“Or a woman’s head,” Clara drawled, smiling sweetly.
Well, hell. His little dove never ceased to surprise him. Julian grinned, feeling the weight that had been heavy upon his chest suddenly disperse. “Good evening, Your Grace,” he said in his most dismissive tones. “Lord Ashburn.”
And then he whisked Clara away from the tawdry pair, giving them the cut. “Well done,” he congratulated his betrothed in quiet tones as he escorted her out of the fray.
“An acquaintance of yours?”
“Former,” he acknowledged, a trace of the old bitterness creeping into his voice. “I’m sorry, Clara, for the insult paid you. I’d have avoided it if I could have.”
“She still seems smitten with you, but she is not a nice woman, my lord. I wouldn’t consort with her ilk if I were you,” she startled him by saying. “You can do far better than her sort.”
He was bemused by her pronouncement, declared to him as he led her through the seemingly endless crush of the ballroom where anyone could overhear. This girl either didn’t have an inkling of proper decorum, or she didn’t give two shites. He rather suspected it was the latter rather than the former. No one had ever told himhecould do better. No one but this petite, feisty American wearing an outlandishly tight midnight-blue gown that showed her waist and bosom to perfection. Damn, but she was lovely. And cheeky. And she’d bested Lottie. Hell, she’d even defended him, and he doubted she’d ever met a more debauched voluptuary than he.
Moreover, she was right. He could do better than Lottie, a woman who had professed to love him all while fucking at least two other men at the same time. Christ, but he’d been stupid. How he had trusted and believed in a woman like the Duchess of Argylle was a mystery to him now. Foolishness mixed with drink, no doubt.
“Of course I can do better than her sort,” he told Clara, placing his hand over hers on the crook of his elbow for just a moment before removing it, lest it be remarked upon by anyone. “I’ve already found her. Or perhaps, to be more apt, she found me.”
“Don’t forget you cannot keep her,” she reminded him beneath her breath, shooting him a sideways glance that just about undid him.
He was bloody well keeping her at his side and in his bed. Never had he been more certain of anything in his entire, admittedly misbegotten life. But he very wisely kept that to himself as he caught sight of Clara’s protective stepmother and steered her back into safe waters.
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.”
