“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.”
lara stared at the carriage awaiting her,the knot of dread within her growing ever more intricate and insistent. Beyond, the standard bustle of the outdoors was as familiar as ever. Carriages, horses, clattering, thumping, creaking, a cacophony of smells and sounds. The London fog had decided to reassert itself with a sudden vengeance, and it cloaked the tops of the elegant mansions lining the street and fell about everyone’s shoulders like a cloying ghost that couldn’t be escaped.
