Clara pursed her lips. “The appearance hides a most hideous soul, I’m sure. Devoid of all morals.”
But still, she turned to drink in the sight of him striding toward her through the ballroom’s heavy crush of revelers with a purpose she didn’t mistake. Their eyes met, and a heavy, languid feeling sluiced over her. He was a beautiful creature, tall of form, lean of hip, his shoulders broad beneath his black evening clothes. His dark hair had been pomaded with a more judicious hand tonight, rendering it less gleaming and more lush. For some reason, she imagined tunneling her fingers through it, raking her nails over his scalp, holding his head to hers for the kind of devouring kiss he’d bestowed upon her that night in his study. The kind of kiss some forbidden part of her clamored for again.
Perhaps her brain was rotten, as her stepmother had suggested. It had to be for her to entertain the notion of ever again allowing Ravenscroft to kiss her. He reached them and bowed with formal elegance, taking their extended hands one at a time to buss the air over them. Bo’s hand came first, and when it was Clara’s turn, the delicious slide of his firm mouth upon her skin teased her, ever so slight but nonetheless sending her traitorous heart into a flurry.
“Forgive me if I’ve intruded upon you, Lady Boadicea, Miss Whitney.” His tone was butter smooth and rich. Practiced.
He wasn’t requesting forgiveness, not truly. Rather, he was marking his claim, Clara realized. She had aligned herself with the wickedly handsome man before her, this man who smelled of French cologne and had taken untold numbers of ladies to his bed. In a short time, she’d be his wife.
The thought gave her a shiver that she banished with the stern reminder that theirs would be a marriage in name only. “You don’t strike me as the sort of man who often asks forgiveness,” Clara said, harnessing the streak of boldness that wanted to come to life within her.
“Ah, Miss Whitney, how insightful you are,” he remarked, an odd light in his eyes that she couldn’t decipher. “Penitence isn’t one of my virtues, I’m afraid. Of course, many would tell you that I haven’t any virtues at all.”
“Of that I have no doubt,” Bo told him matter-of-factly.
Part of Clara couldn’t believe her friend’s insouciance but then she thought about all the nights they’d crept about their finishing school in the name of pranks and revenge. For his part, the earl flicked a casually assessing glance over Bo before turning his brilliant eyes back to Clara.
“This is the one, then,” he said, and she knew he had discerned which friend had led her to his door in a mere sentence.
He was blessed with an alarming penchant for reading people with a blend of clarity and ease. She’d witnessed it before, but she was just beginning to fully appreciate its consequences. The Earl of Ravenscroft was smarter, wilier, and more aware than she’d even supposed. “Lady Bo is my dear friend,” she said carefully, aware that she neither confirmed nor denied his suspicions. She didn’t wish to cause any trouble for Bo, after all.
“Of course.” He flashed a grin that showed off his white, even teeth. “Lady Boadicea, I have an old and treasured friendship with your sister, Lady Thornton.”
His confirmation of the Duchess of Devonshire’s similar suggestion days earlier stirred up an odd emotion that she refused to recognize as jealousy, for of course it wasn’t. Curiosity was all it was. Bo’s elder sister, the Marchioness of Thornton, shared a love match with her husband. They were a rarity in the ton, Clara understood. So how was it that Lady Thornton was a friend of Ravenscroft’s?
She looked at Bo, who shrugged, as if to suggest it a moot point, and then back to the earl, who revealed nothing. His expression was impenetrable. Surely he would’ve realized the implications of his admission. But if he did, he didn’t appear to care.
“I believe you owe me this dance, Miss Whitney,” was all he said.
She raised a brow. “I’m sure I don’t owe you a dance, Lord Ravenscroft,” she returned. “However, I will give one to you, just the same.”
* * *
Julian had to admit he found her cheek oddly endearing. As he led Clara into the glittering crush of dancers and they took up their places opposite each other, he once again experienced an irritating surge of appreciation for the plucky girl. Irritating because he wasn’t meant to like her. Lottie had cured him of any misguided notions about the finer emotions that supposedly distinguished men from beasts. The sad truth of it was that men and beasts were all the bloody same. The eyes of their fellow revelers were upon them, sudden and curious, as if to underscore his presumption.
“After this dance,” he felt compelled to warn into her ear, “my interest in you will become common knowledge.”
“What shall happen then?” she asked, her Cupid’s bow bearing an amused slant, as though she were privy to a joke shared by no one else in the chamber—certainly not him.
He inhaled her intoxicating scent and wished she preferred something cloying and floral, something less earthy and inviting and bright. Something that didn’t make him mad for her. “You’ll be watched. Your every action will be fodder for the gossip mills. In short, you’re about to experience firsthand the folly of your decision to enlist my aid in your schemes.”
“But my lord, I have no schemes.” She said the last with the ease of a practiced coquette.
He bowed, feeling grim and altogether too appropriate. They linked hands, palm to palm, and she turned her face up to his as he settled his other hand high on her waist, drawing her nearer than was entirely polite but he didn’t give a damn. Her corset was a cuirass beneath her silk gown, keeping him from knowing the lush nip of her waist. He couldn’t help but imagine her lovely form without the stiff girding. He would trace her soft curves, come to know the swell of her hips. A swift surge of lust kicked him in the gut, right there on the ballroom floor as the orchestra struck a waltz and they began the obligatory steps.
Waltzing involved too damn much whirling for his peace of mind. While his dancing proficiency had improved over the years, his appreciation for the art most certainly had not.
“I beg your forgiveness, Miss Whitney, in the event I prove a less than nimble dance partner.” He smiled as though he hadn’t a care in the world, keeping his tone equally light and low.
Several ladies and lords had actually begun making spectacles of themselves in their effort to stare. He longed to quit the ballroom, but fleeing wouldn’t do a thing to further his cause. It would only invite more speculation, more whispers, more gossip to fly. The ton was a complex machine, powered by scandal and built upon unforgiving ruthlessness. He possessed too many black marks against him to count by now, his presence within polite society suffered for his association with the prince and the Marlborough House set.
But for Clara this would all be new. He didn’t wish to make her a scapegoat, and the realization had a chilling effect upon his ardor. Then again, the urge to protect her, he supposed, was likely innate—some sort of remnant response from the days of ancient man. For there was nothing about the vibrant American beauty in his arms that made him feel differently for her than any other woman who had come before.
Or was there?
He stared at the pale, silken skin of her throat, the delicate hollow beneath her earlobe, the waterfall of golden curls spilling from her coiffure, the diamonds winking from her hair and ears. Mine, came an unsettling thought from deep within him. She will be mine. From the tip of her upturned nose to her wild eyebrow, to her red lips and small hands, her full bosom and responsive nipples…all of her. Every bit of her. He’d lay claim soon enough, and yes, he had to admit that their marriage would make her different from all the other women who had come before, whether he liked it or not. For that matter, whether she liked it or not.
Round and round they went, twirling by rote. Then he saw a flash of glossy, dark curls, a familiar profile—too handsome for conventional beauty, her patrician nose a bit long, her cheeks high slashes charged with color as she danced ever nearer in the arms of her partn
er. Lottie. Julian felt, for just a breath, the careening slide of anger, followed by a return to the bottomless pit of self-loathing where she’d cast him.
Jesus, her partner was leading her astray, making a fool of them all, and they were on a path to collide. Before he realized what Lottie was about, he’d pulled Clara closer, her skirts brushing his legs, nearly tangling in his feet. He turned her neatly so that it was his back that bore the brunt of the collision and not Clara’s smaller and more delicate frame as Lottie and her partner jostled into them.
Despite his attempt to shield Clara, the damage had been done. This altercation, however apparently innocent and accidental, would be remarked upon by all. Lottie smiled at him, acknowledging him with a nod of her head. It was a knowing smile upon her lips. A satisfied one.
“Do forgive me, old chap,” drawled her partner, equally insincere, enjoying their little farce. The Marquis of Ashburn hadn’t changed a great deal since Julian had seen him at one of their set’s wild house parties. It had been the very last wild house party he’d attended, in fact.
For a moment, he returned to that day, to Lottie’s chamber. She’d been nude beneath Ashburn, mid rut. The unwanted image of the marquis’s pale, hairy arse and thin, spider-like legs thrusting into her flashed briefly through his mind. A year had passed, but the bile in his throat was just as real and bitter as if it had been that very morning that he’d blithely walked in upon the woman who claimed to love him being fucked by a man he’d once counted as a friend.
“You’ll need forgiveness, Ashburn, but not from me,” he forced himself to quip with a lightness that was far from the true, dark ugliness festering within him.
Ashburn threw back his head and barked out a laugh. “Ever the ready tongue, Ravenscroft. One ought not to be surprised with all the practice you’ve had, eh?”
The orchestra ended its set, leaving the other dancers milling about them in a sea of colorful silk, perfect evening clothes, gleaming jewels, and unabashed curiosity. He bowed to Clara, who watched him now with a questioning expression upon her unguarded face. Damn it, he couldn’t allow Lottie and Ashburn to rattle him. Nor would he allow them to insult his future countess.
“Some of us use our tongues wisely, my lord, and others do not.” He kept his tone mild and cool, but his meaning was apparent, as was his deliberate slight in return.
“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” Lottie murmured, pursing her lips as she raked a rude stare over Clara. “Ravenscroft, won’t you do the honors?”
There was something inherently wrong about the business of introducing one’s former mistress to one’s future wife, whether or not the former mistress was a peeress. Lottie was a duchess and a favorite of the Prince of Wales, which allowed her entrée into the best parties. However, all polite society knew damn well that, aside from the heir and spare, not one of her children belonged to her husband. Just as all polite society knew damn well that he and Lottie had indulged in a very lengthy and public affair. He’d foolishly imagined he cared for her and she for him. She’d tossed him away like a dress from last season.
“No,” he said with deliberate calm.
Lottie faltered. She was not the sort of woman who had ever been denied. She’d been raised in a life of privilege, cosseted and spoiled, adored for her beauty, sought after for her charms. Men fought to win her. Even Bertie, as the Prince was known, had fallen for her with an unusual haste.
Her lips thinned and her nostrils flared, betraying her ire. “You’ll not introduce me to your little nobody?”
“Oh, I daresay I’m not a nobody,” Clara interrupted then, her tone as august as any peeress in her own right. She bestowed a slow, withering glance upon Lottie. “Nor am I particularly little. I am a Virginian, however, and we Virginians are a fierce lot. I can shoot an apple off a man’s head from fifty paces.”
Lottie stiffened. “How…accomplished you must be.” Her tone belied her words.
“Or a woman’s head,” Clara drawled, smiling sweetly.
Well, hell. His little dove never ceased to surprise him. Julian grinned, feeling the weight that had been heavy upon his chest suddenly disperse. “Good evening, Your Grace,” he said in his most dismissive tones. “Lord Ashburn.”
And then he whisked Clara away from the tawdry pair, giving them the cut. “Well done,” he congratulated his betrothed in quiet tones as he escorted her out of the fray.
“An acquaintance of yours?”
“Former,” he acknowledged, a trace of the old bitterness creeping into his voice. “I’m sorry, Clara, for the insult paid you. I’d have avoided it if I could have.”
“She still seems smitten with you, but she is not a nice woman, my lord. I wouldn’t consort with her ilk if I were you,” she startled him by saying. “You can do far better than her sort.”
He was bemused by her pronouncement, declared to him as he led her through the seemingly endless crush of the ballroom where anyone could overhear. This girl either didn’t have an inkling of proper decorum, or she didn’t give two shites. He rather suspected it was the latter rather than the former. No one had ever told him he could do better. No one but this petite, feisty American wearing an outlandishly tight midnight-blue gown that showed her waist and bosom to perfection. Damn, but she was lovely. And cheeky. And she’d bested Lottie. Hell, she’d even defended him, and he doubted she’d ever met a more debauched voluptuary than he.
Moreover, she was right. He could do better than Lottie, a woman who had professed to love him all while fucking at least two other men at the same time. Christ, but he’d been stupid. How he had trusted and believed in a woman like the Duchess of Argylle was a mystery to him now. Foolishness mixed with drink, no doubt.
“Of course I can do better than her sort,” he told Clara, placing his hand over hers on the crook of his elbow for just a moment before removing it, lest it be remarked upon by anyone. “I’ve already found her. Or perhaps, to be more apt, she found me.”
“Don’t forget you cannot keep her,” she reminded him beneath her breath, shooting him a sideways glance that just about undid him.
He was bloody well keeping her at his side and in his bed. Never had he been more certain of anything in his entire, admittedly misbegotten life. But he very wisely kept that to himself as he caught sight of Clara’s protective stepmother and steered her back into safe waters.
Chapter 6
“Her Grace, the Duchess of Argylle,” intoned her father’s butler in what Clara could only suspect was grim portent.
She hadn’t expected any callers, and that the duchess would arrive in the morning, outside of her receiving hours, when Clara was perfectly alone and not expecting a soul, was cause for surprise. But, she hoped, not the alarm that stirred within her as she stood with a dignity that belied her inner turmoil.
She could have claimed she was not at home, could have refused the duchess’s call, and been left instead with her card on a salver and no strife to speak of. But avoidance wasn’t Clara’s way.
The duchess swept into the morning room where Clara had been reading, wearing a formidable visiting gown of aubergine damask and crushed velvet that emphasized her voluptuous form to perfection. She was lovely, graceful, elegant, and—worst of all—a former paramour of the earl’s. A former paramour who had meant something to him. Clara had supposed as much by his reaction to the duchess at the ball, and Bo had confirmed her suspicions with a healthy dose of friend-to-friend gossip afterward.
They exchanged a proper, formal greeting. The duchess perched herself on a settee as though she were as delicate as Sèvres porcelain. Perhaps it was the tight-lacing of her lady’s maid that was the source of the woman’s achingly slow, deliberate movements, Clara thought rather unkindly.
Silence descended upon them, interrupted only by the steady ticking of a clock and the faint background sounds to which Clara had grown accustomed: the outside din of London traffic and the whispered footfalls of servants moving about the halls. The duchess�
��s ice-blue gaze raked over Clara’s person, her expression a study of the aristocratic dismissive. Her raven-haired beauty would have been a natural foil to the earl’s dark good looks. Clara could picture the two of them together, a couple so beautiful that it would almost be painful to look upon them. A curious twinge cut through her at the notion of Ravenscroft with the exquisite creature before her.
“I have paid you an honor in this call, Miss Whitney,” the duchess said at last.
Clara almost gave an indignant and thoroughly unladylike snort. The woman clearly possessed an interesting definition of the term. Over a week had passed since their inauspicious meeting, and she supposed that the duchess had followed Ravenscroft’s obvious pursuit of her.
For a man who was rumored to be one of the worst rakes in England, the earl had done a grand job of properly courting Clara. He danced with her at the Earl of Margate’s ball twice, once at the Marquis of Londonderry’s, and two times at the Duke of Cheltenham’s. He walked with her in the park. He took her for a ride on Rotten Row. In public, he was the epitome of charm. He scarcely touched her, and he certainly never said wicked things to her about his tongue or pinned her with smoldering stares that made her feel as if she stood before him in nothing save her chemise.
Clara should have been relieved. But she had grown tired of the endless social whirl. Tired of being trussed up in corsets and heavy skirts, changing five times a day, smiling pleasantly to Lady Dullard and listening with feigned concern to the Duchess of Snipe. She was weary of tea and visits, of dancing and eating and generally doing nothing of value with her time.
And now she was being ambushed by a beautiful, haughty duchess who dared to call said ambush an honor. No, facing the gorgeous former lover of her betrothed was not, in Clara’s book, an honor in any form.
Heart’s Temptation Series Books 4-6 Page 35
