Page 62 of This Laird of Mine

Two weeks later, Jules found himself sitting alone in the drawing room. He gazed into the flames in the hearth, trying to concentrate on an estate ledger, but it was Claire he saw in his mind and not the columns of profit and cost.

Even so, the estate was beginning to recover. His tenant farmers had returned and were preparing the soil for a crop of winter wheat. The estate was starting to repair itself.

If only his heart would do the same.

Claire finished her painting of Jules a week later, and still he continued to haunt her.

She spent her days with the girls, teaching them new techniques in painting. Recovered from their ordeal, Anna and Eloise had finally returned to their usual behaviors. The younger girls had even started to laugh again, as they did now, filling the studio with their high-spirited voices while they painted a still life Claire had set out for them of a candlestick, a book, and two apples.

Penelope had not recovered as quickly. Her once-cheerful face now held an ever-present sadness, and her lovely blue eyes seemed haunted. Penelope sat in a chair before her easel, her brush in her uninjured hand, arrested above the canvas. She could learn to paint left-handed if she tried.

But instead of trying, the girl had been withdrawn and without spirit since the events at Kildare Manor. Claire could feel tears of sympathy burn in her eyes, but she blinked them angrily away. They could not change what had happened, only how they responded to it. If only she could get Penelope to respond.

She had tried to be consoling. She had tried to inspire her. She had been firm, and she had simply held Penelope in her arms and let her cry. But nothing seemed to change that look of desolation in her eyes, nothing except David. Only when he was near did she brighten.

Claire walked slowly across the studio and lifted her cloak from a hook on the wall. She nodded to the guard David had hired. “I will return shortly.” To the girls she said, “Keep painting. I have a short errand I must attend to.”

The younger girls nodded. Penelope simply stared at the blank canvas with a dull and hopeless look in her eyes.

The August air was crisp, yet the sun shone overhead as Claire hurried down her street, past the coaching inn, and into the heart of Edinburgh. She was on her way to David. Perhaps he had an idea of how to return the vivaciousness to Penelope’s spirit.

As she headed toward the rooms David had let a few blocks away, she passed by the storefronts. The sound of the shopkeepers and tradesmen hawking their wares filled the late-morning air with a cacophony of noise mixed with the jangling harnesses of the carriages and the steady beat of horse hooves on the cobbled streets.

Darting through the crowd, Claire slipped closer to the buildings to avoid a cart filled with cabbages when she passed by a jeweler’s shop. At first she walked right past, but something familiar caught her eye. She stopped, retracing her steps until she stood before the window, staring at a gold and ruby ring that could only have come from one source.

Jules’s mother’s ring.

Had he sold it?

Surprised and a little unsure, she went inside the shop.

“May I help you?” an older man asked, coming around a small desk in the corner of the shop.

Claire pointed toward the window display. “The gold and ruby ring in the window, did you purchase it recently?”

The old man nodded as he reached for the ring, holding it between two fingers. “That I did. A fine purchase, if I do say so myself. They don’t cut the rubies like that anymore.” He pulled out a pair of fragile glasses from his pocket and, setting them on his nose, scrutinized the ring through the lenses. “Everyone wants sparkle. But the rich color is far more valuable. Are you looking to purchase this ring for yourself?”

Claire laughed. “I might be, if I could know a bit of its history. Can I ask from whom you purchased such a fine piece of art?”

The old man looked at her over the rim of his lenses. “Came from a young laird who appeared a little down on his luck.”

“I see,” she said, trying to appear uninterested in the piece even as a shiver rippled across her flesh. “How much are you asking for the ring?”

“Sixty shillings Scot.”

Claire tried not to react to the outrageous sum. She frowned and turned away from the ring. To show how much she wanted that particular ring would only increase the cost. She had to make him think otherwise. “What else do you have to show me? I want something with rubies.”

The shopkeeper’s smile slipped as he looked about his cluttered shop. “Hmmm.”

“Well, if you have nothing else,” she said in a calm and even voice as she turned toward the door.

“Wait,” he called. “The ring is all I have with rubies. If you would just take another look. It is an exquisite ring.”

Claire sighed. “I had my heart set on a pair of earrings to wear to the Davisons’ ball this Saturday . . .” She strung the words out, hoping the shopkeeper would bargain with her. She had nothing to lose.

“Forty shillings Scot.”

“Thirty.”