Free Highland Bachelor 02 - This Laird of Mine by Gerri Russell Page B

for the past five years.”
    “A teacher?” He hadn’t expected that, although he wasn’t certain what he expected. When they’d first met, she’d said her father was a scholar, and that had led him to believe she was some spoiled aristocrat’s daughter. Yet if that were true, why would she ruin herself on the altar of matrimony, especially to someone like him? “What do you teach?”
    “Art mostly, but I have also taught my girls to read, to write, and to do their numbers.”
    He gave her a puzzled look. “You were taught those things?”
    She nodded. “My father was insistent that I learn everything I could. Then when my parents died, I was fortunate to be taken in by a family who believed in educating their daughters as well as their sons and my education continued.”
    “Who do you teach?”
    Claire fingered a locket on a chain around her neck. “I teach young women who have the desire to paint and have a need to support themselves.”
    Not for the first time, Jules found himself at a loss to understand her. “Why would women, especially young women, need to support themselves? Isn’t that what marriage is for?”
    “Marriage is not always the answer, especially when certain husbands don’t believe their bond is true,” she said dryly. “It is men like you who have every advantage, while women have very few, if any at all.”
    “Like you.”
    “Like me,” she said softly.
    “You think you have me all figured out, don’t you?” he replied, watching her closely.
    “No,” she said with a shake of her head. “I do not know much about you. And I fear there are very few people in this life with whom you will bare your soul, or even accept as your friend.”
    “If that is true, then where does that leave you?”
    “That is your ninth question, and I still have yet to ask even one.” She pushed back from the table. “In answer to your last question, I do not see myself ever reaching your inner circle, despite our relationship.”
    The anguish in her voice troubled him before he tensed. “We have no relationship,” he countered, suddenly disgusted with himself. He would not fall for her helplessness again. Damnation, the woman was a master at getting under his skin.
    Claire stood, staring at him with hurt in her eyes. “You have made it perfectly obvious I am unwanted, but as I have nowhere else to go, consider yourself burdened with me. That is your plight, husband, until you prove me wrong.” She turned and headed back toward the manor.
    He stared at his adversary with a crazy mixture of anger and regret as she disappeared from view. He should go after her. He should do the right thing and apologize. Except the “right” thing was what he had always done . . . and that had landed him in this situation in the first place. He had done the right thing by returning home from Jane’s father’s employ when his father had demanded. He had come home to meet his new mother full of hope and eager to do the right thing. But that hope had turned to despair when at the age of twenty-one he’d been charged with her murder. Nay, the right thing was not always the best thing to do.
    Jules looked around the terrace in the sudden silence and realized the only thing he could do in these circumstances was the dishes. The remains of the supper they’d enjoyed still sat upon the table, and with no servants except Fin—who was no doubt abed by now—the only option was to take care of the mess himself.
    As he gathered the plates, he tried not to think about Claire. God knew there were plenty of other things for him to worry about, but she wouldn’t leave his mind.
    He squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the image of her entrance into the salon earlier this evening. He should be thinking of Jane, the only woman he had ever loved. But Claire’s image was fixed firmly in his mind.
    He tried to think of something else, someone else, but nothing came to him. The problem was, had always been, that there was very