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The room fell into an awkward, prolonged silence. Clara kept her eyes fixed on the table in front of her. To her left, she could sense young Christopher doing much the same, continuing in whatever thoughts haunted his adolescent mind. Across from her, Mr Morton chewed his breakfast—and, she felt, continued to look at her.
Her mind roamed back upstairs to the closets full of clothing, the gargantuan bed and maidservant ready to wait on her whims. Remembering this strange scenario, she felt a rush of excitement that was snuffed instantly as the images of Helena and Judith returned to her memory.
They had so much hate in their eyes, she recalled mournfully. What was it they said? “We’ll get rid of her for good?”
Clara was dimly aware of food being set before her, but now her stomach had tied itself into knots. Swallowing, vision threatened by a tide of tears, she looked up to Mr Morton and spoke without thinking.
“Truthfully, though…” she said, as though the previous conversation had not lapsed into quiet several minutes ago. “I think you should know that I am intent on finding somewhere else to live, at my earliest convenience.”
Edward frowned, putting his last bite of bread down on his plate. With another thoughtful dabbing at his mouth, he answered in a sombre tone, “You are certainly not a prisoner in this house, Miss Clara. But I hope you know that that will be going against your father’s express wishes for you to live here, at St. George Manor.”
“I understand that.”
“Is this about Helena and Judith?” he asked abruptly.
Clara drew in a sharp breath. Am I that transparent? “I…simply do not wish to stay somewhere I am not wanted,” she answered, twisting her mouth to one side. “I do not wish to make anyone here uncomfortable with my presence, after all.”
“You are not,” Mr Morton said, leaning forward on his elbows. “Ladies Helena and Judith do not live here any longer. And His Grace is not bothered by your presence. Isn’t that right, Your Grace?”
The Duke looked up from the fork he was toying with and shook his head wordlessly.
Clara swallowed. “Mr Morton, I hope you know that all of this comes as much of a surprise to me as to anyone.”
“Yes, Mr Finch told me.”
“And I hope you believe it,” she said, more insistently than she had intended. Her hand lay upon the table, as though to show she didn’t conceal anything. “I know you have no reason to care about me at all, Mr Morton—Your Grace,” she added with a belated address to the sulking Duke. “But I am not the sort of person some may think me. I am not a grasper, or some usurper come to take what is not given to me. I desire nothing, and I do not intend to make a nuisance of myself to the St. George family, now or ever.”
These words flooded from Clara’s mouth though she had given them no forethought, and she felt as determined as she ever had in their speaking. It was as though she was delivering this protest to every closed-fisted scoundrel in London who had turned her away, to all the noble ladies she imagined whispering behind her back, and most of all, to her half-sisters.
But as Edward matched her steely gaze with one of his own, she felt her resolve dissipate the longer she took in his handsome features.
Clara watched him weigh her words heavily before, licking his lips briefly, he said, “I appreciate your candour, Miss Clara. I do believe you.”
His face struck Clara as a strange one, though she could not entirely place why. His chin had a small cleft, his nose tall and aristocratic at the centre of a wide face that she supposed looked handsome enough. Around those dark, moody eyes she saw the first tiny hints of wrinkles, as though this Mr Morton had spent a good deal of his life hard at work—unusual for one of the monied class, she reckoned.
At last, she realized that it was not the presence of something on his face that struck her, but an absence. Nestled amid the features of most people Clara had known, there had been a reflection of some deeper cruelty. In some it was a hardness in their eyes, or else it was a hesitation in their smile, a line across their forehead. Highborn or low, well-concealed or fresh and plain on their face, nearly everyone she had known had had this look somewhere about them.
Edward Morton did not.
As she sized up this man who held her fate in his hands, something crossed between their eyes that Clara had not seen before. It was as though a bolt of lightning passed through them, a flash of energy as brief as it was powerful. Then Mr Morton leaned back in his chair, once again possessed of an air of easiness.
“Now,” he added with a smile returning to light up his face once more, “perhaps you had best start on your breakfast, else we shall have to simply move on to lunch.”
In answer to this suggestion, Clara’s stomach gave an enthusiastic gurgle. Laughing with embarrassment, Clara murmured, “It seems you have the right of it, Mr Morton,” then tucked into her meal with gusto.
“Surely that cannot be so,” Edward muttered into the air, frowning.
“What cannot?” Clara replied, her mouth half-full of food.
He inclined his head toward her and gave a knowing smile. “As I said, I have not a single doubt of your good intentions. But no one desires nothing, Miss Clara.”
Clara swallowed and found herself returning his smile. “Then perhaps I simply have not yet decided what it is I desire.”
