“Even so, do you expect your father would allow the Duke of Ravenscourt’s daughter to be left here because you do not like her?”
“I did not say I do not like her. I said I hate her.”
And if she didn’t herself abhor the other young woman so much, she’d have admired her for going toe to toe with the vile dragon.
“She cannot very well stay here for the holiday.”
“Why? You do.” Desperation and confusion leant the girl’s words a high pitch.
The headmistress sputtered. Young ladies did not challenge the woman.
A smile pulled Cara’s lips; the feel of it rusty and painful from ill-use. Her grin withered at the other student’s next words.
“I am sure her father will eventually remember he’s forgotten her.”
That was a wager Lady Nora would handily lose.
Another thump of the cane. “A duke does not forget his children.” And that was another misspoken statement from this combative pair. The duke had forgotten more birthdays than Cara remembered. A memory slipped in.
“You are as pretty as a princess, Cara mia.”
Mother placed her hands upon her shoulders and they stared at Cara’s visage in the full-length mirror.
Cara cast an eager glance over her shoulder. “Papa is truly taking me to Gunter’s?”
“Why, it is your birthday, dear.”
The excited laughter trilled around the chambers of her mind.
She’d waited all day—and he’d never come.
Cara blinked. Where had the thirteen-year-old memory come from? For she’d been summarily forgotten at various points through her life.
This, however, was the first time she’d been so forgotten during the holidays. She blinked several times as a sheen misted her vision. Dratted dust. Odd, she’d never noticed the immaculate establishment was so dusty, and yet, how to account for this odd blurring? “A duke is very busy with matters far more pressing than his children.”
To those powerful noblemen, all matters were more important than his children. With the exception of his heir, of course. She’d spent years hating Cedric for their father’s favor. Then she’d spent the other years hating him for being as coolly indifferent as their sire.
“It will be a short carriage ride and then she will continue on to the duke’s estates for Christmas. I consider this matter concluded, Lady Nora.”
Blast and double blast. A carriage ride with Lady Nora, a girl who despised Cara and would delight in her misery? Perhaps being summarily forgotten and forced to dwell in the lair of the other dragons was preferable. She rapped once.
“Enter.”
Cara pressed the handle and swept inside. Carrying her shoulders with a stately bearing even her father would have been forced to find pride in, she pulled the door closed and ran a cool, condescending look over Lady Nora. A flush stained the girl’s cheeks and by the way she tightened her hands into balls at her sides, she was as prepared to resume the physical blows they’d come to six months earlier when Cara had single-handedly seen their instructor, Miss Jane Munroe, tossed out. Guilt knotted her belly.
“That will be all for now, Lady Nora,” Mrs. Belden said in dismissal. She thumped her cane once in a manner more befitting a witch wielding the magic of her broom that would see the other girl vanish.
The two young ladies eyed each other a long moment. Cara met the vitriol and loathing teeming from the other lady’s gaze with an icy derision. She’d not allow Nora the triumph of knowing her words and sneers had wounded like a well-placed barb.
“I said that will be all for now, Lady Nora,” Mrs. Belden gave a tellingly furious two thumps of her cane.
As Lady Nora passed closely by Cara, the young woman yanked her skirts back.
The spectacle-wearing dragon spoke as soon as the door closed loudly behind the other student. “Your father failed to send ’round his carriage to collect you, my lady.”
She’d known as much. The already eight departed carriages and the barren halls indicated all those slightly aware parents had sent for their daughters. While her own power-driven father, consumed by his own lofty status and advancing his wealth, could not be bothered to even send his servants to collect her. For Christmas. Having the headmistress utter those words aloud only made the truth of her circumstances all the more real.
Cara stood stiffly, silent as Mrs. Belden moved around her desk and claimed a seat at the head of the immaculate, broad, mahogany piece. She eyed her over the rims of her thick spectacles. “Most ladies would be in tears by such a fact, my lady.” She eyed her with a pride better reserved for a mother to a daughter. “I am pleased with your absolute dignity and reserve in the face of your father’s inactions this day.”
It was an ill-testament to the person she’d become in her eighteen years that this headmistress, as hated as a venomous serpent, should find pride in her. “You summoned me, Mrs. Belden,” Cara said with the ducal chill she’d heard in the handful of exchanges she’d had with her absentee father. “Say whatever else you’d say so we might,” she dusted a speck of imagined dust from her puffed white sleeve, “conclude our business here.”
The other woman froze a moment but then another one of those cold, dark smiles hinted at her pleasure. She no doubt applauded Cara’s frigidity. “Will you please sit, my lady?”
She eyed the hard, wood chair at the foot of the desk, filled with a childlike urge to hurl that piece across this hated office, into the fire, and then take off running into the world outside, running as far and as fast as her legs could carry her, away from this world and into another where she ceased to be this and managed to be someone else—
“My lady?” Mrs. Belden eyed Cara standing there like she was an oddity on display at the Egyptian Center.
Except, after her mother’s death, she’d spent her life being the perfect, ducal daughter and knew no other way. With wooden steps, she walked with a long-practiced calm over to the proffered chair and sat.
“Lady Nora is to leave today. She has graciously agreed to allow you to accompany her. From there you will then be given leave of the earl’s carriage to return to His Grace for the holiday.” For the holiday. That last part may as well have been nothing more than an afterthought. Holidays were not celebrated in the Duke of Ravenscourt’s home. As they did not advance his power or prestige, he’d never allowed those festivities and inane affairs. All they were, anyway, were artificial moments of false happiness.
The leader of the dragons steepled her fingers and rested them on her desk. She stared at Cara, expecting, what? Thanks for being shuffled off, humiliated and shamed, in Lady Nora’s carriage? A promise to speak favorably to the powerful Duke of Ravenscourt? Alas, the woman still did not realize the duke preferred his hounds and horses to his one daughter.
Cara spoke and when she did, she stripped all emotion, all hint of caring, and even the disdain she felt for one who’d bow before an almighty duke for his total alone. “Is there anything else you wish to speak with me about, Mrs. Belden? I would oversee my maid’s packing of my belongings.” It was a blatant lie. By now, Alison had likely already clicked the trunk closed.
Mrs. Belden frowned. “That is all.” She pursed her lips, likely in an attempt to keep from saying more.
With a toss of her head, Cara rose with the graceful care ingrained into her by the army of nursemaids and governesses who’d reared her and swept from the room.
Cara sat rigid on the seat of the Earl of Derby’s carriage, alongside her sniffling maid. Her body carefully angled as it was, and had been for the better part of the journey, had developed an ache that traveled from her neck, down her shoulders, and to her hips. The same stilted silence that had fallen the moment Lady Nora’s groom had closed the carriage door at Mrs. Belden’s Finishing School had stretched on for these two hours.
The seventeen-year-old lady with her outspoken thoughts on anything and everything from a woman’s place in the world to Cara’s constant frown, as she called it, br
oke the silent impasse. “I did not want to bring you.”
Alison burrowed against the wall of the carriage, as though she were trying to escape the charged exchange.
Cara bit the inside of her cheek. It should not matter that this surly, deservedly angry lady abhorred her, and yet, strangely, an odd pang struck her chest. Refusing to give the other young woman any idea that her words had any effect, she flicked a cool gaze over her frame. “I do not care whether you wished to bring me or not.” Then, in a bid to ruffle the infuriatingly cool woman she peeled her lip back. “Furthermore, you’ve already indicated as much, two,” four, “times now. Your words grow tedious.”
Lady Nora narrowed her gaze and Cara stiffened. That harsh glint in the lady’s eyes matched the fury right before she’d backhanded Cara across the mouth for having told one of the instructors about the scandalous material being taught by former instructor Mrs. Jane Munroe. “I do not like you, Clarisse Falcot.”
That was rather disappointing. With the lady’s inventive curses and harsh words, she was capable of far more originality than “I do not like you”. In fact, if she truly wished a rise out of Cara, a more astounding revelation would have been if the girl stated her regard. “I have not liked you for your smug, condescending looks since I entered the school. And I have hated you since your actions resulted in Mrs. Munroe’s firing.”
The pebble of guilt grew to a large stone in Cara’s belly. Mrs. Munroe. Cara’s father’s illegitimate daughter-turned-instructor at Mrs. Belden’s. There had been whispers amongst the instructors which had fueled whispers amongst the students and then the tittering comments and loud whispers had ensued about a duke who cared for his illegitimate child more than his rightfully born one. Which in retrospect was utter rubbish. Her father didn’t care about anyone. She curled her toes into the soles of her serviceable boots. Of all the detestable acts she was guilty of in her life, getting her half-sister sacked had been the greatest offense. What kind of black, ugly soul did she possess that she could so impulsively ruin another woman’s life, without considering the ramifications until it was too late?
“You, of course, have nothing to say,” Lady Nora seethed. “You sit there in all your pompous glory as though you are yourself the Duke of Ravenscourt or a member of the Queen’s Court, but the truth is you are nothing, Clarisse Falcot. You are nothing more than an unwanted daughter, whose father cannot even bring himself to remember at Christmas and who will go on to be a leading Society matron and produce equally unkind and cold offspring. I pity the gentleman who will be tied to you.”
Cara searched around inside for the deserved fury and the biting scorn for the young woman’s venomous tirade. And yet, for some reason, she could not force out the proper words past this blasted lump in her throat. Instead, she pasted on a practiced, hardened grin. With slow, precise movements, she presented her back once more. Aware of the young woman studying her for some sign of weakness or emotion and any other reaction Cara was determined to deny her, she pulled aside the red velvet curtain.
She damned the faint tremble to her fingertips and blamed it on the winter cold. Snow and ice hit noisily off the lead windows and she stared out at those pure white specks as they swirled and danced in the air. Lord Derby’s horses trudged ahead at a slow, steady clip through the snow-covered countryside. The two young ladies continued the remaining trek in stilted silence.
And as they neared the end of their journey to the Earl of Derby’s property, Cara came to the sad, staggering truth that she far preferred the idea of remaining with the unkind Lady Nora to returning to face the father who’d forgotten her.
“At last,” the other woman muttered.
Cara drew back the curtain once more as Lady Nora’s home pulled into focus. Though sprawling, the country estate would be considered modest compared to her father’s ducal holdings. And yet, she’d happily trade her own empty home for a father who did not forget her. Cara bit the inside of her cheek hard. No, that wasn’t altogether true. She’d trade it all for a father who cared. For someone who cared. Then, what person would care about someone who’d become such a hollow shell of a human being that she no longer knew how to show or feel any emotion outside of bitterness? Her throat worked spasmodically.
The carriage drew to a halt and she gave her head a clearing shake, in a bid to dislodge her maudlin sentiments. The conveyance dipped as the groom scrambled from his perch. Moments later, the liveried servant opened the door. “Lady Nora,” the man greeted with a smile and reached inside.
“Thomasly,” she returned with a cheerful grin Cara had not believed the other woman capable of. Then, perhaps it was merely her for whom she reserved her vitriol.
From within the confines of the carriage, she studied the exchange between servant and lady. The two chatted more than Cara’s maid about her morning meals. Surely the earl did not allow such familiarities between his daughter and his staff, particularly the male members of his household?
A memory slipped in of the days following her mother’s passing, of Cara’s visits to the stables. The scent of horseflesh and hay still as sharp in her mind now as it had been those eleven years ago. For the agony of losing her mother, she found solace in the stables alongside the grooms. Those coarse and gruff servants who showed her the proper way to brush a horse… Until her father had stormed in and, with his hand clamped about her arm, forcefully led her back to the house. It was the last time she’d ever visited that dark, comforting place.
Cara blinked. She’d not remembered that moment—until now.
She dimly registered the stares of Lady Nora and the groom fixed on her and gave a quick shake of her head.
“Well, come along,” Lady Nora snapped.
Schooling her features into the hardened, practiced mask she donned for anyone and everyone, Cara held her hand out and allowed the once smiling, now stoic, groom to help her down. The other young woman moved at an almost sprint up the steps, while Cara followed at a more sedate pace that came from years of ladylike decorum being drilled into her—as well as a desire to have as much distance between herself and this lady who so disliked her.
As though the entire household had been in waiting for this very moment, the front doors were thrown open and a butler greeted Lady Nora with a beaming smile. All the while, Cara picked her way up the steps, trying to escape notice, a rather impossible feat considering she’d imposed upon the charity of the earl’s daughter, and still the favor was not complete.
A cry went up and Cara jumped, slapping a hand to her erratically beating heart. And then, she froze at the threshold. A towering, broad, bear of a man swallowed Lady Nora in a hug while a delicate, thin slip of a woman stood with her fingertips to her lips. By the deep brown hue of the older woman’s eyes and the slight cleft in the man’s chin, the couple before her was none other than Lady Nora’s parents.
A swell of envy so potent and powerful filled Cara’s chest. She gripped the edge of the doorway a moment to keep the world from swaying. For the misery she’d known as the forgotten daughter of the Duke of Ravenscourt, there had been solace in knowing that all those self-important noblemen treated their female offspring thusly. This intimate moment between mother, father, and daughter, however, proved an altogether different tale. She cast a look over her shoulder into the increasing storm. For their tale made her long for the biting cold of the snow outside to this wholly special moment exchanged between father and daughter.
“Papa, this is Lady Clarisse Falcot.”
Cara stiffened as the butler hurried to close the door behind her and the earl and countess shifted their attention to their unexpected and unwanted guest.
Broad, where her own father was lean and wiry, the earl sketched a deep bow. “My lady,” he said with the cool reserve bestowed a duke’s daughter.
She preferred the unrestrained loving father he’d been mere moments ago. Cara inclined her head at a lofty angle and dropped a deep curtsy. “My lord. Thank you for the use of your carriage.” How di
d her words not shake with the hurt and embarrassment still running through her?
“The duke forgot her,” Lady Nora said by way of explanation.
Mother and Father turned matching glowers on their cherished daughter.
She wrinkled her nose. “He did.” The spirited miss looked to Cara with a bold insolence that only deepened her mother’s frown. “And with good reason. She is horrid.”
“Nora,” the countess scolded. A gracious and flawless hostess, the older woman came forward with her hands extended. “We are honored you will be spending the holiday season with us.”
From beyond her mother’s shoulder, Nora choked. “The hol—”
Cara snapped her damp, emerald green, muslin cloak, smattering the marble foyer with bits of melted snow. “I thank you for the gracious offer. However, I truly must leave now. My fath—” The lie died a quick death.
“Now?” The earl furrowed his high, noble brow. “The storm is worsening.”
“Which is why it is imperative I leave posthaste. If you’d be so gracious as to allow me the use of your carriage.” So that she could slink off, the shamed, laughed about, unloved duke’s daughter, while retaining some level of pride.
“But—”
“My family is expecting me,” she said in clipped tones when the earl made to protest once more. This time she fed him the lie they all knew to be a lie. Life had taught her that people did not challenge a duke’s kin. She wrinkled her nose. Well, Lady Nora did. And a handful of the other distinguished students at Mrs. Belden’s. But never before their parents.
This moment proved that truth.
“Of course,” the earl said. “I will see the team of horses switched.”
Standing in the foyer of this bucolic family, Cara huddled deep into the fabric of her damp cloak. What an odd place to be; not wanting to stay with this happy, loving lot, but not wanting to board the earl’s carriage and return to her own life, either…
And in this moment, being honest with at least herself, Cara indulged the wish she had in her heart this Christmas—to be loved for nothing but herself.
A Heart of a Duke Collection: Volume 1-A Regency Bundle Page 171