A Groom of Her Own (Scandalous Affairs Book 1)

by Christi Caldwell

  “I’m not,” he said tightly, cutting Wade off at the pass.

  “You could do a good deal worse than that one.”

  Which…? He could do a good deal worse? Than Claire Poplar? “If by ‘worse’ you mean cutting off my fingers and losing the ability to hold the paintbrush, then yes, I could always do worse,” he muttered.

  He and Wade had been together since they’d both survived and escaped an impressment ship. Since then, Wade had served as a loyal assistant. Seeing to anything that fell outside the scope of Caleb’s painting. Which was, really, everything. The other man took over the headache of everyday finances, and he found the exhibitions and museums to house Caleb’s work. He coordinated the sale of Caleb’s paintings. As such, between their business relationship and their shared past, Wade also had a greater sense of entitlement to voicing his opinion. Which Caleb tolerated because of their history.

  He returned and found Wade packing up Caleb’s brushes and equipment. “You know we have to have this talk,” his friend said, rolling up the packed case and tying it off.

  Oh, God. He wouldn’t let it go. But then, what kept Caleb able to survive was that one of them stayed on top of Caleb’s lack of interest in anything that wasn’t painting.

  “You’re not listening,” the other man charged.

  “I’m… listening.”

  Wade gave him a look.

  “Reluctantly,” Caleb allowed.

  “We’re out of money. Nearly. This exhibit netted you one hundred pounds, but when you partition that out for your replacement equipment, rent, travels, and my salary, of course, you’re back to the job of finding the next job. Which isn’t teaching, that is.”

  “Which isn’t teaching.”

  “As I see it, you’ve got few options. One, take on the students.”

  “Not an option. Next?”

  “Yeah, well, with your miserable personality and your lack of prospects, you certainly aren’t going to find some fancy heiress and her fortune.”

  Caleb chuckled at that blunt and entirely accurate assessment. “You’ve only given me one option.”

  “Night’s Keep.”

  He snorted. What a ridiculous name for any place. “You think the solution is some desolate, run-down property?”

  “No, I think it is some desolate, fixed-up property.

  “It’s been fixed up since we last journeyed there?”

  “No, that’s my point. You get in there and fix it up so you can let it out for a steady income.” Wade paused. “And then you get out.”

  And then he got out. He continued his travels and was free to pursue his work. It was nothing short of a tantalizing prospect. An English property sustaining him and his future would be the ultimate irony. A place that had taken so much from him would sustain the one true joy he found in life.

  “You can stay there and see—”

  Wade already had his hands up. “Don’t look at me. Nothing is going to keep me in this godforsaken country. Not even you.”

  Caleb couldn’t and wouldn’t blame him. Neither would he ask him to make that sacrifice. That wasn’t the nature of their relationship. They had both endured an everlasting hell, and that was the bond that bound them.

  “What else do you got?” Because for the other man to have raised the possibility, he would also no doubt put an equal effort into the plan.

  “You find yourself some woman you can leave behind, at the property we came here to look at in the first place. Leave her in charge of it, and you’re both free to go your own ways. She manages the estate. You get the money so you can continue painting, never having to do any of these exhibits or shows… unless you want to. On your terms. A mail-order bride.”

  The other man left that there to dangle in the air. The possibility that should be an impossibility. After all, the last thing he wanted was marriage. He’d gotten close enough to that state, only for the woman he’d loved to up and marry Caleb’s brother when Caleb had been rotting on a British prison ship.

  Except, what Wade spoke about wouldn’t really be a marriage. It’d be a business arrangement like any person born to America would know all about. Such partnerships had helped form a country. The woman could be old. The woman could be young. All she needed to be was agreeable to having a husband who was happy to travel the globe and see to his work while she remained behind at that British property.

  It couldn’t be sold.

  But it could be exploited.

  And if there was one certainty, it was that Americans knew things about exploiting land.

  “You’d have to find some paragon who’d agree to take on the job.”

  “We just have to find a woman who isn’t really looking for a husband, but for some freedom. A woman good with numbers and finances. Somebody who isn’t afraid to visit the properties and know what to do to make them better.”

  That could have easily been any number of American women. But an English lady? Why, he didn’t know if even Poppy, whom he respected and trusted and was more intelligent than any Englishman, would be up to the task.

  “Well?” Wade prodded.

  Caleb chuckled. “Take out an advertisement.”

  He’d get what he wanted. Whoever responded to the advertisement would get what she wanted. And he’d be free to go on his own way.

  “That’s why I keep you,” Caleb said, heading to gather up the next painting.

  “It helps that I’m the only man who will work with you.”

  “Now, we just need to find the female version of you.”

  Wade’s laughter followed Caleb out.

  Chapter 3

  By way of a future, few options existed for ladies.

  That was, beyond the bounds of matrimony.

  For Claire, there were even less available to her than to most women.

  After all, no one wanted to marry the daughter of a murderer.

  Not that her father had been a murderer. That fact, however, didn’t really matter, not when his actions had led to the kidnapping and almost death of the previous Earl of Maxwell. Scandalous stories found themselves twisted and contorted into some variation of the truth, mostly exaggerations, never managing to settle anywhere in the middle.

  It was why Claire Poplar found herself a social pariah.

  In the immediacy of her family scandal, she’d not really cared. She still didn’t really care about her circumstances. She didn’t mind being trapped in a world between her blissfully in-love-with-his-wife brother and her gloom-and-doom, always-weeping mother. She didn’t care about the tedium of days that rolled together, largely purposeless. Absolutely meaningless.

  She was lying.

  She cared very much.

  Because she’d not considered that being excluded from the living would mean she’d find herself living a purposeless existence. There was no husband or family of her own, not that she equated her own existence with that of being wed. There were no invitations to respectable charitable organizations. Which had always struck her as ironic…her being shunned by supposedly kindhearted women.

  And there were no art instructors or tutors. As such, she’d become a figure that floated about society, when invitations were forthcoming. And even then, she remained as invisible as those invites. No, she had been relegated to the role of younger sister, to be cared for much the way she had been as a small girl. Only now, she was a twenty-three-year-old woman staring down a future of living on the generosity of her brother and his wife. And though they were both loving, and she’d no doubt they would care for Claire until she drew her last breath, neither did she wish to be so dependent upon them.

  She had pride enough to want more.

  To dream of more than an existence without purpose.

  “I’m intrigued,” her sister murmured at her side. “What exactly is a mail-order bride?”

  A…?

  That managed to gain Claire’s attention. For the first time since she and Faye had taken up a spot before the hearth—she sketching and Faye re
ading—she glanced over. How different they were in so many ways. Those differences extended to their appearances. Her sister, possessed hair a shade lighter than Claire’s dark strands. Faye was pixielike in height and frame, pale and ethereal. And in truth, Claire had oft secretly envied her sister for the uniqueness of her person.

  Her sister had always been a tad eccentric, but there’d become a deeper layer of bizarreness to her since their family had been linked to the kidnapping of a lost—and then found—heir.

  As if she’d followed Claire’s question, Faye waved the scrap of paper that had been so commanding her attention this night.

  “Let me see that,” Claire muttered, plucking the page from Faye’s hand. Laying it on the wide-plank hardwood floor, Claire leaned down so she might see the tiny print and read, “‘Mail-order bride desired.’ A bride who is shipped by mail?”

  “It sounds quite dangerous.”

  Her sister sounded entirely too intrigued by the prospect. Claire glanced over. A peculiar light glimmered in Faye’s eyes. Her sister looked entirely too intrigued, as well.

  Drawing the page closer, she angled it away from Faye’s view and returned to her reading.

  Sought: A wife who is skilled in mathematics, capable of maintaining accounting of estates, and capable of running a household, hiring staff, and retaining staff.

  The ideal candidate will be a woman who is skilled in mathematics… she will be a woman capable of keeping meticulous ledgers, conducting meetings pertaining to the health and wealth of the estate. Interested candidate should be a woman who is disinterested in a romantic relationship…

  In short, the gentleman responsible for this advert was, in fact, looking for a business partner.

  She knew she should be outraged and horrified, as any good English lady would be, but she was intrigued. Not in the same way her sister was, of course, with the macabre aspect of it. But more with the possibility of a marriage that wasn’t a marriage.

  It sounded battier than the late King George.

  “I’ve never heard anything so—”

  “Dangerous?” her sister repeated.

  “I was going to say bizarre,” Claire said dryly.

  “Do you think he’s a murderer?” Faye remarked with her usual ominous outlook. Of course, they’d been shaped by their family scandal in different ways.

  Their brother, Tristan, had become the martyr.

  Faye had become the hauntingly eerie one with a morbid curiosity about gloomy news, and researching everything she could about criminal acts.

  Christina had ceased coming around; living solely in the country with her sickly husband and children.

  And then there was Claire, who wanted to live her own life, free of society’s chains and her family’s scandals. “He’s not a murderer,” she said, directing her gaze up to the ceiling, where the shadows danced ominously overhead, as if in supernatural support of Faye’s musings.

  “Murderers do peculiar things.” Faye spoke in the tones of one who knew.

  “I dare say, if the gentleman is a murderer, he isn’t going to take out an advertisement for a victim,” she said dryly.

  Faye’s eyes went round, and she inched closer to Claire’s side. “Sometimes… sometimes, there is no reason for murder. Like the Harpe brothers.”

  Wrinkling her brow, Clare searched her brain, trying to recall the family among members of Polite Society. Alas, it escaped her. “The Harpe brothers?”

  Her younger sister spoke on a whisper. “You know—”

  “Actually, I don’t,” Claire interrupted with an added layer of dryness.

  “They were known as Big Harpe and Little Harpe, two brothers, highwaymen. River pirates.”

  Even with her nearness to the raging fire, Claire shivered. Not for the first time since her sister’s macabre fascination in the most gruesome tales started, she wished she hadn’t indulged her.

  “They often killed people of all types for the thrill or for minor slights, without actual monetary gain, even babies.”

  Despite herself, Claire’s eyes grew ever wider through her sister’s telling. The fire snapped and hissed, adding a foreboding layer of mystique to the terrifying tale.

  She reread the words in the advertisement once more.

  “I still say he could be murderer looking for his next victim,” Faye said matter-of-factly as she rolled onto her side and stared into the fire until she fell into a deep, snoring slumber.

  Claire proceeded to re-read the advertisement. “‘The ideal prospect will be the woman who is skilled in mathematics…’” she whispered. Well, perhaps it wasn’t so very horrifying, after all. A husband who sought a bride capable in mathematics? Claire exhaled softly.

  A business arrangement.

  Not a marriage.

  As Claire pondered that advertisement, an idea was born.

  Chapter 4

  Some of Caleb’s earliest, fondest memories had involved the biting-cold winters of New England.

  More specifically, the snow.

  He’d adored the crisp air, so sharp it had the power to suck a person’s air from their lungs and infuse it with a deeper, cleaner breath. He’d welcomed the quiet of it. The way it had swirled before his face, a whorl of white, and had left the landscape transformed.

  His love of those thrilling Connecticut storms had been so deep and so great that when he’d been impressed by the British, during the hardest, longest days of his imprisonment below decks, it hadn’t been the memory of his then-betrothed that had gotten him through. Rather, in those cramped quarters, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey and burning up from the heat of a southern summer, he had called on the memories of the New England winter to get him through.

  Tightly bound as he’d been, with the blood flow to his hands cut off, he’d gone half mad with the need to rub the sting away when sweat had slid down his brow and burned his eyes.

  Memories of snow had kept him sane.

  He’d squeezed his eyes shut to keep out any more of the sweat and, in his mind, had gone off to the land he’d loved—and left.

  As such, when he’d finally gotten free and then found his way to—of all places—England, he’d sworn the only thing he would miss were those cleansing, peaceful winter storms.

  Until now.

  Until, on his journey to North Yorkshire, he’d collided with a damned blizzard.

  Jumping down from his carriage, Caleb took his bags from, Timlin, his driver. He shouted up a word of thanks, and then hefting his army sack onto his shoulder, Caleb started for the Rotted Rooster. As he trudged onward through the elements, he kept his head low to keep snow from striking his face and blinding him.

  He gave his head a frustrated shake.

  The whole of goddamned England was a contrary, fickle kingdom determined to make an American miserable whenever and wherever it could.

  Be it land or sea, or in Caleb’s native Americas, or in the king’s homeland, he was destined to be stymied by this kingdom.

  The temperate, always wet, bloody place had chosen this damned time to give the countryside snow.

  It was probably fate’s damned way of telling him to turn his ass around and avoid the ridiculous arrangement Wade had gotten him around to accepting.

  After all, there couldn’t be a worse thing than for Caleb to one day leave this country with an English wife.

  Though, in fairness, he wouldn’t really be leaving with her.

  Not really.

  That wasn’t the plan.

  At all.

  At this damned rate, however, he wasn’t going to be leaving himself.

  Caleb rubbed his gloved hands together in a bid to get some warmth into the half-frozen digits.

  Wind battered at him, slamming into his face with a force that made it a physical effort for even Caleb to stride forward. He held his cap down to keep it in place. While he made the walk to his temporary lodgings, he gritted his teeth.

  “‘It doesn’t snow in England,’ they said. ‘You’l
l find yourself only rain, even in the winter,’ they said,” he muttered, his breath stirring a cloud of white. And to think he’d actually been missing a good old-fashioned American winter storm.

  If it weren’t for bad luck, he’d not have any damned luck at all.

  Caleb reached the front of the inn, and adjusting the bag on his arm, he let himself in.

  The noise of the inn spilled out into the quiet courtyard, a din of laughter made more jubilant from drink and the heavy ring of revelry and discourse. In short, a welcome change from the staid, stiff, and miserably proper company he was forced to keep while he was in London.

  Except, he wasn’t going to have to suffer through that shite. Not anymore. That was, after all, the whole reason for this journey… and impending marriage.

  Caleb shoved the door shut hard behind him.

  A graying man came forward to meet him.

  “I need a room,” Caleb cut him off before the man could speak. “A table and some food.”

  The man stopped short, as people of all stations in London invariably did at Caleb’s bluntness. As quick to take offense at everything as they were to frown instead of smile, they were a miserable lot.

  Given all that, he found himself in like company.

  “O’ course, sir.”

  “Not a sir,” he said bluntly.

  A short while later, after he’d accepted a key from the older innkeeper and set himself up in the temporary rooms, Caleb collected his art bag and returned to the taproom. He wound his way through the place, which was brimming with bodies, and found the last open table in the crowded establishment.

  Caleb availed himself of one of the open chairs. Then, doffing his hat, Caleb set it down on the table and dropped his bag down next to it.

  Wade was going to kill him.

  He’d insisted Caleb set out two weeks before he had.

  But there’d been the latest piece he’d been creating, and well, time invariably got away from him, as it always did when he was painting.

  He grimaced. Not that he was creating anything good.

  He’d not done that in years and rather feared he never would.