Dukes Prefer Blondes

by Loretta Chase

  They went on to fantasize about a newly married lady’s walking dresses and morning dresses, dinner dresses and opera dresses, and everything that went on over and under them. Clara tried to rein them in, but soon gave up, because she knew they were right. As usual.

  They’d achieved their success because they understood the haut ton perfectly. Yes, it would cost Papa, but he never fussed about dressmakers’ bills and such. More important, as they said, an elegant set of clothes would bolster Radford’s status and quiet malicious tongues.

  The rest of the marriage was up to her and Radford.

  Woodley Building

  Monday 26 October

  I trust you’ve thought about where you’ll live,” Westcott said.

  Radford hadn’t had time to think about anything practical. He’d barely been able to carry on his lawyerly duties. His fight for Lady Clara was all he’d thought about.

  Immediately after the Trial of Raven Radford, he’d ridden out to Richmond, to report to his parents. He hadn’t told his father about the trial previously, concerned it would infuriate him: his son having to defend himself to a pair of spoiled aristocrats! Now, though, he took the entire tale in high good humor. His mother said she was pleased, but she’d looked a little troubled.

  Buoyed by triumph, he’d told himself the two sets of parents would meet soon, and the odds were in favor of personal acquaintance overcoming many of the social barriers. His father was a gentleman, his mother a wellborn lady. No stickler could possibly find fault with their manners. Well . . . Father could be brusque and rude, but so could any number of noblemen, especially those of advanced age.

  And considering his father’s advanced age and infirmity, Radford didn’t think anybody would be so unreasonable as to object to the marriage taking place in Richmond. And the honeymoon, too, for that matter. A bridal trip at this time of year wasn’t wise. Given his current legal responsibilities, it was out of the question.

  For the time being, he and Clara would reside in the first floor wing of Ithaca House. His parents had essentially abandoned this part of the house as Father grew too frail to stir much beyond the library and the occasional, very slow, walk in the garden.

  Everything had looked so rosy then.

  Now, not seventy-­two hours after he’d obtained Lord Warford’s consent, reality crept in, like the chill fog slinking over London and seeping through every available crack and crevice. It slithered into Westcott’s office and mingled with the smoke from the fire to make a sickly yellow indoor haze.

  Westcott sat near the fire. Yet another letter from Bernard in his hand, Radford had taken up his post at the window to gaze down at the churchyard. Fog swirled round the gravestones.

  “I know Clara’s parents will want her to live in a suitably fashionable, and therefore extortionate, neighborhood,” he said. He thought this an idiotic use of her dowry, immense as it was.

  “Nobody’s using the ducal town house at present,” Westcott said. “Or for the foreseeable future.”

  Malvern House had been let until a year ago, but the lessees hadn’t renewed. Typically, Bernard hadn’t charged anybody with finding new tenants.

  “Bernard’s next wife might have something to say in that regard.” The letter Radford held contained, along with the usual trials and tribulations, three pages describing a young lady Bernard had met recently at a dinner party in nearby Ashperton. Apparently, she hadn’t run away or gagged at Bernard’s clumsy advances, because Bernard intended to court her. “She has good hips for breeding,” he wrote, “and she’s the only girl in a family of males. I’ll get half a dozen sons on her, and you are out of a dukedom, little Raven. Ha ha.”

  Radford did not feel sorry for the girl, whoever she was. Bernard couldn’t pretend to be anything but what he was. He wasn’t clever enough, and there was no disguising his whalelike physique. If she could stomach the sight of him at dinner, slurping up food like a pig, or the sight of him after dinner, drunk and even more oafish than usual, then she must be either excessively charitable or excessively determined to be a duchess. Either way, she was welcome to him.

  The important thing was, Bernard’s next duchess would not be Clara.

  “Do you think he’ll marry the girl?” Westcott said.

  “She’s near at hand, she’s young and pretty, and she comes of good breeding stock,” Radford said. “If she or her parents had discouraged him, he’d have said so, and abused her looks and family, rather than boasting about them. Yes, he’ll marry her—­before the year is out, I predict.”

  “But he won’t want to live in London, and if he wants to breed sons, he’ll keep her at Glynnor Castle.”

  “Unless she’s very persuasive,” he said. “In any event, I’d rather not ask him for favors, even for Lady Clara.”

  She’d remain Lady Clara after they were wed, taking his surname but retaining her title and her precedence. She would remain who she was, a lady bred to be the wife of a nobleman of the highest rank.

  How the devil was he to make two lives, so separate in so many ways, fit together?

  Sophy did as she’d promised, painting the engagement in glowing terms in the pages of Foxe’s Morning Spectacle, for which she wrote anonymously. Like everybody else, Lady Warford read this publication devotedly. Unlike most others, she knew the anonymous writer was her daughter-­in-­law. While neither intellectual nor literary, her ladyship understood the way Society’s mind worked. It took her no time at all to see how brilliantly Sophy had managed the debacle. She’d presented the humiliating engagement as a triumph. Thanks to her, unwed young ladies would envy Lady Clara and their mothers would envy Clara’s mother—­or at least wonder what she knew about her prospective son-­in-­law that nobody else did.

  Lady Warford not only decided that she loved her daughter-­in-­law more than she’d realized, but absorbed the lesson as well. She began to crow about the engagement as though it were a great coup she’d personally engineered.

  She went so far as to share her pretend rapture with the King and Queen—­and was shocked (though not visibly) to learn they held Mr. Radford in some regard, even if at times the King, once a naval commander, had expressed a wish to hang him from the yardarm.

  “Brilliant fellow,” His Majesty said. “But he can be damned irritating.”

  “I believe Lady Clara is up to his weight,” said Her Majesty.

  “No doubt about it,” said the King. “Lucky fellow, indeed. With such a wife, he’ll go far.”

  He did not add, “If nobody kills him first,” because that went without saying.

  Glowing with royal approval, Lady Warford was splendidly armed for her battle with Lady Bartham. Best of all weapons was the very great pleasure of apologizing for being unable to invite her friend to the nuptials, “as it is to be quite private, you know, for Mr. George Radford’s health is too fragile to endure crowds. We shall have only the immediate family . . . and a few ministers, as Warford’s position requires . . . oh, and the King and Queen have appointed certain members of the royal family to represent them, as Their Majesties’ schedule does not permit their personal attendance.”

  Within three days, the news had reached every quarter of London. By the fourth day, Radford had to dodge journalists on his way to and from the Temple; Tilsley got into fighting form evicting sellers of this, that, and the other thing indispensable to newlyweds; while Westcott saved on coal by burning mountains of business cards and brochures—­for household furnishings, “reasonably priced” town houses, staffing ser­vices, etc.

  Among the lowest of Raven Radford’s acquaintance, matters grew hot, too, as they argued and wagered about what this would mean for the criminal business. Some were sure he’d give up lawyering and become a gentleman, living on his wife’s immense dowry—­a fortune estimated at anywhere from ten thousand to five hundred thousand pounds, with bets covering the extremes and all point
s in between. Others said they’d have to pry his wig from his cold, dead skull before he gave up harassing “coves which was only trying to sweat out a living someway or t’other.”

  Jacob Freame wasn’t among those wagering or expressing opinions.

  A fever had struck him down not long after Chiver failed to fly. This was deadly from several angles. Both rivals and ambitious associates would be happy to help speed his way to the graveyard when he wasn’t in a condition to defend himself.

  But two of his boys stood by him, even after he took sick: Husher and Squirrel—­the latter one of the newer boys Chiver had named for his large front teeth, overfull cheeks, and sudden, darting way of moving. The two had helped Freame get away—­by boat. Though it was a hellish way for a sick man to travel, it was safer than the streets, where his enemies would recognize him.

  They took refuge in a hovel in one of the foulest neighborhoods along the river, where nobody who knew him would expect him to be. Everybody knew Jacob Freame lived high. He owned a carriage and horse, traveled in the first circles of London’s underworld, and lived in luxurious private rooms in one of Covent Garden’s better brothels.

  In his own world, in short, he was a celebrity.

  Among the river’s criminal population, he was nobody, and even the worst of them couldn’t be bothered to cut his throat, even if they wanted to come near a man dying of fever. Too, Husher was on guard, in case anybody got curious and foolhardy enough to come close.

  And so Freame got sicker and sicker and sicker and came to death’s door. But Death changed its mind at the last minute, and Freame came back to life in a pesthole, with no place to go and next to nothing to live on. His boys had run away and joined other gangs. Thinking him dead or as good as, rivals had taken over his businesses.

  And now . . .

  “He’s what?” he snarled, as Squirrel set a cracked bowl of slop in front of him.

  Squirrel and Husher spoke a version of English only others of their kind understood. Revised for ordinary comprehension, the exchange went like this:

  Squirrel said, “Raven’s getting hisself a wife. I heard it down Jack’s.”

  Husher nodded. “Me too.”

  Jack’s was a disreputable coffeehouse in Covent Garden.

  “You can hear anything down Jack’s,” Freame said. “Doesn’t mean it isn’t a steaming pile of shit.”

  “They was making bets on it,” Squirrel said. “On account she’s the Long Meg what beat Chiver and come to the house that time when he dropped off of the roof. On account she’s a nob. With diamonds as big as goose eggs, they say. And they’re going to live in a castle and he’s giving up the Old Bailey and going to be a gentleman.”

  “No, he won’t,” Freame said. “Not him, swanning with the nobs and chatting with the King and wearing diamond stickpins. Not him. He won’t be raising himself up after what he did to me.”

  Husher said, “What he done to Chiver, too. If it wasn’t for that Raven—­”

  “Chiver brought it on himself, the bloody fool,” Jacob said. “Who was it brought the whiny whoreson, that—­ What’s his name?”

  “Toby,” Squirrel said. “Toby Coppy.”

  “Him,” Jacob said. “Why am I sick, why am I ruined, but on account of Master Toby Coppy—­and that squeaking sister of his—­Betty or Biddy or—­”

  “Bridget,” Squirrel said.

  “Her—­prating and squawking, and bringing the quality to stick their noses in. But it’s all down to Raven, isn’t it? And he’s going to have sashes and velvet robes and crowns and such and rub elbows with princes and princesses? Ha!”

  Freame smiled now, a smile that made his boys tremble and enemies reach for their weapons or run away.

  “Oh, he’ll have a crown all right,” Freame said. “And I’ll crown him myself.”

  Squirrel and Husher looked at each other and smiled, too.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Let it be observed, that those who write in defence of marriage, usually give such sublime and exalted descriptions, as are not realized in one case of a thousand; and therefore cannot be a just motive to a considerate man.

  —­John Witherspoon, Letters on Marriage, 1834

  Ithaca House, Richmond

  20 November 1835

  Two princesses, two royal dukes and their wives, four members of the ministry and their wives, three slightly French more or less former dressmakers and their spouses: duke, marquess, and earl, in order of precedence. These, Radford’s groomsman Westcott, and what seemed to be thousands of Fairfaxes filled the drawing room of Ithaca House.

  While Radford knew each and every name, and could if required have recited them a week or a year hence, at the moment they were no more than a sea of hazy faces amid blobs of color.

  He couldn’t blame the fog on the previous night’s extended celebration with the aforesaid duke, marquess, and earl. He’d begun the celebrating already weary, after weeks of working long hours to keep up with his professional responsibilities and Bernard’s stream of pestering letters. Thanks to the duke, marquess, and earl’s notions of a proper bachelor’s party, Radford had enjoyed about two hours’ sleep. He decided that they, like so many others, had been trying to kill him, or at least make sure he didn’t make it to the wedding.

  The haze had nothing to do with any of this.

  It was what he saw at the entrance to the drawing room.

  Clara.

  His bride—­his bride—­on her father’s arm.

  A bride so beautiful, Radford’s inner self wept. And maybe a mist managed to escape from that secret inner chamber, to make his vision somewhat watery for a moment. But he blinked, and the mist cleared, and there she was, radiantly beautiful, a sun goddess shedding golden light upon the mundane world beneath.

  His mind was falling into the hands of his troublesome self, and descending into poetry, but he couldn’t help it.

  In a very short time, she would be his, by law.

  His in a deeply personal, intimate sense, too.

  He mustn’t think about that. Yet. Wits and sobriety were needed at present.

  He made himself regard her bridal attire as though it were legal evidence.

  The dressmakers had created a fantastical iced-­cake madness of Brussels point lace and silk embroidery dotted with pearls. A bouquet of lace rose from the braided knot atop her head. Strands of pearls wrapped about the knot and draped her forehead. A pair of lace lappets flowed from the crown down to the richly embroidered lace flounce of her skirt. Rosettes dotted the flounce and marked her puffy sleeves’ gathering, above her elbows, where another mile of lace dripped down past the upper edges of her gloves. A lace-­ and embroidery-­adorned sash with long, flowing ends circled her waist. Another rosette rested cunningly between the folds at the neckline of a very snug bodice, drawing the eye to the lace edging, thence to satin skin and the pearl necklace encircling her smooth throat.

  He wished he’d had more sleep. He’d need all his ingenuity to get all that—­and everything underneath—­off her in less than a day.

  He wanted to lick every inch of that satiny skin.

  But he could not let himself think about that. The wedding night was hours from now—­blast these tribal rituals!

  He of all men had to get through the rites in a rational manner. All the world would be waiting for him to do something inexcusably obnoxious. Someone was sure to object when the minister offered the opportunity, and Radford would have to defend himself as well as prosecute the objectors swiftly and irrevocably.

  It felt like eons, yet only a moment passed before she was standing beside him.

  Then his mouth spread into a grin. He couldn’t help it. After all the storms and drama and despair and fear, she was to be his at last.

  She shot him a quick glance, and a quick smile, barely enough to offer a glimpse of the chi
pped tooth. But then she seemed to remember where they were and why, because her smile faded and she became solemn.

  He became solemn, too, as it struck him, finally, the immensity of what they were about to do. What this remarkable girl was about to do.

  Tie her life to his.

  Forever.

  “Still time to run,” he murmured.

  She looked at him then in patent disbelief. “In this dress?”

  The minister cleared his throat.

  They both turned toward him, Radford with pounding heart.

  “Dearly beloved,” the minister began.

  That evening

  Clara was going to kill the bridegroom.

  Admittedly her wedding dress was not the sort of thing one simply threw on and threw off again. Its numerous attachments and fastenings would have sent the bridegroom directly to an insane asylum.

  Still, it was a miracle of a wedding dress. Even Sophy’s lavish prose in the Special Bridal Edition of Foxe’s Morning Spectacle couldn’t do it justice.

  Radford had looked a little misty-­eyed when he first saw Clara in her wedding ensemble.

  Or maybe those were tears of laughter.

  In any case, it was no small challenge to get out of, and she’d had to retire with Davis into the dressing room.

  The process couldn’t have taken an hour, if that, and Clara had spent the time in a tumult of anxiety and anticipation.

  Last night, Mama had sharpened Clara’s vague notions of what went on during the wedding night—­but not by much, Lady Warford being slightly embarrassed and greatly tearful.

  And so, trembling a little, Clara had entered the shadowy, candlelit bedroom.

  And found the bridegroom sprawled on the bed, sound asleep, and still wearing most of the clothes he’d worn to his wedding.

  Even her brother Harry, who didn’t care much what he looked like, had a valet.

  Radford didn’t. Still, men’s clothing wasn’t a fraction as complicated as women’s, though the best coats, tailored to fit like skin, weren’t easy to remove without assistance.