Chapter 2

The man whose bulk threatened to collapse the chair groaning beneath him must be a bloody giant. Clara's eyes had almost jumped right out of her bone box when she'd entered the room. But years of tempering her reactions had kept them right where they must remain—behind her lids. She needed to make a good impression. She needed this position. Alfie needed it. She could not very well walk in and stare her fill at a man who would either be a woman's naughtiest dream or worst nightmare. Depended on the lady.

Clara was no lady, no matter eight years of training to make her one. Make her appear one. That she must never forget. Her husband's family had never let her forget—she was not a lady by birth or blood, could only hope to fool others with pretty speech and fancy clothes.

And as she sank into a chair at the front of the room before the large windows, she knew she played the part well. She wore a plain but fine gown, and she'd wrangled her hair into a prim coronet around her head. Not a fashionable coiffure, but one that conjured images of Madonnas, angels, innocent shepherdesses. She offered, to go with her appearance, a gentle smile that entirely ignored the pounding in her heart. Two men before her.

At least one possessed a title, that she knew of, and held her destiny in his hands. The hulking fellow at the side of the room? A man clearly too big for the chair, and the chair, groaning beneath his weight, clearly not hardy enough to survive him. Or the slim man sitting behind the table? Neither of them quite like any of the swells she'd seen before, neither like the one she'd been married to. The sitting one fit her expectations more, though. Sleek, polished, handsome in a cool, aloof sort of way. Entirely untouchable behind the glimmering glass of his spectacles.

Behind him sat a woman with curly but tamed black hair, the only soul in the room keeping Clara's limbs from bouncing off her body. The curly-haired woman touched the untouchable man, first tapping him on the shoulder and then, when he did not look up from his notes, using the feathered end of her quill to tickle his ear.

He swatted it away and, finally, looked up at Clara. "And you are?"

"Mrs. Clara Bronwen." Said in her best Mayfair voice. "I'm come to interview for the position of cabinetmaker at Briarcliff manor. You are Lord Atlas?"

The man behind the desk said, "I am Lord Andrew. Lord Atlas is my brother." He gestured to the giant. "He is the one in need of an assistant. I am merely helping facilitate the interviews." Both lords, then. They looked much alike with hair from sandy to chocolate brown waving back from their foreheads, striking blue eyes, and fine features. Lord Atlas was much larger, more muscled, and he possessed a dimple in his chin, just below his thin-lipped frown, that seemed out of place on so burly a man.

Lord Andrew did not introduce the woman behind him. Typical of a peer. Was the woman his wife? What else could she be? A sister?

Clara took the woman's presence as a sign, a reassurance—the interview would go well. She must leave London as soon as possible, and if what she'd heard about Briarcliff were true, it would be something of a haven for her and Alfie. Still, she'd better do her best to appear nonthreatening. Men like Lord Andrew did not like a woman to appear too strong, too knowing, too hardened.

Clara folded her hands in her lap and cast her gaze down toward them. Unfortunately, the modest posture did nothing to sell her skills. She would eventually have to speak up about those and shove humility to the side. On the side of the room, the Lord-Atlas-afflicted chair creaked. It took all Clara's self-control not to turn and see if the man had broken it yet.

"It is most unusual," Lord Andrew said, "to see a woman with your training, and?—"

"My father was a journeyman, and he spent some time learning from Sheraton." She'd interrupted him, but how could she not? He'd questioned her. She could no longer remain silent. "Do you know of him?"

"Mrs. Bronwen, I've met him." Lord Andrew raised a brow, clearly not amused. "My parents fostered connections with every talented artist and artisan in England, no matter how little well-known by others. But that is of no import. Nor is your father's training. We're interviewing you, madam, no one else." Lord Andrew stretched out a leg, his boot popping out from under her side of his table. "And you are not a journeyman."

"Because I'm not allowed to be. But the lack of a slip of paper does not mean I have no skill. My father taught me everything he learned. Though I prefer Hepplewhite's style to Sheraton's. More elegant in my opinion, which is what your project needs. Additionally, I can accomplish any task you require of me with refinement and skill." Clara held her chin high. She was proud of her abilities. But prouder still of her father. It had been almost a decade since he'd passed away, leaving her alone; a decade since she'd found herself in a predicament similar to the one she now found herself in. She'd figured out how to fend for herself then. She would do so now.

"You were not on our list of artisans to interview, Mrs. Bronwen." Lord Andrew brushed his hair behind his ear, raised a brow.

"I heard Lady Theodore speaking of it to Mr. Clapton. I am more capable than he. And I paint as well." She nodded to the wall behind them, the mural sprawling across it. "That is my work." She'd been thinking, as she'd painted it, of the day her husband had died. A gray day. She remembered little but for the birds perched on the roof of his family's country manor, how they'd stayed there all day then taken flight as the sun sank into the horizon and navy blue spilled across the sky. She remembered, too, how Alfie had cried. How she had wanted to but had not.

The woman with the dark curls stood and traced the flying birds with gentle fingers. "Beautiful." She looked to Lord Atlas, but his face remained as much a mask as his brother's. If the woman found anything in the man's visage, she possessed keener sight than Clara did.

Lord Andrew turned to his brother as well. "Something like that would be appropriate for the dower house, don't you think?"

"We don't need anything fancy." Lord Atlas grimaced and shifted in his seat. "Apologies, madame." His voice… holy Hepplewhite, what a miracle of a sound. How did… How could she recover from that? If she'd been pressed to guess how he would sound, she'd say gruff, like shagreen scraping across wood. Surely. Just look at the man. He should sound like tree bark. Or a donkey's bray. Or like the constant clip-clop of horses and carts on a muddy London street.

But his voice sounded like pure silk, smooth and warm, a melody without a song, a strain of pure beauty. She inhaled to collect herself. Voices, no matter how perfect, were of no matter at the moment.

She reconnected with that ever-present strand of fear coursing through her every limb and stood. "Please know I do not beg for myself but for my son. He must escape the city. For his health. Please do not dismiss me because I am a woman. I assure you I have as good or greater skill than any man."

"It is not because you are a woman." Lord Atlas stood, shoulders hunched as if he were a child receiving a lecture. Wrong, that, to see so strong a man curved like a slender branch beneath a gentle breeze.

Lord Andrew made a tsking sound. "Our mother would skin our hides if she even thought we were suggesting that. You see my secretary behind me, yes?"

Ah. The woman with dark curls was a secretary. Interesting. Promising.

"Yes." Clara tempered the hope from her voice.

"Is she or is she not a woman?" Lord Andrew asked.

The secretary did not seem pleased to have such a question asked about her. Her lips were pressed into a tight line, and she gripped her quill so tightly, Clara feared it might snap. An angry woman, but definitely a woman. "I take your meaning, my lord. But can I?—"

Lord Andrew stood and bowed. "We are making no decisions today. We will let you know when we have."

A dismissal. She hadn't even been able to describe her work, the projects she'd helped her father with before his death. She should have known two titled men would never let her speak. She should not have trusted them to do so. So she stood, offered her prettiest curtsy, and swept from the room like a queen, shutting the door softly behind her.

Then muffled a shriek when she saw Alfie standing just before her, wide-eyed. He was taller, ganglier than the other children his age, and at seven years old had seen more death than she would have liked. Losing a father… it should not happen so soon. He looked just like Everette, too—yellow hair with a stubborn cowlick at the very top and brown eyes. Not much of Clara in him but for, perhaps, his lips and nose. His brave heart, too. At least she hoped hers was brave. She worked daily to be so.

She knelt and put a hand on his shoulder. "What are you doing here, love?"

"I wanted to hear."

"You were eavesdropping?"

He nodded, his hair flopping over his eyes. He needed a haircut, and she swept it out of the way.

"You should not eavesdrop." And yet… she looked at the door behind her. It did not muffle well the sounds of conversation within the room. If their voices could be heard in the hallway… well then, the conversation was not private, was it?

She winced but turned on tiptoe until her bunched knees brushed the door and pressed her ear against it. Alfie joined her, leaning close to her so they were almost nose to nose.

Not every word made it through the wood, but one voice did so, hammering like a battering ram through the door.

"Clearly not her." Said in Lord Atlas's deep honey-silk tones.

On top of his voice, another, cutting and sharp. "She's the one, quite obviously."

Thank you, Lord Andrew.

A softer voice, then. The secretary's? Clara couldn't quite make it out.

"What'd she say?" Alfie whispered.

"Shh!" Clara pressed a finger to her lips.

Lord Andrew seemed to be making something of a speech in her defense, though she only caught a few of the words. "Her boy needs fresh air… at Briarcliff… Mother would hate… we turned them away."

"But she's too delicate to help me finish the dower house," Lord Atlas protested. That voice came through loud and clear and shiver-inducing.

Clara and Alfie snorted.

"Didn't look delicate to me," Lord Andrew countered.

She was not delicate, thank you very much. She'd had a child and looked it. But even before then, she'd never been the slender sort. Her hips had always been the kind heir-mad men coveted for breeding. And her bosom ripe for ogling. But who cared for curves? She had muscle enough to build a chair, to paint a wall, to fit molding to a drawing room ceiling. She'd used her curves once to save her hide and with decidedly mixed results. She'd use nothing but her talent now.

"Sheraton!" Lord Andrew's voice boomed from behind the door. "If she learned ornamentation in his style, we should not ignore that influence." The man proved to be, surprisingly, a gem. A truly superior intellect who recognized that the daughter of a student of the most-renowned furniture maker in England—nay, the world—should not be dismissed so lightly.

"I'm the one who must work with her." Lord Atlas again, and she suddenly wished she was not eavesdropping. No one wished to hear what others thought of them. "Restoration is dangerous work. We cannot have a child wandering about. No. Not her. The first fellow seemed perfect. Good experience. No children. Likable. We'll do well together. No need for further interviews."

"It's your decision to make, brother."

Clara bolted upright and snatched her son's hand.

"They're not done yet," he hissed, trailing along behind her on reticent legs.

"They will be soon, and we don't want to be caught. Lesson one in eavesdropping, darling—leave before you wish to."

He sighed but followed all the way up to the room they shared at the art school. She set him in a chair in the corner with a book and paced back and forth in the small, spartan space.

Caught. Yes, she must avoid that at all costs. Stopping before the small window, she brushed the curtain back. Every time she peered down into the street, she expected to see the figure of her father-in-law standing below, scowling up, ready to snatch from her the only thing she had left, the only thing that mattered—her son. She let the curtain drop and leaned her head against the glass, cool in the autumn air.

She would do anything for him, and he'd been so miserable before they'd left in the dead of night, made their way to London, found help—miraculously—at the new art school where she'd been hired to teach cabinetmaking. Everything about him pounded into dust, everything he'd loved dismissed as unworthy. His own mother pushed so entirely to the periphery of his life, he'd come to her crying one evening, after the house had fallen beneath the hush of sleep, terrified they'd send her away one day.

She'd been terrified, too, of the exact same thing. She'd seen it in Baron Tefler's eyes, the need to exorcise her from their family circle. He'd never approved of his youngest son's marriage to a cabinetmaker's daughter. And with that youngest son dead… there'd been no need to keep her around.

When Alfie had begged to leave, she'd been unable to tell him no, had wanted it too. Leaving was the only way to remain together. But every step they took, fear hounded her. Surely Lord Tefler searched for them. Alfie had left a note for the man, saying he was well and not to try to find them. A young boy's hope, scratched so simply, flutily, into fragile paper. Clara did not doubt. Baron Tefler searched for Alfie, no matter the wishes expressed in her son's farewell epistle. And soon he would find them, no matter how large London. But perhaps in a small village in the middle of nowhere, they might hide a while yet.

Could she make Lord Atlas see all that? Make him understand this was not merely a position for her. It was a necessity, a means of keeping her child. Because after running, surely Lord Tefler would not allow her to keep Alfie. He'd not hesitate to make the final excision and separate them forever.

She strode across the room, taking only a few moments to check her image in the mirror. "Stay put, Alfie."

"Where are you going?" He blinked over the top edge of his book.

"To have a chat." She kissed Alfie's forehead and swept out of the room. And went in search of the honey-tongued giant.