Chapter 20
One week after he’d returned home, Jules said good-bye to Jane, Nicholas, Margaret, and Hollister. Since he had safely returned to Kildare Manor, his friends were eager to return to their own homes to await the births of their children.
Alone in the suddenly empty halls of Kildare Manor, Jules tried to purge Claire from his mind and tear her from his heart.
He knew he was losing the battle when he found himself upstairs in the room he once hated for so long.
Suddenly it seemed to be his favorite chamber in the house.
He would stop in the center of the ballroom and lose himself in Claire’s painting for hours on end.
Claire stood in her studio, staring into empty space.
Jules. She closed her eyes and pushed the thought away, just as she had done every day since he’d left her behind a week ago.
She had tried cleaning her studio at first in an effort to forget him.
She’d scrubbed every splatter of dried paint from the wood floor.
She’d walked through the streets of Edinburgh with the girls.
But every time she saw something beautiful, something inspiring, she wondered what Jules would think if he looked at it with her. How he would respond?
And she always ended each day right where she stood now.
In her studio. In front of the half-drawn image of Jules she had started when he had left.
A frisson of excitement shivered along her skin as she gazed at the image.
Her fingers curled at her sides, and before she could stop herself, she grabbed her palette and her paints and set to work.
Perhaps if she put him on the canvas, she would be free of him in her mind.
Or at least that was the hope as she lost herself in painting.
Two weeks later, Jules found himself sitting alone in the drawing room. He gazed into the flames in the hearth, trying to concentrate on an estate ledger, but it was Claire he saw in his mind and not the columns of profit and cost.
Even so, the estate was beginning to recover. His tenant farmers had returned and were preparing the soil for a crop of winter wheat. The estate was starting to repair itself.
If only his heart would do the same.
Claire finished her painting of Jules a week later, and still he continued to haunt her.
She spent her days with the girls, teaching them new techniques in painting.
Recovered from their ordeal, Anna and Eloise had finally returned to their usual behaviors.
The younger girls had even started to laugh again, as they did now, filling the studio with their high-spirited voices while they painted a still life Claire had set out for them of a candlestick, a book, and two apples.
Penelope had not recovered as quickly. Her once-cheerful face now held an ever-present sadness, and her lovely blue eyes seemed haunted. Penelope sat in a chair before her easel, her brush in her uninjured hand, arrested above the canvas. She could learn to paint left-handed if she tried.
But instead of trying, the girl had been withdrawn and without spirit since the events at Kildare Manor.
Claire could feel tears of sympathy burn in her eyes, but she blinked them angrily away.
They could not change what had happened, only how they responded to it.
If only she could get Penelope to respond.
She had tried to be consoling. She had tried to inspire her. She had been firm, and she had simply held Penelope in her arms and let her cry. But nothing seemed to change that look of desolation in her eyes, nothing except David. Only when he was near did she brighten.
Claire walked slowly across the studio and lifted her cloak from a hook on the wall. She nodded to the guard David had hired. “I will return shortly.” To the girls she said, “Keep painting. I have a short errand I must attend to.”
The younger girls nodded. Penelope simply stared at the blank canvas with a dull and hopeless look in her eyes.
The August air was crisp, yet the sun shone overhead as Claire hurried down her street, past the coaching inn, and into the heart of Edinburgh. She was on her way to David. Perhaps he had an idea of how to return the vivaciousness to Penelope’s spirit.
As she headed toward the rooms David had let a few blocks away, she passed by the storefronts.
The sound of the shopkeepers and tradesmen hawking their wares filled the late-morning air with a cacophony of noise mixed with the jangling harnesses of the carriages and the steady beat of horse hooves on the cobbled streets.
Darting through the crowd, Claire slipped closer to the buildings to avoid a cart filled with cabbages when she passed by a jeweler’s shop.
At first she walked right past, but something familiar caught her eye.
She stopped, retracing her steps until she stood before the window, staring at a gold and ruby ring that could only have come from one source.
Jules’s mother’s ring.
Had he sold it?
Surprised and a little unsure, she went inside the shop.
“May I help you?” an older man asked, coming around a small desk in the corner of the shop.
Claire pointed toward the window display. “The gold and ruby ring in the window, did you purchase it recently?”
The old man nodded as he reached for the ring, holding it between two fingers.
“That I did. A fine purchase, if I do say so myself. They don’t cut the rubies like that anymore.
” He pulled out a pair of fragile glasses from his pocket and, setting them on his nose, scrutinized the ring through the lenses.
“Everyone wants sparkle. But the rich color is far more valuable. Are you looking to purchase this ring for yourself?”
Claire laughed. “I might be, if I could know a bit of its history. Can I ask from whom you purchased such a fine piece of art?”
The old man looked at her over the rim of his lenses. “Came from a young laird who appeared a little down on his luck.”
“I see,” she said, trying to appear uninterested in the piece even as a shiver rippled across her flesh. “How much are you asking for the ring?”
“Sixty shillings Scot.”
Claire tried not to react to the outrageous sum. She frowned and turned away from the ring. To show how much she wanted that particular ring would only increase the cost. She had to make him think otherwise. “What else do you have to show me? I want something with rubies.”
The shopkeeper’s smile slipped as he looked about his cluttered shop. “Hmmm.”
“Well, if you have nothing else,” she said in a calm and even voice as she turned toward the door.
“Wait,” he called. “The ring is all I have with rubies. If you would just take another look. It is an exquisite ring.”
Claire sighed. “I had my heart set on a pair of earrings to wear to the Davisons’ ball this Saturday . . .” She strung the words out, hoping the shopkeeper would bargain with her. She had nothing to lose.
“Forty shillings Scot.”
“Thirty.”
He released an audible sigh. “All right, my dear. You drive a hard bargain, but I agree. Thirty shillings Scot.”
Claire nodded. “Hold the ring for me. I will return on the morrow with the funds.”
He agreed, and Claire left the shop before she either cried out her delight, or swooned. She had a feeling the latter was far more likely. Once outside, she leaned against the first wall she came to, and pressed trembling fingers against the cool stone.
She had found Jules’s mother’s ring—the only link she would ever have to Jules or his family. Once she saw the ring in the window, she knew she had to do anything and everything to possess it.
Her breath caught. And she had made it her own. Now all she had to do was figure out some way to get the funds by the next day, or all her efforts would be for naught.
When the initial exhilaration of bargaining for what she wanted so desperately wore off, she realized she had the answer to her problem already.
The lie she had concocted about Lady Davison was not entirely false.
The woman had asked her to attend a ball at her winter home in Argyll the following year, after Claire painted a ceiling for her that would make her the envy of her friends.
Claire had met the woman in the ballroom of Kildare Manor, at the party Jules’s friends had planned.
Perhaps it was time for Claire to agree to hire out her talents.
Lady Davison had said she would agree to any terms. Would she be willing to advance Claire her fee before she had even started, and allow the girls to come along with her?
There was only one way to find out.
At the thought of heading to Argyll, Claire began to feel light-headed. Lady Davison lived within walking distance of Kildare Manor. If Claire went to Argyll, she would be close to Jules.
She drew a deep breath, forcing herself to be calm. Jules would never have to know she was there. She could paint the ceiling and be away from Argyll long before Lady Davison’s ball.
Her decision made, Claire headed toward Amberly Place, Lady Davison’s Edinburgh home, where the woman was fortunately in residence.
Across the street, Agatha slipped from the apothecary shop.
Her hand closed around the small bottle of poison the young girl had created for her.
It was a pity that Agatha had had to dispose of the girl, forcing her to drink her own concoction.
Agatha had to be certain the poison was not only lethal, but fast.
The time to strike was coming nearer. She had to be prepared for when the opportunity presented itself.
It would eventually arrive, and the bottle in her hand would serve her purposes well.
Three weeks later, out of need to find some connection to the woman he missed so desperately, Jules climbed the stairs to the tower room, hoping and praying that the room still smelled like her. He entered the chamber and froze at the sight before him.
Everywhere he looked, the ceiling, the walls, even the floor, had been painted to resemble a garden in springtime.
She’d painted the ruins of an ancient Greek temple that was surrounded in lush ivy and a riot of flowers.
Beneath the shade of a willow tree was a fountain that looked so real Jules could swear he heard the soft trickle of water.
And to the side of the fountain, resting in a bed of violets, were two figures, their bodies entwined. He moved closer, and recognition flared. His heart stopped.
She’d painted the two of them as they had been by the loch.
Their bodies glistened with drops of water, their skin vibrant and alive beneath the sun’s light.
The lines of their nude bodies were obscured by a sheer white cloth, yet the very covering only made what the viewer did not see more explicit.
The very portrayal was as realistic as it was exotic and sensual.
His entire body burned. He groaned at the painful loss that filled him.
How would he ever forget her, when she had made Kildare Manor such a part of herself?
Everywhere he went, he was reminded of her, from the tower to the stable, the loch and the kitchen.
There was no safe place in his own house where memories did not consume him.
He often wondered how she fared. If the girls had fully recovered from their ordeal.
He wished he knew where she was, what she was doing, and if she missed him as much as he missed her.
Wearily, he lay down on the small bed in the center of the chamber and looked up at the clouds she had painted on the ceiling.
He tried to close his eyes, but as was usual these past three weeks, he could not sleep.
He never slept anymore, not unless he had exhausted himself in the fields with his tenants, or he imbibed the family whiskey.
Quite often he lay awake as he did now, wanting her with a passion that transcended all reason. They had to stay separated. It was for her own good. Until Agatha could be found and locked away for the rest of her life, Claire would have to remain a stranger to him.
“Why are we in Argyll?” Penelope asked from the bottom of the ladder Claire stood on. She was painting the first quadrant of the ballroom ceiling in Lady Davison’s country home.
“We are on a grand adventure as far as Anna and Eloise are concerned,” Claire answered as she applied a final swoop of gray to a mass of blue-gray clouds.
“That’s not what I mean,” Penelope said, “and you know it.”
“What do you mean?” Claire asked with a frown as she stepped down the ladder.
She needed to clean her palette and brushes, then start on the cherubim and seraphim.
She was making excellent progress on the ceiling.
At this rate, she and the girls could be back in Edinburgh before the end of the year.
“Why are we in Argyll, so close to Lord Kildare, without going to see him?”
Claire smiled sadly. “He’s not part of our lives any longer. But we wish him well with his.” She poured turpentine on a rag and wiped the gray off the wooden board in her hand.
“But you are still married to him,” the young woman cried.
“Yes.”
“Don’t you think he misses you?” Penelope asked.
Claire shook her head and drew a stilted breath. “No. I hurt him too badly. He will never trust me again. Besides, he can’t miss something he never loved.”
“He loved you,” Penelope said, her voice choked with sorrow. She stepped toward Claire and, ignoring the palette and the odorous cloth, wrapped her in a supportive hug.
“Not enough.” Claire turned out of Penelope’s arms, grateful for once that the mention of his name did not bring an agony of pain.
She’d grown numb over the last month. That numbness helped her now as she moved to her paints and refilled her palette with white and brown, and just a hint of red, yellow, and green, to create the flesh tones she needed.
The two words echoed in her mind as she blended the paint.
Not enough.