Prologue
Hampshire, England
April, 1810
Claire struggled through the mud and rain, the sodden skirts of her gown sticking to her legs as she tromped up the drive toward Newsom Manor, the ancestral home of the Dukes of Bridgewater. Her boots squelched in the muck, pulling at her feet with every step, and she shaded her eyes against the pouring rain—an exercise in futility, as the water simply slipped straight through her fingers and down her face. It hadn’t been her choice to walk, but there wasn’t a conveyance in Havenwood that could have hoped to make the trek through the washed-out road, and so she’d been forced to go on foot.
Her hair, which had once been wound up and carefully pinned, had long since escaped its constraints to plaster itself to her neck and back. Her gown—the best she owned, which, in retrospect, was not saying too terribly much—was soaked straight through, and its hem had accumulated a great deal of sticky brown mud that even the pounding rain had not exorcised from the fabric. She had hoped to make a good first impression, but she knew she must look rather like a poor, destitute waif in some sort of wretched Gothic novel.
The Elizabethan manor house loomed before her, stark against the crackling grey sky, an ominous-looking structure full of towering gables and windows that reflected the storm, occasionally lit by the streaks of lightning that crashed across the sky, and peering down on her like judgmental eyes.
She scurried from beneath their watchful stare and into the shelter of the awning that guarded the front door, but she felt dwarfed even by that, and she shivered in the cold as she rapped her knuckles smartly against the solid mahogany, wondering if it could even be heard above the hollering storm.
A moment later the door opened, and a butler clad in clean, proper attire peered out at her. His face was disapproving, his nose long and tilted up in stuffy superiority, and his mouth settled into something just shy of a sneer as his gaze drifted over her bedraggled person.
“Servants go through the kitchens,” he said with a disdainful sniff.
“Wait!” she cried, jamming her boot into the door before he could snap it closed in her face. “I’m not a servant. I’ve come to see his lordship. The marquess, I mean to say,” she added, lest he think her such a lackwit that she couldn’t differentiate between the forms of address used for a duke versus a marquess.
And now hedidsneer, this pretentious butler, clearly wondering what business a woman who looked like her could have with his employer’s son. “And who might I say is calling?” he inquired icily.
Claire lifted her chin, sick unto death already of his condescension. “Hiswife,” she snapped in return. “The Marchioness of Leighton.”
At leastthathad given the butler pause. He blinked in surprise, his face shifting from self-assured superiority to shock and then back to resolved indifference so rapidly that Claire felt a touch of vertigo come over her. “His lordship is a bachelor,” he said.
“Oh, no, he isn’t,” Claire said fervently. “We married a week ago by special license.” By all rights theyshouldhave been on their honeymoon…but Gabriel had wanted an opportunity to break the news to his father in private, and to make arrangements before he had brought her home with him. He was only supposed to have been gone for a few hours—but that had come and gone days ago, and he had not returned for her as planned.
Something odd flashed across the butler’s face—perhaps the vague supposition that she was telling the truth—and at last he opened the door wide enough to admit her. “His lordship is not at home,” he said finally, his tone just the tiniest bit more respectful, as if he suspected his position might be in jeopardy if he dared be less than excruciatingly polite to her. “I will see if His Grace will receive you. Would you care to wait inside, Miss…?”
Claire ground her teeth together in aggravation. “Lady Leighton,” she said tightly. “And yes. I would.”
The butler sniffed. “Indeed.”
He left her in the foyer, his gimlet gaze suggesting there would be hell to pay if she were to even briefly entertain the thought of sullying his pristine rugs with the mud clinging to her gown and shoes.
Claire wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to quell the shivers that slipped down her spine. It was bad enough that she had to meet her father-in-law looking like a drowned cat. Where had Gabriel gone, if not home? She hadn’t wanted to present herself to the duke on her own, but at this juncture it couldn’t be helped. They were already married, after all. There was naught the duke could do about that, aside from cut Gabriel off—but Gabriel possessed a respectable income of his own, and he would not feel the loss of his father’s financial support.
Resounding footsteps approached, and a gentleman strode down the stairs. He had a commanding presence, but she supposed that a dukewould. He was tall and lean, and in him she saw the echoes of her husband. His hair, while shifting toward grey, still shared the same sleek chestnut hue as Gabriel’s. His eyes, rimmed by gold-framed spectacles, were the same sharp and shrewd green. He wore his consequence like a cloak draped over his shoulders. She could almost imagine it fluttering behind him as he approached.
“Who the devil are you?” he said, and his voice trembled through the foyer, clear and resounding, the commanding tone of a man accustomed to obeisance.
Claire forced herself to dip into a curtsey, her stiff limbs making such a motion unbearably awkward. “Your Grace,” she said, attempting pleasantness for the sake of family harmony. “It’s a pleasure to meet you at last. I am Lady Leighton,” she said. “Your son’s wife.”
For a moment the duke said nothing. He simply looked her over, and she had the unpleasant sensation that he regarded her as little more than an obnoxious insect to be crushed beneath the heel of his boot. “Is that what he told you?” he asked at last, his tone light and dismissive.
“It’s the truth,” she said, angling her chin up. “We were married a week ago.”
Something approximating a snicker issued forth from his lips. “I suppose you’ve got a license as proof of your claim? A special license, perhaps—although they are both costly and time-consuming to obtain.” His tone, dripping with derision, suggested he thought her a fool and more. The insinuation in the duke’s voice had Claire clamping her lips together against a furious retort.
Another laugh, and it was sly and soft and it curdled something inside of her. “My dear,” the duke sighed. “You’ve been had. Andhadas well, I would guess.”
Claire stiffened, her cheeks burning with outraged dignity.
But the duke continued, “I’m sorry to say you would not be the first maiden my son has deflowered with the promise of marriage.” He sighed and shook his head, as if lamenting the situation. “It’s just as likely you won’t be the last.”
“That’s—that’s not true,” Claire said, nausea churning in her gut. “Gabriel loves me. We’re—we’re married. I’m hiswife.”
The duke shook his head. “You’re his mistress at best,” he said, drawing the word out in cruel sibilance. “It’s easy enough to forge a license, to fool an innocent young girl into the fiction of marriage for the purposes of seduction.”
