Chapter Four
Dust covered him. It rose from the pages when he turned them and settled on his coats like iron shavings on a magnet.
Adam forged on, reading the old newspapers, more interested in what was not reported than what was. An allusion here, an offhanded reference there, a name mentioned in passing—such were the pieces of evidence he sought, because he already knew there would be no outright discussion of the events he investigated.
He had come to the Times last, after turning other pages at the offices of other papers and journals. They all kept examples of their old publications somewhere. It might be in an airy library or a damp cellar, but with time and patience he had read every word published about the Duke of Stratton in the few years up to and through his father’s death.
The death notices were the most useless, although a few in less respectable journals vaguely implied it might have been a suicide. The Times would never tread in that direction on a duke, so its notice extolled his father’s accomplishments and taste. Reading it, one would never guess at the extreme provocations that had made a man take his own life.
Clues regarding the details and sources of those provocations were what he now sought. It had all been a very secretive business, so the bits he uncovered were all between the lines. No publisher would ever openly air those rumors. No man would speak about it except behind closed doors in the lowest voice.
And yet, words had been spoken, and they took to the air like pollen, so while no one made accusations, all had been known by the people in government who mattered.
He closed the tome of bound copies of the Times. He had hardly found the direct evidence he wanted, but he also found nothing to convince him he was wrong in his beliefs about how the tragedy had played out.
At the highest reaches of the government, questions had been raised about his father’s loyalty. Things had been said to him by ministers and other lords. Someone had been collecting evidence. It went on a while, growing, perhaps a year or so. Isolated and friendless as the hounds closed in, he had taken his life so he might not face the kind of disgrace that stained a family’s name for generations.
The final act and its reason were the only parts not under question, however.
I think Marwood is behind it all. That was what his father had written on the only note he left. Did he have proof of that? If so, he did not leave anything to indicate it. Was it an irrational conclusion, born of his state of mind and the long enmity between the families? Adam did not know. If his father thought Marwood was behind it all, however, then Marwood was at the top of Adam’s list of men to investigate.
He left the Times building and made his way to his carriage. Deep in thought, he almost did not notice the woman across the street until something familiar about her pulled him out of his reverie.
She walked with a determined stride, as if on an important mission. He noticed the brilliance of her eyes, which implied so much about her. Intelligence. Spirit. Passion. Trouble. He did not mind the last quality. One rarely found the first three in a woman without the fourth. His time with her thus far had been brief, but none of it had been dull.
Although her reddish chestnut hair, visible as a frame to her face beneath the brim of her bonnet, looked stunning against the black of her ensemble, he suddenly wondered what she would look like wearing soft, pale green.
He pictured her thus while he crossed the street and approached her. As soon as she saw him, her expression fell. He wanted to laugh at the way she struggled to maintain a composure fitting for an earl’s daughter. He imagined the impolite thoughts jumping into her mind.
“Lady Clara. What an unexpected delight to see you today.”
“Yes. Delightful.” She angled her head to the left, eyeing the path to freedom. “It is a day of errands for me.”
“For me as well, although I am well done. What errand brings you here?”
She did not reply at once. He had asked an awkward question, it appeared.
“I am not on an errand here. I am simply walking down this street after attending to an errand elsewhere.” She stepped to his side and scrutinized him with a frown. “Were you in an attic? You are covered in dust.” Her hand went out and she brushed at his sleeve, producing a small cloud of dust.
He thought her gesture charming. “My valet will groan when he sees it.”
“Hold still.” Again her hand swept his coat. More clouds rose. She brushed him off like he was a child who had fallen in the dirt. Not that gently, however. Her hand slapped at his shoulders and chest.
“There. You are almost presentable. Now, I must be on my way.”
“Will you be so ungenerous with your company? I have not seen you in almost two weeks. It was my fault, I know. I have not called on you. Due to all those errands, you see.”
“Has it been that long? I had not noticed. In fact, I did not expect you to call at all. There was no reason to.”
“We both know that is not true. However, here we are now. At least allow me to accompany you safely back to your carriage.”
“That will not be necessary. I will be quite safe on my own.”
“Please. I insist.”
She stood silently, looking much like a little girl caught doing something naughty.
“Do you have your carriage here?” he asked.
“No.” The answer came after a long pause. She bit her lower lip.
“A hackney again?” He glanced up and down the street. “Does he live near here? Your friend, I mean.”
“There is no friend. Not the way you insinuate.”
“Of course not.”
“I am serious.”
“Please understand that I am not shocked. I am half French, after all. I do not mind. I merely request that you end it.” He lied smoothly. He did mind. Any man would once he set his sights on a woman.
“A request, is it?”
“I am being polite. A request for now. Eventually, of course, it will have to be a command.”
Her eyes blazed. Hell, she was exciting when she was angry. Just as well, since he expected she would be angry often.
“You are deliberately provoking me, I think,” she said.
“I promise to stop if you agree to a short visit to the park. We will keep the landau open so you will not worry about me imposing. Then I will bring you home.”
“And if I refuse your offer?”
“I will probably follow you around, asking indiscreet questions about your mysterious doings in this area of town.”
She heaved a sigh of exasperation. She removed a pocket watch from her reticule. “There will be hardly anyone at Hyde Park at this hour. Let’s take a turn there, if we must. A very short visit, please. I have an appointment this afternoon.”
“More mysterious doings? How intriguing you are.” He offered his arm. She did not take it. Together they walked to his carriage.
* * *
The Duke of Stratton was becoming a serious inconvenience. Part of the joy of being an older woman known to be uninterested in marriage was that people tended not to notice what she did. Clara had enjoyed that freedom even before her father’s death and now did so even more because she occupied Gifford House alone.
Stratton’s curiosity about her complicated that. Now here she was, sitting in his carriage when she should have been visiting the decorator she had hired to make some changes at her house on Bedford Square. Since no one knew about the house, she could hardly have the duke trailing her there.
She did not care for how he maneuvered her into spending this time with him. She resented that he had won a little contest.
“Do you prefer town? You spend a good deal of time here,” he said once they were seated across from each other and the coachman had opened the carriage to the air.
From anyone else she would think it small talk. From this man, she heard an intrusive question. “I like both town and the country. I spend time in both places. However, after all the months at Hickory Grange after my father’s funeral, it was time to see some friends here and dip one foot into society again.” Even as she said it, she worried that she gave him too much information.
“Your bluestocking friends?”
“Yes.”
“What do you do when you are not talking letters with them?”
“If I told you, I would no longer be intriguing and mysterious.”
It was a mistake to say that. She knew it as soon as she said it. His dark eyes settled on her, amused and too confident that he saw more than she wanted. That gaze unsettled her. She found it stark, almost naked, in its demand for her attention. It implied intimacies of the spirit that she did not want to have or acknowledge.
She hurried to brush her own provocation aside. “You will find my interests very boring and feminine. I visit drapers and feast my eyes on the fabrics I cannot wear now. I stroll through warehouses and covet silk cords and laces.”
“Why not buy them now and store them until you can use them?”
“Because the anticipation is part of the fun. There is the danger it will build to a fever, however, and when I finally remove these black ensembles, I will be so reckless in my spending on a new wardrobe that Theo will have to bail me out of debt.”
“Oh, I doubt that.”
She knew then that this man had learned about the size of her inheritance. Had Theo told him? Perhaps he had only heard gossip, but that would be enough.
It entered her mind that his only reason to pursue her with that stupid proposal was her fortune. As if the Duke of Stratton needed that! Although, really, who knew if he did or did not? She had not investigated him the way he had obviously investigated her, although she intended to.
Still, a man after her fortune. How predictable. How commonplace. How disappointing.
Once they were in the park she asked her own questions, while she encouraged their stroll to leave the main path so they might not be seen together.
“Would you truly not mind if the woman you proposed to had a lover before you? You keep implying as much.” She thought it a sophisticated and arch query and waited for him to avoid the meal once she set it squarely on a plate in front of him.
“You are what, twenty-four years in age? Only a fool would require innocence of a woman of that maturity.”
“What a liberal outlook you have.”
“I like to think so. I am only being a bit strict with you because I cannot risk my heir being the son of another man. I am sure you understand.”
She looked over at him, hoping to see that little smile or anything that indicated his continued references to his proposal were now a private joke. Regrettably, he appeared most serious. She decided that objecting would only dignify the ridiculous notion, so she ignored it.
Since he had coerced her into spending this time with him, he could not object to some frank questions about his life and his family, especially if he really believed they would marry. Althea was charged with investigating this man, but every bit added to the pile would help.
“Why did you leave?” she asked while they strolled through a little copse of budding trees.
“It was time to come back.”
“I did not mean why did you leave France. Why did you leave England?”
His mood altered in a snap, as if the question opened a door to the dark humor she sensed in him. “My mother did not want to remain here after my father’s death, so I took her away and ensured she was settled in Paris.”
“She wanted to go home, you mean. That is understandable.”
“She had lived here for decades. This should have been her home, not a foreign land to escape. There were those who never welcomed her, however, or allowed her to make her place here.”
“If she is happy in France now, that is what matters, isn’t it?”
“I did not say she was happy. She did not want to return to France. She just did not want to remain here.”
His sharp tone made her stop walking. “I am sorry if I misunderstood. I was careless in my response. Of course she could not be happy to leave her home of so many years.” She swallowed the question that begged to be asked. Why did she not want to remain here?
They stood under one of the trees, in the tangle of linear shadows its branches made.
“Do you really know so little about my life?” he asked. “Did you never hear the talk about my mother? You were out before she left. Before my father died.”
She did not have to search her memory long to remember some of the talk she had heard. Her grandmother’s voice always dripped with disdain when she mentioned Stratton’s French duchess. Grandmother was one of the people who suspected the worst of everything and everyone French during the war.
Others had sniffed when the Duchess of Stratton walked by at a ball, however. Clara had always assumed they envied her beauty and sought bad gossip out of spite. In truth she had not much cared what people said, however. The old war between her family and Stratton’s had left her unsympathetic to whatever slights were visited on his mother.
“I will admit, now that you speak of it, that I do know something of what she endured,” she admitted. “If that drove her away, it was not fair.”
To her surprise he took her hand and raised it to a kiss. “That alone did not do it. However, it is good of you to see how unfair it was.”
That kiss on her hand, brief though it was, created a bridge of intimacy. She felt that kiss all the way up her arm and down her body. His gaze captured hers before he kissed her hand yet again, slowly.
She did not pull her hand away. She did not avert her eyes, as she most definitely should. Instead she stared while that kiss and those dark eyes enlivened her whole body.
He drew her closer, closer, until she either had to step toward him or fall. She did a bit of both, stumbling awkwardly, and found herself in his arms.
He was going to kiss her. She was sure of it. That must not happen. Instead of pushing away, however, she could not move. His gaze paralyzed her and incited an unseemly excitement.
His arms embraced her. He looked down. Dazed, she closed her eyes and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
When nothing happened, she opened her eyes. Instantly the euphoria lifted, and she felt a fool. She tried to extricate herself from his embrace, but he did not allow it.
“Do you want me to kiss you?” he asked.
“Of course not. You are the last man I want kissing me, I assure you.” She refused to look at him and continued trying to pull away.
“That is not true. Let us be honest with each other in this if nothing else.” His head dipped and his lips hovered over hers.
Her breath caught. Heavens, but he was beautiful. And exciting. Even that darkness seduced. Thrills kept spiraling through her, begging to have excuses to become something more powerful.
“Part of the fun is the anticipation,” he said quietly, imprisoning her with his gaze. “Although there is always the danger of it building to a fever.” His lips brushed hers, ever so faintly, but enough to create a starburst of sensation.
It was a terrible tease. A provocative promise.
He released her and stepped back. She stood there speechless, and utterly defeated, shocked at how he had used her own words against her to imply they shared some sympathy on sensual matters.
“I must go.” She turned on her heel and marched toward the main path. With each step, her indignation grew.
He walked alongside her, too contented by far.
“I can’t believe you imposed on me like that,” she said in her best how-dare-you tone.
“I imposed very little, especially given the circumstances. Indeed, had I made love to you up against one of the trees, I am not sure it would have been an imposition.”
“If you think so, you have been in France too long.”
She could not get to the carriage soon enough. She refused to look at him all the way to Gifford House. Once there, she barely suffered his insistence on handing her down. She steeled herself against the feel of his hand on hers, and the closeness of his body, and the way her whole being still wanted to react inappropriately.
She could not resist one last scold. Not only to remind him of proper behavior, but herself too. “Please remember in the future how a gentleman treats a lady, sir.”
“I know how to treat a lady. You, however, are also my future bride. That changes everything.”
She hurried to her door full of furious indignation. Once inside, she learned that this discomforting day would only get worse.
Theo, Emilia, and the dowager had come up from the country to join her.