Dukes Prefer Blondes

by Loretta Chase

  “I did that for the dukedom and the ­people he was responsible for. Not for him.”

  “Yet you were pleased when you learned he was courting a lady.”

  “I’d be an idiot not to be pleased. I didn’t want my father to inherit. I didn’t want to inherit. I liked my life.”

  “But it’s happened,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  And the reality had turned out more complicated and demanding than he’d anticipated. So much to do and think about, even he hardly knew where to begin.

  “I’d hoped he’d do better,” she said. “I didn’t know him, yet I was so disappointed. And angry at him, too, for mucking up his chance.”

  The feelings about Bernard, like so many, huddled in the farthest reaches of Radford’s brain, being brooded over by his other self. They were so deeply packed in that mental lumber room, he wasn’t sure what he felt. He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.

  “I missed him,” he said. “It’s completely irrational.”

  She brought her hand up to his cheek and simply laid it there. He turned his face into her palm and kissed it.

  “Feelings,” she said. “Not your strong suit.”

  “I loathe them. More your department.”

  “I see little value in your cluttering up your great brain with feelings,” she said. “I recommend you leave the feelings to me, along with domestic matters. Then you can give your attention to—­to—­” She waved a hand, and the ruffles at her wrist fluttered. “To what you’re good at. Logic and business and such. Henceforth consider the big, nasty feelings my responsibility.”

  He had to laugh. How could he help it? He caught her wrist. “Come here,” he said.

  “I am here,” she said.

  “Closer,” he said.

  “I do not see how I could be any closer.”

  “Think harder,” he said.

  Wednesday 9 December

  Marchioness of Bredon’s sitting room

  Dash it, Clara, you promised!”

  “I did not, technically, promise,” she said.

  “Do not split hairs with me! I told you specifically to leave it alone—­and you ought to have the intelligence to understand why.”

  She bristled at this, but Radford went on heedlessly, “Yet you go out, exposing yourself to known villains—­”

  “That’s nonsense, and you of all men ought to recognize it,” she said. “Villains are everywhere. We’re all of us exposed to them every day. And what should anybody think, if they did see me? ‘Ah, there goes the brand-­new Marchioness of Bredon—­with her groom and lady’s maid.’ ”

  He held on to his temper with a thread, and that in itself was infuriating. He never gave way to temper, except by design, in the courtroom.

  But his heart was pounding with fear—­for her—­and a thousand thoughts beat in his brain, making chaos there. He moved away, to the window, and stared out.

  In the garden, Toby pushed his father’s invalid chair along one of the footpaths. The day was mild, for December. Father was well wrapped in a shawl, a rug over his legs. Mother walked alongside, talking.

  They’d taken to the fool boy, amazingly enough.

  Clara’s idea. She’d been busy, indeed, while he was away.

  But this . . .

  “Why should they suspect me of anything?” she said. “I’m only a woman. Helpless and incompetent and lacking in intelligence. Even lowborn persons, even criminals, think that. Women don’t count.”

  He closed his eyes and fought for detachment. The other man, in the shadowy corner of his brain, was in a frenzy of rage and fear and memories of last night and this morning . . . their lovemaking and—­oh, who knew what else and who cared? Feelings.

  Her department.

  This is a criminal matter, he told himself. You’re in a courtroom of sorts. Consider the facts and the facts alone.

  And my marriage? he wanted to argue. Does your lordship expect me to ignore my wife and the duty of a husband?

  Of course he remembered every word.

  . . . the causes for which Matrimony was ordained. . .

  Thirdly, it was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.

  Mutual . . . help . . . comfort.

  He waited until the noise in his head quieted to a hum.

  He turned back to his wife. She stood by the mantelpiece, where any number of missiles stood conveniently at hand. At the moment, she did not look as though she contemplated throwing any of them. But her blue eyes flashed and he noticed the tension in the hands folded at her waist.

  “Clara, it was Freame with that boy,” he said.

  “So I concluded,” she said. “That is why—­”

  “Do you think a London banker or speculator or whatever he’s pretending to be would collect someone like Squirrel on charity? The boy’s hard as nails. While at Glynnor Castle, I wrote to Inspector Stokes about Stuffed-­Cheeks Boy. I had a full report. Though new to Freame’s gang, Squirrel had already made a name for himself as a cracksman.”

  His wife looked blank.

  “Housebreaker,” he said. “And Chiver’s prize protégé.”

  “Then it’s as well Toby spotted him,” she said. “Only imagine if Bridget had gone out.”

  “She would have had the good sense to run in the opposite direction. Unlike you, driving straight for trouble.”

  “I did not go near that curst boy! None of us did. You are being exceedingly irrational.”

  “I!”

  “Let me tell you again because I know you were not listening properly before.”

  “I heard every—­”

  “Colson went to the stable yard and gossiped,” she said. “As grooms do. He didn’t have to ask questions. The stable men were only too happy to tell him everything about everybody, including the so-­called Mr. Joseph Green, in Richmond for a rest and to take the healthful waters. He’s come with his son, Humphrey, and a young servant, Samuel. I was safe with Davis, streets away, in a shop. There’s no reason to throw yourself into a pet.”

  “A pet!” A son named Humphrey, and a servant. Who was Humphrey? Half a dozen gang members remained unaccounted for, according to Stokes . . . including Husher.

  Radford’s gut knotted.

  “You remind me exceedingly of Mama,” Clara said.

  For a moment he thought his hearing had failed him. His ears seemed to be ringing.

  She gave him no time to respond but went on: “Such histrionics are all very well in the courtroom, but it won’t do in a marital situation. Unless you are angling for a divorce.”

  Had he suddenly taken a delirious fever? He could not have heard the words he thought he’d heard. It took him a moment to speak. “Are you quite mad? A divorce?”

  “You’re right,” she said. “It’s early days yet. An annulment.”

  “Stop talking rot.”

  “You started it,” she said. “You flew into a rage because I sent a spy to obtain information necessary to the family’s safety.”

  He had not flown into a rage. He never did. He was the calmest and most rational of men. He said very calmly, “The family is not your responsibility.”

  “It most assuredly is,” she said. “Especially when you’re not here. As to spies, you didn’t hesitate to use Millie, I recollect. But I couldn’t approach her without causing talk, which of course would go round the town. Everybody knows everything about everybody, sometimes before one knows it oneself. Really, my lord, you are behaving quite irrationally. I realize this is a difficult time for you but—­”

  “It isn’t difficult. I’m perfectly capable of managing a dukedom, thank you—­and of doing so more competently than my father’s predecessors.”

  “You’re making a sad job
of managing me, in the present instance,” she said. “But I suspect you’re excessively troubled by feelings. Unfortunately, I’m too much out of humor with you to attempt to intervene or translate. I recommend you find something productive to do. Or somebody else to rage at. I have letters to write and one hundred fabric swatches to look at, and both want a tranquil mind.”

  He opened his mouth to retort, then changed his mind.

  He stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  He heard something shatter against the door.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The mildness and inviting appearance of the weather has induced her Majesty to walk out several mornings this week. Her Majesty has also ­taken carriage airings with the King and her ­Royal relatives.

  —­The Court Journal, Saturday 5 December 1835

  Heart pounding, Clara dropped into the chair at her writing desk.

  She would not make herself wretched thinking about it.

  He was impossible.

  She snatched up her pen and started yet another list, but her hand was shaking and she was so angry, she tore the paper and spoiled the pen.

  She took out a penknife and tried to mend it, but she only ruined the nib. She pushed the chair back, got up, stalked to the door leading to her husband’s study, and stomped in. She’d tidied his desk after he left, and it had comforted her to touch his things. It had also comforted her to know he’d object to her touching his things, and she could tease him about it.

  Her throat tightened.

  She stole a pen from his desk. Not satisfactory. She was still so angry. And hurt.

  She’d thought he understood.

  Someone ought to encourage her, he’d told her parents. To be herself.

  She opened drawers and started rearranging his neat order. She moved the ruler to the small tray where he kept pencils. She took all the writing paper out of an upper drawer and opened a bottom one to put it there.

  She reached down to remove what was in the bottom drawer . . . and paused.

  Because there, instead of paper or notebooks or anything else related to his work, rested a crumpled bit of tissue paper, loosely wrapped about something.

  She set the writing paper down on the desk and took out the parcel from the drawer. The loose tissue paper opened further, giving her a glimpse of soft leather.

  She sat in her husband’s chair and set the parcel on his desk and fully opened the flimsy wrapping.

  Gloves.

  A lady’s gloves.

  Very dirty gloves.

  They were plain but of good quality. They still smelled of lavender . . . the scent Davis always kept in among Clara’s clothes.

  Her clothes. Her gloves. Her plainest pair, the ones she’d worn on the day they rescued Toby.

  Only look at your gloves! Radford had said, so bafflingly furious about such a small thing.

  She’d taken them off and—­then what?

  When she returned to her great-­aunt’s, Davis had said, “Has your ladyship lost another pair of gloves?”

  Clara had assumed she’d dropped them in the street when she’d climbed out of the carriage, pretending to an insouciance she’d been so very far from feeling. Or else they’d slipped from her lap and onto the floor of the coach . . . when she and Radford had kissed. She’d supposed the coachman or the next passenger had appropriated them.

  She’d assumed incorrectly.

  Radford had found them. And kept them.

  Her throat hurt.

  She heard returning footsteps.

  She wrapped the gloves, thrust them back into the drawer, and slid it shut. She dropped the writing paper into its proper drawer and hurried back into her sitting room, taking the fresh pen with her.

  She was in the chair at her desk a moment before the door flew open.

  By the time Radford stormed back in, she had the pen in hand and a list of some sort—­she had no idea what it was—­in front of her on the desk. Her heart raced and her hand gripped the pen too tightly. She wanted to throw it down and put her face in her hands and sob.

  She placed her grandmother’s image firmly in the front of her mind and refused to let the tears fall or her mouth so much as tremble.

  He closed the door and stalked to the desk. “Dash it, Clara, have I hurt your feelings?”

  “Certainly not,” she said. “I take no notice of your irrational ranting and raving.”

  He set his hands on the desk, leaned toward her, and looked her in the eye. She met his gaze, chin aloft.

  “I’ve hurt your feelings,” he said.

  “You promised,” she said.

  “Promised.”

  “That day. At your trial. I needed to be myself, you said. You’d encourage me to make a spectacle of myself. You—­”

  “I remember.”

  To her amazement, a tinge of red spread over his cheeks and jaw.

  “You spoke of my mind,” she said. “But a little while ago, you behaved as though I hadn’t one. You—­”

  “Yes, yes,” he said impatiently. “I may have overreacted somewhat.”

  “Somewhat? You insulted my intelligence. On no evidence.”

  “Flimsy, I acknowledge.”

  “Not flimsy,” she said. “None. Aught. Nihil. Unless your great brain is malfunctioning, you ought to know I did my spying as cleverly as you might have done, though you—­”

  “I should not have done it quite in that way.”

  “Of course not,” she said. “You’re a man. You can act more freely. I’m hampered by a strait-­waistcoat of rules.”

  “Except the ones I’m so lost to reason as to try to make.”

  She wasn’t ready to be mollified. “I took no risks,” she said. “I could not have been more discreet. I did not pursue your criminals in any way or acknowledge their existence. I simply gathered information, which I presented to your ungrateful self as soon as you’d had time to recover from traveling. And if I had it to do over again, I should do it again, because I’d rather nobody killed you at present.”

  “Not at present?”

  “I’m not in a humor to wear mourning for you,” she said. “I’m already in black for your cousin—­whom I dearly wish I had married instead—­and it doesn’t become me, and I’d rather not extend the length of time I must go about looking like a scarecrow, especially on your sorry account.”

  He studied her dress. “Black only makes you look a little pale, though your present rage heightens your color. I should not call it unbecoming.”

  “Do not try to turn me up sweet.” He was doing it, though. She was hopeless. She wished she hadn’t found the gloves. He uttered a few vaguely complimentary words and she commenced melting.

  “Clara—­”

  “I’m not Clara to you. To you I am my lady.”

  “Your ladyship is doing it too brown. Marry Bernard, indeed.”

  “I might have made something of him! I can do nothing with you! Your obnoxiousness knows no bounds.”

  “You knew I was obnoxious when you married me. All the world knows it. My picture is in the dictionary next to the word.”

  “You’re not even trying,” she said.

  “I don’t actually have to try to be obnoxious,” he said. “It comes quite naturally.”

  She wanted to throw herself in his arms. She didn’t want to quarrel anymore. She loved him, with all his faults. She loved his faults, too.

  She reminded herself that the only way to get the marriage she wanted was to fight for it. They could have a partnership, like the one his parents had built. They could have the marriage she’d always supposed was a fantasy. But it wouldn’t simply happen because she wanted it.

  “I refer to your learning how to be a tolerable husband,” she said.

  “Tolerable! My dear girl, th
at’s asking a great deal.”

  “I realize we’re in the catastrophe phase of this inheritance,” she went on ruthlessly because my dear girl made her want to fly into his arms. “But you don’t seem to realize that the earthquake has happened to both of us. Yes, I trained to be a duchess. But I was not prepared to enter a household that had never been a ducal household or had anything to do with Society or had any thought of doing either, and is completely unprepared—­and in many cases, unwilling—­to change its ways.” She added quickly, “You’re not to think I blame your parents in the least. It’s perfectly reasonable of them to want their peace. But I’ve been carrying on single-­handedly for this last fortnight—­and you come back only to find fault!”

  His head went back as though she’d slapped him.

  He straightened away from the desk, and she thought he’d storm out again, but instead he drew in a deep breath and let it out and said, “You have a point.”

  “A point!” she said. “I have a hundred points! I could write pages on the topic, had I time. But I must think about curtains for Malvern House. And Mama cannot find half the furniture listed on the last inventory, not but what she says we shouldn’t attempt to retrieve it, judging by what remains.”

  “I do realize—­”

  “You don’t, not a fraction of it. The staff at Malvern House is not only too small, but incompetent as well. We’ll have to replace all but one or two. Have you any notion how time-­consuming and tedious that is?”

  “Surely you don’t need to—­”

  “It’s a house of some forty or fifty rooms. We don’t know the precise number because we can’t find the most recent floor plans. There are five floors in all, and even Mama’s stamina could not withstand more than the main ones.”

  He turned away from her and walked to the fire. He folded his hands behind his back and stood there for a time, staring into the burning coals.

  The silence stretched out. She could hear the crackle and hiss of the fire and the anxious beating of her heart, which seemed louder by far.

  She gazed at him, taking in his tall physique and broad shoulders and the strength and confidence of his long, lean frame. She remembered the lanky boy from so very long ago, defending her honor against a bully who, at the time, had seemed to her the size of an elephant.