“Indeed, we must.” She guided Clara to the sitting area, an uncomfortable set of gilt settees she found rather loathsome. “Do let us sit down.”
Clara sat on the edge of the cushion, folding her hands in her lap. “I suppose my father is angry.”
Her stepmother settled herself daintily. “He’s quite overset, as would any father in his position be. You can consider yourself most fortunate that your driver had a conscience and returned at once to unburden himself. Who knows what would have transpired if Jesse had not reached you when he did.”
So it was the new coachman she’d bribed with a hundred pound note who had been her undoing. The rascal. But now was not the time for ruminating. She had a feeling Lady Bella was being rather magnanimous in her description of what—if her father’s reaction last evening had been any indication—was his utter fury. “He nearly shot Lord Ravenscroft dead in his study, my lady. Did you know that?”
“I’m sure you’re being melodramatic, my dear. Your father would not murder a peer of the realm, regardless of the man’s crimes.” Bella paused, her expression growing strained. “Speaking of crimes, the reason for my visit this morning is to…ascertain the extent of the earl’s actions.”
Ah. Perhaps they feared Ravenscroft had forced himself upon her. He had not, of course, but he’d been no gentleman. She thought of the depraved things he’d said, the likes of which she’d never heard. The way he’d undone her buttons and kissed her until she’d felt as if she’d drunk too much wine. The way he’d sucked on her nipple straight through her chemise, fabric no barrier to his prurient ways. A sharp pang of yearning shot through her, startling her, making a new ache settle between her thighs.
Her cheeks went hot. She shifted and focused on settling her skirts into place. “I would prefer not to speak of it, my lady.”
“But you must.” Her stepmother’s tone was soft, almost pitying. “Did Lord Ravenscroft hurt you, Clara?”
Shocked her? Yes. Done wicked things to her body? Yes. Hurt her, however, he had not. “Why, no. Of course he didn’t.”
“He didn’t force you?”
“No.”
“You understand that there’s no shame if he did, do you not? Be honest with me, dear heart. The law does not allow the misuse of innocents, and we shan’t hesitate to prosecute the earl should it be necessary.”
Lord in heaven, did everyone think the earl so evil that he’d force a woman? He must possess some redeeming quality, something to which she could cling for the short time she’d be his wife.
“The earl didn’t force me,” she repeated. There would be no hauling Ravenscroft off to some dank prison cell, even if she did have a deeply troubled conscience over the wisdom of her decision.
“Did you lie with him?”
Clara’s cheeks went hotter still. Lord have mercy, she hadn’t anticipated such direct questioning. “I do believe his lordship has compromised me.”
She didn’t want to fib to her stepmother. When Clara first met Lady Bella, they had clashed horridly. Clara had been young, newly motherless, and fresh on the shore of a strange land where she’d been brought to live by a father she scarcely knew. But Bella had been firm and kind and caring. She’d earned Clara’s respect.
Her stepmother pressed a hand to her heart now as if it pained her. “Oh, dearest girl. I know you love your scrapes but this time you’ve gone much too far. You cannot recover from this without marrying Ravenscroft.”
“I wish to marry him, my lady.” If only she could speak the words with more conviction. Marrying him would get her what she wanted, after all. She thought of the rolling hills of Virginia, the beauty of her home. How she missed it. She didn’t belong here in this stilted, aristocratic society laden with titles and rigid custom. She was a Virginian by birth and by nature.
“You don’t even know him.” Bella appeared to consider her next words with care. “Are you aware that he has a…certain reputation?”
“I too have a past, my lady. I’ll not judge him.”
“Others do, however. You may not be welcomed at certain homes as his wife, Clara. He is an earl, but his reputation is quite black.”
Irredeemable, or so her good friend Bo had claimed. It was part of her reasoning in choosing him. A man with such a dark past had nothing left to lose. But his past and his repute didn’t matter to Clara other than that they made him an ideal candidate for her plan. After all, she hardly intended to be his wife for long.
Bella’s gaze was earnest upon her. Clara tamped down her guilt. She was doing what she must. Her father had told her he refused to allow her to return home on her own, and that he would withhold all monies he intended to settle on her so that she could not leave England upon reaching her majority. He’d forced her into it, really, with his stubbornness.
She forced a sunny smile to her lips. “Never fear. Virginia ladies are made of stern stuff. I’m sure I shall manage life as Lady Ravenscroft with aplomb.”
Her stepmother frowned, her expression akin to that of a woman watching her loved one board a canoe with a hole in it for a voyage across the Atlantic. “I certainly hope you are made of the sternest stuff, my dear. For you shall need to be if you marry the Earl of Ravenscroft.”
There had to be worse fates. She thought of his sinful mouth, his beautiful face, his lean and hard body. And then she thought about the real him, the Bowie knife and rattler. An unwanted shiver stole down her spine.
Julian’s sisters sat before him in the same study where he’d so recently defiled his bride-to-be. They’d been summoned from their impeccably proper aunt’s home, where they’d been staying lest his reputation taint them, for the purpose of his grand announcement.
He loved his sisters, and the latest mark upon his soul was partially down to that fine emotion. He wanted to see them happy, wed to decent men, gaggles of children about their skirts one day. They deserved everything good, sweetness and light, this lovely pair of innocents.
Alexandra and Josephine. Just three years apart in birth, they were marked opposites in all ways aside from their age. Alexandra had fiery red curls and stood almost as tall as Julian. Handsome rather than beautiful, she was without doubt the issue of their mother’s affair with a hulking, redheaded Scottish groomsman on their country estate. Josephine was petite and dark-haired, fine-boned and exquisite in appearance, almost certainly not their father’s daughter either but her lineage was rather more muddled, given their mother’s dozen flings in the last year of her life. She’d died shortly after giving birth to little Jo. Julian still recalled looking down at the red-faced, mewling infant and hating her for taking their mother away. Seventeen years had not faded the memory.
