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“Children are resilient. She’ll throw a few temper tantrums, as she does sometimes when she can’t get her way, but she’ll recover.”
“Does she commonly run away?”
“No, and it won’t happen again.”
“You can’t be sure,” he said. “It was a desperate thing to do. I don’t think she would have done it if she hadn’t been very deeply upset.”
“She was deeply upset at being thwarted,” Noirot said. “She knows the city streets are dangerous, but she was too furious with us to care about any rules or lectures—and Sarah, unfortunately, doesn’t know her well enough to recognize the signs of rebellion.”
She was as taut as a bowstring. She was tired, clearly, her face white and drawn. Relieved of fear for Lucie, she was probably feeling the fatigue she’d ignored. He’d better keep this short and to the point. She clearly wanted to be done with this conversation, and with him. She was shutting him out of her life and out of Lucie’s.
She was Lucie’s mother, but he knew that parents were not always right, and she was wrong to shut him out.
“I don’t think that’s enough,” he said.
“I think you ought to let me be the judge.”
He made himself say it. He saw no alternative. “When my mother and sister were killed,” he said, “I wanted my father.” He had to take a breath before continuing. He’d never spoken of his childhood miseries to anybody, even Clara, and it was harder than he’d supposed to talk of them now. “It was a carriage accident. He was drunk, and he drove them into a ditch. He lived. I was—I didn’t know how to cope. I was nine years old at the time. I was grief-stricken, as you’d expect. But terrified, too. Of what, I can’t say. I only recall how desperately I wanted him with me. But he sent me to live with my aunts, and he crawled into a bottle and drank himself to death. Everyone knew he was a drunkard. Everyone knew he’d killed my mother and sister. But I was too young to understand anything but that I needed him, and he’d abandoned me.”
He took another breath, collecting himself. “Lucie experienced something terrifying, and I don’t want her to feel I’ve abandoned her. I think we must make an exception for her. I think I ought to visit her, say, once a week, on Sunday.”
A long, long pause. Then, “No,” Noirot said, so calmly. She looked up at him, her pale countenance unreadable.
That was her card-playing countenance. Anger welled up. He’d told her what he’d told no one else, and she shut him out.
“You’re right,” she said, surprising him. “Lucie does need you. She’s frightened. She had a shocking experience. But it up to me to deal with it. You’ll visit her on Sundays, you say. For how long? You can’t do it forever. The more she sees of you, the more she’ll assume you belong to her. And leaving aside Lucie and her delusions, how much more heartache do you mean to cause Lady Clara? How much more public embarrassment? None of this would have happened, your grace—none of it—if you had stuck to your own kind.”
It was not very different from what he’d already told himself. He’d behaved badly, he knew. But he wanted to make it right. He’d confided in her, to make her understand.
The cold, quiet fury of her answer was the last thing he’d expected. His face burned as though she’d physically struck him.
Stung, he struck back. “You’re mighty concerned with Lady Clara’s feelings all of a sudden.”
She moved away and gave a short laugh. “I’m concerned with her wardrobe, your grace. When will you get that through your thick head?”
What was she saying, what was she saying? She’d turned to him when Lucie disappeared, and they’d searched together, sharing the same hopes and fears. He cared for that child and he cared for her, and she knew it. “Two nights ago you said you loved me,” he said.
“What difference does that make?” she said. She turned back to him and lifted her chin and met his gaze straight on. “I still have a shop to run. If you can’t get hold of your wits and start acting sensibly, you’ll force me to leave England altogether. I’ll get nowhere with you causing talk and undermining me at every turn—you and your selfish disregard of everything but your own wants. Think of what you’re doing, will you? Think of what you’ve done, from the time you chased me to London, and the consequences of everything you’ve done. And think, for once, your grace, of someone other than yourself.”
She turned away and left him, and he didn’t follow her.
He could scarcely see through the red haze in front of his eyes. Rage and shame and grief warred inside him, and he wanted to lash back as viciously and brutally as she’d flayed him.
He only stood and hated her. And himself.
It was a long while he remained standing in the garden, alone. A long time while the anger began by degrees to dissipate. And when it had gone, he was left deeply chilled, because every last, remaining lie he’d told himself had been burned away, and he knew she’d spoken nothing but the plain, bitter truth.
Later that same Monday, the Duke of Clevedon visited the Court jewelers, Rundell and Bridge, and bought the biggest diamond ring he could find, the “prodigious great diamond” Longmore had recommended.
He spent the rest of the day composing his formal offer of marriage. He wrote it and rewrote it. It had to be perfect. It had to say everything he felt for Clara. It had to make clear that his heart could hold no one else. It had to make plain that he had put all his follies and self-indulgence behind him and meant to be the man she deserved.
Words came easily enough to him when he was writing. He’d always had a knack for an easy, conversational tone, where others would be stiff. When he wrote, thoughts sharpened in his mind as they did not always do when he spoke.
He’d always delighted in writing to Clara, and it wasn’t simply for the mental companionship. While sharing his thoughts and experiences with a kindred spirit formed a great part of his enjoyment, there was more to it. In the process of writing to her, he sorted and clarified his thoughts.
But he made heavy going of his marriage proposal. It was very late by the time he finished and memorized it, and by then it was far too late of think to going to Warford House. Clara would have gone out to a ball or a rout or some such.
He’d call tomorrow.
The Duke of Clevedon called at Warford House on Tuesday, naturally, though he knew the family were not at home to visitors—and for once Lady Clara was tempted to be not at home to him.
But when she told her mother she had a headache, Lady Warford said, “Lady Gorrell saw him yesterday leaving Rundell and Bridge. And here he is today when he can have you all to himself, instead of having to make his way through that crowd of bankrupts and mushrooms who hang about you. Surely you can put two and two together—and surely you can postpone indulging your megrims until after you hear what he has to say.”
A ring and a proposal was the tally Mama made. She might be correct, but Clara was not in the mood, for him or for her mother. Lady Warford had taken three fits only this morning, complaining that all the world was talking about the Duke of Clevedon and those “she-devils who called themselves milliners, and their wicked child,” who had very nearly cost him his life.
Of course, all would be forgiven once he put a ring on Clara’s finger, and Mama could lord it over her friends, whose daughters had snared merely earls and viscounts and a lot of Honorable Misters.
Clara would be forgiven, too, for her numerous failings as a daughter. It was her fault Clevedon chased shopkeepers. It was her fault he was so shockingly inattentive and forgot engagements—such as promising to join them for dinner on Saturday night. It was all Clara’s fault because she’d failed to fix his interest.
Small wonder, then, that when Clevedon entered the drawing room where she and her mother waited, Lady Clara’s smile wasn’t her warmest.
After mentioning that Longmore had told them of Sunday’s “excitement,” Mama asked so very sweetly whether the little girl was well. Clevedon said she was. Though he answered in monosyllables, obviously reluctant to talk about the child, Mama kept on grilling him. Finally, unable to smother her own curiosity, Clara asked, “Is it true she demanded to see the Princess Victoria?”
He laughed. Then he told the whole story. It was the same story Harry had recounted but it was in Clevedon’s style, vivid and funny, including a droll imitation of Lucie Noirot explaining that she was the Princess Erroll of Albania.
“And when her mother pointed out that she was not a princess,” he said, “Miss Lucie said”—and he raised his voice to a higher, lighter pitch—“‘Yes, Mama, but her highness wouldn’t come to talk to Miss Lucie Cordelia Noirot, would she?’ It was all I could do to keep a straight face.”
And Clara thought, He loves that child.
And she thought, What am I to do?
“It seems to me that the child gets into dreadful scrapes,” Mama said.
“How lucky you are,” Clevedon said, “to have three girls who’ve never given you a moment’s anxiety.”
“If you think that, you’re far out, indeed,” said Mama with a titter. “I vow, they give me more anxiety as they grow older, rather than less.”
“Yes, Mama is anxious that we shall end up old maids—or worse, married to someone unsuitable.”
“Clara has a little headache,” Mama said with a warning look at her. “She’s a trifle out of sorts.”
He looked at her. “You’re ill, my dear? I should have realized. You seem not your usual cheerful self.”
“It’s only a trifling thing,” said Mama, glaring at her.
“Trifle or not, you look pale, Clara,” Clevedon said. He rose. “I won’t weary you. I’ll come back at another time.”
A moment later he was gone, and in very short order, thanks partly to her mother’s badgering and partly to shame and anger and various other emotional turbulence, Clara went to bed with an altogether real headache.
Wednesday afternoon
The Green Park
“You ran away,” Marcelline said.
She’d taken Lucie to the park, and Lucie was pushing a child-size baby carriage, one of the numerous presents Clevedon had filled the nursery with. Susannah, who was still the favored doll, sat in it, staring at her surroundings with her wide blue glass eyes.
Marcelline had taken pains to make him hate her forever. Yet in spite of all said, Clevedon had come back.
He’d gone to the shop, and not finding her there, and getting no information from her sisters, he’d insisted on speaking to Sarah. Since the nursemaid was still, officially, his employee, Sophy and Leonie had to let her talk to him, and Sarah had to tell him that Mrs. Noirot had taken Lucie to the Green Park.
He’d come to the park and hunted Marcelline down—to confide his romantic tribulations, of all things!
He was intelligent, caring, and sensitive. He was an artful and passionate lover.
He was obstinate and oblivious, too.
She reminded herself that dukes were not like other men. Getting their own way all their lives damaged their brains.
Her brain was damaged, too, probably from spending so much time with him. No, her heart was what was damaged. In a not-so-secret corner, she was glad that he and Lady Clara were not yet engaged.
But they soon will be, and you’ll simply have to live with it.
“You leapt at the first excuse not to propose,” Marcel-line said. “If you had persevered, I promise you, her headache would have vanished. Your behavior is what pains her, you obtuse man.”
“I know I’ve made a muck of everything,” he said. “It was true what you said the other day. But the mess is so horrendous, I’m having the devil’s own time finding my way out.”
“You’re not helping matters, being here,” she said.
“You’re the expert on everything I do wrong,” he said. “You’re the autocratic female who knows exactly what everyone ought to do.”
“No, I know how everyone ought to dress,” she said.
“I’ll wager anything she knew why I was there,” he said. “I saw Lady Gorrell as I was leaving the jeweler, and she was bound to tell everybody. But I know Clara, and she didn’t seem very happy to see me—and when I offered to go, she looked relieved.”
“And you have no idea why she’d want you gone?” Marcelline said. “You’ve neglected her for weeks. You’ve made a spectacle of yourself with a lot of milliners.” Then you go out and buy a ring. And without any warning, you turn up, all braced for matrimony.”
“It was hardly like that,” he said.
“It was wrong, in any event,” she said. “You haven’t spent a minute wooing her.”
“I’ve known her since she was five years old!”
“Women like to be courted. You know that. What is wrong with you? Have you a blind spot when it comes to Lady Clara?”
He stopped in his tracks and looked at her while a comical look of horror overspread his beautiful face. “Are you telling me I have to chase her and make sheep’s eyes at her and hang on her every word the way her sodding idiot beaux do?”
“Don’t be thick,” Marcelline said. “You of all men know how to cast your lures at a woman. The trouble is, you treat her like a sister.”
He stiffened, but recovered immediately. In the blink of an eye, he was moving again, walking alongside her in his usual easy, arrogant way, expecting all the world to give way before him. Why shouldn’t he demand she solve his romantic difficulties? It was her purpose in life, as it was the purpose of all ordinary beings, to serve him. And wasn’t that her job, serving people like him? Not merely her job, but her ambition?
It wouldn’t occur to him that this was a thoroughly unreasonable way to behave with a woman he’d driven himself mad trying to make love him.
It wouldn’t occur to him how painful this was for such a woman.
She reminded herself the pain was nobody’s fault but hers for letting herself fall in love with him. She was a Noirot. She of all women ought to know better.
And being a Noirot, she needed to be thinking with her head—and not the soft bit, either.
He had to marry Lady Clara. All Marcelline’s plans had one objective: making the Duchess of Clevedon her loyal client. If this marriage didn’t take place, who knew how long it would be before he found someone else? It could be days. It could be years. And regardless how much time it took, how many other women in London could provide as splendid a framework for Marcelline’s dresses?
Furthermore, that framework wouldn’t provide nearly as good advertising were Lady Clara to marry a lesser being than the Duke of Clevedon.
In any case, she’d already cultivated Lady Clara and was grooming her to be a leader of fashion. Marcelline had already won her loyalty. In spite of all the rumors and scandal. In spite of Lady Warford.
In fact, Lady Clara had a fitting this afternoon.
A nursemaid walking with a little girl stopped to admire Lucie’s doll. She obligingly stopped the baby carriage and took out Susannah for inspection.
“What a pretty dress!” the little girl exclaimed.
“My mama made it,” Lucie said. “She makes dresses for ladies and princesses.”
She put Susannah back and the nursemaid led the little girl away. The latter dragged her feet, looking back over her shoulder at Lucie’s doll.
“You ought to give Lucie business cards to hand out,” Clevedon said. “Have you thought of adding a line of doll dresses?”
“No.”
“Think about it.”
She had too much to think about as it was. “Lady Clara is coming for a fitting later today,” she said. “A dress for Friday night. One of the Season’s most important balls, I understand.”
“Friday?” He frowned, thinking. “Damn. That must be Lady Brownlow’s do. I suppose I’d better attend.”
“Of course you’ll attend,” she said. “It’s one of the high points of the Season.”
“That doesn’t say much for the Season.”
“What is the matter with you?” she said. “I know you like to dance.”
“In Paris,” he said. “In Vienna. In Venice.”
“Do you know how many men and women would give a vital organ to be invited to that ball?” she said.
“You?” he said. “Wouldn’t you like to be there, showing off one of your creations?” A smile caught at the corner of his mouth and devilment danced in his eyes. “I should like to see you get into that party, uninvited.”
She wanted to scream.
“Are you not paying attention?” she said. “You need to court Lady Clara. What you don’t need is the woman everybody thinks is your latest liaison calling attention to herself. And what I don’t need is to alienate precisely the people I want to come into my shop. How many times must I explain this to you? How can you be so thick?”
He looked away. “I was picturing you at the ball, and it amused me. Well, I’ll imagine it while I’m there. That should allay the tedium.”
She could picture herself there, too—not the self she was, but the self she might have been, a gentleman’s daughter. But then, if she’d been welcome to that ball, she wouldn’t have Lucie. She would never have learned how to make clothes. She would never have truly found herself.
Not to mention she’d look like the rest of them.
Her life wouldn’t be so hard but it wouldn’t be nearly so much fun. One need only consider how bored he was, the great, spoiled numskull! Lady Brownlow had recently been elected a patroness of Almack’s. She was one of Society’s premier hostesses. Her parties were famous. And he acted as though he was forced to attend a lecture in calculus or one of those other horrible mathematical things.
“You will attend,” she said. “And you will not arrive late. You’ll make it clear that you want only to see Lady Clara, to be with Lady Clara. You’ll act as though no other woman in the place exists for you. You’ll act as though you haven’t known her for ages, but have only now truly discovered her. It will seem as though she has suddenly appeared to you, like a vision, like Venus rising from the sea.”
She wished Sophy were here to offer less clichéd dramatic imagery.
“You’ll sweep her off her feet,” she went on. “If the weather allows, you’ll lure her out onto the terrace or balcony or someplace private, and you’ll make it very romantic, and you’ll make it impossible for her to say anything but yes. It’s a seduction, Clevedon. Do keep that in mind. This isn’t your dear friend or your sister. This is a woman, a beautiful, desirable woman, and you are going to seduce her into becoming your duchess.”
Countess of Brownlow’s ball
Friday night
The Duke of Clevedon resolved to do exactly as Noirot advised. He refused to let himself think about what he was doing because, he told himself, there was nothing to think about. He wanted Clara to marry him. She’d always been meant for him. He’d always loved her.
Like a sister.
He crushed the thought the instant it popped into his mind. He went to Lady Brownlow’s ball. He followed Noirot’s instructions to the letter. He arrived not too early, because that would be gauche, but in good time. And he hunted Clara as he would have hunted a popular demimondaine or a dashing matron.
He exerted himself to amuse her, whispering witty remarks into her shell-shaped ear whenever he could get close enough. She was looking quite handsome this evening, and the sodding idiot beaux couldn’t keep away.
Noirot had dressed Clara in rose crepe, one of those robe sort of things. The front opening of this one revealed a white satin under-dress. Some ribbons crisscrossed the deep white V of the bodice, calling attention to her décolletage, while the bodice itself was shaped in diagonal folds that emphasized her voluptuous figure.
The men were almost visibly drooling and the women were almost visibly green.
He led her out to dance, aware that he was the luckiest man at the ball.
And he loved her.
Like a sister.
He strangled the thought while they danced, and it lay lifeless and forgotten in a dark, cobwebbed corner of his mind for the ensuing hours. It still lay dead in the shadows when, as instructed, he led Clara out to the terrace. Others were there, but they’d found their own relatively private corners. No one could be completely private, of course. It wasn’t that sort of party. The lights from the ballroom cast a faint glow over the terrace. A sickle moon was sinking behind the trees toward the horizon, but the wispy clouds racing overhead didn’t conceal the stars. It was a romantic enough evening.
He made her laugh and he made her blush, and then, when he deemed the moment exactly right, he said, “I have something very important to ask you, my dear.”
She smiled up at him. “Do you, indeed?”
“All my happiness depends on it,” he said. Was that an amused smile? Mocking? But no, she was probably nervous. He was, certainly.
Time to take her in his arms.
He did it. She didn’t push him away.
Good. That was good.
But something was wrong.
No, everything was perfect.
He bent his head to kiss her.
She put her hand up, blocking the route to her mouth.
He lifted his head, and something skittered inside, cool, like relief…
But no, that was impossible.
She was looking up at him, still smiling, but now there was a spark in her eyes. He tried to remember when he’d seen that expression before. Then he recalled her eyes sparking in the same way when she snapped at something her mother said.
He wished Noirot were there to shout instructions—or get control of Clara—because he sensed that the situation had taken an unexpected turn, and not a good one, and he wasn’t at all sure how to turn it back.
Then he realized what he should have done.
Idiot.
He should have asked first.
He drew back and said, “Forgive me. That was stupid. Presumptuous.”
She raised her perfect eyebrows.
His speech, the speech he’d practiced for hours, went straight out of his head. He plunged on. “I meant to ask, first, if you would do me the very great honor of becoming my wife.” He started to reach inside his coat for the ring. “I meant—I hardly knew what I meant…” Where the devil was it? “You look so beautiful—”
“Stop it,” she said. “Stop it. How stupid do you think I am?”
He paused in his searching. “Stupid? Certainly not…We’ve always understood each other, you and I. We’ve shared jokes. How could I write all those letters to a stupid girl?”
“You stopped writing them,” she said. “You stopped writing as soon as you met—But no, that isn’t the point. Look at me.”
He took his hand away from his coat. “I’ve been looking all night,” he said. “You’re the most beautiful girl here. The most beautiful girl in London.”
“I’m different!” she said. “I’m completely different. But you haven’t noticed. I’ve changed. I’ve learned. All the other men notice. But not you. I’m still Clara to you. I’m still your friend. I’m not really a woman to you.”
“Don’t be absurd. All night—”
“All night you’ve been acting! You practiced this, didn’t you? I can tell. There’s no passion!”
Her voice was climbing and he became aware of other terrace occupiers casually drawing nearer. “Clara, maybe we—”
“I deserve passion,” she said. “I deserve to be loved—in every way. I deserve a man who’ll give his whole heart, not the part he isn’t using at the moment, the part he can spare for his friends.”
“That isn’t fair,” he said. “I’ve loved you all my life.”
“Like a sister!”
The dead thing sprang up from its corner and came running to the front of his mind. He knocked it down again. “It’s more than that,” he said. “You know it’s more than that.”
“Is it? Well, I don’t care.” She tossed her head. Clara actually tossed her head. “It isn’t more to me. When you’re about, it’s the same as if I were with Harry. No, it’s worse, because lately you’ve been a dead bore, and he, obnoxious as he is, is at least entertaining. I know you men are bound to have your outside interests—Oh, why should I bother with euphemisms? We both know we’re talking about other women. Mama has drummed that into me. We’re supposed to overlook it. Men are born that way and it can’t be helped. I was prepared to overlook it.”