Page 10 of The Love Knot

Claire rolled her eyes as she flipped her fabric over and started picking at the knots. “Yet somehow she managed to get to the dairy without assistance,” she muttered under her breath. “Daft man.”

“Did you say something?” Pieter’s gaze warmed her cheek again.

Claire wagged her head from side to side. “Continue on with your woeful tale of carryin’ fine ladies in your arms. ’Tis surely warmin’ me heart towards ye.”

And that was why she needed to keep her mouth shut. He’d be a fool not to hear the jealousy behind the sarcasm. Then again, he’d been fool enough to fall for the Oh, I can’t possibly dirty my hem ploy.

“Well, anyway . . . it became apparent that she harbored some . . . interest in me.”

Ye think so? Claire ground her teeth together and jerked her needle. A separated thread pulled without its partners, increasing the size of the knot. Good grief. Why would this thread not cooperate? No matter how she picked at the loose ends, the tangle only grew worse.

“And her father seemed to approve, despite the fact that I had mentioned having a girl back home.”

As if that would matter. Pieter was intelligent—about most things—driven to succeed, and the hardest worker in ten counties. Ellmore would have recognized that right away. He’d no doubt been grooming Pieter to become a partner in his business. How better to solidify the future of Ellmore Dairy than to tie Pieter to it through marriage to the man’s daughter?

“Then I made the mistake of listening to my brother.”

“Diederick?” Claire’s head came around at the tightness in Pieter’s voice. His disapproval and disappointment in his sibling could not have been more evident. Yet judging by the way he lifted a hand from the reins to tug at his collar, there was some disapproval and disappointment aimed at himself as well.

Pieter nodded. “He came to see me one weekend, and we got to talking. I complained about how uncomfortable Miss Ellmore’s . . . flirtations were making me. How trapped I felt.”

Glad Jo was back to being Miss Ellmore, Claire opted to keep her gaze on Pieter’s face. The way his jaw clenched when he talked about Miss Ellmore lent authenticity to his story. Claire knew Pieter. His kind nature. He’d never rebuff a woman or fail to offer assistance. He was too much the gentleman. Maybe he had been trapped.

Claire turned back to her needlework and ordered her heart not to soften. Trapped or not, there was no excuse for what she’d witnessed at the ice cream parlor. Pieter hadn’t been carrying Josephine Ellmore’s parcels or protecting her from a runaway wagon. He’d been stepping out with her. In public. Shaming the poor Irish girl he’d left behind in the tenements of New York.

“Dirk always has an angle.” Pieter ground out the words between clenched teeth. “He said he’d overheard Jo complaining to her father about me ignoring her and being so rude as to leave a room whenever she entered. He said Ellmore was angry and threatened to send me packing without a reference.”

An outcome that could have negated all the work Pieter had done to establish a reputation for himself among the area dairymen.

“Dirk suggested I humor the girl. Pay her some attention. Take her out a few times and let nature run its course. She was bound to tire of me, boring stiff that I am.”

Claire frowned at the unflattering phrase Diederick always tossed in his brother’s face whenever Pieter attempted to rein in Dirk’s adventurous tendencies. Pieter might not be flamboyant or boisterous, but he’d never been boring. Not to her. Besides, what good was a bright red circus tent that flapped free of its moorings the first time a bit of wind kicked up? She’d much rather have a stone wall sheltering her, stalwart and dependable. If Josephine had half a brain, she’d recognized that truth, as well.

“Then, after the infatuation faded,” Pieter continued matter-of-factly, as if such a result was a foregone conclusion, which ironically stirred Claire’s temper, “I’d be free to return to you with better prospects. Perhaps even a partnership.”

He fell silent for a moment, then guided the horse to the side of the road and halted the wagon. Claire’s feet squeezed the basket on the cart floor at the unexpected change in direction, but she needn’t have worried. Liam slept on.

Pieter turned in his seat, or tried to. There was so little space that his knees simply knocked against hers as his torso twisted. He covered her hand with his own, needle and all.

“I gave in to temptation, Claire. I knew better than to listen to Dirk’s schemes, but I wanted that partnership so badly.”

She understood that drive. The same need to succeed burned in her chest, too. She just never thought he’d choose the easy way over the honest way. Diederick, yes. But Pieter? Never.

“Losing my position at Ellmore’s would have put me back at least a year, if not more, from my goal,” Pieter said. “I couldn’t bear to put off our wedding that long.”

Our wedding? Claire pulled her gaze from his hand to focus on his face. His beautiful, rugged, weather-worn face.

“The separation was already tearing my heart out. I would have done anything to speed the day that would make you mine. So I . . . I gave in. With Dirk’s idiotic promises of ‘no one will get hurt’ and ‘Claire will never even know’ scratching my itching ears, I agreed. I stopped avoiding Jo. I never sought her out, but neither did I turn down any of her requests. If she wanted me to take her to town, I took her as soon as my work at the dairy was done. I sat with her in church. Held her knitting yarn so she could roll it into a ball, and tried to look interested when she prattled on about fashion and people I knew nothing about. I even made myself smile at her with one of those ridiculous giant grins that Dirk insisted made the ladies happy.”

Claire’s heart seized before galloping away with her breath. Had . . . had she understood him correctly? He’d gone along with Diederick’s scheme not because he’d wanted to find success in business, but because he wanted to find a way to make her his wife sooner? The irony was too much. He’d danced attendance on another woman in order to be with her. Heaven preserve them.

“I was stupid, Claire. Stupid and impatient. It wasn’t fair to Jo for me to pretend an interest I didn’t feel, and it was hurtfully disloyal to you. The moment I spotted you on the street in Rochester, I recognized my error. You were everything to me. All that I’d been working for was for you. For our life together. But by using dishonorable means to achieve an honorable end, I corrupted something beautiful and made it ugly.

“That very day, I told Jo about you and apologized for not being honest with her. She was angry and hurt, but she didn’t have her father send me packing, which made me wonder if the conversation Dirk had supposedly overheard had ever really happened in the first place.

“Every weekend I returned home, praying you’d let me apologize, let me somehow put things right. But you refused to see me. Returned my letters without reading a single word. Then one weekend you were simply gone.” Pieter fell silent for a moment, then slowly pulled his hand away from hers. “After all we had meant to each other, Claire, you just gave up on me. Worse—you ran off to Texas to marry a stranger.”

The hurt in his voice made her heart bleed, but it was the betrayal shining in his eyes and the loss of his touch that cut the deepest. She hadn’t been the only one betrayed. He’d used a woman to ease his path to success, but hadn’t she done the same? Used a man to salvage her pride and escape her pain? She’d taken the easy way out, too. With disastrous results.