ten

Choose wisely whom you allow to share your home, for you will slowly become what he or she believes you are, an image chiseled out word by word, day by day.

~A scientist’s observations on love

Clara Gresham chided herself all the way up the grand staircase as she climbed by feel, hand gliding along the well-oiled railing. Her suspicions were silly. Burke was likely buried in work, not sneaking off for dalliances with the new nurse. He’d warned her when they married that work consumed him, and it had proved truer every month of their life together. She paused outside their chamber for a moment, leaning on the door and allowing the cool dark to swallow her thoughts. She brushed her hand against Essie’s love letter in her pocket, willing herself to stop longing.

Suddenly the door fell away and she stumbled into Burke. She looked up into his chiseled face, the one that had drawn her away from her childhood home. She’d gone willingly enough then. To be always in the presence of such a formidable man, to claim him as hers, would be nothing short of heaven, she’d thought. What girl didn’t dream of having such a man to call her husband?

Yet now, only hope kept her there. She’d been outrunning her misgivings all this time, stuffing them down, but they’d caught up with her. That simple love letter—given to the maid, of all people—filled the cracks reality had made in her heart and enlarged them, making her fully aware of how much was lacking in her marriage to the great Burke Gresham.

Burke’s frown was magnified by the shadows. “Where were you?” How readily that frown came, especially around her. She’d never have guessed their union would turn into this.

“I couldn’t sleep.” Especially with him still not abed. She puffed up her meager courage and lifted her gaze. “Where were you?”

His sharp warning glare was the only answer. It was an offense, she knew, to poke at him with questions to which she should already know the answers, if she trusted the man she married. And mostly, she did. Yet it seemed impossible for a woman who had married so well to not have doubts now and again.

Ducking past him, she slipped into their chamber and tightened the robe about herself.

“I’ve given you the grandest suite you’ve ever had in your life, but you hardly ever use it. I suppose you were up in that attic again, buried in your paints.”

“I wasn’t painting.”

“But you were wandering alone by yourself at night. What will it take to entice you to act a lady?”

“You needn’t treat me this way. I’m not a child, Burke.”

“Then stop behaving as one. I need a wife, Clara. One who can walk among nobility with poise, stand beside me as an equal.”

His words assaulted her as tiny pellets to her heart that stung but did not kill.

“I purchased that book of manners for you. I suppose it was a waste, just like all the costly gowns with paint smears on the sleeve. It’s as if you don’t care a whit for the beautiful things you have. Do you? Do you care at all?”

Her very soul curled in on itself as her body remained in the room but her mind separated itself from what her life had become. She should have changed the wretched frock. Instead she’d let passion send her hurtling up the stairs when inspiration struck, heedless of what she wore, and she’d ruined it. She hated to know how much these gowns cost, but he always made sure she did.

“Tell me how to make this work, Clara. How can my wife and the opulent life I’ve brought her to exist together? Tell me what needs to be done and I’ll do it. Shall I hire a tutor? Would that help you remember the social graces that always seem to elude you?”

“I’ll try to remember.” She turned away, humiliated. She wasn’t certain exactly where the failure was, in herself or in the marriage, but she felt it keenly. Hurt welled up in her, its abundance spilling warm and wet from her eyes and falling down her cheeks.

Burke saw, and growled. He always saw. “Why are you crying again?”

She cowered into her settee, which made him growl louder.

“For pity’s sake, Clara, stop doing that. Have I ever struck you?” He paced. “Have I?”

She forced herself to straighten and turn back to him. “No.”

“You were so eager to take on this life when we were courting.” He gripped the chair back, face intense.

A glimmer of hope sparked in her chest at the earnest way he looked at her. It was as if he was fighting a battle within himself concerning her, and perhaps everything was about to change. He’d come to himself again, adoring his little Clara and delighting in her amusing ways.

“It brought me such joy to think of giving you everything you’d always wanted, showering you with the beautiful gowns you used to gaze upon in the windows of Harrods, but you barely seem to care.”

“I do care.” Indeed, she was the problem. She was such a child. Irresponsible and rash, flitting about her lovely life without concern for what others did for her. Though she’d been a Harrington, she lacked the deportment that went along with that old family name, their natural dignity wiped out by a single generation of poverty. She’d have to try harder, especially since it was important to him. “Truly, I do.”

His gaze oozed with doubt.

Turning, lashes fluttering away tears, her hand crumpled against the letter still in her pocket. That terrible, troublesome, utterly beautiful letter. She’d meant to look through the study for handwriting samples, but she couldn’t help feel a personal connection to this note now.

How she longed for—ached for—what the letter offered. Burke had been that way once, hadn’t he? Everything she did had been splendid and charming. He’d even been the one to purchase her paints and set up the attic studio, where he soon after proposed to her.

Slipping the note onto her desk, for she could not bear to be reminded of the fool thing every time she moved, she turned and looked at her husband’s back outlined by candle glow as he stared out the window.

Without another word—for what could she say in the face of her obvious lacks?—Clara slipped beneath the sheets and curled around her hurt. She did not even bother to remove her robe. Though they were man and wife, she could not bear to be vulnerable in any way just then. She tucked her hand under her pillow and caught sight of a blue-green dash of paint still on the inside of her wrist.

She touched it, remembering the first time Burke had kissed her. It had been a sacred action, much like a crown being placed on her head. “You mustn’t feel you need to hide yourself from me, Clara,” he’d said when she tried to conceal a similar paint smear.

At that point, a whole twenty-six months past, she’d been young enough to believe him.

One day things would be better. They had to be, for she belonged to God even more than Burke, and no one was more able than God to right every wrong in the lives of his children.

It wasn’t until morning that everything changed. Burke Gresham woke to a cold bed and flung his arm across the rumpled sheets. Head pounding, he pushed himself upright and stared into the harsh glow slicing through a crack in the drapes. The lovely little form beside him was gone. Not that he was surprised.

With a groan, he planted his feet on the morning-chilled floor and splashed his face with water from the pitcher, willing the ache in his head to recede. Feeling for a towel, he knocked books from a chair and papers from a desk. Finally his hand connected with a cloth and he blotted his face and blinked, looking down over the mess. It was a bit like his life at this moment.

He stooped to shuffle the chaos together, and that’s when he saw it. The letter was edged with crimson, and it begged to be pursued further. She’d slipped it from her pocket to the desk last night when he’d turned his back, but he’d watched her in the window’s reflection. He lifted the little missive from the invitations and clippings on the floor and flipped it open, catching a brief and sickening glance at the opening. Dear one, it began.

Dear one?

He dropped it like hot coal. Firming his jaw, Burke swept the entire pile together, letter and all, and deposited it back on the unkempt little desk. She was his wife, letter or not. It was better not to know.

He rose and fresh pain assaulted his head, sending him cowering away from the bright window and into the desk chair. Why did she have to be so wretchedly closed off these days? It was as if she’d pretended to be this woman of poise and raw talent, a true lady simply fallen on hard times, so that she might catch the attention of Crestwicke’s heir. Once she’d wedded him, the light had slowly dimmed to reveal a simple, absent-minded child-creature who was nothing like the woman he’d chosen. That letter might explain what had changed. He had a desperate urge to read it.

But he wouldn’t lower himself to snooping. He had plenty of work set out for the day, especially with traders coming through within the fortnight. Everything in the logbooks, every pedigree paper and purchase record, must be perfect if he was to make an advantageous trade. Straightening, he moved toward the door and touched the handle. There he stopped, that simple opening ringing in his head. Dear one.

This was useless. He’d never get the wretched thing out of his mind until he read it and saw for himself it was simply a misunderstanding. He crossed to the desk and yanked out the note amid a flurry of papers, reading it with growing dread from start to finish—twice. Then his hand shook. He controlled this estate, a house full of staff, even several investments, but his marriage and wife eluded his firm grasp.

He read it a third time and anger boiled within. With an incensed growl, he jammed the note in his pocket and marched out the door. What a fool he’d been to ignore the signposts. Distant and withdrawn, Clara had disappeared into the attic more and more until she’d begun missing meals and outings. Family events. Chances to be alone with him.

Now he had a clear view of the wedge that had formed between them.

Disbelief feathered in him at the notion that his wife had a secret love. She was pretty, no doubt about it, but what about her might drive a man to such desperation, to take such great risks with his reputation and hers? It was her old family name that had drawn his mother to suggest her, and her sweetly unsullied beauty that had drawn him, but besides those traits she was sadly reserved and unremarkable. A nice little addition to the house and his life, but nothing to inspire the raw passion on that dreadful page.

His anger burned, desperate for release, and he channeled it into every physical movement as he banged out the door and up the stairs. “Clara?” Who was the man, anyway? Likely some nobody little artist who wasted as much time as she did on useless frivolity, abandoning family and responsibility. That was the only sort with whom she’d truly connect.

The man was obviously important to her, for he’d seen the way she gazed at his note when she’d slipped it onto the desk. He pictured the woman he’d chosen to marry with a wave of fresh pain. Why on earth did she need another man, anyway? What about Burke was not enough? Was he not even able to keep a simple shop girl happy? There had to be an explanation.

Bang, bang. The attic door rattled against his fist, but no one answered.

Wait. What was he doing? Was this not his family’s estate? He shoved the door open, stumbling into a raftered space hazy with floating dust. Wide-open silence greeted him, and the messy clutter that seemed to naturally trail behind his wife. Brushes, overturned cups, broken pencils, and unstretched canvas littered the fringes of the room.

No Clara.

He glanced around at the sum total of the work she poured herself into. Her painting had been a nice little benefit at first, something to keep her from becoming a cloying, demanding wife, yet he had to admit, he’d always thought it a rather pointless endeavor. Replicating a horse or a flower, the foaming ocean, when one could simply step outside and see them, made little sense to him. All this effort, time, and expense for what—a wall hanging? It baffled him that she threw herself into it, heart and soul, as if it would bring in a living or save a life.

He moved deeper into the room, shoving things aside with the toe of his boot. Completed paintings stood propped against the far wall, and he gazed upon each, shaking his head. How did this steal so much of her attention? They were wasters of her time and heart, for it seemed she spent all she had of both up here.

He lifted a small square picture of a man’s face and held it close, looking for some hint of who he might be, some connection to the letter. A picture of an unknown stone chapel had received much of her careful attention, down to the shading of the ivy climbing its side. He’d never even seen this place, nor the man in the other painting. Most of the others were a view out an unfamiliar window.

Burke’s frown deepened. How foreign she was to him, this woman he’d married. She had such odd things, pictures that held the faces of other men, and letters that started with Dear one.

The pain of betrayal assaulted him again fast and hard, stabbing at his usual composure. How could she? How dare she? It was abominable. Wretched! Why would she even do it? Why? The question burned inside, his soul a furnace of anger. A primal noise rumbled in his chest and exploded out in a terrible growl. He spun, kicking paintings and easels with the force of his pain.

He fell back onto a crate and dropped his face into his hands, chest heaving, and that’s when he saw it. There in the dormer window was the image of a beastly man in hard, angular lines with blazing eyes. It was him.

He peeked again at the window, looking at the face she saw every day, the face from which she so often cowered, as she did last night. He spun away and covered his eyes, trying to exit the memory. It was, after all, no excuse for the letter he’d found. She was his wife—she’d vowed to honor and obey him, forsaking all others. There was no addendum to that promise, no loophole. Besides, they’d been mere words he’d launched at her. Only words.

Rising, he tore down the stairs and into the study, his sanctuary full of meaningful, logical work where there was always one right answer, a clear-cut expectation. With a firm jaw and resolute mind, he took one last look at the letter written to his wife by some other man, let it flutter down toward the cold hearth, and turned his back on it.

This was not over, but at least he didn’t have to look at the thing again.