“That will not be necessary. I will be quite safe on my own.”
“Please. I insist.”
She stood silently, looking much like a little girl caught doing something naughty.
“Do you have your carriage here?” he asked.
“No.” The answer came after a long pause. She bit her lower lip.
“A hackney again?” He glanced up and down the street. “Does he live near here? Your friend, I mean.”
“There is no friend. Not the way you insinuate.”
“Of course not.”
“I am serious.”
“Please understand that I am not shocked. I am half French, after all. I do not mind. I merely request that you end it.” He lied smoothly. He did mind. Any man would once he set his sights on a woman.
“A request, is it?”
“I am being polite. A request for now. Eventually, of course, it will have to be a command.”
Her eyes blazed. Hell, she was exciting when she was angry. Just as well, since he expected she would be angry often.
“You are deliberately provoking me, I think,” she said.
“I promise to stop if you agree to a short visit to the park. We will keep the landau open so you will not worry about me imposing. Then I will bring you home.”
“And if I refuse your offer?”
“I will probably follow you around, asking indiscreet questions about your mysterious doings in this area of town.”
She heaved a sigh of exasperation. She removed a pocket watch from her reticule. “There will be hardly anyone at Hyde Park at this hour. Let’s take a turn there, if we must. A very short visit, please. I have an appointment this afternoon.”
“More mysterious doings? How intriguing you are.” He offered his arm. She did not take it. Together they walked to his carriage.
* * *
The Duke of Stratton was becoming a serious inconvenience. Part of the joy of being an older woman known to be uninterested in marriage was that people tended not to notice what she did. Clara had enjoyed that freedom even before her father’s death and now did so even more because she occupied Gifford House alone.
Stratton’s curiosity about her complicated that. Now here she was, sitting in his carriage when she should have been visiting the decorator she had hired to make some changes at her house on Bedford Square. Since no one knew about the house, she could hardly have the duke trailing her there.
She did not care for how he maneuvered her into spending this time with him. She resented that he had won a little contest.
“Do you prefer town? You spend a good deal of time here,” he said once they were seated across from each other and the coachman had opened the carriage to the air.
From anyone else she would think it small talk. From this man, she heard an intrusive question. “I like both town and the country. I spend time in both places. However, after all the months at Hickory Grange after my father’s funeral, it was time to see some friends here and dip one foot into society again.” Even as she said it, she worried that she gave him too much information.
“Your bluestocking friends?”
“Yes.”
“What do you do when you are not talking letters with them?”
“If I told you, I would no longer be intriguing and mysterious.”
It was a mistake to say that. She knew it as soon as she said it. His dark eyes settled on her, amused and too confident that he saw more than she wanted. That gaze unsettled her. She found it stark, almost naked, in its demand for her attention. It implied intimacies of the spirit that she did not want to have or acknowledge.
