Dukes Prefer Blondes (20 page)

“Everybody says it's more troublesome after childhood,” Davis said. “Especially dangerous for young gentlemen, they say. Like your brothers.” The maid paused. “Lady Exton worried that word would get about of your being ill. I believe measles was Mr. Radford's suggestion.”

“Not very glamorous,” Clara said. “But more so than . . .” She tried to remember if anybody had ever told her. “What was it I had?”

“Typhus was Mr. Radford's diagnosis, my lady.”

“Good grief.”

“Indeed.”

“Yet I lived.”

“So it seems.”

Thanks to him.
Typhus!

“Then measles will do nicely,” Clara said calmly. “It won't cause Mama heart failure.”

“No, it won't, my lady. He thinks of everything.”

Clara looked up, but the maid was carrying the soiled linen out of the room.

Not half an hour later, the three Noirot sisters turned up, obviously unafraid of measles and, in the Duchess of Cle­vedon's case, undeterred by an advanced state of pregnancy.

Clara told them nothing of the truth, but she did try on the clothes they brought her, their idea of convalescent gifts.

Tuesday 13 October

I
've come to say goodbye,” Radford said.

The weeks of looking after her and hiding his anxiety had caught up with him at last, and he'd slept most of yesterday. At one point, he'd been distantly aware of visitors descending on his patient—­who was no longer his patient, he reminded himself.

The callers had been women. They were, moreover, women whose otherwise flawless English betrayed to his sharp ears a Parisian upbringing.

It wanted no brain power at all to deduce their identities. These were the famous modistes of Maison Noirot. They bustled along the corridor, talking, sometimes all at once, and he could hear their voices until, after a few minutes, they closed Lady Clara's bedroom door.

A moment ago he'd closed her bedroom door, too, not thinking about propriety, because he hadn't needed to before.

Lady Clara set aside the book she'd been reading, and folded her hands in her lap.

He'd become so used to seeing her in her nightgown. Later, as she became stronger and able to leave her bed for stretches of time, she'd worn a simple wrap over the nightdress. Now she was dressed in the elaborate dishabille women called morning dress.

Hers comprised a cloud of embroidered muslin, the sleeves full to the elbow and snug on her lower arms. It fit snugly over her bosom and waist as well. Yards of lace and ribbons garnished the concoction, and a pink sash, tied in a bow at her waist, called attention to her figure's lush femininity. As though any man with working eyesight needed this pointed out.

Instead of the virginal nightcap, she wore a lacy cap trimmed in pink, from which a pair of lacy pink lappets dangled over her shoulders to point to her bosom, in case one didn't know the way.

In case one hadn't undone a button there, once.

A lifetime ago, it seemed.

With her return to what she'd deem proper dress, he saw the wall between their two worlds go up.

Which was exactly what any rational man would expect to happen.

The rational man knew that everything would revert to what it was before. She'd been ill, that was all. She hadn't changed into somebody else. This was the reason a rational man stood here, saying goodbye.

“Did my sister-­in-­law and her sisters frighten you yesterday?” she said.

“Women do not frighten me,” he said. “Even somewhat French women.”

“No, of course not,” she said. “How silly of me. Naturally you deem it time to go. You've taken care of me. Now you must go back to Herefordshire and take care of your beastly cousin.”

He advanced further into the room. “You ought to sit nearer to the fire,” he said. “After an acute illness, one is more susceptible to chills. Stand up, and I'll move the chair.”

She rose in a flurry of rustling muslin. “I suppose you can't help yourself,” she said. “It must be in the ducal bloodline, this dictatorial manner.”

He took up the chair and set it nearer the fire. Then he drew the screen to precisely the place where it would shield her from excessive heat while allowing sufficient warmth.

“You're every bit as dictatorial,” he said. “If I didn't tyrannize you, you'd tyrannize me.”

“Of course I'm tyrannical,” she said. “I was brought up to be a duchess.”

The words struck like a blow to the head and to the heart simultaneously. Inwardly, he reeled. Outwardly he went very still. For a moment only. To collect himself.

Only the fire's crackle broke the room's taut silence. Then she crossed to the chair and sat, muslin whispering, lace fluttering.

“My mother will not settle for less,” she said.

He was not in the least surprised. He wasn't cast down. He couldn't be, because he'd told himself exactly this. She wasn't for him. She'd never been for him. He was not a man who deluded himself. He'd seen the facts from the moment he'd recognized her, the day she'd appeared in the Woodley Building, a place where she clearly didn't belong. He and she came from different worlds. She might as well have lived on the moon.

“Perhaps I ought to marry Beastly Bernard,” she said before he could step far enough away from himself to fashion a rational sentence. “He sounds as though he needs someone like me desperately. Being despotic, I should not have much difficulty making something of him. In my experience, men like Bernard are not at all difficult to manage.”

Radford stared at her. It took a moment for his brain to connect to his tongue.

“Bernard,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “He's the duke in the family, is he not?”

C
lara's heart pounded so fiercely, she thought it must break through her chest. She needed all two and twenty years of ladyship training to maintain her composure.

“Are you delirious?” he said.

“On the contrary,” she said, “I view the matter dispassionately. I've been near death—­”

“You were never near death while I was by,” he said sharply.

“But had you not been by,” she said, “my life would have ended, courtesy Dr. Marler, with my having done almost nothing of value beyond rescuing a not very intelligent boy for his sister's sake. I realized I had frittered away my time.”

“You're only twenty-­two!”

“It's past time for marrying,” she said. “Nearly every girl who made her debut with me is wed. Some have children. I'd hoped for—­ Well, it doesn't matter, because that was silly. I'd considered never marrying, but that was silly, too. I ought to have realized that being an eccentric spinster could not suit me. Especially living in a tent.”

“No one says you have to live in a tent! This is demented.”

“I only point out a lady's lack of alternatives,” she said. “I've been brought up to do nothing else but become a nobleman's wife, and I've put it off long enough. I don't want to marry a gentleman who asks me because it's this year's fashionable thing to do. Your cousin doesn't sound like somebody who cares what's fashionable. He only wants a wife to give him sons.”

The fading green and yellow bruises round Radford's eye showed starker as the color drained from his face.

She hoped he was too shocked to think clearly, because otherwise he'd realize what she was up to.

“Furthermore, if I'm to please Mama and be a duchess, I should like to be one whose life isn't tediously repetitive,” she said. “All you've told me proves the Duke of Malvern will present a stimulating challenge to my wits and ingenuity. Clearly he needs someone like me to put his household in order. You'll do for estate business, but that means property and legal matters.” She waved a slender hand. “The agent and land steward and such.”

“I'm overjoyed to know I'll
do
in some paltry fashion.” His voice was choked.

“But His Grace requires a woman to take charge of domestic affairs. I was strictly trained to oversee a ducal household. Because I was supposed to marry Clevedon, you know—­”

“My cousin isn't Clevedon!” he said. “Bernard is gross! The day you saw him, all those years ago? That was Bernard at his best. He's
disgusting
.”

“So are paupers, yet you undertake the challenge of seeking justice for them.”

“I don't have to live with them!”

“His Grace owns several houses, all of them large,” she said. “I need not see more of him than I can tolerate.”

“He's intolerable!” Radford said. “How can you, Clara?”

She looked toward the fire. “My mother always says that.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw him clench his hands, then unclench them.

“I did not nurse you back to health only to see you throw yourself away on Beastly Bernard,” he said.

She glanced at him. His color had returned and he seemed as composed and remote as usual, but the ghosts in his eyes told the same story his fisting hands had told.

“Mama wants me to marry a duke,” she said. “She'll be mortified if I don't, and her poisonous friend Lady Bartham will make her life unbearable. It's my duty. The trouble is, I threw over Clevedon, and youngish dukes aren't thick on the ground.”

“Drat you, Clara, you don't need a duke.”

“But Mama—­”

“To the devil with your mother,” he said. “You need
me
, you stupid girl.”

The silence between them became so fraught that the burning coals' soft crackle sounded like artillery fire.

Heart galloping, hands sweating, she raised her eyebrows, but not very much. “Do I?” she said coolly.

R
adford realized what he'd said only after he'd said it, which showed the state of mind he was in. Or out of.

He folded his arms and walked to the window and looked out. He saw nothing but what roiled inside his head.

“This is absurd,” he said to the glass.

“Certainly it is,” she said. “I can't think what on earth I'd need you for, unless I was in dire want of aggravation.”

He turned back to her. “You will not marry Bernard.”

She sat in perfect duchess posture, spine straight, chin aloft.

“I will,” she said. “Unless I get a better offer. I have to marry
somebody
.”

Me!
his other self shouted. Marry
me
!

He'd all but said it a moment ago. But not precisely.

He glared at her. Then he stalked to the fire. One of the mantelpiece ornaments depicted the naiad Daphne in the process of turning into a tree. He moved her an inch to the left. He remained there for a moment, his hand on the mantelpiece.

It was a pose he'd taken many times before, hand on the jury rail, head bent, as he prepared to speak. The trouble was, this time he was on both sides of the case. He needed to represent Reason. His other self was opposing counsel, aka Throw Caution, Intellect, and Basic Facts of Life to the Wind.

“You're going to try to wriggle out of it,” she said. “I can tell.”

She could tell a great deal too much. He remembered the way she'd taken note, in no time at all and despite fear for her life, of Jacob Freame and Chiver. She'd noted what they looked like, what they wore, and every detail of the carriage apparently aiming for her in Charing Cross.

“I spoke in a passion,” he said. “The notion of your marrying Bernard was so revoltingly imbecile as to cause a temporary derangement of my senses.” When she'd spoken of Bernard wanting sons, the image had arisen in Radford's mind of Bernard in the process. With her. For a moment he'd believed his brain would actually explode.

“Your illness has brought about an intimacy that would never have happened in normal circumstances,” he said. “I will not deny . . . affection.”

Love!
his other self roared.
You love her, you pompous ass!

“If there were no . . . affection, I should take advantage of your confusing, at present, feelings of gratitude with . . . stronger feelings,” he said. “I should consider your large dowry and do what I could to compromise you, thus forestalling parental objections. Your family would hate me forever, but everybody hates me. Meanwhile, I should have a beautiful wife who owns the closest thing to a brain I've ever observed in a female, whose influence would further my career, and whose dowry would make life comfortable until I achieved the level of success I intend.”

Who would make me happy. Whose face I would be so grateful to see on the other side of the table at breakfast. Whose voice I would be so grateful to hear the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning
.

“But,” she said. “There's always a
but
.”

“Use your head,” he said. He moved away from the mantelpiece, farther away from her. “You're not for me nor I for you. The novelty of living in chambers and being a barrister's wife would soon pall. It's nothing like the challenges you've been trained to manage, and the society is a different class of persons. Not to mention how disagreeable I am to live with. Ask Westcott. One of these days he'll shoot me and the jury will call it justifiable homicide.”

“I could shoot you just as well as he could,” she said. “And I'd probably have more fun doing it.” She waved a hand. “Never mind. You're quite right. I've been foolish.”

“You've been ill. Naturally, you—­”

“I thought the man who had the courage and stomach to look after me during a thoroughly disgusting disease—­a man who'd take full responsibility for my survival—­who'd trust only to his brains and wit and patience and c-­compassion . . .” Her voice wobbled.

“Clara.”

She put her hand up. “I'm not done. This is my closing speech, my learned friend, and you will let me say it through.” Her eyes glistened, but she blinked back the tears, swallowed, and went on, “I thought such a man was everything a man ought to be. I thought this was the kind of man a woman could live with happily, whether or not he was a duke and no matter how many large houses he didn't have. Silly me, I wanted the kind of man I could love and respect, one I'd be proud to help advance in his profession—­because he'll need a great deal of help, given his complete lack of tact, let alone charm. I wanted the man who saw me not as this year's fashionable beauty, not even as a proper lady, but as I was, and as a friend and companion. I don't see why I'm any less capable of putting up with you than Westcott is, but you seem to think so, and you're a professional arguer. And you seem to think I should never be happy unless I married a duke. And so I will take counsel's advice. I'll marry Bernard.”