Chapter Twenty-Two
Clara was hummingas she headed to her bedroom. She often hummed when sorting through calculations in her head. She wasn’t trying to find fault in Mr. Russell’s designs. It simply amused her to run through the numbers while she walked. It took the tedium away from travelling through this great monolith of a home.
She smiled when she opened the door to see Liam standing naked as he looked at papers on the desk she had set there. She’d never known a man who was so casual about nudity. If it was a Scottish custom, she heartily endorsed it. As a student of anatomy, she appreciated the way God had combined muscle and bone for optimal function. As a woman, she gloried in his masculine beauty. Thick muscles, long limbs, powerful hands. One night, she’d pleased herself by naming the muscles that wrapped his torso. She’d barely made it to his serratus anterior before he was awake and reaching for her again.
She vowed to make a game of naming his leg muscles soon, but right now she was more interested in what he was reading so intently.
“What do you have there?”
“Mr. Russell’s plans.”
She leaped forward. “You got them from him? How did you manage that? He’s normally so protective—”
“I gave him no choice. Since I am paying for the changes, I expect to be included in every decision.”
She caught his cold tone and wondered what had set off his mood. She’d been hoping they could visit the stream tonight, but she quickly revised her expectations. She also suppressed her annoyance that he’d claimed to be paying for the changes. It was her dowry that would finance this, and he had given her leave to handle things how she wanted. But she knew better than to challenge a man when he was being prickly, so she sought a shared interest.
“I’m so happy you want to be involved,” she said. “What do you think?”
He was silent for a long moment, but she could hear the hard push of his breath in and out. For some reason, staring at it was making him angry.
“Oh dear,” she said as she sidled closer. “Has he done something awful?”
“How should I know?” Liam shot back. He rounded on her, his face twisted in frustration. “I’m an educated man, Clara. I studied hard and can learn quickly—”
“I never said you didn’t!”
“But this,” he said, flicking the sketch with a single calloused finger. “This is beyond me.”
“Oh, well, I shouldn’t worry about that. No one understands Julian. Not even Julian, sometimes.”
“Julian?” The word came out with a hard growl.
“Yes. Mr. Russell. We use given names in private.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “He was my first dance at my come-out ball, after my father, of course. We’ve been friends ever since.”
“And you use given names with each other.”
Why was he focused on such a minor thing? As a rule, he was never one to stand on formality. It was one of the things she most liked about him. “Well, yes. My father hoped for a match between us, but Mama ended that because he’s a younger son. Not even a title for him for all that he’s a grandson of a duke. I didn’t care, of course, but that holds sway with Mama.”
If he was angry before, his face darkened now with fury. “Would you have married him? If your mother had given permission?”
She dropped her hands on her hips, confused and angry now by his attitude. “I don’t know. What does it matter? He’ll not have me now that I’m bound to you.”
He stepped up to her so fast that she unbalanced backwards. She didn’t fall, though, because he gripped her arm such that there was nowhere for her to go. “You’ll not be having your leave with him under my roof. In Scotland, you’re my wife!”
“I’ll not be having my leave with him anytime! If he tempted me, then I would have become a demi-rep years ago.” She jerked her arm out his grip. “What has gotten into you?”
He didn’t answer, but there might have been a softening in his face. It was hard to tell especially as he turned back to the sketches and stabbed his fingers down at where she’d overdrawn Julian’s sketch. “Why was this wrong?”
“What?”
“Why did you change this?” He bit out every word.
She peered down at it. “Oh, well, Julian has lately enjoyed creating fountains of a sort. A well that can be pumped into a pleasing display. He’s made some money fashioning them, and so he puts them everywhere.” She shrugged. “I thought it unnecessary.”
“Because it isn’t worth making my castle beautiful?”
“What? Of course not. But why would you set a servant to pump water just so it can spray about? It only works if there’s a cistern somewhere and pipes to carry the water.” There was a great deal more she could say about pumps and piping, but she barely understood it. What she knew came from listening to Julian through the years. But Clara could not believe her normally unflappable Scotsman was upset about a fountain. “What has happened?”
