by Erica Ridley
She was just…there, like a dust mote in a shaft of light.
Her perpetual insignificance had helped her through scrape after scrape. Chloe would never admit how much she wished, just once, to see a flicker of recognition reflected back at her.
Not that her expectations of Faircliffe were high. What type of conceited, coldhearted knave blithely gave away a painting he did not own as a courtship gift?
A villain like that could not be trusted or reasoned with. He’d had his chance to deal honorably. Chloe wouldn’t beg him for the painting even if she could. At this point, the duplicitous, arrogant blackguard deserved to have it whisked out of his hands.
She forced her tense fingers to unclench and folded them in her lap. Soon.
“Thank you ever so much for your charming gift,” Mrs. York cooed loud enough for the entire party to hear, and likely the neighbors as well. “Philippa is overjoyed.”
Philippa did not appear to be overjoyed. Or even middling-level joyful. She bore the same I am here because I must be expression she wore at every social function, save the brief occasions when her mother left her side and the reading circle could actually talk about books. Chloe imagined her far more interested in the duke’s famed library than in the man himself.
Not that Faircliffe seemed particularly infatuated. A man in love would have dreamed up a gift better suited to his bride.
“My gratitude,” Philippa murmured.
The duke looked self-congratulatory. “My pleasure.”
Chloe glared at him on behalf of women everywhere who longed for more than token gestures of false affection.
But Faircliffe’s kind didn’t waste time on matters of the heart. Lords and ladies—or those who aspired to become them—selected their unions with cold practicality. Their minds were muddied not with emotion but with visions of titles and dowries and estates and social connections.
Chloe was delighted not to belong to a world like that.
Mrs. York clapped her hands together. “And now…a celebratory tea!”
The duke’s face displayed a comical look of alarm. “I don’t think—”
“You must join us!” Mrs. York’s hands flapped like frightened birds. “The ladies were about to have oatcakes and cucumber sandwiches—”
“We were about to discuss epistolary structure in eighteenth-century French novels,” Philippa murmured.
“I never meant to interrupt,” Faircliffe said with haste. “I mustn’t stay, and in fact—”
“Nonsense! Come, come, all of you.” Mrs. York waved her arms about the room, driving her guests into the dining room like a shepherd herding sheep.
Chloe and Faircliffe were both caught in the flow.
Once they passed through the doorway, however, Chloe stepped to one side. She could not take a seat at the table or she would be stuck there for the next hour.
While everyone else was occupied, this was her chance to liberate her beloved Puck. But first, she needed an excuse to disappear. An adorable, furry reason.
She released Tiglet from the large wicker basket. The calico kitten darted between boots and beneath petticoats with a formidable rawr.
Mrs. York gave a dramatic shriek in response.
Tiglet scaled several curtains in search of an open window before darting out of the dining room and flying off down the corridor as though his tail were afire.
Chloe gasped as if shocked that her homing kitten was attempting to dash home. “How embarrassing! I’ll run and find the naughty little scamp at once. Please don’t wait for me.”
Philippa glanced up from her place at the table. “I could help—”
“Sit down,” her mother hissed. “The duke is here.”
Philippa sighed. “We could at least ring for a maid or footman—”
“It’s really no trouble,” Chloe assured her. “Please serve the tea.”
With a meaningful glance to Mrs. York, Chloe made several unsubtle tilts of her head toward the Duke of Faircliffe, who was tarrying noticeably, as if reluctant to take his place at the table.
“Oh!” Mrs. York said loudly. “You’re absolutely right. Go on, dear. Take your time. Over here, Your Grace. Come and sit by Philippa. We’ve saved you the best seat.”
“Have you met the others?” Philippa gestured at each young lady as she took a chair at the table. “To my left is…”
Chloe slipped from the room at the sound of Mrs. York chastising her daughter for performing introductions out of the order of precedence. Chloe could be gone an hour before anyone would notice.
She wouldn’t need but five minutes.
With her basket hanging from her arm, she ducked into the parlor and closed the door behind her. A broken hairpin in the keyhole would not only prevent anyone from entering behind her but would also make it obvious a crime was under way. She would simply work fast.
There was no sense looking for the kitten. Strands of calico fur and unfortunate paw prints on a velvet curtain indicated Tiglet had already found an open window and was well on his way home.
Chloe hurried to lift her family painting from the wall and carried it behind a chinoiserie folding screen in the corner. Cutting the canvas free was not an option. The replacement must look identical to the original, and besides, she would never damage an object that meant this much. Quickly she lay the frame facedown and removed her tools from the basket.
Marjorie had drilled Chloe on mounting and unmounting canvases until her fingers were callused and she could perform the maneuver in her sleep. Up came the grips, off came the backing, out came Puck & Family. She rolled it into a scroll the size of her forearm and tucked it into the basket before stretching the forgery over the wooden frame.
This was the tricky part. There was no way to attach the painting without hammering the grips in place. She must do so in silence. If she placed only one grip on each side, and lined each one perfectly with the holes it had come from… There! She hurriedly returned it to the wall.
As long as it stayed there, no one would notice the imperfect craftsmanship. And if one day someone did notice, well, that was none of Chloe’s concern. Faircliffe would be the one who had to explain the shoddy frame.
She did not feel sorry for him at all. This was not his painting to give away. For that alone she could never forgive him.
She ran to open the parlor door before anyone noticed it had been shut, and strode past the dining room to the front door without taking her leave from the guests. By now Faircliffe and Philippa were exchanging romantic words, with all of the other ladies hanging on every utterance.
Would anyone realize she had failed to return? Doubtful. If anything, the ladies would assume Jane Brown had slunk off in mortification.
Her throat prickled. She would never know what the other ladies thought of the current novel, but Chloe didn’t need reading circles. She was a Wynchester. They had each other, which was more than enough.
Keeping her face down, she headed along the front walk toward the first carriage in the queue. Only when she glimpsed red curtains and a pair of leather gloves on the box did she lift her head toward the driver’s perch.
It was empty.
Her lungs caught. Where was Graham?
Distant shouts reached her ears, and her tight muscles relaxed. Something unexpected must have occurred, and her siblings’ planned distraction was in progress.
This was her cue to flee.
Chloe pushed the basket onto the perch, unhooked the carriage from its post, and leapt onto the coachman’s seat. Female drivers weren’t unheard-of, but all the same, she was glad she never went outside without garbing herself in the plainest, dullest, dowdiest clothes in her wardrobe. No one who glanced her way would bother looking for long.
She set the horses on a swift path out of Mayfair.
Only when Grosvenor Square was no longer visible behind her did she allow herself a small smile of victory.
Their cherished family portrait was coming home. Once she walked in that doo
r with their painting held high—
“Did we escape?” came a low, velvet voice from within the carriage.
Chloe’s skin went cold. Who was that? Graham wouldn’t be hiding in the back of the carriage. A stranger was in the coach! She twisted about and wrenched the privacy curtain to one side.
A handsome face with soft brown hair and sculpted cheekbones stared back at her, glacial blue eyes wide with surprise.
“Faircliffe?” she blurted in disbelief.
“Miss…er…you?” he spluttered when he found his voice. “What the devil are you doing driving my carriage?”
4
Chloe swung the privacy curtain shut in Faircliffe’s shocked face and spun back toward the horses.
No, no, no. This could not be happening. She had come so close to completing a perfect mission with no one the wiser until she…accidentally abducted a duke in the process? Her blood pounded loud in her ears. What the dickens was she supposed to do now?
Faircliffe jerked the curtain back open.
She did not turn around.
“Stop the carriage!” His Grace’s imperious tone sent shivers up her spine.
Chloe urged the horses faster.
And to think she’d bragged to her siblings that the next time she saw Faircliffe, she’d give him the cut direct. Instead she was carting him across town like a gin-crazed hackney driver.
They were out of Mayfair, at least; that was something. But they had to get off the road before someone noticed the House of Lords’ prized orator hanging his head out of the front window like a puppy, with some nondescript chit at the reins.
“I demand you stop this coach at once!” the duke thundered.
She made a sharp left into a narrow alley. One of the inns her family used as a safe harbor was a few miles from there. The proprietress was paid well not to ask questions. Chloe could jump from the carriage and slip through the kitchen and out through the laundry door before the duke scrambled out of the coach.
Not that a duke would scramble. At least, not a dignified nob like Faircliffe. He moved with stiff, austere precision—a godlike statue come to life. He was as clever as Apollo, as forbidden as Bacchus, as dangerous as Ares.
No matter where she glimpsed him, he managed to look utterly majestic and extremely uncomfortable in his own skin at the same time—as though a great prophecy had been bestowed upon him and he did not relish what the future had in store.
But today Chloe held the reins. She alone determined her path.
The rapid beating of her heart was due to the surprise of finding him behind her, not from his closeness or the way she could feel the energy radiating from his body along her spine and the back of her neck. He was a problem, and she would deal with it.
“I am warning you,” Faircliffe began, “you haven’t just stolen my coach; you’ve made off with my entire person! Do you know what happens to… Wait a minute.” His words were slow and increasingly certain. “This isn’t a proper theft at all, is it? I see your game. You don’t wish to kidnap me. You wish to compromise me. You’re a common social climber hoping to obtain an advantageous marriage by nefarious means!”
His smug certainty at his own hilariously inaccurate conclusion made Chloe wish Tiglet were still in the basket so she could toss him back at Faircliffe.
In Parliament, the duke seemed accustomed to being the cleverest person in the room. This gave him the obnoxious tendency to assume others could not keep up with him. But in this case, his arrogance was a boon. If he wished to believe her some silly debutante scheming to land a duke “by any means necessary,” so be it.
“H-how did you figure me out?” she stammered, injecting a measure of mortification into her voice.
Now that she’d stolen her painting and replaced it with a forgery, she couldn’t let him suspect she was fleeing the scene. Absconding with an eligible bachelor was a far better alibi.
He snorted. “The only reason any respectable young lady would orchestrate a private encounter with a lord is to force him to the altar. What else could this be?”
What else, indeed! Chloe steered the horses down another back alley. She was more grateful than ever that she hadn’t been born to aristocracy, if their marriage mart was this cutthroat.
“Well?” His velveteen voice was right behind her. “Aren’t you going to tell me your name?”
“I’m…” Jane Brown.
But she didn’t need that alias anymore. That was her painting in the basket beside her, which would have been returned ages ago if the almighty Duke of Faircliffe had deigned to answer her family’s entreaties or acknowledge them when they attempted to seek an audience.
Now that she never again needed to humiliate herself by throwing herself into his path only to be brushed aside, she didn’t care if he knew her real name. Better yet, she wanted him to know it. Despite his best efforts to avoid them, he was stuck in a carriage with a Wynchester. Ha! Take that, Your Grace!
She did not bother to hide her smirk. “I’m Chloe Wynchester.”
The sharp inhalation of absolute horror squeaking from Faircliffe’s throat should have been amusing. Instead, it was insult and injury. She clutched the reins and concentrated on getting to the Puss & Goose coaching inn as quickly as possible. Once she rid herself of the duke, she and His High-and-Mightiness need never cross paths again.
“Chloe Wynchester,” he whispered, as if by not giving his full voice to her name perhaps it wouldn’t be true. His moan grated. “Why couldn’t it at least have been Miss Honoria?”
Oh, difficult to say. Perhaps because Baron Vanderbean’s alleged daughter Honoria was another lie.
To provide the wards he considered family a lasting connection to the beau monde, the baron had created a fictional heir and heiress who existed only on paper. No one peered too closely at wealthy lords from far-off nations. The house and most of the fortune now belonged to “Horace Wynchester,” an eccentric recluse like his father, who preferred to conduct all business via the post. Every single one of the siblings could pen the new baron’s “signature” perfectly.
One of many secrets she would never share with the Duke of Faircliffe.
“My apologies for not being my better sister,” Chloe snapped.
A mortified pause. “I’m sorry. I did not mean—”
“You did mean,” she said bitterly.
And for that, Faircliffe deserved to be betrothed to a figment of the ton’s collective imagination. After all, His Grace didn’t give two buttons about what person he married. All that mattered was good blood, a fine dowry, superior social connections.
To him, those elements made Honoria leagues better than Chloe, sight unseen, regardless of intelligence or character. Honoria was highborn and legitimate. Chloe was a Whitechapel foundling. In Faircliffe’s eyes, a castoff like her wouldn’t belong in a reading circle, much less hobnobbing with the ton. Although Bean had ensured his fostered children had their debuts, he couldn’t force high society to accept them.
“We’re here.” She pulled the horses to a stop.
A crease lined Faircliffe’s perfect brow. “We’re where?”
At an inn the duke and his ilk would never frequent.
Rather than answer, Chloe leapt from the driver’s perch, basket in hand, and tossed the reins over a post.
“Wait,” he called in obvious alarm. “Where are you going?”
“To repent the naïveté that led me to this moment,” she replied with a straight face. “My deepest apologies, Your Grace. You were right, as you are in all things. Compromise is a poor way to secure a husband. I see my error, and you are free to return home unbetrothed.” She waved. “With luck, we shall never see each other again. I bid you adieu.”
“Miss Wynchester—”
But she was walking, running—flying—up the steps and into the front door of the Puss & Goose. She would escape through the back door with the precious canvas while he drove himself back to fashionable Mayfair—
“Why did y
ou come here?” His voice came from right behind her.
She stopped and spun around in shock. Was he daft?
Faircliffe was not fleeing as expected. He was standing in the reception room of the Puss & Goose looking imperial…and utterly confused.
“Are you renting rooms?” He glanced about the humble inn with obvious distaste. “I thought you lived at Baron Vanderbean’s estate. Has something happened? Are you in trouble?”
God save her from the good intentions of overly helpful men!
Mrs. Halberstam, the proprietress of the inn, swept into the reception area.
“Oh!” Her eyes lit up. “Is that—”
“One room, please,” Chloe interrupted, before Mrs. Halberstam could ask questions that were better left unanswered. “For a single woman, no guests.”
No guests was code to mean anyone she was with could not be trusted.
“Of course, miss.” Mrs. Halberstam provided Chloe a pencil for the guest book as if this were nothing more than a routine transaction. “Sign here, please. Do you prefer a window facing the east or the west?”
East meant all was well. West meant a note should be dispatched at once to Chloe’s family.
She gave a bland smile. “West, please.”
Mrs. Halberstam handed her a key and whispered, “Number four.”
Perfect. Chloe closed her fingers about the key. All she had to do was climb a single flight of stairs, lock herself in the safe room, and wait to be rescued. By now Graham would have realized what had happened. He was likely to arrive here before the note found its way home.
She turned back to Faircliffe with her best expression of abject embarrassment. “I apologize ever so much for having misappropriated your time. I shan’t waste a single minute more.”
Before he could respond, she hurried up the stairs to the first floor and freedom.
