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Much like all the others she summoned from him.
“It should not be a debate at all,” she continued, as he ignored the wild pounding of his heart.“A scourge. A thing we should banish to the darkness of the past and lock away.”She paused. “Is that not what you said in your speech last week, Your Grace?”
“It is,” he agreed. How did she know?
“You are wrong, of course.”
The marchioness sucked in a shocked breath as Clayborn’s brows rose. It was not an assessment he heard often. “Do tell me how.”
“When we banish sins to the past, we must not lock them away. We must keep them close so that their memory reminds us never to allow them back to the light.”
How could anyone fail to notice her?
“Well, I am not certain that we should call this a sin. My husband tells me that the children are well rewardedby the work. It keeps them from developing a taste for idleness.”
It was a disgusting argument, one Havistock had made a dozen times during debate in the House of Lords. Clayborn held his tongue rather than deliver a scathing setdown to the woman behind the desk, who was as odious as her husband, it seemed.
Adelaide Frampton had no such hesitation. “Truly, hearing such an argument in a home built for idleness with funds earned via the work of those children and others around the world is...” She paused, and he imagined she searched for a word she might use in polite company. “...a journey.”
The marchioness’s eyes nearly rolled from her head. “Madam. Youoverstep.”
A retort sprang to Clayborn’s lips—words commanding the marchioness to watch her tone. To know her betters.
Before he could speak, however, Miss Frampton said, “We have not been introduced.”
Silence fell as the marchioness collected herself and spoke. “I suppose you would not know each other.”
Why not? Adelaide Frampton was regularly at balls and dinners, dances and musicales.
Before he could point it out, the marchioness continued, “Men do work their very hardest to avoid the messy bits of life, do they not?”
Clayborn assumed the question was rhetorical.
“This, dear boy,” the marchioness pressed on, “is the Matchbreaker.”
Another surprise to hide.
Generally, Clayborn did his level best to remain outside the gossip and discussion of society. Oh, he attended balls and turned up at his club and showed his face at the races, but that was for politics and propriety, not pleasure. Even so, one would have to be birthed beneath a rock not to have heard of the Matchbreaker.
Hired by the women in society to check the pedigreeof the men who wished to marry their daughters. The Matchbreaker was whispered about throughout Mayfair, any time a society jewel was courted by a less than ideal gentleman.Poor girl, they would whisper behind their fans,someone should summon the Matchbreaker.
And when she was summoned, usually to confirm an already existing suspicion, she knew everything—childhood fears, schoolboy foibles, adult flaws. Full accounting of debts. Webs of friendships and business acquaintances. Mistresses. Illegitimate offspring. Incurable vice.
There was no secret the Matchbreaker could not uncover. She was a legend to the women of Mayfair... and enemy to many of its men.
And no one knew her name. At least, no one admitted to knowing it, despite the unmarried men of London being willing to do virtually anything to get it. The true identity of the Matchbreaker was the best-kept secret of their counterparts in skirts, until that moment, when the Duke of Clayborn discovered her identity.
A sizzle of excitement coursed through him at the knowledge that, suddenly, the field that stretched between him and Miss Adelaide Frampton was once more level. She thought herself disguised, never imagining that he had watched her long enough to turn a veil into a day-old beard—barely any disguise at all.
Showing none of his thoughts, Clayborn turned in the little chair, keenly aware that the legs were as fragile as matchsticks, to consider the woman in black. “The Matchbreaker?” he asked, willing his tone slow and even, despite nearly a dozen questions immediately on his tongue. “Is that a formal designation? A post from the queen?”
Lady Havistock chuckled. Adelaide did not, and Clayborn marveled at her even, cool demeanor. “I believe you’re about to discover just how important it is, Duke.”
He leaned back in his chair, not replying, not likinghow unmoved she was by his presence. She’d been well moved earlier; why was she so even-keeled now?
Adelaide reached down to her feet where a small bag sat, barely large enough to fit a piece of paper, and extracted a blue file, inked on the front with a large indigo bell.
Clayborn’s heart began to pound. “What is that?”
