Julian had to admit he found her cheek oddly endearing. As he led Clara into the glittering crush of dancers and they took up their places opposite each other, he once again experienced an irritating surge of appreciation for the plucky girl. Irritating because he wasn’t meant to like her. Lottie had cured him of any misguided notions about the finer emotions that supposedly distinguished men from beasts. The sad truth of it was that men and beasts were all the bloody same. The eyes of their fellow revelers were upon them, sudden and curious, as if to underscore his presumption.
“After this dance,” he felt compelled to warn into her ear, “my interest in you will become common knowledge.”
“What shall happen then?” she asked, her Cupid’s bow bearing an amused slant, as though she were privy to a joke shared by no one else in the chamber—certainly not him.
He inhaled her intoxicating scent and wished she preferred something cloying and floral, something less earthy and inviting and bright. Something that didn’t make him mad for her. “You’ll be watched. Your every action will be fodder for the gossip mills. In short, you’re about to experience firsthand the folly of your decision to enlist my aid in your schemes.”
“But my lord, I have no schemes.” She said the last with the ease of a practiced coquette.
He bowed, feeling grim and altogether too appropriate. They linked hands, palm to palm, and she turned her face up to his as he settled his other hand high on her waist, drawing her nearer than was entirely polite but he didn’t give a damn. Her corset was a cuirass beneath her silk gown, keeping him from knowing the lush nip of her waist. He couldn’t help but imagine her lovely form without the stiff girding. He would trace her soft curves, come to know the swell of her hips. A swift surge of lust kicked him in the gut, right there on the ballroom floor as the orchestra struck a waltz and they began the obligatory steps.
Waltzing involved too damn much whirling for his peace of mind. While his dancing proficiency had improved over the years, his appreciation for the art most certainly had not.
“I beg your forgiveness, Miss Whitney, in the event I prove a less than nimble dance partner.” He smiled as though he hadn’t a care in the world, keeping his tone equally light and low.
Several ladies and lords had actually begun making spectacles of themselves in their effort to stare. He longed to quit the ballroom, but fleeing wouldn’t do a thing to further his cause. It would only invite more speculation, more whispers, more gossip to fly. The ton was a complex machine, powered by scandal and built upon unforgiving ruthlessness. He possessed too many black marks against him to count by now, his presence within polite society suffered for his association with the prince and the Marlborough House set.
But for Clara this would all be new. He didn’t wish to make her a scapegoat, and the realization had a chilling effect upon his ardor. Then again, the urge to protect her, he supposed, was likely innate—some sort of remnant response from the days of ancient man. For there was nothing about the vibrant American beauty in his arms that made him feel differently for her than any other woman who had come before.
Or was there?
He stared at the pale, silken skin of her throat, the delicate hollow beneath her earlobe, the waterfall of golden curls spilling from her coiffure, the diamonds winking from her hair and ears. Mine, came an unsettling thought from deep within him. She will be mine. From the tip of her upturned nose to her wild eyebrow, to her red lips and small hands, her full bosom and responsive nipples…all of her. Every bit of her. He’d lay claim soon enough, and yes, he had to admit that their marriage would make her different from all the other women who had come before, whether he liked it or not. For that matter, whether she liked it or not.
Round and round they went, twirling by rote. Then he saw a flash of glossy, dark curls, a familiar profile—too handsome for conventional beauty, her patrician nose a bit long, her cheeks high slashes charged with color as she danced ever nearer in the arms of her partner. Lottie. Julian felt, for just a breath, the careening slide of anger, followed by a return to the bottomless pit of self-loathing where she’d cast him.
Jesus, her partner was leading her astray, making a fool of them all, and they were on a path to collide. Before he realized what Lottie was about, he’d pulled Clara closer, her skirts brushing his legs, nearly tangling in his feet. He turned her neatly so that it was his back that bore the brunt of the collision and not Clara’s smaller and more delicate frame as Lottie and her partner jostled into them.
Despite his attempt to shield Clara, the damage had been done. This altercation, however apparently innocent and accidental, would be remarked upon by all. Lottie smiled at him, acknowledging him with a nod of her head. It was a knowing smile upon her lips. A satisfied one.
“Do forgive me, old chap,” drawled her partner, equally insincere, enjoying their little farce. The Marquis of Ashburn hadn’t changed a great deal since Julian had seen him at one of their set’s wild house parties. It had been the very last wild house party he’d attended, in fact.
For a moment, he returned to that day, to Lottie’s chamber. She’d been nude beneath Ashburn, mid rut. The unwanted image of the marquis’s pale, hairy arse and thin, spider-like legs thrusting into her flashed briefly through his mind. A year had passed, but the bile in his throat was just as real and bitter as if it had been that very morning that he’d blithely walked in upon the woman who claimed to love him being fucked by a man he’d once counted as a friend.
“You’ll need forgiveness, Ashburn, but not from me,” he forced himself to quip with a lightness that was far from the true, dark ugliness festering within him.
Ashburn threw back his head and barked out a laugh. “Ever the ready tongue, Ravenscroft. One ought not to be surprised with all the practice you’ve had, eh?”
The orchestra ended its set, leaving the other dancers milling about them in a sea of colorful silk, perfect evening clothes, gleaming jewels, and unabashed curiosity. He bowed to Clara, who watched him now with a questioning expression upon her unguarded face. Damn it, he couldn’t allow Lottie and Ashburn to rattle him. Nor would he allow them to insult his future countess.
“Some of us use our tongues wisely, my lord, and others do not.” He kept his tone mild and cool, but his meaning was apparent, as was his deliberate slight in return.
“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” Lottie murmured, pursing her lips as she raked a rude stare over Clara. “Ravenscroft, won’t you do the honors?”
There was something inherently wrong about the business of introducing one’s former mistress to one’s future wife, whether or not the former mistress was a peeress. Lottie was a duchess and a favorite of the Prince of Wales, which allowed her entrée into the best parties. However, all polite society knew damn well that, aside from the heir and spare, not one of her children belonged to her husband. Just as all polite society knew damn well that he and Lottie had indulged in a very lengthy and public affair. He’d foolishly imagined he cared for her and she for him. She’d tossed him away like a dress from last season.
“No,” he said with deliberate calm.
Lottie faltered. She was not the sort of woman who had ever been denied. She’d been raised in a life of privilege, cosseted and spoiled, adored for her beauty, sought after for her charms. Men fought to win her. Even Bertie, as the Prince was known, had fallen for her with an unusual haste.
Her lips thinned and her nostrils flared, betraying her ire. “You’ll not introduce me to your little nobody?”
“Oh, I daresay I’m not a nobody,” Clara interrupted then, her tone as august as any peeress in her own right. She bestowed a slow, withering glance upon Lottie. “Nor am I particularly little. I am a Virginian, however, and we Virginians are a fierce lot. I can shoot an apple off a man’s head from fifty paces.”
Lottie stiffened. “How…accomplished you must be.” Her tone belied her words.
“Or a woman’s head,” Clara drawled, smiling sweetly.
/> Well, hell. His little dove never ceased to surprise him. Julian grinned, feeling the weight that had been heavy upon his chest suddenly disperse. “Good evening, Your Grace,” he said in his most dismissive tones. “Lord Ashburn.”
And then he whisked Clara away from the tawdry pair, giving them the cut. “Well done,” he congratulated his betrothed in quiet tones as he escorted her out of the fray.
“An acquaintance of yours?”
“Former,” he acknowledged, a trace of the old bitterness creeping into his voice. “I’m sorry, Clara, for the insult paid you. I’d have avoided it if I could have.”
“She still seems smitten with you, but she is not a nice woman, my lord. I wouldn’t consort with her ilk if I were you,” she startled him by saying. “You can do far better than her sort.”
He was bemused by her pronouncement, declared to him as he led her through the seemingly endless crush of the ballroom where anyone could overhear. This girl either didn’t have an inkling of proper decorum, or she didn’t give two shites. He rather suspected it was the latter rather than the former. No one had ever told him he could do better. No one but this petite, feisty American wearing an outlandishly tight midnight-blue gown that showed her waist and bosom to perfection. Damn, but she was lovely. And cheeky. And she’d bested Lottie. Hell, she’d even defended him, and he doubted she’d ever met a more debauched voluptuary than he.
Moreover, she was right. He could do better than Lottie, a woman who had professed to love him all while fucking at least two other men at the same time. Christ, but he’d been stupid. How he had trusted and believed in a woman like the Duchess of Argylle was a mystery to him now. Foolishness mixed with drink, no doubt.
“Of course I can do better than her sort,” he told Clara, placing his hand over hers on the crook of his elbow for just a moment before removing it, lest it be remarked upon by anyone. “I’ve already found her. Or perhaps, to be more apt, she found me.”
“Don’t forget you cannot keep her,” she reminded him beneath her breath, shooting him a sideways glance that just about undid him.
He was bloody well keeping her at his side and in his bed. Never had he been more certain of anything in his entire, admittedly misbegotten life. But he very wisely kept that to himself as he caught sight of Clara’s protective stepmother and steered her back into safe waters.
er Grace, the Duchess of Argylle,” intoned her father’s butler in what Clara could only suspect was grim portent.
She hadn’t expected any callers, and that the duchess would arrive in the morning, outside of her receiving hours, when Clara was perfectly alone and not expecting a soul, was cause for surprise. But, she hoped, not the alarm that stirred within her as she stood with a dignity that belied her inner turmoil.
She could have claimed she was not at home, could have refused the duchess’s call, and been left instead with her card on a salver and no strife to speak of. But avoidance wasn’t Clara’s way.
The duchess swept into the morning room where Clara had been reading, wearing a formidable visiting gown of aubergine damask and crushed velvet that emphasized her voluptuous form to perfection. She was lovely, graceful, elegant, and—worst of all—a former paramour of the earl’s. A former paramour who had meant something to him. Clara had supposed as much by his reaction to the duchess at the ball, and Bo had confirmed her suspicions with a healthy dose of friend-to-friend gossip afterward.
They exchanged a proper, formal greeting. The duchess perched herself on a settee as though she were as delicate as Sèvres porcelain. Perhaps it was the tight-lacing of her lady’s maid that was the source of the woman’s achingly slow, deliberate movements, Clara thought rather unkindly.
Silence descended upon them, interrupted only by the steady ticking of a clock and the faint background sounds to which Clara had grown accustomed: the outside din of London traffic and the whispered footfalls of servants moving about the halls. The duchess’s ice-blue gaze raked over Clara’s person, her expression a study of the aristocratic dismissive. Her raven-haired beauty would have been a natural foil to the earl’s dark good looks. Clara could picture the two of them together, a couple so beautiful that it would almost be painful to look upon them. A curious twinge cut through her at the notion of Ravenscroft with the exquisite creature before her.
“I have paid you an honor in this call, Miss Whitney,” the duchess said at last.
Clara almost gave an indignant and thoroughly unladylike snort. The woman clearly possessed an interesting definition of the term. Over a week had passed since their inauspicious meeting, and she supposed that the duchess had followed Ravenscroft’s obvious pursuit of her.
For a man who was rumored to be one of the worst rakes in England, the earl had done a grand job of properly courting Clara. He danced with her at the Earl of Margate’s ball twice, once at the Marquis of Londonderry’s, and two times at the Duke of Cheltenham’s. He walked with her in the park. He took her for a ride on Rotten Row. In public, he was the epitome of charm. He scarcely touched her, and he certainly never said wicked things to her about his tongue or pinned her with smoldering stares that made her feel as if she stood before him in nothing save her chemise.
Clara should have been relieved. But she had grown tired of the endless social whirl. Tired of being trussed up in corsets and heavy skirts, changing five times a day, smiling pleasantly to Lady Dullard and listening with feigned concern to the Duchess of Snipe. She was weary of tea and visits, of dancing and eating and generally doing nothing of value with her time.
And now she was being ambushed by a beautiful, haughty duchess who dared to call said ambush an honor. No, facing the gorgeous former lover of her betrothed was not, in Clara’s book, an honor in any form.
“Forgive me for being obtuse, Your Grace, but I don’t see the reason for your call,” Clara said at last, allowing her Virginia drawl to accentuate her words far more than she ordinarily would. After all, she’d been trained to speak the way a proper Englishwoman ought. But Clara was no Englishwoman, and she never would be. Which meant she had the advantage over the duchess facing her as though they had declared pistols at dawn.
The duchess stiffened, her chin raising a notch in an elegant display of ire. “Undoubtedly, you’re unaccustomed to proper society. That much is grievously apparent, but that’s neither here nor there. I shall be candid. I’m trying to aid you, Miss Whitney.”
Clara almost laughed aloud. Trying to help her, indeed. “Pray enlighten me, Your Grace.”
The duchess’s eyes narrowed, revealing fine grooves caused by time. “Ravenscroft is courting you. It’s common knowledge. He has been making a fool of himself all over town. I come to you with the concern of an older sister for her younger, infinitely more foolish sister. Walk away from him, Miss Whitney. If you hold yourself or your family in any esteem at all, you must throw him over at once, for his motives are not pure.”
She couldn’t quite stifle a smile. What irony. “I’m certain his motives aren’t any less pure than your own in seeking me out, Your Grace.”
The duchess’s spine stiffened, her lips thinning into an angry line. “I sought you out to help you, but perhaps you are the sort of young lady who doesn’t prefer to hear the truth.”
“Forgive me if it seems to me that you’ve sought me out to help yourself,” Clara said gently. It was clear that the woman before her saw her as a rival. She had orchestrated the ridiculous collision in the ballroom, and now she’d turned up holding a supposed olive branch that looked far more like a poisoned cup of wine to Clara’s shrewd eye.
“Ah, American impertinence. I suppose I should’ve expected it. You Americans think you’re all the rage now, don’t you? I’ve seen your kind a dozen times before, Miss Whitney. You prance around with your father’s wealth and your brazen attitudes and your complete lack of care for society. Some may find your gauche dearth of manners a quaint spectacle, but I am not among them.” The duchess rose from her seat, sweeping her skirts back in
to order with an august dignity Clara couldn’t help but admire, even if she didn’t like or trust the woman. “Believe what you wish, Miss Whitney, but I know Ravenscroft better than any other woman alive. If you think he truly has a genuine interest in a girl as young and naïve as yourself, you’re even more foolish than you appear.”
“Perhaps I’m not at all foolish. Perhaps I’m very wise, and I’m a woman who isn’t afraid to seek what she wants from life rather than meekly waiting about for someone else to dictate what I ought to do.” Clara stood as well then, not willing to allow her opponent to tower over her. “Your Grace, I don’t think it was wise for you to come here. I understand you were the earl’s…particular friend. However, you’re not his friend any longer. Whether he chooses to court me or wed me is up to his lordship, and regardless of the reasons for his actions, your older sister concerns are neither wanted nor necessary. Good day, Your Grace.”
She didn’t await the duchess’s response, merely took her leave of the chamber, head held high, completely aware of the social rules she eschewed as she went. But no matter how many steps she put between herself and the earl’s past, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her plans had gone hopelessly awry.
She’d thought she could easily convince the earl to wed her and send her back to Virginia. Instead, she’d wound up with a courtship, a jealous former lover, and a betrothed who was handsome and wicked and wild and yet somehow also proper and…good Lord. She’d been about to think that he was kind.
Heavens, where had that rogue thought come from? Whatever the source, she’d do best to weed it out posthaste. She couldn’t afford to like Ravenscroft. No indeed. Liking him was far too risky, too dangerously close to upsetting her plans. And she’d come too far for any of her plans to be dashed now. Far too far.
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