Page 57 of The Trouble with Tweed

Claire was too distracted by her own fury to correct her sister’s language. It had been no small sum, and to think that the blackguard let them pay the debt twice, when they were in dire straits and needed the money…

“Well,” Claire finally said, jutting her chin. “We are no longer without protection. I think our brother might need to go have a word with Mr. Jensen.”

Beatrice chewed her bottom lip, her eyes narrowed. “Do you think he’d let us come along and watch?”

CHAPTER 18- CLAIRE

True to Michael’s word, he arranged a promenade through the park with Lord Sheldon the following afternoon. It was as perfectly boring as Claire could have hoped. The man’s face was as bland as his tan-colored suit, his smile as dim as the muted sunshine struggling through the clouds. His countenance reminded her of something, but she couldn’t quite place what it was.

“Are you quite sure this weather is appropriate for a walk around the park?” Lord Sheldon said, pointing his furrowed brow toward the scattered clouds overhead. “It does look like it might rain.”

A toad, Claire thought, suddenly. That’s what the man reminded her of. With the corners of his rather wide mouth perpetually downturned, he looked like a very dissatisfied amphibian.

“I am willing to take a quarter hour’s worth of chance on the subject,” Claire said kindly, “in order to get to know you better, Lord Sheldon.”

She had worn one of her very favorite day dresses for the occasion, a lavender ensemble that she hoped wouldn’t be wasted.

Lord Sheldon’s smile looked forced, his eyes barely crinkling with the effort. “It’s only that I don’t care for the rain, you see.”

He smoothed his lapels nervously. Claire thought it ironic that his coat was indeed a finely worked tweed.

“We are in view of the front door of my brother’s townhouse; I don’t see that there’s any grave concern.” She said the words lightly, but if anything, his frown only deepened.

“It is a grave concern. That’s the perfect word for it. My third cousin took ill after he had been rained upon, and he never was the same after that.”

Claire blinked, feigning her concern, even while measuring the distance from where they stood to her front door. Not because she was concerned about rain, but because ten minutes into this conversation with Lord Sheldon was already ten minutes too much, in her opinion.

“Did he recover?” she asked politely.

He shook his head forlornly. “Indeed not. He is plagued with the sniffles whenever the weather turns.”

Despite her best efforts, Claire’s eyebrows leapt upon her forehead. “That’s a very common affliction, is it not?”

He frowned again. “Perhaps because it’s exceedingly common for people to underestimate the rain.”

“Ah, well, look.” She pointed at the clouds. “There’s a break. Surely the sun is going to shine through at any moment.”

Lord Sheldon shook his head as if sunshine would be even worse than the rain, but Claire didn’t give him the opportunity to expound on his moroseness regarding the weather. “I do find such solace in nature, for here one can listen to the birdsong and smell the sweetness of the air and the flowers. Do you enjoy flowers, Lord Sheldon?”

Claire’s smile was holding on by a thread. She felt a tick developing in the corner of her left eye. However, she’d chosen the subject of flowers on purpose, for who could have anything negative to say about those?

Apparently, she’d underestimated the pervasiveness of Lord Sheldon’s gloom.

“They make my nose itch something frightful. I’m allergic to all of them; even being amongst them makes me afraid I will break out into hives.”

“Is that so?”

Claire feared her smile was more of a baring of teeth now. She’d never met someone who could turn a mildly sunny day into some sort of fight for survival. If Lord Sheldon was determined to look at the entire world through a rainy windowpane—even when the weather was nice—the best she could do was not join him.

“Please,” he said, “allow me to escort you back to the safety of your brother’s house, for I fear I just saw a speckle of rain upon the path.”

Claire looked to where he gestured, but saw nothing more than the same dry path they’d been walking. However, as she was keen to conclude their meeting, she nodded. He offered his elbow gingerly, and she took it with a mere press of her hand, checking that Mara was close behind them to observe every possible rule of propriety. Lord Sheldon was the last person she’d want to be trapped into marriage with because of a scandal.

They ascended the steps and Claire was dismayed to find she was mistaken—Lord Sheldon hadn’t been offering a happy conclusion to their interlude. Instead, he followed her back inside and readily accepted her begrudging offer of tea. For some reason, she led him into a different sitting room than the back parlor she’d been favoring as of late.

She made polite conversation until the tea tray arrived, then steeled herself as she poured. Claire had thought their meeting at an end; it was a keen disappointment to realize she had to hoist this banal conversation upon her shoulders and trek another mile.

“Are you enjoying the Season, Lord Sheldon?” she asked politely.