Dukes Prefer Blondes (The Dressmakers 4)

“I can’t take a footman!”

“If you mean to go without Mr. Radford, my lady, you’d do well to take somebody,” Davis said. “Only consider what might happen should your ladyship arrive when not expected or wanted. I should not put it past Mr. Radford to tell the police to arrest you. In that case, your ladyship would wish to have a servant at hand, to fetch a solicitor.”

“Arrest me?” Clara said. “They wouldn’t arrest Lord Warford’s daughter if I stood over Mr. Radford’s corpse with a bloody knife in my hand. No one would dare to arrest me, no matter what Mr. Know-­Everything said. Why, Papa . . .” She trailed off as she realized what she was saying, what she was thinking. If Papa found out what she was up to—­ Oh, never mind what he’d do. It would be a happy party compared to what Mama would do. She’d give herself a heart seizure, and Clara would feel guilty for the rest of her life.

“Quite so, my lady,” Davis said, reading her face if not her thoughts. “At any rate, here he is.”

Clara hurried to the window. Like all hackney coaches, the one slowly trundling by the house was an ancient relic, once the pride of a great family.

Then—­in her great-­grandmother’s time, perhaps—­it had been bright yellow. Now it was a mottled mustard. While its windows seemed newer and cleaner than most, they were small. The faded coat of arms seemed to comprise a half-­plucked goose impaled on a pitchfork in a field of rotten cabbages. The wheels were dingy green except for the one that was dingy red—­and the pile of rags on the box must be the coachman.

She couldn’t see Radford, but he must be inside, since he’d said he’d be inside. He would not come out, though, or stop the vehicle or even wave. A hackney coach stopping in front of the house would give the neighbors’ servants too much to talk about. The coach only slowed as it passed Great-­Aunt Dora’s house—­that was the signal—­then continued down the street.

Clara slipped out of the house and walked on calmly until she was out of sight of neighboring houses. Then she picked up her skirts and ran to the meeting place.

You didn’t need to run,” Mr. Radford said. “We’ve plenty of time.”

Clara, in the seat opposite, was still trying to catch her breath. It took her a moment to answer. “I thought you’d decided to leave me behind. Half-­past five you’d drive by, you said. It was well past six.”

“In my experience, women are always late, even for court,” he said. “Consequently, I’ve learned to set an earlier time. You ought to take it as a compliment, my allowing you only an extra half hour for tardiness.”

For a moment she could only stare at him while she seesawed between incredulity and rage. “A compliment?” she said. “Have you any idea how condescendingly obnoxious you are?”

“A precise idea, thanks to ­people endlessly telling me.”

“I might have slept for another half hour,” she said.

“Does this mean you’re going to be tetchy and cross?”

“Only to you,” she said.

A lady was always courteous. Even if she had to administer a setdown, she did so in the politest possible manner. Clara had learned tricks for concealing irritation or impatience or any of a hundred unmannerly reactions. She’d learned to present a smooth façade, no matter what happened. She reminded herself she wasn’t a child, to throw a fit over every little thing. She was a lady of high station who did not allow a mere male, no matter how annoying, to set off her temper. She folded her hands in her lap and calmly regarded him. And that was when, finally, she noticed something was wrong.

“Is that a disguise or did you sleep in your clothes?” she said.

He looked down at himself. He was dressed in the usual black but was unusually rumpled.

“I slept in my clothes,” he said. “I was in Richmond. I rode out from there in time enough, but I was delayed at my chambers. I calculated there wasn’t enough time to change, then travel westward again to collect you.”

“Rode?” she said. “You rode? From Richmond?”

“Yes, I’m capable of handling a horse, my lady.”

“I always picture you traveling in a hackney or walking,” she said. “You’re so . . . citified. London citified. I can’t even picture you in the country. Richmond is very . . . green.”

“It’s green and beautiful, and my parents enjoy one of the finest of many fine views,” he said. “I went to see them in case you or somebody else killed me today.”

“Your parents,” she said.

“I do own a pair of them,” he said. “Doubtless you imagined I’d sprung full-­grown from Zeus’s forehead, like Athena. But no, I’m a mere mortal, sprung from the usual place. I have the customary allotment of progenitors, one of each gender, alive and well—­relatively ­­speaking—­in bucolic Richmond.”

“Yes, of course. Great-­Aunt Dora told me your father had retired.” She paused. “You said they were well, relatively speaking. I hope they’re not ailing.”

“My father married late in life,” he said. “He’s eighty and . . . frail.”

It was faint, so very faint. Maybe it was her imagination, but she thought she heard a note of pain in his voice. Her heart squeezed, and she wanted to reach across and take his hand. She didn’t. Whatever else she knew and didn’t know about him, she was sure he wouldn’t welcome gestures he’d interpret as pity or even compassion.

“And you thought it would improve his health to know you were about to risk your life?” she said as lightly as she could.

He gave a short laugh. “I knew it would lift his spirits. He can’t do this sort of thing anymore. In his day, the Bow Street Runners and watchmen were charged with keeping order and catching villains. London, he says, was a smaller yet not so tame place in those days. I know he went into law because it tested his intellect in ways he didn’t believe a military or church career could do. That wasn’t the only reason. Since, being a gentleman, he couldn’t be a Runner or watchman, he decided that acting for or against them was the next best thing.”

He told her more about the way the practice of law had changed since the start of his father’s career, with barristers more and more representing either the accuser or the accused in court, instead of these persons acting for themselves.

In the middle of a sentence illuminating the politics behind the 1829 law creating a Metropolitan Police Force, he said, “Why are you not dozing? I’m at my pedantically boring best, and you’re not even yawning, in spite of the thirty minutes’ sleep I deprived you of.”

“Were you trying to put me to sleep?” she said. “In hopes I’d doze through whatever is to come? It won’t work. I can’t remember when last I looked forward to anything so much.”

“I refuse to believe your life is so dull,” he said.

Dullness wasn’t the problem. Suffocation was the problem. And despair.

She looked out of the window. “It’s not the sort of thing one realizes until one catches a glimpse of something else. I thought I was more or less content, until the day I saw that nasty boy try to make Bridget go away with him.”

It had happened on the day after her birthday.

It was as though she’d passed a milestone and come unexpectedly upon a sign at a crossroads. She’d been traveling unthinkingly in one direction, along the main road—­the king’s highway, in a manner of speaking. But the incident had made her pause, and look down an alternate route.

She hadn’t realized until she said it, and even now she wasn’t sure she fully understood. All she knew was that her view of the world had changed.

“Let’s hope we catch the nasty boy today,” he said. “He isn’t one you want running about on the loose, carrying a grudge. And as to that, I have a few points to cover, points I had to leave out of yesterday’s discussion because of the other parties present.”

“I don’t recall any discussion,” she said. “I recall your telling me what I was to do, and my being obliged to hold my tongue. I recall Mr. Westcott raising objections, which you overruled.”

“Do you mean to lecture me on my personality flaws all the way to the rendezvous?” he said. “Because if you’re not interested in the details of what’s to come, I should like to prepare myself for death, disgrace, or—­worst of all by far—­the end of what was to have been a brilliant

legal career.”

She turned away from the window, sat back, folded her arms, and met his gaze. “Oh, good,” she said. “Drama.”

T he house stood in a crooked alley off Drury Lane, squeezed in with others of a similar ilk. Some were more and some less decrepit but all were uninviting. Its ground floor held a dismal shop bearing no identifying features. The morning light had hard going, trying to illuminate the alley at all. At these shop windows it gave up trying. The objects lurking behind the murky glass might have been furniture or crockery or old clothes or coffins, for all one could tell. A china dealer’s shop stood next door, boasting windows marginally cleaner and a legible sign. Apart from a pawnbroker near the alley’s western end, the other businesses seemed to carry on anonymously. Presumably the area’s residents knew what they were, in the same way they knew what went on in the rooms above the shop with the impenetrable windows.

Radford saw Lady Clara examine the watch pinned to her bodice.

“The police will be here soon,” he said.

The alley was narrow. Taking extreme care, a hackney coachman could make it through. But the driver—­a police sergeant—­had pretended to be stuck. Meanwhile a large wagon blocked the other end.

Stokes and his team had better arrive soon, before somebody noticed the two vehicles blocking the alley’s exits, and raised the alarm.

Radford became aware of movement. Peering through the small window, he saw the first of the policemen slip into the alley. Others would be moving to block escape routes—­at the back of the house and at the places of egress in the court it overlooked. In any event, he hoped that was what they were doing.

It wasn’t easy to sit in the coach and look on. He wanted to be with them. He wanted to lead the charge.

But that would be improper. His place was in the courtroom.

And Lady Clara’s was in the ballroom or drawing room, where of course she’d shine as brilliantly as any barrister would wish to shine in court. He understood her feeling . . . constrained. All the same, he knew she was never meant for this world, his world. Even at its best, it wasn’t pretty.