Chapter 6 #2
More seriously, they talked about the latest battle at Aird’s Moss between the Covenanters and the government dragoons.
“They say Reverend Richard Cameron was killed, along with eight of his men,” Hollister recounted as he sipped a small glass of whiskey.
All the men supported the side of the Covenanters, although none of them had signed the covenant themselves.
“Twenty-eight government soldiers lost their lives,” David said quietly, his voice distant as he clenched his fists on the table.
“When will the fighting end?” Jane asked, her voice tight. The pain in her eyes was tangible.
Nicholas said nothing as he stood, then positioned himself behind Jane, placing his hands on her shoulders.
But Jules saw the anguish in Nicholas’s eyes at the unspoken reference to her brother, who had yet to return from the conflict last year at Bothwell Bridge between the Covenanters and the government forces.
Jane looked up at her husband. Their gazes locked.
Something passed between them, a shared look that left Jules raw. To be so loved . . .
Nicholas pulled Jane’s chair away from the table and took her hand, helping her to her feet. “Thank you for the lovely supper, Claire, but I think it is time for Jane and me to retire.”
“It’s the baby that makes me tired,” Jane said.
Margaret and Hollister stood as well. Margaret let her hand drift to her softly extended belly. “Perhaps all of us could use some sleep after the ruckus that had us all awake before dawn.” She cast Jules a look that said she’d been disturbed from her sleep by the early morning noise.
He shrugged. “Without that ruckus we would not have had this . . .” He paused, trying to find a word to describe the meal that would not hurt Claire’s feelings. When nothing came to mind, he simply said, “dinner.” He watched as Claire’s cheeks warmed and she dropped her gaze to her hands.
David excused himself with the others, and soon Jules and Claire were very much alone on the terrace. The torchlight danced in the breeze, and silence hovered between them until he lifted the bottle of whiskey, poured a splash into two cups, and handed her one. “It’s my family’s own recipe.”
Claire frowned at the amber liquid. “I have never had spirits before.”
“Here’s to the first of many firsts. Your first wifely meal cooked, your first whiskey, your first night alone with me.” As his words faded into the night, he raised his cup to hers, then took a drink.
She raised her cup and took a tiny sip, and her eyes flared wide. “It’s like drinking fire. Fire might actually be easier to swallow.”
He grinned sympathetically and set down his cup. “It does take some getting used to.”
“This is what you were raised on?” she asked, her voice raspy from the liquid.
He shook his head. “I was raised by Jane’s father until my own sire felt it necessary for me to return to the family fold.
” He took another long sip of his whiskey, allowing the “liquid fire,” as Claire had aptly called it, to numb his senses.
Tonight he longed for an escape from his burdens, and to stare into Claire’s warm and sensual gaze.
“Now it is my turn to ask you something.”
She set her cup down at arm’s length, then returned her smiling gaze to his. “You may ask me three questions. That is your quota for one night.”
“Why three?” he asked, chuckling.
“One is too few and four might become far too personal. So three seemed to be just right,” she responded with a teasing tone and a lazy smile. “But I demand the same in return.”
“Very well. Tell me, Claire, when you are not posing as someone’s wife, what do you do?”
Her smile fading, she leaned back in her chair. “I am a teacher. That is how I have been able to be on my own for the past five years.”
“A teacher?” He hadn’t expected that, although he wasn’t certain what he expected.
When they’d first met, she’d said her father was a scholar, and that had led him to believe she was some spoiled aristocrat’s daughter.
Yet if that were true, why would she ruin herself on the altar of matrimony, especially to someone like him? “What do you teach?”
“Art mostly, but I have also taught my girls to read, to write, and to do their numbers.”
He gave her a puzzled look. “You were taught those things?”
She nodded. “My father was insistent that I learn everything I could. Then when my parents died, I was fortunate to be taken in by a family who believed in educating their daughters as well as their sons and my education continued.”
“Who do you teach?”
Claire fingered a locket on a chain around her neck. “I teach young women who have the desire to paint and have a need to support themselves.”
Not for the first time, Jules found himself at a loss to understand her. “Why would women, especially young women, need to support themselves? Isn’t that what marriage is for?”
“Marriage is not always the answer, especially when certain husbands don’t believe their bond is true,” she said dryly. “It is men like you who have every advantage, while women have very few, if any at all.”
“Like you.”
“Like me,” she said softly.
“You think you have me all figured out, don’t you?” he replied, watching her closely.
“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “I do not know much about you. And I fear there are very few people in this life with whom you will bare your soul, or even accept as your friend.”
“If that is true, then where does that leave you?”
“That is your ninth question, and I still have yet to ask even one.” She pushed back from the table. “In answer to your last question, I do not see myself ever reaching your inner circle, despite our relationship.”
The anguish in her voice troubled him before he tensed. “We have no relationship,” he countered, suddenly disgusted with himself. He would not fall for her helplessness again. Damnation, the woman was a master at getting under his skin.
Claire stood, staring at him with hurt in her eyes. “You have made it perfectly obvious I am unwanted, but as I have nowhere else to go, consider yourself burdened with me. That is your plight, husband, until you prove me wrong.” She turned and headed back toward the manor.
He stared at his adversary with a crazy mixture of anger and regret as she disappeared from view.
He should go after her. He should do the right thing and apologize.
Except the “right” thing was what he had always done .
. . and that had landed him in this situation in the first place.
He had done the right thing by returning home from Jane’s father’s employ when his father had demanded.
He had come home to meet his new mother full of hope and eager to do the right thing.
But that hope had turned to despair when at the age of twenty-one he’d been charged with her murder.
Nay, the right thing was not always the best thing to do.
Jules looked around the terrace in the sudden silence and realized the only thing he could do in these circumstances was the dishes.
The remains of the supper they’d enjoyed still sat upon the table, and with no servants except Fin—who was no doubt abed by now—the only option was to take care of the mess himself.
As he gathered the plates, he tried not to think about Claire. God knew there were plenty of other things for him to worry about, but she wouldn’t leave his mind.
He squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the image of her entrance into the salon earlier this evening. He should be thinking of Jane, the only woman he had ever loved. But Claire’s image was fixed firmly in his mind.
He tried to think of something else, someone else, but nothing came to him.
The problem was, had always been, that there was very little inside him.
Deep inside, where he should have had a soul, he felt a desperate emptiness.
Ever since he was a child, he had known something was missing in him, some defect that made him unlovable.
He had always blamed his shortcomings on his lack of love as a child.
His mother had died when he was only three, and his father had always been too busy warring or whoring to care about his sons.
As an adult, Jules came to understand that his father’s shortcomings were not the reason for his emptiness.
There were others among his friends who’d had similar childhoods, such as Nicholas Kincaid, who had overcome those deficiencies to find love and happiness.
Nicholas was, by all means, a self-made man whose soul was filled with generosity and goodness. While Jules’s own soul was empty.
Perhaps it was best that Claire was angry with him now.
She might not like his refusal to accept her word about their marriage.
But on the morrow, when his solicitor arrived, he would give her what little money he had left, then send her away from Kildare Manor and himself for good.
And the emptiness that had been his constant friend for the whole of his life would be his fate and no one else’s.
Exactly the way it should be.