by Tuft, Karen
“No, thank you; I shall be fine in a minute.” She rested her head on the back of the chair, feeling weary suddenly. “Is it normal for the upper classes to be so contentious about these things?”
“No, and that is the puzzling part. Lady Elizabeth and Tony were agreed that there would be no marriage. Apparently her father had other expectations. He is certainly bearing a tremendous grudge.” He frowned. “At any rate, the Ashworths, Lord and Lady Farleigh, Sir Richard, Hugh, Phillip, and myself are at your service this evening, and we shall endeavor to do whatever we can to end this business once and for all.”
“Why did Lady Elizabeth ask you to speak with me?” Amelia asked.
“She knows I am loyal to Tony,” Kit answered simply.
“I see. Thank you, Kit. I can only hope the Duke of Marwood decides to act with honor, for everyone’s sake.”
“I too. Are you feeling better? If you are, I will return you to Tony,” Kit said.
“Thank you, but I believe I promised the next dance to your brother.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it?”
“I’m fine.”
He smiled at her. “Well done, Amelia. In that case, I will escort you to him and commiserate with you over your bad fortune.”
“Meaning Marwood?” she asked.
“Not this time,” he said, the corner of his mouth tipping upward slightly. “As you dance with Phillip, I suggest you watch your toes.”
Kit had made the joke to divert her, and she was grateful to him for it. She replied in kind. “I am rather attached to my toes, so I shall be very careful indeed.”
But as Phillip was bowing to her and leading her out to the floor, Amelia forgot her toes and silently prayed the Duke of Marwood would have a change of heart—or character or whatever it was that needed changing.
* * *
Amelia danced with Phillip, who was a much better dancer than his brother gave him credit for. Then she danced with Hugh and Sir Richard. Sir Richard flirted shamelessly with her, begging her quite charmingly to forget Anthony. “Only consider those of us who will weep piteously at your wedding,” he said with the right amount of theatrical nuance. “My neckcloth will wilt from the dampness of my tears when I am forced to use it after my handkerchief becomes a soggy mess.”
Amelia smiled at his attempt to distract her. “That’s laying it on rather thick, wouldn’t you say?” She noticed he was glancing surreptitiously around the room and turned her head to look.
The Duchess of Marwood was making her way around the ballroom, and Amelia couldn’t help but notice that wherever the duchess went, eyes inevitably turned toward Amelia. Lady Putnam seemed very eager to listen to what the duchess was saying, which meant it couldn’t be good, whatever it was.
In addition to this discouraging turn of events, one gentleman in particular had seemed to be watching Amelia steadily throughout the evening, and he was doing so again now, in such a way that it made her skin crawl. She did not know him, although there was something familiar about him. He was an older man, old enough to be her father, certainly, quite tall, with steel-gray hair. He was a man used to overindulging himself, if Amelia were any judge of his appearance, for, despite being dressed in the latest fashion, he had a large, protruding belly and a ruddy complexion that came from too much rich food and drink.
The fact that he was watching Amelia so intently and with such a look of malice alarmed her. Was he a close friend of the Duke of Marwood? For the life of her, she could not understand the nobility at times, nor fathom what the duke was thinking—or why this total stranger should look at her with such a clear expression of loathing.
The strange man moved closer to her as she danced with Sir Richard. The normal hum of chatter increased in volume, and the eyes of many of the guests began watching her even more closely in the wake of the Duchess of Marwood’s progress around the room. Amelia dreaded the moment when the music would stop and she would learn what was being said.
The dance eventually ended, and Sir Richard offered her his arm. “Courage, Miss Clarke,” he whispered, all seriousness now, apparently aware of the negative attention on them. “You have been all that is gracious and ladylike this evening. Everything will be well, I am sure.”
Amelia was not sure at all. But the supper dance was next and she would be with Anthony, and that alone gave her the will to move toward him, despite the murmuring and looks of disbelief and hostility from the very people she had met earlier this evening who had been quite pleasant and congenial.
Louisa was with Anthony when Sir Richard and Amelia reached their side. “They are saying,” Louisa hissed indignantly, “that you stole my brother from right under Lady Elizabeth’s nose and that you are no better than you ought to be!”
Amelia paled. It was the same accusation the Duke of Marwood had made at Ashworth Park, and it implied she was a woman of loose morals.
To have all these people think that about her . . .
She shut her eyes, shielding herself from everyone and everything going on around her.
“Anthony, take her home,” Amelia heard Lady Ashworth say. “She does not need to be subjected to this. Her upbringing has not prepared her to deal with the ugly side of the beau monde.”
Lady Ashworth’s words struck her. Her upbringing had not prepared her, she had said. The vicar’s daughter, gently bred in a small village, where life was about family and work, birth and life, and sickness and death. But Little Brenchley had not been completely idyllic either, and while Amelia had not seen its ugliness, she was not so foolish as to think it did not exist.
She was not naive. She understood that Anthony had seen even worse in Spain. He had barely shared what he had endured at Badajoz. What of the rest of it? What of the other battles he had endured? If Amelia could not endure the gossip of a bitter woman—a duchess who should hold herself to the highest standards—then she was not worthy to be Anthony’s wife.
She opened her eyes and straightened, looking each of them in the eye. “Running away will not make things better; it will only accomplish the opposite and make me look guilty.” She turned to Anthony. “Were you ever afraid before going into battle?”
“Yes,” he said, his eyes blue and clear. “Every time.”
“Did it stop you from doing what you knew you needed to do?” she asked.
“No,” he answered. “But be warned, Amelia. Battles are never straightforward. A man’s moral courage is tested at every turn. Not all men face the enemy with honor, nor is the enemy completely honorable. It is difficult, and I would not have you experience it in any form.”
“But you have experienced it,” she said softly. “Many times.”
“Yes,” he said. “And it is why I know what I am telling you.”
“Will we have better success at overturning the damage the Marwoods have created if I stay or if I go?” she asked.
“I cannot say with any certainty,” he said. His face was tense, his eyes those of the warrior she knew he had been.
“You must cease to be my fiancé for a moment,” she said. When he looked at her in alarm, she added. “I mean you must cease thinking as my fiancé. You must be my captain instead. What, Captain, do you think will increase our odds of success?”
His eyes softened. “I hate to say it, but my gut tells me you are right, my love.”
Amelia’s heart swelled near to bursting at his endearment. Why must he call her his love now, of all times? She looked into his dear, strong face. He was a man of honor, a man who had faced terrible things with courage and a respect for others—
“Lord Halford.” The strange man who had been eyeing Amelia all evening interrupted her thoughts.
“Do I know you, sir?” Anthony asked. The entire group seemed taken aback that a total stranger would presume to approach him without an introduction.
“I am the son and heir of Vis
count Winfield,” the man said.
Anthony’s eyes grew huge.
“How do you do,” Lady Ashworth said graciously, attempting to defuse the tension in the air that had arrived with the man. “I am the Marchioness of Ashworth.”
He scarcely looked in the marchioness’s direction, instead turning his attention directly to Amelia. “Perhaps I would be more easily recognized by the commoners in this group if I were to say that my name is John Clarke-Hammond Junior.”
Viscount Winfield. That was supposedly the name of her grandfather, but before Amelia could even react, he pointed his finger at her and, in a loud voice, declared. “Did you hear me? I am John Clarke-Hammond, brother of Edmund Clarke-Hammond, and this woman is a deceitful fraud!”
Amelia was barely aware of all the gasps that erupted around her at those words. She had gasped herself, and then she had gone cold.
“Tony!” someone cried—possibly Kit—and suddenly Anthony’s arms were around her as her knees grew weak and she fought a threatening blackness that encroached on her vision.
“No,” she said weakly.
“Edmund Clarke-Hammond went against our father’s wishes and denounced his family to marry the daughter of a coal miner and a seamstress. He was disowned as a result, something that grieves my father to this very day.
“We, of course, have kept ourselves informed of Edmund’s whereabouts in order to assure ourselves he would do no further damage to the family name. Therefore, when it came to our attention that an Amelia Clarke, daughter of Edmund and Sarah Clarke, deceased, was to marry the Earl of Halford, heir to the Marquess of Ashworth, I made it my duty to thwart her in her attempt to do what her own mother did to my brother.”
“You needn’t have bothered,” Anthony said in a cold voice. “The lady you sully with your words is my choice of bride. I care not a whit who her family is or whether she is the daughter of a vicar or granddaughter of a viscount.”
Amelia still felt weak, but her vision had cleared enough to see the Duke and Duchess of Marwood join the crowd gathered around them. She was also vaguely aware that the orchestra had ceased playing.
“It is much worse than that,” Mr. Clarke-Hammond sneered. “The chit is not even my brother’s flesh and blood! He and his wife had no living children!”
“What?” Anthony turned to look at Amelia.
A series of puzzling circumstances suddenly fell into place. On one occasion her mother had let something slip, implying how grateful she was to have gotten her, or words to that effect. Amelia had thought little of it at the time. And when she had packed up her parents’ things and moved to Oxfordshire, she had thumbed through the family Bible during a bout of melancholy, missing them both dreadfully, and had realized that her entry was different from the children her mother had birthed who had not survived.
Three small entries: one for Edmund Clarke Junior, born 5 May 1786–died 6 May 1786, and one for Sarah Clarke, born 22 September 1789–died 22 September 1789. And one final entry, which read: Amelia Clarke, christened 15 March 1790.
A christening. Not a birthdate.
As Amelia had always celebrated March 15 as her birthday, she had simply presumed the entry an anomaly. Considering what little she knew of childbirth, it had not occurred to her that her arrival in the Clarke household had not allowed sufficient time for her mother to recover from the previous birth before giving birth to Amelia . . .
Oh, good heavens.
“This . . . person,” Mr. Clarke-Hammond waved his hand in a disgusted gesture at Amelia, “is the illegitimate child of no one in particular. She is not what she claims to be, the legal offspring of the Reverend Edmund Clarke-Hammond—”
“Clarke,” Amelia said in a soft voice. “Edmund Clarke.”
“Clarke-Hammond,” the horrible man hissed at her. “And she is definitely not the granddaughter of Viscount Winfield. I am only glad I was able to arrive in time, before this fraudulent marriage actually occurred and you found yourself bound for life to this . . . this common piece of nothing.”
The din, which grew in size as the news spread through the ballroom, was a throbbing ache in Amelia’s ears. She had bravely told Anthony she would stay and fight when the only cause for alarm was the accusations of the Duke and Duchess of Marwood. But, then, Amelia had known she was innocent in their particular accusations.
This man’s accusations, however, she could not answer, for she did not know how. Edmund and Sarah Clarke had been her parents in every way. If they had chosen not to tell her about her origins, their reason must have been that they had wanted her to believe she was theirs.
They were not her real parents. Not in the eyes of society, even if they were to Amelia.
The world as she had always known it was turning upside down.
Anthony, his arm securely around her waist, opened his mouth to reply to Mr. Clarke-Hammond, but before he could say anything, the Duke of Marwood pushed his way through the crowd to face them. He sneered. “What a delightful discovery to find the great Earl of Halford, who could have married the daughter of a duke but now finds himself shackled to a trollop of uncertain parentage—a social climber of the worst sort.”
Amelia felt Anthony tense. “You will watch your language. There are ladies present—”
“True ladies,” the duke added.
“Ladies,” Anthony continued in a voice that should have sent a warning to the duke. “Including my affianced bride. You will act honorably, or I will not be accountable for the consequences of my actions.”
“Anthony,” Amelia said softly.
He ignored her and turned back to Mr. Clarke-Hammond. “And as for you—”
“Anthony,” she repeated more firmly. “This is my battle too.” She stood as straight as she could, though she was grateful Anthony’s arm was there to lend support, since her whole body trembled. “Mr. Clarke-Hammond,” she said, addressing the man whom she now recognized as having a mild resemblance to her father underneath his fleshy appearance. “How happy I would have been to meet you on more neutral terms, where you could have told me about my father’s childhood and family. He did not speak of you, you must understand, and yet I know how important family was to him in the way he cared for me and my mother—yes, I can see you wish to argue their relationship with me. But in all the ways that mattered, they were my parents, and I loved them. And they loved me. They never told me I was not their own.”
“Yes, Mr. Clarke-Hammond,” Anthony said in a mock agreeable tone. “I too must wonder at your showing up at this ball fully prepared to make a scene—and I must commend you on your success—when I would have respected you much more if you had come to me privately, where we could have discussed these matters in a civil manner.”
“I could not trust that you would see things with the proper perspective, Lord Halford.”
Amelia watched the color rise in Anthony’s face.
“Well, Duchess,” the Duke of Marwood said to his wife, who stood behind him, looking at her toes. “It appears I needn’t have made you say anything after all.”
Lady Elizabeth stared in disgust at her parents. “Father, how could you? Oh, Mother, even you. I just knew it.” She turned and pushed through the crowd to run away, with Kit following after her.
“Elizabeth, wait!” the duchess cried and dashed after them.
Amelia herself was feeling slightly hysterical. It was a circus, like the one that had come through Little Brenchley when she was seven, only this time she was in the center ring. Anthony’s face was getting redder by the second, his mother and Louisa clutched their hands to their breasts, and Mr. Clarke-Hammond and the Duke of Marwood looked like overstuffed geese, their chests puffed out, honking belligerently at her.
It was too much.
What should she do? What could she say that would bring this to an end?
Papa, I need you.
Pr
ay, my child, she heard.
She briefly shut her eyes. She had been doing a lot of praying tonight, and it hadn’t seemed to help so far. But there wasn’t a lot of time or any other options.
Help, was the only prayer she could manage.
And then she could see her father in her mind, pulling her onto his lap and opening the family Bible, the one that held confirmation to the horrible truths Mr. Clarke-Hammond had thrown derisively at her tonight. Her papa, the good man, the vicar, would thumb leisurely through the pages until he found just the right passage to answer a little girl’s question. It had been a common occurrence in their home, tender, blessed memories that would give her strength now. Her father and God’s grace were with her.
“I stand accused,” Amelia said, feeling calmer, “by men who are my superior of rank and birth. In my defense, I can only say that I lived my entire life believing I was the daughter of Edmund and Sarah Clarke. I loved them unconditionally as any child would love her parents, nursed them both when illness struck, grieved when they died, and then found myself alone.”
“Yes,” the Duke of Marwood said, “and that is precisely when—”
“You will be silent!” Anthony roared at him.
“And you will refer to me as Your Grace!” the duke bellowed back.
Anthony strode over to the duke until he was in his face, requiring that the man look up, as Anthony was several inches taller. “Had you acted with the honor your title implies, I should have replied in kind. Now you will simply be quiet and let the future Countess of Halford speak!”
He returned to Amelia’s side like a gallant knight of old—her champion, there to guard and protect her. Oh, how she adored him.
“You may continue, my love,” Anthony said to her in a restrained voice.
She looked in his eyes, and although there was an icy turbulence to them, she saw a tender emotion there for her alone. “I had no one,” she said, turning to face her audience once more. “And were it not for the kindness of Lady Walmsley and the Marchioness of Ashworth, I would have been in the direst of circumstances: without home, family, or security of any kind. They are my angels on earth, and I love them.”
