Chapter 11
Clara woke when the carriage stopped. She had not meant to sleep.
She had closed her eyes for a few minutes while Julian had taken care of David.
She’d intended it to last no more than that, but when she woke up again, she glanced at the pocket watch she kept in her reticule and saw that two hours had passed.
They had stopped in a yard, and Julian was standing outside the carriage door, David still in his arms. She hadn’t realized how comfortable he was with the little boy. He stood there as if he’d always held him, as if he was truly his own flesh and blood.
Well, in a way he is. I must not forget that David is more related to Julian than he ever will be to me.
She blinked at him through the window. He looked back at her with the faint, dry patience she was beginning to recognize as his version of amusement.
She straightened, smoothed her skirt as best she could, and descended from the carriage with as much dignity as the situation allowed, which was not a great deal.
Julian said nothing about the fact that she had been asleep for the better part of two hours after claiming she was not tired.
She appreciated this more than she would ever tell him.
“When did we stop?”
“Only a couple of minutes ago. I assumed you would join us in due course. Mrs. Holt has already been settled and will take David in a moment for his evening meal.” He grimaced. “Or whatever it is when babies eat before sleeping. Shall we?”
She lifted the hem of her skirts, and they headed inside. The inn was small and warm. The innkeeper appeared at the door with a candle. He appeared to know Julian, for he broke into a smile.
“Goodness, what a pleasure, Your Grace It has been…”
“Less than a week, I know. May I introduce my wife? Lady Clara, Duchess of Lynden. And our son, Master David, Earl of Huxley.”
Earl of… It took her a moment to realize what he was doing. Julian had bestowed one of his lesser titles on the boy, as was customary for a duke’ son. It made things more believable.
The innkeeper, meanwhile, stared at them with some confusion.
“Duchess? Well, what joy. I thought I had misheard your man when he told me you were traveling with your family.”
“Not at all. Now, our rooms?”
The innkeeper showed them to their rooms; they were on the first floor with a small sitting room between them.
Mrs. Holt emerged from the room attached to the sitting room and took David away for his feeding
In the grate, a fire roared. Clara stood and stared at it, unsure what to do now. She hadn’t yet wanted to admit that sleeping would be an odd arrangement. Mrs. Holt had the second room which meant she and Julian would share this bedroom.
And there was but one bed.
She was not tired, she reminded herself.
She had just slept and was therefore entirely refreshed.
There was absolutely no reason to feel the particular heaviness behind her eyes that she was currently feeling which she chose to attribute to the firelight.
In fact, she ought to feel awake enough to stay up all night, so the subject of who might sleep where should not come up.
Julian came in from seeing to the coachman and closed the door.
“Tea?” he said.
“Please,” she said and sat down.
He found the things on the side table and set about making it himself which was not something she had expected. She watched him locate the pot, examine the contents with a brief frown, and apparently decide they were acceptable.
“You look surprised,” he said, without turning around.
“I did not say anything.”
“You have a very expressive face,” he said, “for someone who believes they are being inscrutable.”
“I never imagined,” she said, settling back in her chair, “that the Duke of Lynden would turn out to be capable of surviving scandal, tending to a babe, and making tea on a rickety inn stove.”
“Ah, and I never imagined,” he said, “that Lady Clara Hampshire would survive a year in Scotland without freezing solid or producing several volumes of sentimental poetry about the Highland mists.”
“Poetry? What makes you think I am a scribe of poetry?”
He let out a laugh. “You and Arabella used to write the most ridiculous poems when you were younger. You would leave pages upon pages all over the house when your fancy was diverted to something else.”
Her stomach twisted as she recalled the silly poems they had written back then, all about the longing for love—of which they had understood exactly nothing at that tender age. The thought that he had read those poems made her feel quite ill.
“You did not…”
“The waning moon shall bring you closer to me, oh beloved man in the stars…” he started, and she dropped her head forward into her lap.
“Goodness gracious, do not tell me you read them all.”
He shook his head. “I did not. I read a few and then put them away. It was insightful, however. I do hope Scotland did not rob you of all your romanticism.”
“I did not take you for someone who cares about such things?”
His eyebrow rose.
“Romance? Not in life. In the abstract, yes. It is charming the way it makes young people dream. Also not-so-young people. In reality, I think it turns people into hapless fools—that notion of longing for and chasing after love.”
“That must be why you always appeared to be untouched in society.”
“Untouched?” He leaned forward as though examining something rather interesting.
“You always seemed untouched by all of it,” she said. “In society. As though nothing could reach you. The women who chased after you, their mothers, and so on.”
“Did I?”
“You know you did.” She looked at him across the fire. “I used to find it considerably off-putting.”
“And now?”
She considered. “Now I find it significantly more understandable which is not the same as finding it less off-putting.”
He smiled then. It changed his face in a way she was not prepared for, and she looked back at the fire.
“Appearances,” he said. “People see what you show them, and they stop looking. It is considerably safer than the alternative.”
“And what is the alternative?”
“Letting them see something worth looking at,” he said, “and then having to care what they do with it.”
He was watching the fire now, and she was grateful for it because the expression on his face was not one she had seen before, and she could not quite look away.
“You said,” she began, “that love mostly turns intelligent people into hapless fools.”
“I stand by that.”
“And yet…” She gestured vaguely at the room, the inn, the carriage outside, the general situation. “… her we are.”
“What are you implying, Lady Clara?”
His eyes bore into hers, and she swallowed hard, shaking her head. “I mean, Arabella. The things we are both doing for Arabella. Out of love.”
“That,” he said, “is obligation. Not love.”
“Is it?”
“Familiar love, then. Love born out of friendship.”
“And yet, it has made us both fools. So perhaps you were right.”
“Perhaps I was too limited in my assessment. Perhaps love makes us all foolish, no matter the sort of love it is.”
She did not answer. The fire shifted, and a log dropped. Julian leaned forward to adjust the grate, pressing the iron latch to let more air into the flame. The metal had been sitting in the heat too long. The latch shifted, and the edge of it caught his palm. He pulled his hand back sharply.
He grumbled under his breath in a manner that told her the words emerging were colorful indeed though he spoke them quietly enough that she could not hear them.
“Let me see,” she said.
“It is nothing.”
“Julian.”
He held out his hand with the air of someone conceding a point under protest. She leaned forward and took it, turning it toward the firelight. There was a red mark across the base of his thumb, angry but not serious. She pressed the back of her fingers against it to check the heat.
His hand was very still in hers.
She released it.
“Keep it away from the fire,” she suggested.
“Remarkable advice,” he said. “I wonder why I did not think of it.”
“Well, at least I am not the only one who sustained a silly injury of late,” she teased.
“I dare say mine is more serious than your encounter with the butterknife.”
She held up a hand. “I was terribly injured, your Grace. Must I remind you?”
He rolled his eyes. “I am making the tea now, and then, I will go to bed.”
She tensed at once, but he shook his head. “Do not fret so much. I shall sleep here in front of the fire, and you can have the bed… assuming you are tired.”
“Very well, if you insist,” she replied though she was grateful he’d resolved the problem before it arose. He made the tea, which was tolerable, and then he settled in front of the fire, using blankets he’d found in the sideboard while she sat on the bed, fully clothed.
She listened to the silence all around her, almost convinced that the words she’d told Helena—that she could never trust another man—were still holding true. Almost. For the truth was, there was something about Julian that managed to tear off parts of the walls she’d built around her heart.
And that, she knew, was a dangerous development indeed.