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She needed to get up. There was simply too much to do tonight to sit there feeling sorry for herself. Laundry, supper, cleaning up this mess, and the one below in the dining room—it all had to be finished before she could crawl into bed. Before tomorrow.
Before tomorrow, when she would ask Noah if his offer still stood.
With a gasp, she lifted her head. Was she really considering his proposal? When she heard Leo sniff, she bit her bottom lip, and cold, hard reality gripped her. She could no longer keep going the way she had been. They’d either have a house to turn over to the bank or, if Tim and Leo weren’t watched more carefully, no house at all. Either way, they would lose it. No doubt after that, her brothers would be taken from her. She couldn’t afford a solicitor to fight for her family, either.
Moving them aside, Clare rose wearily, cringing at her soiled skirt. Perhaps mindless work would help her form the words she needed to say to Noah Livingstone in the morning.
She should start with an apology.
* * *
Noah was always the first one in the Recording Office, an admirable work ethic. Through the window, Clare could see him poring over some paperwork in his small, glassed-in office.
Normally, she would’ve plastered on a bright smile, for a good attitude was as important as good training. But as she pushed open the door, her heavy heart wasn’t allowing any of that.
Noah looked up from his desk as she walked in. Eyes wary, expression guarded, he said nothing as he watched her. Her heart sank further. Oh, what damage had she inflicted in turning him down? Had it really been that personal?
This morning, she’d been churning possible words around in her head. But seeing Noah now, all thought escaped her. Could she really expect him to gather the pieces of his pride and propose to her again? Did she really want him to?
Tears stung her eyes. Yes, she did. She had two little ruffian brothers, and they were a family, and families shouldn’t be separated. But no man would want to take on the responsibility of parenting those boys, and surely her employer realized that. If she asked Noah to propose again, would he? Was that what she needed?
Yes, unfortunately. He’d only proposed to repair her financial situation and the look of consternation on his face immediately after proved he regretted his impromptu suggestion.
But did she really want to get married? Who would take her career seriously then? Married ladies didn’t work, didn’t aspire to be successful businesswomen. They allowed their husbands to control their lives. She’d seen it with all of her college friends who’d abruptly cut short their education in order to wed.
She remembered seeing the disappointment in their eyes when she asked if they were still pursuing the dreams they’d shared while at college.
No, she couldn’t bear for that to be her.
Noah Livingstone would surely sense the resentment she would no doubt harbor. It was only his nobility that had done the talking yesterday.
Forget it. She would not ruin his life to ease her own financial burden. Miss Worth had said more than once that strength came from discipline.
Clare stiffened, all the while fighting both tears and her indecision. She’d finished her crying. Miss Worth had a valuable saying about women’s tears. They were a weak woman’s weapon. A strong woman used her head.
No, Clare would not cry anymore.
Having listened to Clare quote her mentor on more than one occasion since returning from college, her father had disagreed with most of the woman’s opinions. They were too general, he’d scoffed, though he offered no other explanation, nor practical advice.
At the memory, resentment rose unexpectedly within Clare. She hesitated as she quietly closed the office’s main door. Resentment? At her father? She shouldn’t be feeling that at all. That emotion wasn’t the most important thing right now. She would deal with it later. First, she needed to be sensible, not flopping back and forth like the long ears on Leo’s favorite stuffed toy.
Gathering her courage, she pushed through the small swinging gate at the end of the counter and came to a stop in the threshold leading to Noah’s private office.
She could hear the clock on the wall behind her ticking, as if marking time, impatiently waiting for her to follow through with the important decision she’d made last night.
Testing her, like a professor waiting for the correct answer to a timed question that would determine whether or not she passed life or failed it.
Except that Clare was no longer confident that her next move was the right one.
Or even if Noah was still willing to help her.
There was only one way to find out. She drew in a deep breath and began to speak.
Chapter Three (#u6d56d307-e5da-57ae-9bc6-91d7842a5f10)
“Good morning.” Clare groaned inwardly. Her words sounded so stilted.
“Good morning.” His attention returned to his work. Clare could practically feel the temperature drop in the room.
She threw back her shoulders. This was far too serious a situation for her to be intimidated by him. Noah had proposed to her. And as much as she hated what it really meant to her freedom, she knew she needed to accept it. If the offer still stood, that is.
“Yesterday, you proposed to me.”
“Yes, I did.” He then paused without looking up. “If I remember correctly, you turned me down.”
Oh, how she wished he would just look at her. She crushed the urge to snatch away the paper he was pretending to read. “About that. I think we need to—”
The door behind her flew open until it banged against the wall. In lumbered Walter Burrows. Having lived in Proud Bend all her life, Clare knew both his name and his reputation.
The tough, mean rancher seemed to have a perpetual chip on his shoulder. Clare knew he had a wife, but in all her years of living here, she had yet to meet the poor woman. But Clare had seen Burrows often enough. He’d come into the Recording Office several months back, and in the course of his business, he’d claimed he’d caught a feral pony a number of years ago. After having no success at breaking it—Clare was hardly surprised as the man was rough and cruel—Burrows had wanted to put it down. He’d heard that Noah had a “foolish notion of rescuing stupid animals,” as he’d put it. Maybe Noah could buy it from him.
That day, Clare had watched Noah take the pony off his hands for the cost of a sack of barley. It was the first time Clare had heard of Noah’s dream of saving horses.
Today, he rose and squeezed past Clare as if she carried a plague. He strode to the counter. “Mr. Burrows, what can I do for you?”
“I bought me another stretch of land. I need to register it. I watched Miz Walsh come in just now and figured you were already open. You know how late women can be when it comes to work.”
Biting back a snappy retort, Clare glanced at the large clock on the wall. There was still a good thirty minutes before opening and Mr. Pooley wasn’t even in yet. She was not late, thank you very much.
After a fast glance at Noah, Clare quickly removed her jacket and hung it up. She heard him clear his throat before pulling out the appropriate ledger and approaching the counter. He usually asked her to assist the customers. Was he saving her from having to deal with the rude man?
“How are you going to work the land, Mr. Burrows?” Noah asked conversationally. “Have you hired some extra help?”
“Not yet.” The man’s voice was gravelly, a perpetual grumble. “But there are always plenty of young ’uns needin’ a roof over their heads. I hear an orphan train is coming west in a few weeks’ time. In fact, I read in the newspaper that there Children’s Aid Society will be picking up a few brats along the way. I can get me a few tough little guys and train ’em up properly.”
Clare couldn’t stop the gasp. Both men glanced her way, and she tried her best to hide the sudden fear leaping in her chest. She doubted she was successful, for all she ended up doing was slapping her hand over her mouth and looking like a fool.
Noah frowned as she forced herself to walk to her desk, where she fell into her chair with very little grace. Her vision swam in sudden tears.
When people got wind of her situation, someone would inform the authorities. No one would expect Clare to be able to raise her hooligan brothers by herself. The Children’s Aid Society would then make a point to stop by.
Clare swallowed. She needed to speak with a lawyer. Even if Noah repeated his proposal, both of them would need to adopt her brothers formally. Yes, some states were less stringent in their enforcement, but both Clare and Noah worked at the Recording Office. How would it look if they were to ignore the laws?
One step at a time, she reminded herself. If Noah’s offer no longer stood, would she be forced to surrender the boys? Not necessarily to Mr. Burrows, of course, but perhaps to someone equally disagreeable, and maybe farther away?
She shut her eyes. Lord, please guide me.
When she opened them again, Mr. Burrows was shutting the door behind him, and Noah was darting a cautious glance her way as he returned to his desk.
He has proposed to you. Do you really want to risk losing Tim and Leo?
If he won’t propose again, you must!
She swallowed around the gravel in her throat.
Clare shut her eyes again. In the distance, muted by the exterior walls, came the sound of the school bell reminding her that she must consider Tim and Leo first. Screwing up her courage, she rose and walked into his office.
Noah looked up from his paperwork, his blue-eyed gaze still wary, a slight frown marring his ruggedly handsome features. Before this nightmare had begun, when she’d just started to work here, she’d found his attention to her pleasing, warming her cheeks and making her feel as gooey as pudding inside. She’d loved it, even though he’d never been anything but professional with her.
Now her heart constricted unexpectedly. His proposal had been just him offering a solution to a bad situation. There was no affection involved. Nothing but his good character showing and even then he’d regretted blurting out his offer. She was sure of that much.
What had she expected? A confession of love? She would have still said no, because marriage was what weaker women searched out. She was made of sterner stuff.
Until she realized she could lose her brothers. Now, knowing her options, her hopes plummeted.
Noah’s brows lifted in expectation, as if waiting for her to explain why she’d barged in here as she had. Why she now lingered beside his desk. Clare fought to hold on to the courage that could waver at a moment’s notice.
“You proposed to me yesterday,” she practically barked.
Leaning back, Noah folded his arms. “We’ve already discussed this. You turned me down.”
“I...I was premature.” She swallowed the hard lump in her throat. “Is the offer still available?”
* * *
Yesterday, Noah had let his mouth decide his fate. The last time he had done that, he’d walked out of his home without so much as a backward glance. There had been no second chances then, even if he’d wanted one, which he didn’t, he told himself fiercely. There had been no way to take back what he’d said to his father. There had been no chance to rescind the promise to his ex-fiancée of keeping an ugly secret that still tormented him today.
But now? Here was an opportunity to correct the mistake caused by his impulsive mouth. With one simple no, he could show exactly how Clare’s refusal had bit into his pride.
When Noah’s father had told him that he was to marry Elizabeth Townsend because her father’s business, not to mention his own, would benefit from merging, there had been an expectation that Noah would roll over like a submissive mongrel and do exactly as his father had deemed appropriate.
No. He had his own dreams to pursue, and marriage was far too sacred an institution to be based on financial gain, especially his greedy father’s.
Besides, he’d realized in retrospect, he could never shake the feeling that he couldn’t trust either Elizabeth or her cagey father. No, marrying Elizabeth had never felt right.
But now, he’d offered it to Clare and only to solve a financial problem in her life. To solve something her own selfish father had created. The proposal was an insane idea, one that should never have been offered. His gaze drifted down her frame.
Then he noticed the stain on her skirt. Or should he say where a stain might have been? It looked like she’d scrubbed the material right at its middle, so much so the dye at that one spot had faded. Clare was always a sensible dresser, a woman who looked professional and modern. She’d always been neat although he’d noticed she had only one suitable skirt.
It was no longer suitable.
His train of thought turned to her brothers. Their clothes would have been washed last night, also, and most likely repaired. Like Clare with her work skirt, the boys’ clothes they’d sullied were the only ones they owned that were suitable for school. Yes, children arrived wearing whatever they had, but only farm boys wore overalls. It was a point of pride to wear a nice jacket and knickerbockers. Clare would do her best to ensure her brothers weren’t dressed like ragamuffins.
Then he remembered her gasp a few minutes ago when Mr. Burrows had announced he would take a couple of boys from the Orphan Train.
That institution had been created to foster out children to good homes, to be loved and cared for. While it worked as such sometimes, there were protests out East by people who felt it was nothing but farming out indentured servants, or worse, a different kind of slavery. Noah couldn’t say one way or the other. He did agree that it wasn’t an ideal solution, but with thousands of orphaned and abandoned children in cities, what else could be done?
He groaned softly and berated himself for his stupidity. Of course. Clare’s gasp should have told him immediately what she was thinking.
His breath stalled in his throat. Had his own defensiveness overshadowed Clare’s fear? Mr. Burrows’s crass remarks just now had proven that the Orphan Train was the worst fate for her and her brothers.
Lord, I don’t know what to do. It’s wrong to marry for financial gain. It’s wrong to take sacred vows simply to correct other people’s selfish errors.
There had to be some affection, surely?
“Is the offer still available?” Clare asked again, this time softly, a melodic question that rolled through him like a tune on a delicate flute.
He forced his attention back to the conversation at hand. Clare looked tired this morning and he felt his brows press together at the sight of the violet shadows under her eyes. “Did you tell your brothers about your parents?”
Her expression clouded. She offered him a single, slow sigh and he knew her answer before she spoke it. “I couldn’t. Not yet.” She wet her lips. “I’ll think about what to say but I need answers to some of my questions, first. Hopefully, they will come today at lunchtime.”
“What questions? Besides you seeing the bank manager, what else do you need to do?”
“Well, I need to find a carpenter—”
“A carpenter?”
She hesitated before clearing her throat. “There was a small incident last night.”
“What happened?”
“Just after you left, the boys tipped over their lamp and the rug caught fire.”
His heart stumbled and he gasped. “Is everyone all right?”
“Yes,” she added hastily. “We’re fine.”
“Why did you light the lamp, anyway? It wasn’t dark out when I left.”
“I didn’t. One of the boys did. I don’t know which one, and frankly, I think both were involved. They said they were cold and they aren’t allowed to put on a fire. They don’t always think first.”
“You need to start disciplining them.”
Her chin wrinkled and for a few long moments, she didn’t speak. “I can’t,” she whispered. “They miss our parents. They’re grieving because they think Mother and Father will be gone for what seems to them to be forever. I don’t have the heart to start punishing them, and then, a short time later, tell them our parents are never coming back! It’s cruel and unfair. So, please don’t ask me to punish them. I can’t! I miss our parents, too. I know how they feel.”
Another pause followed. “And frankly, well, I feel betrayed, too,” she added.
She dragged forward the chair that sat against the glass wall and collapsed into it. Her hand covered her nose and mouth, but Noah could see tears welling up in her soft brown eyes before she laid her arm across his desk and dropped her forehead onto it.
Disconcerted, he glanced around. Was there something he was supposed to do? “Your parents—”
Her head snapped up, her eyes, although watery, flashed pure anger. “Don’t tell me they’ll be coming home, because we both know that is very unlikely!” The anger dissolved immediately. “This is insane. I’m not mad at you. I’m furious at them for leaving us in the lurch.”
Noah guessed he must have looked a little confused, because she threw up her hands. “I don’t care if it doesn’t make any sense! That’s the way I feel, if you really want to know.”
If truth be told, Noah didn’t want to know. Still, something gripped him deep inside at the sight of Clare’s anguish. Life was far more unfair to her than it had been to him. He’d walked out of his home because his parents had tried to force him to do something he didn’t want to do.
It was a choice. If he’d chosen the opposite, he’d have lived an opulent life, married and had children, and not wanted for anything.
