In fact, you’re going to have to speak with one of them for years and years.”
“But—” Claire pressed her lips together, the rosebud pink blanched to white.
“We can hardly hope to find a better hunting ground than this. They’re all grouped together.” Michael frowned. “Flock mentality, most likely.”