Chapter Three
Adam handed his hat and crop to the servant at the door of White’s. He strode through the club’s salon.
Glances shot his way. Heads bowed to each other. Enough silence fell that he heard the low buzz of whispers.
He proceeded on, nodding acknowledgments to men who could not resist looking more directly. A few returned smiles far too hearty for casual acquaintances.
He exited the salon through a door at its end and sought the back stairs to the second level.
“Sir, I am afraid that all of the chambers are in use.” The servant’s gentle rebuke caught him halfway up the stairs.
He turned. The servant saw his face and flushed. “My apologies, Your Grace. I did not realize it was you. Welcome back, sir.”
“They are above, I assume.”
The servant nodded. Adam climbed to the landing.
Sounds came from behind one of the doors. Male voices, and laughter. He pressed the latch and walked in.
Two men stared at him, struck mute with surprise.
“Hell,” one of them finally muttered. “Brentworth here speculated that you might show up today, but I told him you would never come.”
“Then he was right, Langford, and you were wrong.” Adam threw himself into a chair and looked around. “It appears not much has changed.”
“Very little.” Gabriel St. James, Duke of Langford, threw him a cigar. He grinned with delight and his blue eyes sparkled. “Damn, but it is good to see you. Word was you came back a month ago. Where have you been?”
“Getting my affairs in order. Examining the estate books.” He reached for a candle and held it to his cigar. “Sacking the steward who was robbing me. That sort of thing.”
He had been doing a few other things too. One had been investigating a woman named Clara Cheswick. He had learned some things about her that only piqued his interest all the more.
“In the country, then. No wonder the only indication of your return has been the gossip and rumors.” Eric Marshall, Duke of Brentworth, got up to get the whiskey decanter. He came over with a glass, poured Adam some, then topped off his own glass and that of Langford. No grin from him, but only a subdued smile on his severely chiseled face. No sparkle in his dark eyes, either, but rather deep scrutiny.
Both men were the epitome of fashion, but in ways as different as their demeanors. The amiable Langford’s cropped curls always looked as if he had just been in a wind, while the more serious Brentworth’s locks never dared such exuberance. Langford wore a casually tied dark cravat this evening, while Brentworth’s white linen neckpiece appeared as if his valet had starched it five minutes ago.
It was not that Brentworth lacked spirit or was a slave to convention compared to Langford. Rather he prized discretion and did not flout either his appetites or thinking. The same could not be said for Langford.
Adam appreciated how his two friends performed the old rituals and took his return in stride. He had not missed that the chair he sat in—his usual chair—had not been in use by either of them, despite its proximity to the comforting low fire. He sipped some whiskey and puffed on the cigar and allowed nostalgia and familiarity to seep through him. He had been back in England for over a month, but right now he finally felt he had come home.
“What kind of rumors and gossip?” he asked, allowing the last comment to penetrate his peace.
His friends exchanged hooded glances. “While you were gone, your reputation visited England, even if you did not,” Brentworth said.
“You mean the duels.”
“One is understandable for any gentleman. Two might be excused. Three, however . . .” Langford said.
“No man in the salon below would have allowed any of those insults to his family to stand unchallenged. I did what anyone would do.”
“Of course, of course,” Langford soothed. “The question, however, is whether you have now returned to do it here as well. There are some fellows who are remembering every small slight they may have given you, and any whispered criticism of you or your family. I am sure that within a few weeks, once you are back in society and spreading your charm, that will all be forgotten.”
“It may be better if it is not.”
That took Langford aback. “You cannot want to be thought of as dangerous. No one will treat you honestly.”
“If being seen as dangerous keeps stupid men from saying stupid things that force my hand in the name of honor, then let them think me dangerous.” He set down his glass by way of ending that line of talk. “I am glad I found you both here.”
“Where else would we be on the first Thursday evening of the month?” Brentworth said. “As it was in the beginning, so it still is. You may have abandoned us, but we are still the Decadent Dukes Society.”
Adam smiled. The three of them had been youths at school when they gave themselves that name. All heirs to dukedoms, they had formed a bond at once. The school set them apart, and the other boys did too. They had all learned fast that the only person who would treat a duke normally was another duke. Thus a long and fast friendship had formed.
This chamber, and its monthly meetings, began once they all left university and came to town to enjoy their privileges. For a long while the Decadent Dukes Society had been more than a clever title made up by schoolboys. Many times they met here but soon left to go and explore just how decadent they could be.
Langford had found his second calling in those debauches. A way of life. Decent families only received him now because he was a duke, although his considerable charm might have bought him a few reprieves in any case.
Brentworth, on the other hand, had outgrown such excess first, at least regarding behavior others might see or report. It was one more example of how he managed without effort to be the public’s notion of a duke, in appearance and demeanor. Superior, arrogant, and confident in his privileges, he towered over the world in both stature and aloofness. Adam did not mind just how ducal this one friend had become. He knew Brentworth well enough to comprehend how different the man truly was from his public persona.
“So why did you return?” Brentworth asked. “After so many years, I assumed you never would.”
“I would like to say that I merely concluded it was time, but it was not that simple. The French government also decided it was time. Complaints were made, and as a result the king also decided it was time. I received a summons to court.”
Langford laughed. “How old-fashioned. Almost charming.”
“Since it was in the king’s own hand, and things were getting a little warm in France—well, here I am.”
“Have you attended on him yet?” Langford asked.
“As soon as I arrived. We drank a good deal of wine together. He asked about the ladies in Paris. I might have been gone on a grand tour, it remained so friendly and chatty.”
“So your English half responded to the command of your English king,” Brentworth said. “If not for that—was it in fact time?”
“Yes.” And it had been. The fury that drove him away had finally eased over a year ago, replaced by more deliberate thoughts, and acknowledgment of his obligations. There were duties that could not be forever conducted long distance from France. One in particular.
“It is good that you finally came up to town,” Langford said. “We will go and have some new coats made for you tomorrow. A trip to a hairdresser might be in order too. You can’t go around looking like one of those French counts who seduce widows to their eternal regret.”
“A few were not so regretful, as I recall.” Adam gazed down at his frock coat. Cut in the French manner, a bit longer and tighter than English fashions, it probably did make him look foreign.
“We will get drunk and you can tell me about them and make me envious,” Langford said.
“Unless something has indeed changed, there is little I can tell you about widows.”
“So, what are your plans?” Brentworth asked.
“I expect that my plans are much like yours now. Tend my estate. Vote in Parliament. As I said, the usual sort of things.”
“That is all?” Brentworth asked. “You leave England and stay away almost five years, and upon your return all you want is to be a country gentleman who comes to town for the sessions?”
“I intend to find a rich and lusty wife too. It is also time to marry.”
“Speak for yourself,” Langford said.
“Ignore him,” Brentworth said. “There are two mammas who have Langford squarely in their sights, and he is running out of places to hide. Unfortunately, it is doubtful either girl is lusty enough, or I am sure he would gladly hand one over to you.”
“If there are two, he should send one in your direction,” Adam said. Oddly enough, mothers almost never targeted Brentworth. Rumor had it that he terrified ingénues so much that their mothers looked elsewhere. “As for the lusty enough part, have you found out yet, Langford?”
Langford laughed. “Perhaps in France all kinds of explorations are made on the subject when it comes to girls, but lest you forget, here in England we just hope for the best and almost never get it.”
Being half French, Adam found the strangled sensuality that had plagued the English these last few decades both odd and curious. It was as if mothers and grandmothers had all convened a conference early in the war and decided that, in the name of rejecting all things French, their daughters should not have as much fun as they had enjoyed in their own youth.
A stillness fell in the chamber. He looked up to see Brentworth eyeing him, and not kindly.
“Say it,” Adam demanded.
“Hell, yes, I’ll say it—”
“Leave it alone, Brentworth,” Langford urged.
“No, I insist,” Adam said.
Brentworth stood and went to the whiskey decanter again. He took long enough there that Adam thought perhaps the rancor had passed, or been swallowed for now.
Brentworth abruptly turned on him. “I understand that you were grieving. I understand that there were things being said that were—scurrilous and damaging and—”
Adam bolted to his feet and hurled his glass into the fire. Flames jumped. “Scurrilous and damaging? He killed himself because of it!”
“I know that. But you never spoke to us. You never allowed us to help. You just disappeared with your mother without a word, and there has been no word since, and you walk in here as if the last years never happened. Hell, Stratton, we have all been friends for years and you acted as if the two of us were lined up against your family.”
“I never thought that.”
“The hell you didn’t.”
Langford shook his head. “Sit down, both of you. I have told you before, Brentworth, that under the circumstances, whatever he did was a choice made in anger and grief. Who knows how you or I would have acted?” He offered Adam a smile of—what? Forgiveness? “You do not have to explain anything to us.”
Except he did. Brentworth was right. He had turned his back on everyone and everything in his anger. He could not leave England fast enough. Not because of the implied disgrace behind his father’s death, and not because he could not trust anyone.
“I left as I did because if I had not, I would have surely killed someone out of rage, without even knowing whether I blamed the right person.”
Brentworth sank back into his chair. Neither friend’s gaze met his for a long time.
“And do you know now? If you blamed the right person?” Brentworth asked.
“Not yet.”
Langford tapped the ash off his cigar. “An interesting answer. I guess now we know why he has really come back, don’t we, Brentworth?”
* * *
Clara quickly read her morning mail while eating breakfast in Gifford House, the family’s London home. Two letters in particular received very brief attention.
Her grandmother had written a scold. I am told that you have refused to receive Stratton twice since you went up to London ten days ago. I must insist that you cease such provocations.
Theo’s letter said much the same thing. We are unlikely to make progress with Stratton if you continue insulting him. Think of Emilia’s future. Think of mine. Surely you can find a modicum of gentility where he is concerned.
She was thinking of Emilia’s future. And the family’s. This whole idea of bridging the divide between her family’s and Stratton’s struck her as ill-advised and disloyal. Let them try it if they wanted to, but she was not going to cooperate. Grandmamma knew that. It was why no one had told her about this plan before embarking on it.
Donning her pelisse and her bonnet, she lifted a wrapped package and descended to the reception hall. Eschewing the family carriages, she told a footman to get her a hackney.
She took some air on the portico while she waited. Unfortunately, while she did, a carriage pulled into the drive. She cursed under her breath.
Stratton again. And here she was in plain view. She could hardly have the butler tell him she was not at home.
On the other hand, it should be obvious she was leaving. A few polite words and he would be on his way.
The duke stepped out of his carriage and approached her. After a greeting, he stopped with one foot on the lowest step of the portico and eyed her.
“You go out a great deal.”
“I may be in mourning, but I am not dead.”
He gestured to his carriage. “Allow me to take you to your destination.”
“Very kind of you, but my carriage is on its way.”
“It may be some time before it arrives.”
Indeed it might. With an inward groan of resignation, she turned to the house. “Since you have called on me, let us go inside and have a proper visit while I wait.”
She led the way into the house and deposited her package in a footman’s hands. Up the stairs she led the duke, and into the drawing room.
She perched herself on a chair and hoped she appeared at least half as formidable as her grandmother.
The duke took a seat in the chair closest to hers and settled in comfortably. His hair had been styled since she last saw him on that hill. His now disheveled cropped locks brought more attention to his liquid dark eyes and to that sensual mouth and hard jaw.
“It is kind of you to receive me, Lady Clara.”
“Since you saw fit to report to my family that I did not receive you previously, I now feel obligated to pretend I am amenable to this inexplicable desire of theirs to form a friendship with you.”
“You are a very direct woman.”
“You are a most persistent man.”
“Persistence in man is a virtue, while directness in a woman—”
“Is a nuisance. Which begs the question of why you have bothered being so persistent with this nuisance of a woman.”
“That is an excellent question. If you had seen me on my first call, by now you would have a full understanding of my intentions.”
What an odd way to put it. Whatever his intentions were.
“Perhaps you will enlighten me now, and quickly, so I can resume my own plans—plans which you have interrupted.”
He laughed quietly, as if at a private joke. “Your brother called you shrewish. I can see why.”
Shrewish? Why, that spoiled, disloyal boy. “I prefer being called direct. As a gentleman, I am sure you prefer that word too.”
“Of course. Allow me to be direct in turn, so you can be about your day’s business.” He leaned forward and set his arms on his knees. It brought his fine face quite close to her. “You know your grandmother’s plan to have me marry Lady Emilia.”
“I do.”
“I have decided to decline the offer.”
It was all she could do not to cheer with relief. Thank heavens someone in this sorry business was using some sense.
“I have decided that you will suit me, and the dowager’s plan, much better.”
A stillness rang in the chamber. It took a good long moment for her mind to absorb what he had said. Even then it sounded too bizarre to be accurate.
“Your sister is too young for me, and whatever settlement is offered with her, it will never be as good as a wife with her own property and income.”
Good heavens.
She gathered her wits, but it took some serious groping through her stunned reaction. “Have you even met Emilia?”
“No, but it does not signify. I am quite sure that while she is lovely, she is not the bride for me.”
“How can you say that when you have not even—”
“I know.”
“You had better know differently, and quickly, because I am not available instead.”
He sat back in his chair, not the least impressed by her definitive rejection. “It is understandable that you are surprised by my proposal. I am confident that you will come around, however.”
Too agitated to sit, she stood and glared at the presumptuous idiot. Regrettably that brought him up too. Instead of what had been a satisfactory staring down, she now had to look far up at a face that hovered over her own.
“I heard no proposal. I heard an edict. I cannot imagine what gives you cause to think I would obey it. You are the last man I would marry, should I marry at all. Indeed, my father would turn over in his grave if I even considered the idea. Now, sir, I thank you for your call, but I must be about my day’s business. Already I will be late.”
She pivoted and strode out of the drawing room and down the stairs. She retrieved her package from the footman and headed outside. She sensed the duke on her heels the entire way.
Her hackney coach waited behind the duke’s carriage.
He gazed hard at that hackney. “Why are you not using the family’s equipage?”
“I chose not to.” She descended the stone steps and aimed for her coach.
He walked alongside her. “You are going to a secret assignation, I assume. One that you prefer the family servants not know about. There is no other explanation for using a hackney instead of a family carriage.”
She truly wanted to hit him with her package for saying that within hearing of the footman waiting to hand her into the coach.
She settled herself on the seat while the footman closed the door. The duke rested his forearm on the window’s edge and waited while the servant walked away.
“I will not demand an explanation now,” he said. “However, if you are going to meet a man, that liaison must end immediately, now that we are engaged.”
She stuck her face to the window. “We. Are. Not. Engaged.” She was almost yelling by the end of it, but the coach had rolled away by then, and only the air heard her.
* * *
A half hour later Clara stood at a library’s desk in a house on Bedford Square. Spread out on the desk were stacks of papers and one blank sheet.
“I think we have enough for another issue of Parnassus, Althea,” she said. “We can talk to the pressmen this afternoon about the schedule.”
Althea bent her blond head over the stacks. She fingered one very small one. It consisted of the poems that their journal would publish. “You have included Mrs. Clark’s sonnet, I see. I am glad.”
Clara served as the anonymous publisher and benefactor of Parnassus. She had conceived the journal two years ago and begun building toward it at once. The first two issues had been fledgling efforts, but they garnered enough subscriptions to encourage her. Now, with her legacy, she could afford to attempt a regular schedule of publication.
Modeled on men’s journals, Parnassus contained political news as well as reviews of theater performances and travel memoirs. She liked to fill it with information and facts but allowed a few sharp thinkers like Althea to write essays. Feminine interests were hardly ignored. Clara loved fashion herself, and Parnassus included a column devoted to it.
The journal’s most distinctive feature was the mixture of writers. A viscountess and a baroness sometimes contributed, although the former used a pen name. However, Mrs. Clark was the widow of a merchant who now ran a millinery shop. Mrs. Clark had a gift for poetry that rang clear and honest and made no attempt to copy any other poet on earth.
Ladies of the ton, women of the City, mothers, sisters, and, yes, even bluestockings had subscribed. The secrecy of the project might have contributed to its success, she knew. The who and the where of Parnassus remained a tantalizing mystery.
Right now the where consisted of this house Clara had bought with her legacy, three months after her father’s death. Memories of him had filled her when she signed the deeds, along with profound gratitude that he had arranged for her to have her own property and substantial income and not be beholden to Theo in any way. Theirs had been a rare bond. In truth, he had treated her like a son. He had taught her to ride and shoot and even said once that he regretted she could not inherit his estate and title. Theo would never forgive her for how she received the best of their father’s love, she supposed.
She had mourned him deeply. Totally. The grief had undone her as nothing else ever had. She drowned in it to where she did not recognize herself. Finally, one day, she began to fight her way to the surface.
Parnassus had been her lifeline. Purchasing this house was her first clear step forward in her life. The journal’s needs forced her to visit London periodically too. Until now those visits had been brief but now, at six months after his passing, she finally had resumed lengthier ones.
“The fashion article has not yet come in from Lady Grace,” Althea mentioned.
Lady Grace Bidwell was the most recent addition to the contributors. The sister of an earl, she had never married. Clara felt a natural affinity for her, and Lady Grace had a clear eye when it came to fashion.
“I will write her a reminder, but not wait forever.” Clara spoke with decisive firmness of the sort she had not long ago used on the Duke of Stratton, to little avail. That encounter kept invading her mind, and it soured her humor whenever it did. The more she thought about that proposal, the more outraged she became.
Althea turned her pretty blue eyes on Clara. A head shorter than Clara, and delicately boned, Althea had a presence that sometimes made Clara feel monstrous in comparison. Not that she was very tall herself, or stout. It was just that Althea was so exquisitely small. The widow of Captain Galbreath, an army officer, Althea lived with her brother, Sir Jonathan Polwarth, a baronet, and his wife. Althea had the life of a dependent relative now, the sort Clara’s father had saved her from with that legacy.
“You are out of temper today,” Althea said. “Is your brother annoying you again? Insisting you come back down to the country?”
“It is not that. Not entirely.” Clara was not given to confidences, but she did want to share some of the recent, strange occurrences in her life. Not the proposal. No one would ever learn about that. “Both Theo and my grandmother have gotten the idea in their heads to end a long feud our family has had with that of the Duke of Stratton.”
“I would think that is a good thing. Such long wars have little benefit.”
“Grandmother never does things simply because they are good things, Althea. She has a mind like a poacher’s trap, and her strategies would have put Napoleon to shame. She is determined, however, and Theo is as well. They even received him. My father always swore that Stratton would never darken his doorstep, but there he was.”
Althea began stacking the articles, sliding clean sheets between each one as she did. “On your doorstep here in town, at Gifford House? I have heard he came up recently.”
“Did you now?” It seemed a good way to avoid admitting he had indeed darkened her family’s doorway here in town.
“There has been some talk about him. You would not have heard it because you were sequestered at Hickory Grange for so long after your father passed, and were not here when he returned from France.”
Althea carried the big stack of papers over to another table and proceeded to wrap the whole thing in linen. Clara strolled in her wake.
“What sort of talk?”
Althea tied string around the thick package, finishing with a rustic bow. “Vague talk. The kind where you hear bits of things when you come upon people, but they stop talking once you are seen. Serious talk, from the looks of the dour faces. Whispered, secret talk. Mostly among those of our parents’ generation.”
“Surely those bits must have given you some idea of why he has garnered that kind of attention.”
Althea shrugged. “I believe I heard my brother refer to him as dangerous. Something about duels in France.”
“I heard about the duels. Theo told me. I think he fears if he does not sue for peace, Stratton will challenge him. What nonsense.”
“I also interfered with some talk about him in a drawing room after a small dinner party. The hostess could not contain herself despite ending mid-sentence. She mouthed a final word of whatever she had been saying to her confidante.”
“What word was that?”
“I am quite sure it was the word revenge. Now, if we are going to speak with the pressmen today, we should be on our way before it gets too late.”
They donned their pelisses and bonnets. Clara envied Althea her celadon green and lemon yellow ensemble. She did not resent wearing mourning clothes. She would wear them forever if that would honor her father. She did miss ensembles with more color and style, however, and sometimes plotted incredible excesses at the shops once she could dress fashionably again.
With the manuscripts firmly tucked in her arms, Clara joined Althea while they walked to a hackney stand around the corner from the square. Her nose all but itched from the tantalizing information Althea had just fed her. Stratton might be high-handed, annoying, and arrogant, but he had just become interesting too, especially to the publisher of a journal.
Revenge? About what? It seemed a few in London knew, but it was not gossip for general consumption.
Once in the hackney and on their way to the printer’s, Clara spoke her thoughts. “I find all of this provocative, Althea. If Stratton is bent on revenge, one wonders why and against whom. He is no ordinary man, after all. He is a duke. Who could have wronged a duke so badly that he seeks revenge? And to be considered dangerous . . . There is something very curious about all of this.”
“I suppose I could ask a few questions, to see if I can gather more than bits.”
“I will as well. Let us see what we can learn about this man. There may be a story for Parnassus in it.”
She neglected to mention that more information might enable her to end Stratton’s inexplicable and discourteous courtship too.