For all of Gwanton’s accusations, Clio felt that she actually showed aremarkablesense of decorum when she didn’t punch him in the face for the insult to her family—to her cousin Hugh’s gambling hell, or to the (admittedly somewhat scandalous) pasts that her sister by marriage, Phoebe, or her cousin, Helen, had experienced prior to each wedding their respective spouses.
If she had been a gentleman, she would have hit him.
Hell, she was showing more decorum than Gwanton himself, given his hideous insults.
“If we are so disgusting and fallen,” she asked, her fists clenched at her sides, “then why, pray tell, did you wish so vehemently to marry into our polluted ranks?”
Because Gwanton’s desperate grabs for her attention had indeed gone so far that, the night prior, he’d practically cornered her on the way out of the small dining room provided for the ship’s first-class passengers—and asked her to marry him.
Well, calling itaskinggave the man far too much credit. He had moretoldher that marrying him was the very best offer she was likely to get, and since she was already such an ancient spinster, not to mention one bearing the stink of Continental excess on her, she really should just agree to be his wife before she became the laughingstock of theton.
She’d held her temper then, too. She had beenpolitewhen she’d told him that, no, thank you, she would have to decline that charitable suggestion.
He had returned this courtesy by calling her a slattern and stomping away.
It really was beyond remarkable that he had the nerve to comment onherdecorum, given it all.
Gwanton sputtered.
“I was merely making an offer out of charity!” he all but shouted. There had been perhaps a dozen first-class passengers aboard this trip back to London, and they all seemed to be listening now, even the German family who, as far as Clio knew, didn’t speak a word of English.
If Clio occasionally lost her head to temper, Letitia was as cool and unruffled as a person could be. So, it was a telling sign of how intensely outrageous Gwanton really was that Letitia heaved an exasperated sigh.
“Could we please just disembark?” she implored. “Look, they’re lowering the ramp. We can leave and just forget this.”
“I do not need charity from a man so stupid that he thinks himself liable to gain a lady’s regard by insulting her at every turn,” she snapped. “I would never lower myself to accept aid from someone who thinks he will rise in Society by denigrating some of its most powerful members. And I would never seek assistance from the likes ofyou—” She waved a hand at him, encompassing the whole of his person. “—given that you are just so very disagreeable as a human being.”
From the crowd of listeners came a scandalized little laugh, and someone began muttering in German, as though translating.
“Please move along,” Letitia said to the onlookers. “We have docked, and you may now disembark.”
“I have matters very much in hand, Letitia,” Clio whispered.
“The only thing,” Gwanton spat, “that you have in hand is your family’s determination to disgrace your name and ruin your reputations!”
Clio let her smile get a little bit sharper.
“What you calldisgraceshould be more appropriately termedlove. Orhappiness. I assume you are unfamiliar with these words, given …” She trailed off meaningfully, waving a hand to encompass all of Gwanton’s person. “But it is likely the rarest phenomenon in London. In that regard, my family is rich far beyond what monetary wealth or status could confer upon us.”
“And yet you,” Gwanton returned, “are a stuck-up strumpet who thinks herself too good for a man who comes to her with an open heart and honest intentions.”
Clio couldn’t resist scoffing.
“If that man is you?” she asked. “Yes. I amcertainlytoo good for the likes of you.”
A toad would be too good for the likes of you, she thought … though she feared that, if she said it out loud, she’d give poor Letitia an apoplexy.
Gwanton puffed himself up in a way that made Clio regret letting the toad comparison slip by her.
“I should bar you from leaving this ship,” he said, self-importance coming off him in waves. “That way, you will be forced to return to the Continent, where you cannot pollute good English Society like the rest of the fecund little sluts that your kinsmen tupped.”
Clio didn’t really think that her reaction was unwarranted. She’d dealt with an awful lot from Gwanton, after all. The days of unwanted advances. The terrible proposal. And the insults. All the bloody insults.
But she wouldnothear such slander about the women in her family, who were absolutely lovely, had brought so much joy to the Lightholder family tree, and who had made the family better in every single way.
Thus, she recalled what her cousin Hugh had once taught her, balled up her fist without tucking her thumb, reared back, pivoted from her hip?—
And punched Gwanton directly in his bulbous nose.
