Chapter 3
Jules stared at the woman before him. He had intended to deny Claire’s claims privately, then send her away.
He had created her. He could uninvent her just as easily.
He would simply fabricate some reason for her slipping into the night.
But with his senses still reeling from the kiss they had shared, he could do no such thing.
Instead, he reached for Claire’s hand, led her to a chair, and bade her sit while he talked with the others—Nicholas and Jane, Hollister, and Margaret. David joined them as well after settling the horses in the stable.
For a moment Jules ached at the sight of Jane and her gently rounded belly. “You look well, and happy,” he said to the only woman he would ever love.
Jules quickly forced his emotion deep inside himself. Jane had chosen another. Contentment with her husband shone in her eyes as Nicholas moved behind Jane and pulled her against his chest.
“We are so happy to see you, Jules. Especially in light of your secret courtship, engagement, and marriage,” Jane said with a soft smile.
“We were quite concerned after we learned your father and brother both passed away three weeks ago. It could not have been easy to lose them both so suddenly,” Nicholas said as he narrowed his gaze on Jules.
Did Nicholas still see him as he was seven months ago—weak and physically diminished from his imprisonment in gaol and sorrowful after losing Jane’s hand to him?
Jules felt none of those things. He had worked hard over the last several months to rebuild the strength that prison had robbed from him.
He was in the best shape of his life, if truth be told.
And sorrow? That emotion had shriveled in the darkness of his prison cell each and every day that he had waited for his father to come and release him, until finally it had existed no more.
“Let us not talk of the past,” Jules said, perhaps a bit too brightly, for his words brought a frown to Jane’s lips. “Sit, relax.” He turned to Fin. “Will you bring us some tea and refreshments?”
The aging servant nodded, and was gone only a short time before he returned with the tea. Fin hesitated for a moment as he looked from one woman to the next. A frown pulled down the corners of his mouth.
“Why not allow Lady Kildare to serve her guests?” Jules said, interpreting Fin’s hesitation of uncertainty as to which woman should serve. At that suggestion, Fin’s frown vanished, and he proceeded toward Jules’s supposed wife.
Jules paused at his own admission. His gaze lingered on Claire as she accepted the task of pouring the tea and serving freshly baked scones to their guests. Who was this pretender? This interloper in his life?
The woman was unknown to him, but he could not fault her impeccable manners as she finished her task and returned to her chair. She met his gaze. Her large almond-shaped eyes, their color a mixture between brown and gold, challenged him to publicly renounce her in front of his friends.
He met her gaze with a nod of thanks for treating his friends well for the moment, yet a growing restlessness surged inside him to get her alone and ask her what she was about. Why was she using his friends to get close to him? And why had she assumed the identity of a woman who did not exist?
She dropped her gaze to the delicate teacup in her hands—a teacup he had purchased only a day ago from a widow in the village with funds he had secured by selling every carpet in the manor house.
That cup didn’t belong in her small hands; she’d no right to make it seem appropriate.
But even as she sipped serenely, Jules could see a vibrant energy that exuded from her wide eyes to every line of her svelte and attractive form.
She set down her cup, then reached up to brush an errant strand of copper hair away from her high, chiseled cheeks set in an oval of perfect porcelain skin.
He did not choose her, but he could not deny that she was beautiful, despite the tight chignon that pulled her hair off her face.
Perhaps the woman had a pleasant form—if her colorless gray dress did not conceal too many faults.
The virginal gown marked her as a cosseted, easily dismissed woman of society—a society he wanted no part of.
Jules closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
If this woman wanted to be part of society, then why attach herself to him?
All he desired was to rebuild what his father and brother had destroyed.
He wanted to be left alone to deal with the estate and try to carve out a living for himself. It wasn’t that much to ask, was it?
He opened his eyes and, almost against his will, his gaze returned to his “wife’s” eyes—eyes that sparked with intelligence.
The thought brought a moment’s pause as her gaze connected with his.
She did not look like a schemer. In fact, she looked very much like someone he and his friends might actually befriend.
She did not react to his bold stare. Instead, she folded her hands in her lap. What secrets lay behind those wide, golden eyes? Why would a woman of her obvious good breeding and education pretend to be the wife of a man she did not know?
He tried to look away from her and the mystery she presented, to shift his attention back to Jane, but something about this woman drew him in.
Despite her horrible dress, and her severe hair, she had a presence that was hard to deny.
It was as if she were unaware of her own energy, or how the slightest shift of her movements could fix any man’s attention.
Jules frowned. What was he thinking? The woman was a fraud. She wanted something from him. Why else would she pose as Claire MacIntyre? He needed to figure out what that “something” was, and quickly, before she attached herself to his friends and his life.
He moved to Claire’s side, offered his hand to help her stand.
She set her cup aside and accepted his outstretched fingers.
When she stood, he slipped his hand about her waist, drawing her against his side.
She startled at the contact, but did not object.
Instead she tossed him a half smile and released a light laugh.
Jules forced a look of fondness mixed with hunger into his expression.
The hunger part was easier to feign as his supposed wife’s soft body pressed against his own.
It had been years since he had held a woman this intimately.
He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath of lavender mixed with vanilla.
The combination sent a jolt of fire to his loins.
He snapped his eyes open, no longer having to feign desire for the woman in his arms.
“Friends, if you will forgive us, Claire and I have much to discuss. We have been apart too long.” Jules did not wait for an answer from his guests as he guided Claire toward the door and out of the chamber.
He shut the door behind him, then guided his “bride” to the main hallway, then up the stairs.
“Where are we going?” Claire asked with only a hint of distress in her voice.
“To your new chamber.”
She stiffened, but did not break her stride. “The master’s chamber?”
“No, you will have to earn your way there, my dear.” Annoyance tugged at him as he drew her down another hallway and toward the rear of the manor. He could not merely send her away, not with his friends here to witness such an act. He was obliged to play along with this farce for a time.
At the end of the hallway, he waved the woman at his side up another spiral stairway and into the tower room.
She came to a stop in the middle of the tiny, dusty chamber, so different than the one downstairs, while he moved to the hearth and lit a single candle with a strike from the flint and steel.
Pale, golden light illuminated the room, making it appear less neglected.
The only furniture in the chamber was a small, sagging bed.
She could find some comfort here. Jules frowned and pushed the thought away.
He turned back to the woman. She clutched her hands together, her nervousness palpable. She exuded fragility and weakness.
“You no longer need to pretend with me, Claire. If that is your real name.” Jules gazed into her face, searching for the duplicity he was sure to find in her large, golden eyes.
She held his gaze. Met it boldly. “My name is Claire. And I am your wife.”
“Yet how can that be? I never stood before the minister. Have you, Claire?” The sound of her name lingered on his tongue longer than it should have. He had pulled that name from the air when he had created his false wife, not from anyone he had ever known or cared to attach himself to.
“Ours was a wedding by proxy, or have you forgotten what you requested of your solicitor?”
Jules frowned. “Of what do you speak?”
She returned his frown. “Our marriage arrangements.”
Jules stared down at her. She was as good a player as he had ever seen upon the stage, he would give her that. “We,” he paused, allowing the word to hang between them, “never had anything between us until this day.”
She did not acquiesce to his rebuttal. Instead, she straightened.
Her spine stiffened. She might be a head shorter than he, but she stood her ground, met his gaze, then raised her brow in a coolly superior way.
“I refuse to be offended by your lack of memory.” She leaned forward and sniffed him.
“I smell no spirits about you, but your family does have a reputation . . .” She turned away.
He had no intention of being so easily dismissed. He reached for her hand and held her captive. “What is your name?”
“Claire MacIntyre, Lady Kildare.”
He frowned. “Before that.”