er Grace, the Duchess of Argylle,” intoned her father’s butler in what Clara could only suspect was grim portent.
She hadn’t expected any callers, and that the duchess would arrive in the morning, outside of her receiving hours, when Clara was perfectly alone and not expecting a soul, was cause for surprise. But, she hoped, not the alarm that stirred within her as she stood with a dignity that belied her inner turmoil.
She could have claimed she was not at home, could have refused the duchess’s call, and been left instead with her card on a salver and no strife to speak of. But avoidance wasn’t Clara’s way.
The duchess swept into the morning room where Clara had been reading, wearing a formidable visiting gown of aubergine damask and crushed velvet that emphasized her voluptuous form to perfection. She was lovely, graceful, elegant, and—worst of all—a former paramour of the earl’s. A former paramour who had meant something to him. Clara had supposed as much by his reaction to the duchess at the ball, and Bo had confirmed her suspicions with a healthy dose of friend-to-friend gossip afterward.
They exchanged a proper, formal greeting. The duchess perched herself on a settee as though she were as delicate as Sèvres porcelain. Perhaps it was the tight-lacing of her lady’s maid that was the source of the woman’s achingly slow, deliberate movements, Clara thought rather unkindly.
Silence descended upon them, interrupted only by the steady ticking of a clock and the faint background sounds to which Clara had grown accustomed: the outside din of London traffic and the whispered footfalls of servants moving about the halls. The duchess’s ice-blue gaze raked over Clara’s person, her expression a study of the aristocratic dismissive. Her raven-haired beauty would have been a natural foil to the earl’s dark good looks. Clara could picture the two of them together, a couple so beautiful that it would almost be painful to look upon them. A curious twinge cut through her at the notion of Ravenscroft with the exquisite creature before her.
“I have paid you an honor in this call, Miss Whitney,” the duchess said at last.
Clara almost gave an indignant and thoroughly unladylike snort. The woman clearly possessed an interesting definition of the term. Over a week had passed since their inauspicious meeting, and she supposed that the duchess had followed Ravenscroft’s obvious pursuit of her.
For a man who was rumored to be one of the worst rakes in England, the earl had done a grand job of properly courting Clara. He danced with her at the Earl of Margate’s ball twice, once at the Marquis of Londonderry’s, and two times at the Duke of Cheltenham’s. He walked with her in the park. He took her for a ride on Rotten Row. In public, he was the epitome of charm. He scarcely touched her, and he certainly never said wicked things to her about his tongue or pinned her with smoldering stares that made her feel as if she stood before him in nothing save her chemise.
Clara should have been relieved. But she had grown tired of the endless social whirl. Tired of being trussed up in corsets and heavy skirts, changing five times a day, smiling pleasantly to Lady Dullard and listening with feigned concern to the Duchess of Snipe. She was weary of tea and visits, of dancing and eating and generally doing nothing of value with her time.
And now she was being ambushed by a beautiful, haughty duchess who dared to call said ambush an honor. No, facing the gorgeous former lover of her betrothed was not, in Clara’s book, an honor in any form.
“Forgive me for being obtuse, Your Grace, but I don’t see the reason for your call,” Clara said at last, allowing her Virginia drawl to accentuate her words far more than she ordinarily would. After all, she’d been trained to speak the way a proper Englishwoman ought. But Clara was no Englishwoman, and she never would be. Which meant she had the advantage over the duchess facing her as though they had declared pistols at dawn.
The duchess stiffened, her chin raising a notch in an elegant display of ire. “Undoubtedly, you’re unaccustomed to proper society. That much is grievously apparent, but that’s neither here nor there. I shall be candid. I’m trying to aid you, Miss Whitney.”
Clara almost laughed aloud. Trying to help her, indeed. “Pray enlighten me, Your Grace.”
The duchess’s eyes narrowed, revealing fine grooves caused by time. “Ravenscroft is courting you. It’s common knowledge. He has been making a fool of himself all over town. I come to you with the concern of an older sister for her younger, infinitely more foolish sister. Walk away from him, Miss Whitney. If you hold yourself or your family in any esteem at all, you must throw him over at once, for his motives are not pure.”
She couldn’t quite stifle a smile. What irony. “I’m certain his motives aren’t any less pure than your own in seeking me out, Your Grace.”
The duchess’s spine stiffened, her lips thinning into an angry line. “I sought you out to help you, but perhaps you are the sort of young lady who doesn’t prefer to hear the truth.”
“Forgive me if it seems to me that you’ve sought me out to help yourself,” Clara said gently. It was clear that the woman before her saw her as a rival. She had orchestrated the ridiculous collision in the ballroom, and now she’d turned up holding a supposed olive branch that looked far more like a poisoned cup of wine to Clara’s shrewd eye.
“Ah, American impertinence. I suppose I should’ve expected it. You Americans think you’re all the rage now, don’t you? I’ve seen your kind a dozen times before, Miss Whitney. You prance around with your father’s wealth and your brazen attitudes and your complete lack of care for society. Some may find your gauche dearth of manners a quaint spectacle, but I am not among them.” The duchess rose from her seat, sweeping her skirts back into order with an august dignity Clara couldn’t help but admire, even if she didn’t like or trust the woman. “Believe what you wish, Miss Whitney, but I know Ravenscroft better than any other woman alive. If you think he truly has a genuine interest in a girl as young and naïve as yourself, you’re even more foolish than you appear.”
“Perhaps I’m not at all foolish. Perhaps I’m very wise, and I’m a woman who isn’t afraid to seek what she wants from life rather than meekly waiting about for someone else to dictate what I ought to do.” Clara stood as well then, not willing to allow her opponent to tower over her. “Your Grace, I don’t think it was wise for you to come here. I understand you were the earl’s…particular friend. However, you’re not his friend any longer. Whether he chooses to court me or wed me is up to his lordship, and regardless of the reasons for his actions, your older sister concerns are neither wanted nor necessary. Good day, Your Grace.”
She didn’t await the duchess’s response, merely took her leave of the chamber, head held high, completely aware of the social rules she eschewed as she went. But no matter how many steps she put between herself and the earl’s past, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her plans had gone hopelessly awry.
She’d thought she could easily convince the earl to wed her and send her back to Virginia. Instead, she’d wound up with a courtship, a jealous former lover, and a betrothed who was handsome and wicked and wild and yet somehow also proper and…good Lord. She’d been about to think that he was kind.
Heavens, where had that rogue thought come from? Whatever the source, she’d do best to weed it out posthaste. She couldn’t afford to like Ravenscroft. No indeed. Liking him was far too risky, too dangerously close to upsetting her plans. And she’d come too far for any of her plans to be dashed now. Far too far.
Miss Clara Whitney disliked corsets. She could make her lilting drawl disappear into minced, born-in-the-purple English at the drop of a coin. Her opinions were her own. She wasn’t vapid, vain, or spoiled like so many ladies of the fashionable set. She was intelligent and witty, quick-tongued and passionate. She liked reading but disliked playing the piano and she’d never even bothered to attempt sketching with charcoals or painting watercolors. Her opinion of England could be summed up in one word: dreary. Her opinion of the Upper Ten Thousand could be summed up in a singularly succinct manner: absurd.
Over the course of the fortnight he’d been playing the role of dutiful, proper suitor, Julian had come to know a great deal about his future countess. Some of the facets of her character had been revealed unintentionally, others had been freely shared during the rare moments when they’d been able to speak with candor.
Walking in the park was one such particular boon, as he’d been able to lead her a safe distance from her stepmama. Her gloved hand rested lightly in the crook of his elbow. The scent of her washed over him, warm and glorious. He didn’t even give a damn at the moment that public walks in the park beneath a hundred other watchful stares were the sort of thing he hated. Devil take it all, he was actually enjoying himself. Not a drop of liquor coursed through his veins, and he was properly clothed, and yes, somehow he was having a damn fine time of sporting Clara on his arm. Ah, irony.
“Women ought to be afforded the right to vote,” Clara declared to him now, keeping her voice low as she turned to him, eyes flashing with the brilliance of her devotion to her subject. “Why should it be denied us? Your very sovereign is a woman, and yet every other woman in the land is denied the opportunity to allow her voice to be heard. How can it be that one woman can rule and the rest must relegate themselves to tittering in drawing rooms and accepting their husbands as their betters?”
Well damn it, how did he answer such a question? She was perfectly correct. He was ashamed to admit he’d never once given the matter much of his time or attention. Julian stood there in the park on an overcast, dreary day, on a gravel path he’d trod hundreds of times before. And for the first time, he realized what a conceited, selfish prick he’d been his whole life.
“That is the way of things,” he offered at last, lacking for a better answer. In truth, there was no answer, at least not one that made a whit of sense. “You’re young. You need more time to become suitably jaded and indifferent.”
“I’m twenty, my lord. Not so very young and naïve, I think, to wonder why it must be so.” She turned to him, her convictions bringing vivacity to her lovely face. “It seems to me that the only sex who benefits from keeping women from having a political voice is men. Where is the science that says a woman is not every bit as capable of careful thought as man?”
“I admit I’m not a man of science,” he said wryly. “But I daresay no such science exists.”
How had he ever thought her naïve? Perhaps she was, when it came to matters of the bedchamber, but that would be easily rectified. Her mind was sharp and vital, capable of being clever or cutting. He found her freedom of expression refreshing. This was not a woman who fretted over nothing more significant than choosing a ball gown. The woman before him was intelligent, and she wasn’t afraid who knew it.
“Of course it doesn’t exist.” She shook her head with so much fervor that she almost knocked her elaborate hat off its dainty perch atop her golden curls. “We are all merely people. Regardless of where we were born, who our parents are, whether we are male or female, we’re all equals because we are all the same. It is only the ancient trappings of society that force us to believe anything different.”
How refreshing to hear her overturn the world in which he’d lived his entire life. It was all nonsense, from the trimmings of polite society to the laws that led the land. It was outmoded, antiquated, foolish and shortsighted. The world needed more Claras to upend it, by God.
“I agree with you.” He covered her hand with his for just a moment.
“You do?” She turned to him, clearly having been expecting an argument from him.
She’d not garner one.
“Is it so surprising that I can be swayed by logic? I’ll own that I’ve never given the injustice of it a second thought until now. But alas, ours is a world of vile hypocrites, darling. We must all behave properly in public, obey the tenets of polite society to the absolute letter, and yet behind closed doors, we’re all just a hodgepodge of sinners and reprobates. One need only look around to see hypocrisy in action. There is Lady Darlington, speaking politely with Lord Ryland as though they are strangers, when her last daughter was sired by Ryland. She hasn’t shared a bed with her husband in half a dozen years or more.”
“Six years?” Clara’s winged brow rose. “How can you know for certain?”
He knew because he’d been one of Lady Ryland’s first lovers after her husband had installed a famous opera singer in a house in St. John’s Wood. He met Clara’s inquiring stare, choosing not to lie to her. “How do you think I know, little dove?”
She appeared to take his admission in stride, her only betrayal of emotion a small swallow evident at the hollow of her throat. “I see. The Duchess of Argylle is not alone in the legions of your many admirers.”
Lottie’s name uttered in Clara’s mellifluous voice somehow didn’t seem right. The two women couldn’t be more different from each other. “The duchess is not an admirer, of that I can assure you.”
She’d made her opinion of him as clear as possible. He’d been nothing more to her than a source of entertainment and pleasure. She didn’t wish to be encumbered by the demands of one man. He could still recall their parting, how she’d attempted to press some notes into his hand. Payment for services rendered. But how could he fault her? He had fashioned himself a whore, and it was a role he’d learned well. He was the one who had erred in thinking their arrangement was different, that it had meant something more. He hadn’t accepted a pound from Lottie that day, and he never would. He’d bloody well starve in a beggar’s prison first.
“I wouldn’t be so certain, my lord.” Clara studied him, and he couldn’t shake the impression she saw more than he would have preferred. “She paid me a call, and she was most adamant that I run far, far away from your evil designs upon my person.”
He’d known Lottie had a vicious streak, but he hadn’t realized she’d stoop so low as to meddle in his personal affairs now. Damn her. She didn’t have a right to make him susceptible to her games any longer. “Dare I hope you made good on your poorly disguised threat to use her in a demonstration of your marksmanship?” he quipped with a lightness he didn’t feel. He hoped to keep their conversation away from the darkness that Lottie inevitably stirred within him.
“If she seeks me out again, I cannot promise that I won’t,” Clara returned. “I don’t like her. Others may be dazzled by her beauty, but I can see plainly through it to the ugliness she hides within.”
“She won’t seek you out again.” Suddenly, the pleasure he’d felt at being out of doors with Clara on his arm fled. Grim determination settled over him, icy and familiar. His past sins were never far from his heels, nor were their consequences. “I’ll make certain of it.”
“I can protect myself against her kind, my lord. I’m merely warning you so that you’re well-armed when I’ve returned to Virginia.” She smiled sweetly at him, but there was a wistful glint in her gaze that belied her apparent cheer. “I wouldn’t wish you to fall prey to a woman like her again.”
When I’ve returned to Virginia. Her innocent belief that such an event would occur needled his conscience. By God, he was startled to find it resurrected these days. But there it was, the nagging stab of guilt at misleading her. She would be furious with him, of that he had no doubt. He remained, however, his father’s son, which meant he was a selfish bastard.
“Although I do take umbrage at the notion of myself as any woman’s prey, I must ask why not, Miss Whitney?” he couldn’t resist querying, allowing his eyes to travel over the soft, lovely planes of her face. If he’d had an artist’s hand, he would have longed to paint her, to capture all that vivacity and passion in bold strokes on a canvas.
“Because I’ve begun to like you, Lord Ravenscroft.” Her eyes widened as though she’d surprised even herself with her admission. “There, I’ve said it.”
He couldn’t stifle a smile, and he didn’t give a damn that at least half a dozen notorious gossips watched him, remarking upon his every expression. There was something freeing about the truth, after all. He kept his gaze pinned to Clara, the petite, complex firebrand who possessed a sharp mind, a bold tongue, and who’d had the innocent audacity to accost him in his own study. “Strange, that, for I find I’ve rather begun to like you as well, little dove.”
The flush that tinged her cheekbones was the only answer he required.
Clara awoke to a nearly cloudless, fogless London sky. She stood by the window of her bedchamber, sipping her coffee as she’d done each morning since moving to London, and watched the parade of carriages on the street below. It was somehow fitting that her last day beneath this roof—one of her very last in England—was the most unsullied she’d ever witnessed. Why, one could almost find beauty in the grand homes parked along the road, the gleaming carriages and pristine horses, the poised and polished clamor of polite society thronging all around.
“Almost,” she repeated to herself before drawing the window dressing closed. For if one looked carefully enough, stripping away the gilding, one could see that the rare world of London’s aristocrats was not all it seemed.
She thought of Ravenscroft’s revelations to her the day before on their walk. Of course she shouldn’t be surprised that he’d taken married women as his lovers. She’d known as much before she’d ever confronted him with her plan. Somehow, hearing it from his lips rendered it different, however. Those lips had kissed hers. And though theirs would be a marriage in name only and for a short duration, she was to be his wife. There was a sense of intimacy involved now that she hadn’t anticipated.
Perhaps that explained her extreme dislike of the Duchess of Argylle. She’d never admit it to a soul, but knowing that the earl had been taken in by that dreadful woman’s charms irked her to no end. She’d dearly like to see her at the receiving end of one of Bo’s notorious jokes. The thought of a saucer of ink dropping into the duchess’s hair and dripping down her lovely face held infinite appeal.
A quiet knock at her door startled her out of the wicked reverie. “You may enter,” she called. She’d been dressed for ages, had simply been in a contemplative and somber mood, her mind sifting over the choices she’d made and the actions she’d need to take in the days ahead.
She was startled to find her father opening the door and crossing the threshold. He’d spoken little to her in the last fortnight of her whirlwind courtship with the earl, and he appeared as grim as she’d ever seen him now. Her heart gave a great pang of regret for her subterfuge.
Although her father was sometimes overbearing and misguided, she did love him. There’d been a time when he had been a stranger to her, and she’d been a young girl adrift, having just lost her mother. He had been kind and patient, enduring her confusion and her rebellion with a grace she had not expected or deserved.
“Father.” She placed her coffee on the escritoire and met him halfway across the chamber, embracing him and eschewing convention in the same way he had with his unannounced visit. She buried her face against his broad chest and inhaled deeply of his familiar scent.
He was slower to embrace her, but at last his arms came around her tightly, and he pressed his face to the arrangement her lady’s maid had taken care to artfully style earlier. “Clara, darlin’.” There was an unmistakable thickness to his deep voice. “Are you certain? You don’t have to marry him, by God. I don’t want you to marry him.”
The only thing she was certain of was that the more time she spent in the earl’s presence, the more she doubted everything. For she was coming to believe more and more that he wasn’t entirely as he seemed. He was beautiful, yes, and unrepentant to be sure. He was a voluptuary, of course, and he had bedded more women than she cared to know about or count. He was the sum of his reputation and then some.
But then there was the earl she’d glimpsed during his courtship. That Ravenscroft was odd and witty and sometimes funny, sometimes wicked, but he was also kind. He listened to her when she spoke, and not just in the way some of her suitors had, gentlemen who’d listened with half an ear only to prattle on about their own accomplishments and beliefs. He heard her, and he didn’t attempt to belittle her or talk over her for beliefs that ran counter to society’s whims. His intelligence simultaneously alarmed and delighted her. She wasn’t sure she could trust him or herself in his presence, for that matter.
“I’m staying the course,” she told him softly, for she had no other option. “I want to marry the earl.”
Lord in heaven, that wasn’t entirely a prevarication, either. There would be some satisfaction in seeing the expression on the Duchess of Argylle’s face when and if next they crossed paths before she left for Virginia. Surely that was the sole impetus for such an irrational feeling.
“Ah, you are your mother’s daughter, willful and proud to the end.”
A grudging tone of admiration marked her father’s words. Clara’s mother had kept her existence from Father—and likewise had kept the truth from Clara as well—until she’d been on her deathbed. It had been a shock to discover the man she’d believed to be her father had not been her father at all. In the span of a week, Clara had been introduced to Jesse Whitney and had buried her mother. She’d struggled in the years since to forgive her mother for the wrongs she had committed, just as she’d struggled to fit into a world and a society that was utterly foreign to her. England simply was not and would never be home.
“I don’t like to compare myself to her. She had many sins I haven’t forgotten.” Clara stepped back from her father’s embrace and knew a moment of clarity as she met his eyes. Yes, she was very much like her mother after all, wasn’t she? Lying to preserve her own aims. When had she become so much like the woman she’d spent the past five years resenting?
“She was your mother,” her father said gently, his eyes glossier than usual. “She gave me you, and for that gift I’ll be forever grateful to her.”
Clara swallowed. Lord in heaven, she should just confess all to him now. Tell him the truth, wait for the anger she deserved. Could she have returned to Virginia by other means? Could she have convinced him to let her go, to grant her the marriage settlement free and clear, hers to use as she wished back home to aid her cause of gaining the vote?
“I’m not a good daughter.” The words escaped her in a rush. “I’ve not been kind to you or to Lady Bella. I don’t know how to be the daughter you both deserve, but you have Virginia, and I can only hope that my little sister will be a far better woman than I could ever hope to be.”
“You are a fine daughter,” her father corrected her, understanding and sweet now that the dye had been cast. This softer, gentler version of her father would perhaps have agreed to her wishes to return to Virginia, she thought. “A man could not ask for better.”
“Father,” she began, the remnants of what she needed to say lingering on her tongue.
“Lady Bella and I have happy news,” her father said at practically the same time, quashing any hope she’d entertained, however fleetingly, of unburdening herself.
“Happy news?” But of course she could already tell from the smile transforming his face just what that news was.
“Another little sister or brother for you, Clara,” he confirmed, grinning with pure happiness. “Lady Bella didn’t want me to tell you until after the wedding, but I couldn’t wait another moment. I’m so damn happy, sweetheart, so happy that my heart is near bursting with it. I want you to experience the same happiness for yourself. That is why I want you to rethink this hasty wedding to Ravenscroft. I’d hoped that this fortnight would prove to you that your feelings for him were a fleeting fancy. I wanted to believe that you’d call this nonsense off and find a man who deserves you.”
What could she say to that? She swallowed, tamping down the tears that threatened her vision. “I deserve a chance to be happy,” she said honestly, “and I do think I’ve found that, Father.”