He wouldn't and they both knew it. She was lonely. And if he was being honest, he'd missed her company as well. So he'd stay, even if staying came with strings attached.
The duchess continued as if he hadn't even spoken. "The Season is well underway. You'll attend some events. You'll be seen and you'll be pleasant. In short…" Her eyes met his in a challenge. "You shall behave like the Duke of Ashworth's heir."
Kit managed not to flinch at that particular title. "I'm always pleasant."
"You're always charming, which is not the same thing." She gave him a look. "Be pleasant, Kit. Dance with young ladies. Make conversation. Let society see that you are a gentleman worthy of your uncle's legacy."
There it was.
She'd never say a word against his father directly. Not to Kit, not to anyone. But your uncle's legacy was its own kind of declaration, and they both knew it.
"I shall be a paragon," he said. "A model of decorum. Society will weep with admiration."
Her lips twitched. "Society will settle for you not being a belligerent drunk at the theater."
He feigned affront. "That was once."
She arched a brow and he shifted in his seat. "The second time was Gage's fault."
"Which is precisely why you are not staying with Mr. Gage." She stood, signaling that the conversation was over. "Dinner is at eight. Do try to be punctual."
Kit rose and kissed her cheek. "Thank you, Aunt Philippa."
He gave a short bow and left the drawing room with his most easy smile in place.
No, he hadn't secured the funds he'd needed… Yet.
But his visit had only just begun.
3
Clarissa faced her half brother with a bright, determined smile.
It was also an incredibly unnatural smile. She'd been practicing it for three days. It was pleasant, polite and, most importantly, her mouth was closed. "How are you, Lord Alderton?"
She clamped her mouth shut again and waited for his response.
The smile John gave her was kind, but weary. "Again?"
Mrs. Lennox, her brother's second cousin and Clarissa's chaperone for the evening, was seated across from them in the carriage. She did not sigh or roll her eyes. Oh no, the older woman was far too dignified for that. But her lips thinned in a way that communicated much the same thing.
Clarissa nodded, widening her eyes as a prompt for John to play his part. She did not trust herself to speak. Speaking was what had gotten her into this mess. Not the mess with Edmund specifically, though speaking had certainly not helped there. But the larger, more fundamental mess of being Clarissa Whitfield. A woman whose mouth had been operating independently of her brain since the age of four.
"I'm well, thank you," John said dryly. "And you?"
Clarissa drew in a breath. "I am also well."
That was it. Stop right there. She clamped her jaw shut against the tide of words pressing up behind her teeth. Words about how she was not, in fact, well. And about how this carriage was too warm, and how her gown itched at the collar, and about how she'd rather be back at John's country estate reading bedtime stories with her niece Lucy than riding toward a ballroom full of strangers who would look at her and see a young lady who'd been thrown over.
Twice.
Clarissa should have expected that her brief and unofficial engagement to Lord Blackwood would be the talk of the ton. Engagements, even brief and unofficial ones, between a marquess and an earl's daughter tended to stir up gossip. But Mrs. Lennox had kindly informed her just the other day that somehow word had spread about her even more humiliating rejection by Edmund.
Why anyone in London cared about the personal life of a countryside vicar, she did not know. But she supposed a second humiliation for an earl's daughter was reason enough to gossip.
So, yes. There was plenty Clarissa could say about her current state. But she said none of it. She sat with her hands folded and her lips sealed as a silence stretched through the carriage.
John watched her. Mrs. Lennox watched her.
