lara received the summons she’d been dreading just after breakfast. Her stepmother gently knocked at her chamber door, apparently the messenger.
“Clara dear? May I enter?” Lady Bella’s voice was tentative, worried, muffled by the wood separating them.
No, Clara wanted to deny. You may not. She eyed the window with dedicated purpose. It wasn’t the first time she’d contemplated an escape via the deep ledge and accommodating architectural effects adorning the front of her father’s stately home. But perhaps it would be the last. She’d cast her fate in Ravenscroft’s study, and she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that decision had brought with it enough trepidation to shake an entire phalanx of soldiers.
She clasped her hands before her and took a staying breath. All night she had waited for someone to address what had occurred. Her father’s wife had said little as she’d escorted Clara from the carriage upon her return from the earl’s home. What have you done this time, Clara? A footman had promptly been stationed at her door as if she were a prisoner.
She’d waited, still dressed, until her father had returned home, having realized far too late that her buttons were one off and her bodice tellingly skewed. And still, nothing had happened. No one had come. No caterwauling, no hollering, no wildly waving revolvers. There had been instead a deep, troubling quiet.
The silence told Clara quite a lot, for she’d indulged in more than her fair share of scrapes and troubles over the years following her mother’s death back home in Virginia. There had always been remonstration, reprimands. There had never been such deafening, dread-inducing tranquility.
“Clara? I’m afraid I’m going to enter whether you’d like me to or not.”
Yes, she had supposed as much. No more procrastination then, though the sleepless night had rendered her a bundle of ragged nerves, bloodshot eyes and all. “Enter as you will.”
Bella breezed over the threshold, effortlessly beautiful and elegant as always with her raven hair styled au courant, high on her head with a fringe of bangs. She wore a silk morning gown of cheerful yellow trimmed with flounces. But her expression was that of a funeral mourner.
“Clara.” Her stepmother’s tone carried a visceral sense of disappointment, her mouth tightening into a pinched line of dread.
“My lady.” Clara performed a perfect curtsy. The occasion seemed to merit it.
“Your father wishes to speak with you.” Bella crossed the chamber and took up Clara’s clasped hands in a show of tender concern. “He has allowed me the favor of this tête-à-tête with you first.”
How wretched.
Clara didn’t want to talk to anyone. Not about what had happened. Not about her supposed ruining. Not about anything. She still wasn’t entirely sure herself what had happened, truth be told. As traces of dawn had stolen across the sky, she’d begun to wonder if she hadn’t been outmaneuvered at her own chess game. All she wanted was to leave for her homeland with enough money to pursue her cause of women gaining the right to vote. But she mistrusted the earl’s sudden capitulation. She mistrusted it very much indeed.
She struggled to tamp down her disquiet as she met her stepmother’s frank gaze. “Must we talk, Lady Bella? You are well-intentioned, I know, but I would prefer not to delay the inevitable.”
Her father waited, the agonizing hours of quiet at an end. He was a kind man, a fair man in most ways. But in the earl’s study, he’d been unhinged. Her fault. Guilt crept over her, mingling with the foreboding. Perhaps she had finally managed to produce her own stunning, inglorious downfall. And she’d thought herself so sharp. Alas.
“Indeed, we must.” She guided Clara to the sitting area, an uncomfortable set of gilt settees she found rather loathsome. “Do let us sit down.”
Clara sat on the edge of the cushion, folding her hands in her lap. “I suppose my father is angry.”
Her stepmother settled herself daintily. “He’s quite overset, as would any father in his position be. You can consider yourself most fortunate that your driver had a conscience and returned at once to unburden himself. Who knows what would have transpired if Jesse had not reached you when he did.”
So it was the new coachman she’d bribed with a hundred pound note who had been her undoing. The rascal. But now was not the time for ruminating. She had a feeling Lady Bella was being rather magnanimous in her description of what—if her father’s reaction last evening had been any indication—was his utter fury. “He nearly shot Lord Ravenscroft dead in his study, my lady. Did you know that?”
“I’m sure you’re being melodramatic, my dear. Your father would not murder a peer of the realm, regardless of the man’s crimes.” Bella paused, her expression growing strained. “Speaking of crimes, the reason for my visit this morning is to…ascertain the extent of the earl’s actions.”
Ah. Perhaps they feared Ravenscroft had forced himself upon her. He had not, of course, but he’d been no gentleman. She thought of the depraved things he’d said, the likes of which she’d never heard. The way he’d undone her buttons and kissed her until she’d felt as if she’d drunk too much wine. The way he’d sucked on her nipple straight through her chemise, fabric no barrier to his prurient ways. A sharp pang of yearning shot through her, startling her, making a new ache settle between her thighs.
Her cheeks went hot. She shifted and focused on settling her skirts into place. “I would prefer not to speak of it, my lady.”
“But you must.” Her stepmother’s tone was soft, almost pitying. “Did Lord Ravenscroft hurt you, Clara?”
Shocked her? Yes. Done wicked things to her body? Yes. Hurt her, however, he had not. “Why, no. Of course he didn’t.”
“He didn’t force you?”
“No.”
“You understand that there’s no shame if he did, do you not? Be honest with me, dear heart. The law does not allow the misuse of innocents, and we shan’t hesitate to prosecute the earl should it be necessary.”
Lord in heaven, did everyone think the earl so evil that he’d force a woman? He must possess some redeeming quality, something to which she could cling for the short time she’d be his wife.
“The earl didn’t force me,” she repeated. There would be no hauling Ravenscroft off to some dank prison cell, even if she did have a deeply troubled conscience over the wisdom of her decision.
“Did you lie with him?”
Clara’s cheeks went hotter still. Lord have mercy, she hadn’t anticipated such direct questioning. “I do believe his lordship has compromised me.”
She didn’t want to fib to her stepmother. When Clara first met Lady Bella, they had clashed horridly. Clara had been young, newly motherless, and fresh on the shore of a strange land where she’d been brought to live by a father she scarcely knew. But Bella had been firm and kind and caring. She’d earned Clara’s respect.
Her stepmother pressed a hand to her heart now as if it pained her. “Oh, dearest girl. I know you love your scrapes but this time you’ve gone much too far. You cannot recover from this without marrying Ravenscroft.”
“I wish to marry him, my lady.” If only she could speak the words with more conviction. Marrying him would get her what she wanted, after all. She thought of the rolling hills of Virginia, the beauty of her home. How she missed it. She didn’t belong here in this stilted, aristocratic society laden with titles and rigid custom. She was a Virginian by birth and by nature.
“You don’t even know him.” Bella appeared to consider her next words with care. “Are you aware that he has a…certain reputation?”
“I too have a past, my lady. I’ll not judge him.”
“Others do, however. You may not be welcomed at certain homes as his wife, Clara. He is an earl, but his reputation is quite black.”
Irredeemable, or so her good friend Bo had claimed. It was part of her reasoning in choosing him. A man with such a dark past had nothing left to lose. But his past and his repute didn’t matter to Clara other than that they made him an ideal candidate for her plan. After all, she hardly intended to be his wife for long.
Bella’s gaze was earnest upon her. Clara tamped down her guilt. She was doing what she must. Her father had told her he refused to allow her to return home on her own, and that he would withhold all monies he intended to settle on her so that she could not leave England upon reaching her majority. He’d forced her into it, really, with his stubbornness.
She forced a sunny smile to her lips. “Never fear. Virginia ladies are made of stern stuff. I’m sure I shall manage life as Lady Ravenscroft with aplomb.”
Her stepmother frowned, her expression akin to that of a woman watching her loved one board a canoe with a hole in it for a voyage across the Atlantic. “I certainly hope you are made of the sternest stuff, my dear. For you shall need to be if you marry the Earl of Ravenscroft.”
There had to be worse fates. She thought of his sinful mouth, his beautiful face, his lean and hard body. And then she thought about the real him, the Bowie knife and rattler. An unwanted shiver stole down her spine.
Julian’s sisters sat before him in the same study where he’d so recently defiled his bride-to-be. They’d been summoned from their impeccably proper aunt’s home, where they’d been staying lest his reputation taint them, for the purpose of his grand announcement.
He loved his sisters, and the latest mark upon his soul was partially down to that fine emotion. He wanted to see them happy, wed to decent men, gaggles of children about their skirts one day. They deserved everything good, sweetness and light, this lovely pair of innocents.
Alexandra and Josephine. Just three years apart in birth, they were marked opposites in all ways aside from their age. Alexandra had fiery red curls and stood almost as tall as Julian. Handsome rather than beautiful, she was without doubt the issue of their mother’s affair with a hulking, redheaded Scottish groomsman on their country estate. Josephine was petite and dark-haired, fine-boned and exquisite in appearance, almost certainly not their father’s daughter either but her lineage was rather more muddled, given their mother’s dozen flings in the last year of her life. She’d died shortly after giving birth to little Jo. Julian still recalled looking down at the red-faced, mewling infant and hating her for taking their mother away. Seventeen years had not faded the memory.
Edward, though, the perfect son—the son who should have been the firstborn, according to their father—had instantly been taken with Jo. Julian had always put it down to how much Edward had reviled both Julian and their mother. And Julian had, in turn, reviled Edward with equal vehemence. Edward, a faultless sycophant to their father, had never once experienced the old bastard’s fists.
But that was all a lifetime ago now, Edward long gone to the Continent, and his sisters awaited the reason for their summoning with ill-disguised curiosity. “You will be moving here with me,” he told them.
Alexandra, ever an imp, was first to respond. “Tante Lydia won’t allow it, you know. She says your reputation rivals only the devil himself.”
Julian kept his expression carefully blank. The ancient bit of baggage had certainly never spared him any love, so he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised to hear her opinion of him. She did, after all, share blood with the former Earl of Ravenscroft, who was currently rotting in the family plot just as he deserved. “Great Aunt Lydia is not your guardian. I am. She can bloody well carry on with attending temperance meetings and sewing for charities like the wizened old bird that she is.”
“Wizened old bird.” Josephine grinned. “One must admit it’s an apt description.”
“She is rather a dragon,” Alexandra conceded. “But why now, Julian? Tante Lydia says you’re in debt up to your nose. She says Edward ought to have been the earl rather than you.”
“Not even enough coin to keep proper servants,” Josephine added. “No housekeeper to speak of. Quite a shame, she says, that you’ve squandered every last shilling on harlots and drink. Edward never would have done, according to her.”
He grimaced before he could think better of it, tamping down the old rage that surged inside him at the mentioning of his brother’s name. “Tante Lydia damn well ought to keep her misinformation to herself. I strongly doubt Edward would have fared any better than myself at managing the mountain of debt the previous earl saddled me with. As it is, the paragon is too busy gallivanting across the Continent at present to grace us with his illustrious presence. Moreover, the task of outfitting this house with a proper staff will belong to my wife.”
His sisters gaped.
“Are you soused?” Alexandra asked. “Tante Lydia said our father was a drunkard and a wastrel and that you’ve chosen the same sad path.”
A chill went down his spine at being compared to that particular rotter. He was nothing like his father. Not one goddamn part of him. But that was neither here nor there, for the dead earl and the misery he’d inflicted upon Julian was best left buried in the past along with any thoughts of his brother. Edward was just as dead to him as the bastard who’d fathered them both.
“Of course I’m not soused.” But he was fast losing patience with the overly opinionated ladies before him. “Has our paragon Aunt Lydia forgotten to remind you two of the necessity of possessing manners? I’ll thank you not to repeat anything else the crone has said.”
For the first time in as long as he could recall, Julian was sober as a teetotaler. He hadn’t a drop of drink since three days prior when he’d suddenly acquired his future countess. He’d nearly completed negotiations with Miss Whitney’s still-irate papa. He’d made his bargains and his peace with the tattered remnants of his conscience. He was in possession of a marriage license and soon, he’d be in possession of a great sum of coin and stocks and one beautiful little dove.
His to do with as he chose.
Surreal, all of it. Too facile by far. He felt like Hades securing himself a Persephone. Fitting, that comparison. He’d lured the girl into his underworld without even trying. She’d set foot in his dark world first, God help her.
Alexandra had the grace to look a bit sheepish. “In truth, I think she’s growing addle pated in her dotage. Quite hard of hearing.”
“None of that explains your alarming lack of civility.” He would hire a proper chaperone for them immediately. Or send them far away to a Swiss finishing school. Yes, perhaps that would be just the thing. How had he thought them a lovely pair of innocents mere moments ago?
“Your wife?” Josephine repeated. “Have you one, then?”
Damnation, he hadn’t recalled that his sisters were this trying. Admittedly, it had been some time since he’d abandoned them to the disapproving protection of Tante Lydia. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes heavenward. At least someone was moving the conversation forward at last. “I will have a wife within the week.”
“Not you.” Alexandra’s tone dripped with disbelief.
Josephine stared at him as if he’d suddenly manifested magical powers and had transformed himself into a mythical creature. “Damn it all, did you say within the week?”
He glowered at both of his troublesome siblings. These girls were a handful, by damn. “Precisely what has our esteemed, ossified great aunt been teaching you about comportment? I begin to think I did you an injustice in leaving you in her care.”
Alexandra grinned. “But near-sighted, almost deaf aunts make perfect chaperones.”
“Wonderfully easy to elude.” Jo’s smile was serene.
Hellfire. He didn’t dare imagine the sort of scrapes the girls had gotten themselves into while Tante Lydia snoozed into her needlework. Their familial reprieve, it seemed, was coming at a crucial moment. “Do try to at least pretend to be civilized ladies, you lot. If I’m ever to find you suitable husbands, you’ll need to stop cursing and exhibiting such cheek.”
“No one will wed us anyway.” Alexandra waved a hand as if to dash away his concern. “We haven’t any dowries and our brother is the Earl of Ravenscroft.”
His mood grew more dire by the moment. “While I’m afraid I cannot change the fact that I’m your brother, a dowry you both shall have. Upon my marriage, I’ll be a very wealthy man, and I intend to use a generous portion of that wealth to see that the two of you are happy for the rest of your lives.”
Josephine and Alexandra exchanged a prolonged glance of incredulity.
Julian tapped his fingers on his desk, irritation needling him. Was it truly that difficult to believe he was marrying? “Dear sisters,” he drawled, “never say my reputation is so black that you don’t believe me.”
“You’re not…you wouldn’t force a girl to marry you, would you, Julian?”
“Good Christ.” The tenuous thread of Julian’s remaining patience snapped. He bestowed his most rebuking glare upon Alexandra, who had asked the question. “Do the two of you take me for a monster? Precisely what is it you’ve heard about me?”
Josephine wrinkled her nose. “I daresay you may not want to know.”
One of the benefits of being regularly inebriated was that he hadn’t a clue just how irredeemable the world apparently believed him. Even his own flesh and blood, Chrissakes. Meanwhile, here he was, about to sacrifice himself at the matrimonial altar for their futures. “I’m falling upon the sword for you two incorrigible minxes. I expect, at the very least, a modicum of gratitude in return. From this moment forward, I’ll thank you to hold your tongues if you haven’t anything civil to say.”
Alexandra’s brows shot up practically to her hairline. “But—”
“Silence,” he bellowed. “I’ll not hear another word about my reputation. Ever again. Are we understood?”
If he expected his sisters to meekly comply, it would appear he’d forgotten they shared at least half of a family tree. Josephine blinked. “A bit of a sensitive subject, is it?”
He gritted his teeth so hard his jaw ached. What the hell had he been thinking, to saddle himself with the vexing scraps of petticoats before him? He should have allowed them to continue moldering with Great Aunt Lydia and retained his sanity.
Julian took a breath, calmly studied the threadbare patches in his carpet, and counted to five before responding. “Each future instance of insolence will cost you dearly. One less dress. One hundred less pounds for your dowry. That goes for each of you. Am I understood now, you ill-mannered imps?”
His sisters stared in unison. Apparently his generosity had robbed them of speech. A rarity, that. His generosity and their lack of verbosity both.
And then Josephine ruined it utterly. “Do you mean to suggest we shall truly have a trousseau and dowry?”
“Yes of course.” Damn it, his benevolence was fast being depleted by the trying nature of his madcap sisters. “You were always meant to have the both. It was merely a pittance before, but now it shall be handsome. Very handsome indeed.”
“What paragon of riches are you marrying to allow such a generous amount to be settled upon us both?” Alexandra demanded, apparently having heard none of his stern admonitions of the past half hour.
“One Miss Clara Whitney.” Damn if the name didn’t feel odd on the tongue. Foreign. But it was a name she wouldn’t possess for much longer, for soon she would be the Countess of Ravenscroft. His lady. And damn if that title didn’t feel equally odd. A slip of a girl, an American at that, would be his bride.
She was a beauty, his little dove. Clara of the golden hair, winsome smile, lilting drawl, and intoxicating innocence. It was a damn shame to spoil that innocence, but spoil it he would. The sisters before him, the servants belowstairs, the roof over his head—all depended upon that very spoiling now. The darkness in him would thoroughly enjoy every second of it.
Clara faced her father not without some wilt in her posture, which, she reckoned, was only understandable. For she loved her father, despite the fact that she hadn’t known him in her formative years. She didn’t want to hurt or disappoint him. But it seemed she was forever doomed to do both. He was as immovable as a boulder, stubborn as the cornerstone in the foundation of a grand old manor house.
His expression was as eerie as a death mask. No hint of smile. No hint of the laughing, teasing father she had come to know. “You’ve finally managed to mire yourself in a situation from which I cannot save you, Clara,” he said in somber tones reminiscent of the reverend who had presided over her mother’s funeral several years before. Her father had been at her side then, and he sat opposite her now, on the other end of an imposing and ornate desk.
It was, she thought for a silly moment, as though they were two nations at war. Much like their country had been not so long ago. She felt like a stranger, almost, brokering a treaty. An armistice? Or was it her terms of surrender? She didn’t rightly know. “I neither want nor need saving, Father.”
He made a moue of supreme displeasure. “You mean to suggest you wish to marry this…waste of flesh lord who has never earned a cent in his life without taking some bored society wife to bed?”
She shifted subtly on her uncomfortable chair, attempting to ease the pressure of her corset and her nerves. Her cheeks were hot and red, she was sure. This was not the sort of conversation one wanted or expected to engage in with one’s stern and protective father. It didn’t matter that she’d had days to prepare. “I’m sure I don’t know what you speak of, nor would I wish to. Lord Ravenscroft is a good man.”
Ha! Even to her own ears, her words rang horribly false. In truth, she didn’t know the earl. Not at all. But Father didn’t need to become aware of that pathetic fact, did he? Of course not.
“Good is not a word to be spoken in the same sentence with that son-of-a-bitch.”
When Father was angry, his drawl was a great deal more pronounced. And the thickness of his drawl suggested he was very, very angry indeed. “I love him.”
Another lie. Guilt struck her heart. She was a bad daughter, a rotten daughter, to prevaricate. He left her with no choice, however. He thought he knew better than she what she wanted, what she ought to do with her life. But she knew. She had a heart and a mind of her own, and that heart and that mind longed for Virginia.
Virginia was where she belonged, fighting for her cause. She’d had her taste of the gilded world of English aristocracy. It was flimsy as her silk stockings. No limbs of its own, if you asked her. Not that anyone ever did.
“Perhaps you foolishly think yourself in love,” her father scoffed at such a notion, as though it were as ridiculous as an apple woman being presented to Queen Victoria at court. “But I can assure you that your lovesick swain has a different perspective entirely. He already had a settlement in mind, Clara. It is not you he is in love with, regardless of whatever nonsense he may fill your ears and innocent heart with. It is your wealth.”
Of course it was. Gold was one of the oldest and surest lures in the world. And it had gotten her what she wanted, hadn’t it? She held her head high. “Am I to be shocked to learn his coffers have nearly run dry? I’m given to understand that many noblemen find themselves in similarly unfortunate predicaments. Surely that makes him no different than most of his peers?”
“What makes him different is his reputation, Clara.” Her father’s eyes bored into hers.
She dropped her gaze lest he read her too well, examining his clenched hands upon the desk. There were papers scattered about, some crumpled, some with entire sentences redacted by a bold strike of his pen. Marriage settlement documents, perhaps? She’d been told by her lady’s maid that her father’s redoubtable lawyer had made a long and solemn call upon him already that day.
What had Father said? Oh yes, Ravenscroft’s reputation. It would seem she must forever answer for his wicked ways. “I’m not as ignorant as you believe me to be. Indeed, I am a woman grown, completely possessed of excellent reasoning and logic.”
“You are aware that he has whored himself to half the ladies of the peerage?”
Clara flinched. Such an ugly insinuation. Ravenscroft himself had used the same word to describe himself. Even whores must set their price, my love. How low the earl’s self-worth must be. For some reason she didn’t care to examine, the thought disturbed her.
“Were every man or woman to be judged by his past misdeeds, no one would be welcome in any drawing room or ballroom,” she countered.
“Clara.” Her father turned his eyes heavenward for a moment, as though beseeching the Lord himself to intervene and strike some sense into her. “Clara, my darling daughter, I want so much more for you in a marriage than a hasty farce forced upon you by a rattler masquerading as an earl.”
He was aggrieved, his pain palpable. Her conscience prodded her to make one last attempt at winning her freedom. “Perhaps there is another way to salvage my reputation without marriage to the earl. You could send me back to Virginia, Father. My mother’s kinfolk would welcome me there.”
Her father cocked his head at her, studying her in that way of his that saw far more than she would have preferred. “Never tell me that this was all another one of your larks, Clara, that you somehow devised this madcap scheme in the hopes that I would send you back to Virginia rather than marry you off to a scoundrel.”
Well, not precisely. But he was too close to the mark for her liking. She didn’t wish for him to unravel all her careful plans, not when she was so near to achieving her goal. “Of course not. As I said, Lord Ravenscroft is the man I wish to wed. I’m sorry for the manner in which it need occur. I was foolish to go to him as I did, and for any shame or distress I’ve brought upon you and Lady Bella both, I apologize.”
Unfortunately, her mentioning of her indiscretion with Ravenscroft hardly blunted her father’s ire. Rage fairly emanated from him, overtaking him with a force so strong he could no longer remain seated and shot to his feet to pace the length of his study.
“What he did to you…ruining you…your stepmother has spared me the excruciating specifics of the nature of your encounter. But Clara, I need to be certain that he didn’t force you or otherwise ill use you. Tell me the truth.”
“He did not force or hurt me,” she answered, one of the few honest statements she’d made since their interview had begun, much to her shame.
All the fight seemed to drain out of her father then. He stopped, appearing far less omnipotent than he always had to her. Far more human. Far more weary. “Then I will accept his offer for your hand. You’ll wed him as expediently as possible. I’ll grant him the two hundred thousand pounds he’s asked for, but he’s only getting fifty thousand in North Atlantic Electric stock. As for you, I will give you ten thousand a year and the other fifty thousand of North Atlantic Electric stock your husband requested for himself. You’ll be a wealthy woman in your own right, and that is the best I can hope to do for you now. Under the law, you’ll maintain control over anything you bring to the marriage aside from what is directly settled upon your husband.”
Two hundred thousand pounds.
Clara had only offered Ravenscroft one hundred thousand to marry her and then annul the marriage. Dread settled over her. She had to know for certain. “He asked for the two hundred thousand directly?”
“You’re damn right he did,” her father gritted, his voice grim as ever. “Don’t fool yourself into believing this is a love match, Clara. The son-of-a-bitch wants your dowry.”
The same sense of foreboding she’d been feeling ever since returning home crept over her now, stronger than ever. If only asking her father to settle all the funds on her would not arouse his suspicion. No, she couldn’t afford to chance he would change his mind. The web she’d spun about herself grew more tangled by the moment. Perhaps she’d been outmaneuvered in her own game.
Checkmate.
“You needn’t worry over me. I know how to look after myself,” she told her father. She’d been raised in the shadowy aftermath of America’s deadliest war, and her upbringing had hardened her in a way none of her fellow society misses would ever understand. She could hold her own in a battle of wits and wills with an English earl whose only recommendation was his face. If he thought to best her, he’d never met a girl from Virginia.