A Fine Passion

by Stephanie Laurens

  Deverell smiled and raised his glass. “When he acts, that friend of ours is nothing if not effective.”

  Their celebration continued for another half hour, then they all recalled it was the middle of the Season and they had social events to attend, however reluctantly. Alton left, eyes bright, saying he’d see Jack later. Closing the front door behind him, Jack grinned. Alton wasn’t slow; he’d understood enough of their references to have gained a more complete and accurate view of Jack. The brotherly concern that had been directed Jack’s way had largely evaporated, laid to rest. One more hurdle removed from his path.

  Smiling to himself, pleased with his day and looking forward to his night, Clarice’s eager questions, and her likely response to their accummulating successes, he climbed the stairs to dress for the evening.

  “My dear, your return is the talk of the ton!” Old Lady Swanley beamed at Clarice. “I’m absolutely delighted that Emily could persuade you and Lord Warnefleet to attend tonight.”

  Clarice smiled; confident and assured, she settled on the chaise beside Lady Swanley. A childhood friend of Clarice’s mother, Lady Swanley was one who had never wished her ill; it was pleasant to be able to circulate in such company again, to relax with people she didn’t need either to manage or guard against.

  Gathered about her ladyship’s table, they’d dined with a select group of guests, then the ladies had left the gentlemen to their port. Ranging in age from Lady Swanley’s venerable years to her granddaughter’s seventeen, the ladies disposed themselves on the chaises and chairs in comfortable groups and settled to their favorite occupation, discussing all they’d seen and heard that day.

  Relaxed, Clarice responded easily to questions and comments about herself and her life in the country, her brothers’ romances—romances the ton was only just realizing were being conducted under their collective nose—and rather more carefully to questions touching on her return to the ton and the adjustment likely to flow from that, specifically to Moira’s standing.

  “For there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind, my dear, that she’ll take against your success and do her best to hobble you.” Lady Swanley nodded sagely. “She was always a flighty, demanding miss. She thought marrying your father would gain her the status she wanted, and so it would have if she’d behaved appropriately.”

  “If she’d had any sense, you mean.” Henrietta Standish snorted. She caught Clarice’s eye. “Moira’s idea of behaving in a manner appropriate to a marchioness is shrilly demanding all due honors.” Henrietta humphed. “It’s never occurred to her that respect is earned, and true status bestowed on one. Neither is given because one stamps one’s foot and insists.”

  Every night as she moved through the ton, with Jack’s aunts and Lady Osbaldestone’s backing gradually, step by step, reclaiming her position, Clarice heard more of Moira’s misdeeds, increasingly learned just how close to being deemed persona non grata her stepmother stood. There were moments she almost felt sorry, or at least concerned for Moira, but then the specter of what Moira was holding over Alton’s and Sarah’s heads, what she’d done to Roger and his Alice returned to her mind, and Clarice put aside such softer emotions as unjustified.

  Every evening with Jack by her side she continued to juggle the balls they’d tossed spinning into the rarefied atmosphere of the ton’s ballrooms and drawing rooms. Her reemergence, her reinstatement as it were, was focusing the ton’s attention better than they’d hoped; most were agog to learn why she’d returned and were keeping close watch for any hint of an answer.

  Her brothers’ romances were of interest, too, but not, yet, as keenly watched. Few had yet realized how serious said romances were; once they did, the majority would assume that her brothers’ impending nuptials were the cause of her return.

  In comparison, the rumor about James, a whisper they’d succeeded in coloring as too dangerous to inflate to fully fledged gossip, had faded, almost withered away. The kernel still resided dormant in some minds, but no one felt the need to nurture it, not with so much else to talk about.

  Not with the senior branch of the Altwood family so very much the cynosure of the ton’s collective eye.

  Later, after the gentlemen had returned to Lady Swanley’s drawing room, and she and Jack had done the rounds, they left for the next event on their schedule, a ball given by one of Clarice’s cousins, Helen Albemarle.

  “I find it rather strange”—Clarice leaned back against the carriage’s cushions—“that the family, those I’ve had little contact with over the years, like Helen, seem so ready to welcome me back.” She glanced at the facades sliding past the window. “I hadn’t thought to be so readily reembraced.”

  She’d been musing out aloud, something she was falling into the habit of doing when there was only Jack to hear. Somewhat to her surprise, his hand closed more firmly about hers.

  “Anthony told me that the wider family, especially the younger generation, didn’t view you with the opprobrium you seemed to expect.”

  When she turned to stare at him, Jack smiled at her amazement. “You didn’t seriously imagine I’d rattle up without knowing what we’d face?”

  Put like that…she inclined her head, acknowledging that, knowing him as she now did, that would indeed have been a silly notion. However…

  He’d asked, had thought to ask Anthony even before they’d set out.

  He’d been thinking of her, of what she would face, if she knew anything of him, thinking of how to protect her even then.

  Facing forward, she left her hand resting in his, felt the strength of his fingers surrounding her slighter bones, and felt…she wasn’t sure what it was she felt, only that it was novel and somehow precious.

  She didn’t have time to dwell on it, not then. The carriage rocked to a halt before another set of front steps, at yet another fashionable address. They alighted beneath an awning and walked up the narrow red carpet laid out to welcome her cousin’s guests. When they reached the ballroom, Helen came sweeping up to greet them.

  “I’m so thrilled you could come, and that you’re back with us—I mean among the ton—again.” Helen beamed and embraced her, then turned to greet Jack; Clarice introduced him.

  That done, Helen rattled on at high speed. She was still the talkative, well-intentioned and perennially good-natured lady Clarice remembered; it was easy to reconnect as if there were only a seven-week gap in their acquaintance, rather than seven years.

  Beckoning her young daughter to attend them, Helen introduced the chit, who had just made her come-out. Clarice gave the girl her hand and a reassuring smile, and was taken aback when the girl sank into a deep, very correct curtsy. A swift glance at Helen showed her smiling with maternal pride. Clarice recovered swifty and bestowed on the girl her most regal and formal approval, the social blessing of the family’s most influential female.

  That was what Helen and her daughter had hoped for; they both beamed. Parting from them, Clarice took Jack’s arm, and they moved on.

  Glancing at Jack, she caught the amused light in his eyes, but she doubted, male that he was, that he’d correctly interpreted that little interlude. Helen had whispered that Moira was there; Clarice only hoped Moira hadn’t witnessed the moment. If she had, she’d be livid.

  Clarice had accepted that to properly aid not just James but her brothers she’d have to reclaim her position in the ton. What she hadn’t initially realized was that in doing so, she would forever diminish Moira’s precarious and hard-fought-for standing, such as it was.

  By her own actions, because of her attitude, Moira could never lay claim to the respect Clarice could, and it increasingly seemed did, command. If Helen’s behavior was anything to judge by, she was all but reinstated, not just in the ton’s mind but within the family, too, to the full honors by right accruing to the Marquess of Melton’s daughter.

  She dragged in a breath. Jack glanced at her. She met his eyes. “I hadn’t thought it would be so easy. Or so swift.”

  He smiled; his
fingers tightened briefly over hers on his sleeve, then he looked ahead, steering her through the crowd to where Lady Davenport imperiously beckoned, two older ladies beside her on a chaise.

  Clarice recognized the pair; by the time she and Jack reached them, she’d metaphorically girded herself for battle, yet as, turning from greeting Lady Davenport, she curtsied before her paternal aunts, her father’s sisters who had supported him throughout in his banishment of her, she let not an inkling of her feelings show.

  Constance, Countess of Camleigh, looked her up and down, cold gray gaze and haughty features giving nothing away, then she raised her eyes to Clarice’s. “I can’t say you’ve grown—you always were a Long Meg—but…” With an effort, her ladyship held out both hands. “Welcome back, my dear.”

  Startled, Clarice took one crabbed hand in each of hers, and, faintly stunned, yielded to the tug and bent to touch both cheeks with her formidable, and until then she’d believed highly disapproving, aunt.

  Constance knew; she humphed as Clarice straightened. “At the time, I thought Marcus was right, but later, especially after what happened to that poor soul Emsworth married, and the more we saw of Moira, well, I came to think perhaps you had, indeed, known best.”

  “Indeed.” More fluttery than her domineering sister but just as high in the instep, Catherine, Lady Bentwood, nodded portentously. “And Emsworth’s second wife is faring even worse, they say. A shocking thing it would have been had he married you.”

  Clarice was grateful she didn’t need to reply. She and Jack remained for ten minutes; both her aunts were exceedingly interested in meeting him, and in gleaning as much as they could about James. When Jack had reached the limit of what they’d deemed fit to divulge, Clarice stepped in and excused them.

  Constance sniffed but let them go.

  Clarice didn’t need to glance around to know that everyone in the entire ballroom now understood that she was fully repatriated to her former status.

  She glanced up to see Jack battling to suppress a grin. “What?”

  He met her eyes, let that grin—a dangerous one—fleetingly surface. “Why do I have the strong feeling that if Emsworth had married you, it would have been he who fell down the stairs?”

  Her answering grin matched his. She looked ahead—straight into Moira’s furious, flashing eyes.

  Thankfully at a safe distance. Her stepmother was standing, fists clenched by her sides, almost quivering with rage, along the opposite wall. Her daughter, Mildred, stood beside her, also shooting daggers at Clarice.

  Clarice met their ire, then coolly inclined her head to them. Then she looked away and let Jack sweep her into the crowd.

  Chapter 18

  They remained at Helen’s for over an hour. Clariceglimpsed Moira a number of times, but every time she looked, her stepmother turned the other way. Inwardly shrugging, Clarice thereafter ignored her and addressed herself to refreshing her memories of the various members of her numerous and widespread family.

  Time and again, she was asked for advice. Some even solicited her thoughts on the suitabilility of various matches for their daughters and sons. The irony didn’t escape her, or Jack; they shared a speaking glance, but managed to keep their lips straight. Regardless, nothing could have more strongly declared that her family regarded her as their de facto matriarch, in preference to Moira.

  Later, they journeyed the short distance to their last port of call for the evening, Lady Carraway’s house at which her ladyship’s rout was in full swing. A dashing, well-connected matron, her ladyship bade them welcome, archly commenting that Clarice would find numerous old friends among the thronging crowd.

  That crowd was somewhat different to those at previous events; her ladyship’s guests were primarily Jack’s and Clarice’s age. Consequently most of the ladies were married, and many of the gentlemen as well. Not that their marriage vows seemed to weigh heavily on most of the guests’ minds, at least not in terms of momentary enjoyment.

  Clarice gauged the mood in a few swift glances, a few short exchanges. There were indeed a number of guests she remembered of old, yet watching a lady who had made her come-out at the time Clarice should have flirt outrageously with some gentleman while his wife, beside him, fluttered her lashes at a gazetted rake, Clarice felt nothing beyond a vague tiredness, a wish she and Jack had simply returned to Benedict’s. But Lady Osbaldestone and Lady Davenport had insisted she make her mark in even this sphere; bowing to their greater wisdom, she gripped Jack’s sleeve and sallied on.

  Jack guided Clarice through the crush, cloaking his reaction with his customary easygoing bonhomie. Clarice had mentioned that her mentors had strongly recommended her appearance at this event, but he suspected they hadn’t made allowance for that waltz he and she had indulged in three evenings before. Since then, the attitude of certain males toward Clarice had changed. Altered. Witness Emsworth’s offer.

  While he seriously doubted others would make such a crass mistake—aside from all else, he’d made certain word of Emsworth’s discomfiture, in all its wonderful detail, had circulated subtly through the clubs—to his mind, the male interest in Clarice had escalated to a dangerous level.

  When he’d moved to throw her sensual attractiveness into the teeth of the gossipmongers, he hadn’t considered that they had sons and nephews many of whom were perennially on the lookout for ladies of sensual promise.

  Still, he didn’t regret that waltz, not for a moment; as for the rest, he would simply ensure he remained, always, by her side.

  He succeeded in that endeavor, but the night had turned sultry; the ballroom grew increasingly stuffy. Despite her upright stance beside him, he sensed Clarice was wilting; she’d been the cynosure of attention for the entire evening, and still largely was.

  “There’s a balcony beyond the glass doors.” He turned so she could see the doors he meant. “Let’s step out and get some air.”

  She nodded. “An excellent idea.”

  They moved steadily across the room. Eventually, they gained the doors. As he swung one open, Jack caught sight of a footman entering the room, balancing a tray of tall glasses. He glanced at Clarice. “Go out—I’ll get us some refreshment.”

  She nodded and stepped through. He let the fine curtains fall over the open door, and headed for the footman.

  Clarice walked out onto the balcony; the cooler night air wrapped about her and she breathed a sigh of relief. She’d been born and reared within the ton, had untold experience at events such as this, yet while she could manage such appearances easily, almost without thought, they neither fascinated nor held her attention.

  There was, she knew, more to life than balls and parties.

  Despite being once again received into the ton, despite having reclaimed her position in its totality, she was finding it difficult even to pretend that such things truly mattered anymore, not to her.

  Gripping the balustrade, she looked out into the velvet darkness of the night, and considered what had changed. Not the ton, that was certain.

  “My darling Clarice.”

  She blinked; it took her a moment to place the drawl. Slowly, she turned and studied the handsome man who’d slipped out of the ballroom to join her. His aristocratic features showed clear signs of dissipation, of the passage of the years.

  “Good evening, Warwick.” Her tone, cold and emotionless, as disinterested as she felt, pleased her. “What are you doing here?”

  He held her gaze, then boldly let his lower, tracing the curves of her body, tonight displayed in magenta moiré silk. Clarice gave thanks she hadn’t worn the plum silk.

  “I wondered, my dear, if, having endured seven years of purgatory, you might perhaps consider the advantages of—”

  He broke off at the sound of approaching footsteps. They both turned; Clarice smiled as Jack stepped through the curtains carrying two glasses of champagne. She took the glass he held out to her, with it indicated Warwick. “Lord Warnefleet, allow me to present the Honorable Jonathon War
wick.”

  Jack’s lids flickered, yet his charming, easygoing smile remained in place. Clarice knew him well enough to distrust that smile utterly.

  Warwick didn’t. He smiled back, an amiable wolf expecting to negotiate a share of the prey. “Warnefleet.” He held out his hand.

  Jack’s gaze fell to it, then he turned to Clarice. “Hold this for me, will you?”

  Puzzled, she took his glass, too.

  Jack turned back to Warwick—and slammed his fist into Warwick’s jaw.

  Clarice blinked. Warwick staggered back, then collapsed to the ground. Stunned, wits rattled, he stared up at Jack.

  With a light shrug, Jack resettled his coat, straightened his sleeves, then lifted his glass from Clarice’s fingers. “Thank you.”

  He raised the glass to Warwick. “Pleased to meet you.” He sipped.

  Utterly befuddled, Warwick remained sprawled on the ground. “What was that for?”

  Jack smiled, this time genuinely, all teeth. “That was for past misdemeanors. That, and worse, is what would have happened to you last time had I been about. That, and worse, is what will happen to you in future, should you be so unwise as to approach Lady Clarice again, in whatever fashion.” His smile grew intent. “Because I am here, now.”

  Taking another sip of champagne, Jack considered Warwick, then quietly asked, “Do you have that clear?”

  Belligerence had bloomed in Warwick’s eyes, but there was hint enough in Jack’s tone to make him look more closely. After a moment of studying Jack’s eyes, Warwick paled; all aggression leached from him.

  “Indeed.” Lips compressing, he threw Clarice a brief glance, then awkwardly got to his feet. Straightening, he paused, as if waiting for the world to stop spinning, then he fractionally inclined his head. “If you’ll excuse me?”