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“Lucie isn’t your responsibility,” Noirot said.
“She had a shocking experience,” he sa
id.
“Children are resilient. She’ll throw a few temper tantrums, as she does sometimes when she can’t get her way, but she’ll recover.”
“Does she commonly run away?”
“No, and it won’t happen again.”
“You can’t be sure,” he said. “It was a desperate thing to do. I don’t think she would have done it if she hadn’t been very deeply upset.”
“She was deeply upset at being thwarted,” Noirot said. “She knows the city streets are dangerous, but she was too furious with us to care about any rules or lectures—and Sarah, unfortunately, doesn’t know her well enough to recognize the signs of rebellion.”
She was as taut as a bowstring. She was tired, clearly, her face white and drawn. Relieved of fear for Lucie, she was probably feeling the fatigue she’d ignored. He’d better keep this short and to the point. She clearly wanted to be done with this conversation, and with him. She was shutting him out of her life and out of Lucie’s.
She was Lucie’s mother, but he knew that parents were not always right, and she was wrong to shut him out.
“I don’t think that’s enough,” he said.
“I think you ought to let me be the judge.”
He made himself say it. He saw no alternative. “When my mother and sister were killed,” he said, “I wanted my father.” He had to take a breath before continuing. He’d never spoken of his childhood miseries to anybody, even Clara, and it was harder than he’d supposed to talk of them now. “It was a carriage accident. He was drunk, and he drove them into a ditch. He lived. I was— I didn’t know how to cope. I was nine years old at the time. I was grief-stricken, as you’d expect. But terrified, too. Of what, I can’t say. I only recall how desperately I wanted him with me. But he sent me to live with my aunts, and he crawled into a bottle and drank himself to death. Everyone knew he was a drunkard. Everyone knew he’d killed my mother and sister. But I was too young to understand anything but that I needed him, and he’d abandoned me.”
He took another breath, collecting himself. “Lucie experienced something terrifying, and I don’t want her to feel I’ve abandoned her. I think we must make an exception for her. I think I ought to visit her, say, once a week, on Sunday.”
A long, long pause. Then, “No,” Noirot said, so calmly. She looked up at him, her pale countenance unreadable.
That was her card-playing countenance. Anger welled up. He’d told her what he’d told no one else, and she shut him out.
“You’re right,” she said, surprising him. “Lucie does need you. She’s frightened. She had a shocking experience. But it up to me to deal with it. You’ll visit her on Sundays, you say. For how long? You can’t do it forever. The more she sees of you, the more she’ll assume you belong to her. And leaving aside Lucie and her delusions, how much more heartache do you mean to cause Lady Clara? How much more public embarrassment? None of this would have happened, your grace—none of it—if you had stuck to your own kind.”
It was not very different from what he’d already told himself. He’d behaved badly, he knew. But he wanted to make it right. He’d confided in her, to make her understand.
The cold, quiet fury of her answer was the last thing he’d expected. His face burned as though she’d physically struck him.
Stung, he struck back. “You’re mighty concerned with Lady Clara’s feelings all of a sudden.”
She moved away and gave a short laugh. “I’m concerned with her wardrobe, your grace. When will you get that through your thick head?”
What was she saying, what was she saying? She’d turned to him when Lucie disappeared, and they’d searched together, sharing the same hopes and fears. He cared for that child and he cared for her, and she knew it. “Two nights ago you said you loved me,” he said.
“What difference does that make?” she said. She turned back to him and lifted her chin and met his gaze straight on. “I still have a shop to run. If you can’t get hold of your wits and start acting sensibly, you’ll force me to leave England altogether. I’ll get nowhere with you causing talk and undermining me at every turn—you and your selfish disregard of everything but your own wants. Think of what you’re doing, will you? Think of what you’ve done, from the time you chased me to London, and the consequences of everything you’ve done. And think, for once, your grace, of someone other than yourself.”
She turned away and left him, and he didn’t follow her.
He could scarcely see through the red haze in front of his eyes. Rage and shame and grief warred inside him, and he wanted to lash back as viciously and brutally as she’d flayed him.
He only stood and hated her. And himself.
It was a long while he remained standing in the garden, alone. A long time while the anger began by degrees to dissipate. And when it had gone, he was left deeply chilled, because every last, remaining lie he’d told himself had been burned away, and he knew she’d spoken nothing but the plain, bitter truth.
Later that same Monday, the Duke of Clevedon visited the Court jewelers, Rundell and Bridge, and bought the biggest diamond ring he could find, the “prodigious great diamond” Longmore had recommended.
He spent the rest of the day composing his formal offer of marriage. He wrote it and rewrote it. It had to be perfect. It had to say everything he felt for Clara. It had to make clear that his heart could hold no one else. It had to make plain that he had put all his follies and self-indulgence behind him and meant to be the man she deserved.
Words came easily enough to him when he was writing. He’d always had a knack for an easy, conversational tone, where others would be stiff. When he wrote, thoughts sharpened in his mind as they did not always do when he spoke.
He’d always delighted in writing to Clara, and it wasn’t simply for the mental companionship. While sharing his thoughts and experiences with a kindred spirit formed a great part of his enjoyment, there was more to it. In the process of writing to her, he sorted and clarified his thoughts.
But he made heavy going of his marriage proposal. It was very late by the time he finished and memorized it, and by then it was far too late of think to going to Warford House. Clara would have gone out to a ball or a rout or some such.
He’d call tomorrow.
The Duke of Clevedon called at Warford House on Tuesday, naturally, though he knew the family were not at home to visitors—and for once Lady Clara was tempted to be not at home to him.
But when she told her mother she had a headache, Lady Warford said, “Lady Gorrell saw him yesterday leaving Rundell and Bridge. And here he is today when he can have you all to himself, instead of having to make his way through that crowd of bankrupts and mushrooms who hang about you. Surely you can put two and two together—and surely you can postpone indulging your megrims until after you hear what he has to say.”
A ring and a proposal was the tally Mama made. She might be correct, but Clara was not in the mood, for him or for her mother. Lady Warford had taken three fits only this morning, complaining that all the world was talking about the Duke of Clevedon and those “she-devils who called themselves milliners, and their wicked child,” who had very nearly cost him his life.
Of course, all would be forgiven once he put a ring on Clara’s finger, and Mama could lord it over her friends, whose daughters had snared merely earls and viscounts and a lot of Honorable Misters.
Clara would be forgiven, too, for her numerous failings as a daughter. It was her fault Clevedon chased shopkeepers. It was her fault he was so shockingly inattentive and forgot engagements—such as promising to join them for dinner on Saturday night. It was all Clara’s fault because she’d failed to fix his interest.
Small wonder, then, that when Clevedon entered the drawing room where she and her mother waited, Lady Clara’s smile wasn’t her warmest.
After mentioning that Longmore had told them of Sunday’s “excitement,” Mama
asked so very sweetly whether the little girl was well. Clevedon said she was. Though he answered in monosyllables, obviously reluctant to talk about the child, Mama kept on grilling him. Finally, unable to smother her own curiosity, Clara asked, “Is it true she demanded to see the Princess Victoria?”
He laughed. Then he told the whole story. It was the same story Harry had recounted but it was in Clevedon’s style, vivid and funny, including a droll imitation of Lucie Noirot explaining that she was the Princess Erroll of Albania.
“And when her mother pointed out that she was not a princess,” he said, “Miss Lucie said”—and he raised his voice to a higher, lighter pitch—“ ‘Yes, Mama, but her highness wouldn’t come to talk to Miss Lucie Cordelia Noirot, would she?’ It was all I could do to keep a straight face.”
And Clara thought, He loves that child.
And she thought, What am I to do?
“It seems to me that the child gets into dreadful scrapes,” Mama said.
“How lucky you are,” Clevedon said, “to have three girls who’ve never given you a moment’s anxiety.”
“If you think that, you’re far out, indeed,” said Mama with a titter. “I vow, they give me more anxiety as they grow older, rather than less.”
“Yes, Mama is anxious that we shall end up old maids—or worse, married to someone unsuitable.”
“Clara has a little headache,” Mama said with a warning look at her. “She’s a trifle out of sorts.”
He looked at her. “You’re ill, my dear? I should have realized. You seem not your usual cheerful self.”
“It’s only a trifling thing,” said Mama, glaring at her.
“Trifle or not, you look pale, Clara,” Clevedon said. He rose. “I won’t weary you. I’ll come back at another time.”
A moment later he was gone, and in very short order, thanks partly to her mother’s badgering and partly to shame and anger and various other emotional turbulence, Clara went to bed with an altogether real headache.
