by Erica Ridley
“The truth,” said Lawrence, each clipped syllable frosty with unconcealed disdain, “is that Miss York is an exceptional young woman of intelligence and good breeding who would make any discerning gentleman a lucky groom indeed.”
“‘Intelligent.’” Rosbotham made a moue and gave an exaggerated shiver. “Say no more.”
With a wink, he sauntered off to the next clump of fashionable customers awaiting their ices.
Lawrence ground his teeth in frustration. There was nothing wrong with Philippa York. Not only had Lawrence meant every word, it had been a compliment. “Intelligent females” were no plague to be avoided at all costs. Cleverness and resourcefulness were traits Lawrence particularly admired.
It was why he loved Chloe. His chest ached.
He adored being able to talk with her about anything and everything. Chloe didn’t just incite his passions; she made him think. Nothing could be more attractive.
One of the waiters jogged up to Lawrence to take his order, then sprinted off to the next customer.
It was the Earl of Southerby, who had not hidden his interest in Chloe.
Lawrence clenched his jaw.
The earl grinned at him. “Couldn’t help but notice your fascination with artwork at that soirée the other night. What is it the Yorks have? A Van Eyes?”
“Van Eyck,” Lawrence corrected. “And no. It was a van der Weyden.”
Southerby gave a snort of jovial self-deprecation. “It could have been a van der Prinny Himself and I wouldn’t have known any better. How do you keep it straight?”
“I visit exhibitions,” Lawrence said. “They have helpful little plaques next to each work of art.”
“Do they?” The earl chuckled. “I’ve a wretched eye for art. Are you a practitioner?”
“No,” Lawrence replied in haste. But that was only part of the truth. “Not until recently.”
Southerby made a face. “I’m horrid at art. Once, on a whim, I hired an art tutor.” He gave a conspiratorial grin. “I’ve never laughed harder in all my life than at the mess I made with paints. Of course, that was nothing compared to the time I fell through the ice at the Thames Frost Fair. What did I know? It was my first time ice-skating.”
Lawrence stared at him in consternation.
Could it really be that easy? To do whatever one was driven to do, even if you ended up hurt or embarrassed? To let your worst failures one day be an amusing anecdote?
Or was that Southerby’s privilege as a wealthy, titled rake? Unlike Lawrence, the raffish earl didn’t need society’s approval. His coin and his charm made up for any shortcomings.
“God save me.” Southerby shot a nervous look over Lawrence’s shoulder. “Here come two patronesses and the Overton woman. She’s determined I should fall in love with her daughter. Or at least the chit’s dowry. Run while you still can.”
Lawrence couldn’t run. He needed to land an amenable heiress. When one’s pockets were empty, one’s social status was the most valuable currency to have.
The earl darted off before they arrived.
“Why, Your Grace,” cooed Mrs. Overton. “What flavor are you dying to taste?”
Chloe Wynchester’s quim was the wrong answer, so Lawrence replied, “Burnt filbert, Mrs. Overton. And you?”
“Maple,” replied Mrs. Overton. She nudged her child forward. “My daughter prefers pistachio.”
Miss Overton was no doubt a fine young lady, but Lawrence was nearly twice her age and very much not interested. He was also, however, not in a position to lose favor with the powerful patronesses. Almack’s was known as a marriage mart for a reason. He could save his dukedom if they helped him make the right match.
Lady Castlereagh’s lips pursed.
Mrs. Overton followed her distant gaze, then yanked her offspring closer to her side.
“What is it?” asked her daughter.
“Wynchesters,” said Lady Jersey with scorn. “In a barouche.”
He tensed as the sound of carriage wheels rolled behind him.
“Don’t worry,” Lady Castlereagh assured him, misreading his discomfort. “Those creatures won’t come over here. They wouldn’t dare.”
Lawrence’s hackles rose. To the haughty patronesses, even a casual interaction with a family as unconventional as Chloe’s was enough to damage one’s reputation. A penniless duke in want of a large dowry was obliged to care very much about the consequences of his actions.
Lawrence’s primary concern, however, was how the onlookers would treat the Wynchesters.
The barouche halted at the corner of the square nearest Gunter’s pineapple sign. First out of the carriage was Elizabeth, who stepped to one side and leaned on a splendidly crafted cane—presumably hiding a lethal blade—as a footman reached up to help the next passenger.
This was a slender, pretty young lady Lawrence had never seen before in his life…until he realized it was Tommy in a debutante-pastel gown and a wig of golden ringlets.
Last came Chloe, her cheeks flushed and her hair perfectly curled and her delectable body clothed in the sapphire walking dress Lawrence had given her that morning. His heart thumped. He could stare at her for hours, days, a lifetime. She was a vision far more beautiful than any painting.
The Wynchesters had not yet spied him standing across the street in the shade with some of the most powerful women in London. Instead, they nipped into Gunter’s Tea Shop with bright chatter and happy faces.
“Wretched how they gad about as though they were the baron’s heirs,” said Lady Jersey.
Lady Castlereagh shuddered. “My husband’s solicitor had it from a colleague that the estate was wholly entailed to the son, besides a few tokens for the orphans. No dowries for any of them.”
The orphans. Lawrence ground his teeth in disgust. As though children’s parentage were their defining feature!
Mrs. Overton tugged on her daughter’s hand and gave Lawrence an aggressively encouraging smile. “My daughter is the very epitome of breeding and taste.”
The epitome of breeding and taste looked as though she’d rather sink through the grass and disappear than endure her mother’s unsubtle matchmaking.
The door to the tea shop swung open and out strode Elizabeth, Tommy, and Chloe in turn. They linked arms before crossing the street, glancing ahead as though to scout the best spot to wait for their ices.
Chloe’s eyes met his at once.
Someone else might think the slight pause in her step was due to an obstruction in the road. Lawrence knew it was because she’d seen him—and whom he was standing with. At Chloe’s pause, Tommy and Elizabeth followed their sister’s gaze.
“They’re not… They cannot be looking our way,” said Lady Castlereagh.
Lady Jersey glared down her nose. “It’s His Grace who has caught their eye. Everyone knows that Wynchester girl has been angling for him—not that she’ll have any success.”
His muscles tensed. When he’d first agreed to owe Chloe a favor, an invitation to his gala wasn’t much of a sacrifice. He’d planned to be married to Miss York by then and no longer in need of the patronesses’ good favor. He could afford an act of charity.
But it wasn’t an act anymore. His love for Chloe was very, very real, and his social and financial straits more precarious than ever. If he defended the Wynchesters, his standing would instantly and permanently fall.
“Are they walking toward us?” Mrs. Overton whispered. “Tell me they’re not.”
“Of course they shan’t,” Lady Castlereagh said with satisfaction. “Could you imagine?”
Lawrence could indeed imagine. Those three young ladies mattered far more than the opinions of gossipy matrons. He might not be able to offer Chloe everything he might wish, but neither could he allow her to be slandered.
Come what may.
“The Wynchesters,” he said coldly, “are the epitome of…”
What were they the epitome of? Certainly not breeding and grace. These siblings were more likely to rob
Almack’s than to simper in it.
“…excitement, cleverness, and wit,” he finished, lifting his nose to its coldest angle. “I, for one, prefer the frank conversation of women unashamed to be who they are over the petty gossip of ladies who build themselves up by tearing others down.”
There was no going back.
33
Late the following afternoon, Chloe strode through Green Park toward Hatchards. It was an unrelentingly dreary day, full of dirt and fog and overcast skies, but there was a spring in Chloe’s step as she leapt nimbly around the growing puddles.
She was off to decide on her first reading circle recommendation, which was cause enough for celebration. On top of such good fortune, Lawrence was to meet her at the bookshop—ostensibly to gauge the price of a few volumes in his collection, but actually, as he had told her over breakfast in bed, because he’d miss her.
Her bosom swelled as she once again failed to keep a sappy grin from taking over her face. He missed her. They’d spent the night together for the second time in as many days, and she’d returned home only four hours earlier. But he missed her.
She missed him, too. The more time they spent together, the more impossible it became to be apart.
A little voice inside her asked: Must they stay apart? Didn’t this mean he’d had a change of heart about the importance of a perfect reputation? Might he think Chloe his ideal match?
Yesterday, when she’d spied Lawrence outside Gunter’s, she’d expected him to pretend not to see her. He had been chatting with the fashionable and the powerful. Just because Chloe wasn’t allowed at Almack’s did not mean she couldn’t recognize the women in charge of deciding which individuals were welcome.
No Wynchesters, of course. Lawrence could lose his subscription for fraternizing with her.
But he had strolled over to where she stood with her sisters and eaten his ice cream with them beneath a tree as though it were perfectly unexceptional for a duke to publicly acknowledge an association with her scandalous family before dozens of high-society witnesses.
What if it could be? What if it was? She had not allowed herself to dream about a life with him because she had not believed it possible until yesterday.
“Pardon us, miss.” Two well-dressed lads exchanged speculative glances, then stepped in front of her to block her path. “You wouldn’t be a Wynchester, would you?”
“Er…” Chloe blinked at them. She was barely used to being recognized at the reading circle. Being stopped on the street by strangers was a new experience entirely. “Yes, I am a Wynchester.”
“But are you the Wynchester?” The lad consulted a square of paper in his hand. “Chloe Wynchester?”
A prickle of unease danced on the back of her neck. She wished Elizabeth were here with her sword stick. It had come in handy on more than one mission. Chloe tightened her pelisse about her sapphire walking dress. She should not have worn it two days in a row, but she adored it more than any other gown in her wardrobe. Lawrence had purchased it for her.
She didn’t need a sword stick. She could deal with two wealthy brats. How did they know her name?
“Yes,” she said cautiously. “I’m Chloe Wynchester.”
The lads burst out laughing.
“How could you tell without a face?” demanded the one on the left.
“It’s the same dress,” answered his friend, “wrapped around a blank canvas.”
“Nothing there at all,” agreed the first, and they stumbled off in chortles of laughter.
“W-wait,” called Chloe, spinning toward their retreating forms. “Why did you want to know?”
They paused to face her, eyes shining with mirth.
“Oh, haven’t you seen?” said one.
His friend elbowed him in the side. “Give her yours.”
“I want mine, now that we’ve seen her.” The lad pushed his friend forward. “Give her yours.”
After some jostling, one of them finally stepped forward, a rectangle of paper fluttering in his outstretched hand.
Chloe took it from him with trembling fingers.
“It’s a penny caricature,” his friend explained helpfully. “They’re all over town. I think it’s a Cruikshank.”
The first lad doffed him on the cap. “It’s a Rowlandson, you bufflehead.”
“Looks like a Cruikshank to me.” His friend pulled out his own copy and ran a dirty finger round the edges. “Where’s the signature?”
Chloe didn’t give a fig about the signature.
The caricature was of her.
The illustration was of yesterday. The scene outside Gunter’s. The famous pineapple sign was blowing in the wind above a trio of fashionable ladies pointing and laughing at a man and a woman on the opposite side of the sketch. The ladies were patronesses of Almack’s. Their features had been exaggerated, which only served to make them more recognizable.
The gentleman was Lawrence. He was down on one knee, in the mud, offering up armfuls of flavored ices with a theatrical expression of infatuation.
The woman was Chloe. Wearing the same wonderful, beautiful sapphire walking dress she had on now.
In the caricature, her face was not making a comical expression. Chloe’s face did not have any expression, because the artist had neglected to sketch her visage. She was just a generic woman shape, with nothing inside.
The caption read:
A fall from grace! The Duke of F— falls
for the most forgettable face of all.
Chloe crumpled the cartoon in her fist. She kept crumpling until it was a hard little ball, just like the heart shriveling in her chest.
This was what it meant to be seen with Lawrence publicly. Ridicule for her and ridicule for him. She would be seen not as a person with thoughts and feelings but as an object of scorn, no more memorable than a puff of air, remarkable only in her ability to attract no one’s eye but Lawrence’s.
Her vision swimming, Chloe faced ahead and forced her boots to keep walking. It was a caricature, not the end of the world. Who cared what two silly boys found amusing?
But every storefront seemed to have the day’s caricatures pasted to their windows. Her beloved duke, portrayed as a clownish buffoon. Herself, a vague outline with nothing of worth inside.
She walked faster, head down to ignore the empty shell of herself reflecting back at her again and again. Her crossed arms were cold, her legs leaden, but she kept moving, moving, moving, her stinging eyes on the pavement before her.
Just as she reached the safety of the bookshop, she glimpsed Lawrence up ahead, striding toward her.
His eyes were on a slip of paper in his hand, which he balled in his fist and threw aside, only to snatch another from a passing windowsill and crumple it with the same fury.
It was the caricature; of course it was.
And the butt of the joke was not boring, irrelevant Chloe Wynchester but the addlepated duke who had publicly doted on someone so unworthy.
Ha ha, can you imagine? What a horse’s arse! Chloe Wynchester, of all pitiable creatures. He might as well have brought ices to a stick of wood. Bound to have more personality, and a better chance of being allowed into Almack’s. Ha ha, what a fool!
The toes of her boots stopped inches from the toes of his.
His eyes met hers. “They—”
“I already saw it.” The words felt like pebbles in her throat. “By now, all of London has seen it. It’ll be reprinted in the scandal columns by morning.”
Her face flamed at the thought of her brother Graham turning to that page as he ate his toast.
Chloe swallowed hard. “I suppose you lost your voucher.”
The anger in his blue eyes made him look like he wanted to crumple all of London into a ball and toss it into the fire.
“I don’t give a damn about my Almack’s voucher.”
But of course he did. He had to. Almack’s Assembly Rooms was more than stale bread and weak ratafia. It was status. It was acceptance. It was power.
>
Anyone would resent her for snatching opportunities from his fingertips.
“Today it’s Almack’s,” she said. “Tomorrow it’s a political ally, and the day after that—”
He tensed when she said “political ally,” and she remembered Philippa and her father.
“Ah,” Chloe said. “I’ve already cost you a political ally. You claim you don’t care about Almack’s, but Westminster is your life. You would put nothing above Parliament. Where does that leave us?”
He didn’t meet her gaze. “I realize that recent actions may have implied—”
That they had a future.
“There was never going to be an ‘us,’ was there?” she said, her voice hollow. “I’m fine enough to invite into bed—even well enough to share ices with—but nothing more. A passing fancy until you find a woman you would marry. Someone even more perfect than Philippa.”
Someone completely unlike Chloe Wynchester.
“Yes,” he burst out. “That’s exactly what I intend to do, because it’s the only thing I can do. I’ve a duty to uphold. Responsibilities. I must wed an heiress. My father left the dukedom destitute. With the loss of a year’s crops, I’ve no income and nothing left to sell. I could never marry you.”
Lawrence had not changed his mind about her. The duke simply wasn’t ready to stop playing with his toy.
“I’m trying to think of a discreet arrangement,” he said. “Public appearances may invite ridicule, but if we’re out of sight, we’ll be out of mind. If no one sees us together—”
She stumbled backward. This was his happy ever after?
“Never let the people who matter learn you cavort with a Wynchester, you mean?” Her voice shook, but she pressed on. “You will be out in society. Routs, dinner parties, Westminster. I would be your secret? Some chit you won’t acknowledge in front of witnesses, lest caricaturists mock you again? A clandestine mistress tucked in a trunk with the bonnets until it’s time to play? Or kept up in the attic, peering down from a peephole?”
A tendon flexed in his neck. “I didn’t say ‘mistress.’”