Clara gave him a little smile and accepted the arm that he offered. He handed her up into the curricle, tucked a thick rug about her and offered her a hot brick for her feet. Despite the chill of the day she felt snug. Fleet leaped up beside her and took up the reins. Clara noticed immediately that they did not travel with a groom and prayed that Mrs. Boyce had not observed the fact from her vantage point behind the drawing room curtains. It certainly made matters easier for her, for she wished to have no eavesdropper on their conversation; on the other hand it also made her a little nervous. She could not expect standard decorum from Fleet. In fact, she never knew what to expect from him. That was half the trouble.
“I confess I was a little surprised to hear from you, Miss Davencourt,” Fleet said with a quizzical smile, as he moved the horses off at a brisk trot. “The terms of our parting left me in no doubt that you wished never to see me again.”
Clara smiled back with dazzling sweetness. “You are quite correct, your grace. As I intimated in my letter, only the direst need led me to contact you. I hoped that out of the friendship you have for my brother, you would agree.”
Fleet sketched an ironic bow. “And here I am, Miss Davencourt, at your service. How comforting it must be to know that you may appeal to my sense of honor and know that I will respond immediately.”
Clara’s lips twitched. “You are all generosity, your grace.” She looked up and met the intense blue of his eyes. “I hope,” she added politely, determined to get the awkward part out of the way as soon as possible, “that we may put the past behind us. I am older and wiser now, and you—”
“Yes?”
“You, I suspect, are exactly as you were two years ago.”
Fleet inclined his head. “I suspect that I am.”
“So we may understand each other and be friends?” Clara finished.
There was a pause before Fleet spoke, as though he were weighing her words and found them lacking in some way she could not quite understand. “If you say so, Miss Davencourt,” he said slowly.
He shot her another look. Clara felt her nerves tingle. She had always known Sebastian Fleet to be shrewd; those members of the ton who declared the duke to be nothing more than an easygoing rake did not understand him at all. The sharpness of mind behind those cool blue eyes had been one of the things that had attracted Clara to him in the first place. But she should not be thinking on that now. Dwelling on his attractions was foolish. She was no longer a green girl of one and twenty to fall in love with the most unobtainable duke in society.
The breeze ruffled Seb Fleet’s dark golden hair, and he raised a hand absentmindedly from the reins to smooth back the lock that fell across his forehead. Contrary to both fashion and common sense, he wore no hat. The very familiarity of his gesture jolted Clara with a strange pang of memory. They had been in company a great deal together at one time but it was illusory to imagine that they had ever been close. Fleet had squashed that aspiration very firmly when he had rejected her proposal of marriage. No one ever got close to Sebastian Fleet. He did not permit it.
She knew she should not raise old memories but Clara had never done as she should. “When I proposed to you…” she began.
Fleet’s brows snapped down in a thoroughly intimidating way. “I thought we were not speaking of the past, Miss Davencourt.”
Clara frowned. “I would like to say my piece first.”
Fleet sighed with resigned amusement. “I was under the impression you said your piece when we parted. Arrogant, proud, rude, vain and self-satisfied were all epithets I took to heart at the time and have not forgotten since.”
“And,” Clara said, “I imagine you have not altered your behavior one whit as a result.”
“Of course not.” Fleet flashed her a glance. “Naturally I was flattered by your proposal but I made it clear I am not the marrying kind.”
“Being too much of a rake.”
“Precisely.”
“I thought it was worth asking you anyway,” Clara said, with a small sigh.
Seb smiled at her, a dangerously attractive smile. “I know,” he said. “It is one of the reasons I like you so much, Miss Davencourt.”
Clara glared at him. “You like me—but not enough to marry me.”
“You are mistaken. I like you far too much to marry you. I would be the devil of a husband.”
They looked at each other for a moment. Clara sighed. She knew he liked her, which was half the trouble. They liked each other very much and it was a perilous form of friendship, forever in danger of toppling over into forbidden attraction.
Fleet turned the conversation decisively. “Tell me what I may do to help you, Miss Davencourt.”
Clara hesitated. “I suppose it was unorthodox of me to write to you.”
Fleet glanced at her. There was a smile in his eyes. “In so many ways. Most young ladies, particularly with the history that is between us, would think twice before pursuing so rash a course.”
They had turned into the park. It was too cold a morning for there to be many people about, but Clara found it pleasantly fresh, if chilly. Autumn leaves and twigs, turned white with frost, crunched beneath the horses’ hooves. The sky was a pale, cloudy blue with faint sunshine trying to break through. Clara’s cheeks stung with the cold and she burrowed her gloved hands deeper under the fur-lined rug.
Fleet slowed the curricle to a pace that required little concentration and turned his head to look at her directly. “Perhaps,” he added dryly, “you will satisfy my curiosity when the time is right?”
Clara’s throat was suddenly dry. Feeling nervous was an unusual experience for her.
“I have a proposition for you.” Clara looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He was starting to look a little exasperated.
“You are dissembling, Miss Davencourt,” he said. “Could you be more specific?”
Clara swallowed hard.
“I need a rake,” she said bluntly, “so I sent for you.”
It was impossible to shock the Duke of Fleet. He was far too experienced to show any reaction to such a statement. After a pause, he said, equally bluntly, “Why do you need a rake?”
Clara drew a deep breath. “I need a rake to teach me how to outwit all the other rakes and scoundrels,” she said. “I used to think I was up to all the tricks that a rogue might play, but I am sadly outwitted. I was almost abducted in broad daylight by Lord Walton the other day, and at the theater Sir Peter Petrie tried to back me into a dark corner and kiss me. If I am not careful I shall find myself compromised and married off to save the scandal before I have even realized it. It is intolerable to be so beset!”
Fleet gave a crack of laughter. “You are a sensible girl, Miss Davencourt. I cannot believe you unable to depress the pretensions of the worst scoundrels in town! Surely you exaggerate?”
“Sir, I do not,” Clara said crossly. “Do you think I should be asking you for help were it not absolutely necessary? Now that I am an heiress, matters are threatening to get out of hand.”
“How thoughtless of your godmother to die and leave you so much money,” Fleet said sardonically. He dropped his hand lightly over her gloved ones. “If only you were not so pretty and so rich, Miss Davencourt. You have become irresistible!”
Clara turned her shoulder to him. “Oh, I should have known better than to ask you for help! You always laugh at me. But you know it is true that one is seldom the toast of society if one’s parents are poor.”
Fleet’s grip tightened for a moment and she looked up to meet his eyes. “I do understand,” he said. “Your situation is not so different from being a duke subject to the wiles of matchmaking mamas and their daughters. You would be astounded at the number of young ladies who have twisted their ankles outside the portals of Fleet House,” he added ruefully. “The pavement must be unconscionably uneven.”
Clara stifled a giggle. “I do recall that you are unsympathetically inclined toward twisted ankles. When I sprained mine that day we had
the picnic at Strawberry Hill you refused to believe me, and I was left to hop back to the carriage!”
She thought Fleet looked suitably contrite. “I apologize. That was very uncivil of me.”
Clara sensed a moment of weakness. “So you see the difficulty I face,” she said, spreading her hands in a gesture of pleading. “Will you help me?”
The weakness had evidently been an illusion. Fleet gave a decisive shake of the head. “Certainly not. This is nothing more than a blatant attempt to trap me into marriage.”
Clara was outraged. Her lavender-blue eyes flashed. “I might have known you could not disabuse yourself of the idea that I might still wish to marry you, your grace! Despite everything I have said you cannot believe yourself resistible! Of all the arrogant, conceited, vain and self-satisfied old roués!”
There was a look in his eyes that suggested he admired the spirited nature of her outburst—but it was clear that the word old had stung him.
“That is most unfair of you,” he said. “I am only three and thirty. Hardly in my dotage!”
Clara gave an exaggerated sigh. “Let us ignore your tragic obsession with age for a moment, your grace. The whole point of what I am asking is for you to teach me how to outwit a rake, not fall into his arms. You need have no concerns that I intend to importune you. I have no romantic feelings for you whatsoever!”
There was a heavy silence between them. The horses had slowed to a standstill beneath the bare branches of an oak tree as Seb Fleet turned his full attention toward her. Despite the cold air, Clara felt a fizzing warmth inside her that was not merely irritation. Under his slow and thorough scrutiny the color rushed to her face in an even hotter tide. Breathing seemed unconscionably difficult.
“No feelings for me,” he drawled. “Can that be true?”
“No,” Clara said, gulping down a breath. “I lied. I feel exasperated and infuriated and downright annoyed and you are the cause of all of those feelings.”
“Strong emotions indeed.”
“But not of the warmer sort.” Clara evaded his gaze and picked at the threads of the tartan rug. “I have everything I desire in life at the moment. Why should I wish to marry anyone, least of all you?”
She saw the flash of something hot and disturbing in his eyes and added hastily, “Do not answer that! It was a rhetorical question!”
“Of course.” Fleet’s smile was wicked. “I doubt that you would appreciate my answer anyway.”
“Very likely not. It is bound to be improper.”
“What do you expect when you are talking to a rake? You cannot have it both ways, Miss Davencourt.”
Clara sighed sharply. “Which is exactly why you would be the perfect person to help me,” she said. “You are an out-and-out rogue. When we met, you took my hand before I was even aware of what you were doing. You charmed my companion into giving you time alone in my company. Those are precisely the things I wish to learn to avoid.”
Fleet shook his head. “The answer is still no, I am afraid.”
“Why?” Clara felt indignant.
“Because, my very dear Miss Davencourt, it would not serve,” Fleet said. “You may not have realized it—” he turned toward her and his knee brushed against hers “—but I am behaving very much against type in refusing your request. Your average rake would accept, with no intention of keeping matters theoretical and every intention of seducing you.”
Clara looked at him skeptically. “You actually claim to be acting from honorable motives?”
“The very purest, I assure you. But then, I am no average rake.”
Clara did not need to be told. Sebastian Fleet was not average in any way. The languid arrogance, the dangerous edge, the sheer masculine power of him—all of these things made him exceptional. She shivered deep within her cloak.
To ask him to help her had been a reckless idea from the first; she recognized that. But her need had been genuine. She had been under siege and she was tired of it. She was also very stubborn.
“Can I not persuade you otherwise?” she begged. “I am not asking you to escort me about town, merely to tell me those dangerous behaviors to guard against.”
She saw him shake his head decisively.
“To do so would be extremely perilous, Miss Davencourt. I might forget I was a gentleman and a friend of your brother and act on instinct. And I do not mean a paternal instinct.”
Clara looked into his eyes. The instinct was there, masculine, primitive, wholly dangerous. She felt her senses spin under the impact of his gaze. She knew that he wanted to kiss her. Right here. Right now. He had never pretended he did not find her attractive. She knew that had their circumstances been different he would have tried to seduce her without a qualm.
He had been ruthlessly open with her in the past, telling her he intended never to marry, did not wish for the responsibility, and that he was incapable of being faithful. It had been her disillusion and disappointment that had led her to rail at him for not being the man she had wanted him to be. And now he was rejecting her again, albeit for a very different proposal, and once again she could recognize his reasons and even appreciate them, in a way.
She cleared her throat and made a little gesture of acceptance. “Very well. I understand what you are saying and…I admire your honesty.”
His eyes opened wider with surprise and then, echoing her thoughts, he said, “It is no difficulty to admit I find you very attractive, Miss Davencourt. I would have the most dishonorable intentions toward you if matters had fallen out differently.”
He sighed, picked up the reins and gave the horses a curt word of encouragement. The curricle picked up speed.
It was a moment or two before Fleet broke the slightly uncomfortable silence between them. “Do you truly intend never to marry?”
Clara raised her brows. “I cannot say never, but for now I am very happy as I am.”
“It would be a tragic waste for you to remain single.”
Clara felt a sharp stab of anger then that he could appreciate the qualities that might make her a good wife—for someone else.
“I doubt you are a good judge of that,” she said. The words came out more sharply than she had intended and, although his face did not register any emotion, she sensed he was hurt. He did not pursue the point, however, and once again a silence fell.
She was on the point of apologizing when he said abruptly, “You are genuinely happy as you are?” There was an odd note in his voice. “By which I mean to ask if you truly have everything you wish for?”
Clara ignored the small voice that told her she had everything she wished for except him.
“Of course,” she said firmly. “I have my family and my friends and plenty to occupy myself. I am very happy.” She fixed him with a direct look. “Aren’t you?”
She saw him hesitate. “Not precisely. Happiness is a very acute sensation. I suppose you could say I am content.”
“Content.” Clara thought about it. There was a comfortable feeling to the word but no high excitement about it. “That is good.”
“It is good enough, certainly.” Fleet had turned his face away from hers and as a result she could not read his expression. He was difficult to read at the best of times, with that bland blue gaze and those open features. He appeared to be straightforward when in fact the reverse was true. Frustration stirred in her at how opaque he was, how difficult to reach. But then she had no reason to try to reach him. She had tried before and been rebuffed. She reminded herself that no one ever got close to the Duke of Fleet. This difficult friendship was as good as she would get. She had to decide whether it was worth it or not.
“If your rakes and fortune hunters are causing such a problem, I would suggest that you appeal to your sister-in-law, Lady Juliana, for help,” Fleet said, breaking into her thoughts. “I doubt there is a rake in town who can out-maneuver her.”
Clara shook her head sadly. “That would be the ideal solution but Juliana is entirely engrossed with the babie
s at present. That was really why I contacted you. We are to go to Davencourt for Christmas in a couple of weeks, but until then I imagine I am very much left to fend for myself.”
“With the help of the redoubtable Mrs. Boyce, of course.”
“Yes, and you have seen how much use she is!” Clara laughed. “I love her dearly but she conceives that she will have failed in her duty if she does not marry me off, and so makes a present of me to every passing rake and fortune hunter. I believe they view me as the ideal Christmas gift.”
Fleet looked at her. His blue gaze was warm enough to curl her toes.
“I can imagine why, and it is nothing to do with your money.”
Clara raised her chin.
“Since you are not to give me the benefit of your theoretical experience, your grace, I refuse to permit you to flirt with me. Rather I suggest you take me home.” She looked around. “Indeed, I have no notion where we are!”
The path was narrow here and wended its way through thick shrubbery. Even in winter the trees and bushes grew dark and close overhead, enclosing them in a private world. It was a little disconcerting to discover just how alone they were in this frosty, frozen wilderness.
Fleet was smiling gently. “Take this as a free piece of advice, Miss Davencourt,” he said. “Always pay attention to your surroundings. The aim of the rake will always be to separate you from company so that he may compromise you.”
He put up a hand and touched one gloved finger lightly to her cheek. Her gaze flew to his as the feather-light touch burned like a brand.
“And once he has you to himself,” the duke continued softly, “a rake will waste no time in kissing you, Miss Davencourt.”
For what seemed like an age they stared into each other’s eyes. Clara’s heart twisted with longing and regret. Could he look at her like that if he did not care for her? He would deny it of course. Lust was easy for him to admit, love impossible.
Her body ached for him with a sudden, fierce fire. His presence engulfed her. She felt shaky, hot with longing. She raised her hand and brushed his away. Her fingers were not quite steady.
The Heart of Christmas Page 11