“I demand to see my daughter!”
The voice was near to Julian’s study now. Positively murderous. Osgood’s affronted, proper tones could be heard next. The sounds of a scuffle ensued.
“Jesus.” Julian stared at the woman in his arms, wondering if she had planned this. The stricken expression on her face suggested otherwise. “Never say you’re Whitney’s get?”
“What can he be doing here?” She shook her head, trying to make sense of the unwanted interruption. “How can he have known?”
The sound of a boot heel hitting his study door crashed into the silence between them. The door flew open, banging into the wall and sending plaster shards raining to the tired, old carpets. With a grim feeling settling in his chest, he set the girl behind him and faced his second unwanted visitor of the night.
Her furious papa.
This was a conundrum he found thoroughly distasteful. The Earl of Ravenscroft had committed a great many sins, but ruining an innocent—much less being discovered in the process by her irate sire—had never been one of them.
“Goddamn it, Ravenscroft! Unhand my daughter at once!” Jesse Whitney pulled a revolver from his jacket and took aim at Julian’s heart. “Step away from her, you son of a bitch.”
The sound of the hammer cocking echoed through the chamber, punctuating his demand with visceral effect.
Clara was almost afraid to peer from behind the Earl of Ravenscroft’s broad shoulder. He was a tall man, blotting out the sight of her furious father and the gun she’d heard him cock, shielding her state ofdishabillewith his large body. Lord have mercy, her father didn’t touch arms of any sort. Not since the war. She hadn’t even known he’d possessed a gun. Never mind making sense of the notion of her good-natured father whisking into the earl’s home prepared to commit murder.
“My lord!” The imperious butler she’d faced earlier now sounded rather breathless and concerned. “What would you have me do?”
“That will be all, Osgood.” The earl sounded remarkably unflappable for a man who had a gun pointed in his direction.
Her father wouldn’t harm Ravenscroft, would he? Clara stole a peek from behind the earl’s right arm. Her father’s expression revealed he was in a fine rage. She didn’t recall ever seeing him so angry, and she had certainly provided ample cause for that emotion in the past. Admittedly, she had not adapted well to life in London or to a father she’d spent most of her life without knowing.
“Clara.” Her father spotted her. “Has this miscreant done you any harm?”
“Of course not, Father.” Her unsteady fingers found her corset and struggled to tug it back into its proper place. She’d never button her tight-fitting bodice back up without her undergarments in order. The thought of her father witnessing the evidence of her wanton behavior with the earl was enough to make her feel ill. “Please, do calm down.”
“I object to your use of the term miscreant, Whitney,” the earl said in an indolent tone, as though he didn’t have a revolver pointed at him, a man’s finger on the trigger. “I’m a peer of the realm, you must realize.”
“We both know what you are, Ravenscroft.” Her father’s voice was dark, void of the irrational amusement the earl seemed to derive from the situation. “Now kindly get the hell away from my daughter so that I can take her home where she belongs.”
Clara longed for home, but home was not and never could be the Belgravia mansion where she lived with her father, stepmother, and their growing brood of children. It had been years since she’d last seen Virginia, her beloved homeland. After tonight, her chances to ever see it again were almost certainly dashed. Her father would lock her in her chamber until she agreed to marry the next florid duke in need of her marriage settlement.
“Afraid I’ll ruin her?” The earl’s voice was cocky. Goading. “Perhaps that’s already been done, old boy. I suppose you didn’t think of that in your haste, did you? My hands are quite quick, and I know my way around a lady’s skirts.”
She stilled in the unattainable feat of righting her corset and decided to simply do her buttons instead, just as quickly as her fingers could fly over the small fabric-covered discs. An almost feral sound emanated from her father, so great was his rage. Mercy, why would the earl say such a thing? Did he intend to ruin her thoroughly before rejecting her? He was unpredictable enough, perhaps even cruel enough, to enact such a misguided sense of retribution.
“If you touched her, I’ll put a bullet in your miserable hide. Don’t doubt that I will,” her father warned.
Clara settled the final button into place and stepped out from behind Ravenscroft, praying she didn’t look as thoroughly kissed and debauched as she felt. “Father, please do calm down.”
“I touched her.” Ravenscroft issued the statement conversationally, as though he were imparting a fascinatingon dit. “More than touched her, if you must know. Will you shoot me now, or wait to take a better aim? Will you shoot to maim, Whitney, or will you shoot to kill? The mind reels with the possibilities.”
Mad, Clara decided. The earl was, without question, utterly mad. She gawped at him. He was handsome and elegant, as cool and charming as he’d be in any ballroom. And yet, he had just admitted the unthinkable to her father, a man with the barrel of a firearm trained on his heart.
“You miserable cur.” Her father’s expression was filled with more rage than she’d imagined possible. He spared her a quick glance as if to ascertain that she had not been unduly physically harmed before pinning Ravenscroft with his glare once more. “Where I will shoot you depends a great deal on what you say and do next, Ravenscroft.”
Clara stepped in front of the earl, shielding him. If there was one thing she had come to know about her father, it was that he meant what he said. If he threatened the earl with bodily harm, he was deadly serious. And it was her fault that the earl faced the end of a Colt now, wasn’t it?
“Father, this is a dreadful misunderstanding. I’ll go with you. Please, do put the gun away. His lordship has done nothing wrong.” Not precisely true, that. But what could she expect from a man of his reputation when she had barged into his home alone? And she had been a more than willing participant.
“Step away from him, Clara.” Her father’s jaw clenched. He lowered the revolver to his side but didn’t seem inclined to holster it.
“Come, darling.” The earl sidestepped her and slid his arm around her waist, drawing her against him. “You needn’t defend me. The fault is all mine, is it not? It was I who asked you here. I who couldn’t wait another moment to have you in my arms.”
What in heaven’s name? Clara stared at his chiseled profile. He didn’t appear mad, rather the opposite in fact. He exuded an ease, a calm charm that was at odds with the situation. Did he think somehow to protect her by feigning culpability for her disastrous plan? If that was his aim, she had to put an end to it.
