Dukes Prefer Blondes (The Dressmakers 4)

“No one says you have to live in a tent! This is demented.”

“I only point out a lady’s lack of alternatives,” she said. “I’ve been brought up to do nothing else but become a nobleman’s wife, and I’ve put it off long enough. I don’t want to marry a gentleman who asks me because it’s this year’s fashionable thing to do. Your cousin doesn’t sound like somebody who cares what’s fashionable. He only wants a wife to give him sons.”

The fading green and yellow bruises round Radford’s eye showed starker as the color drained from his face.

She hoped he was too shocked to think clearly, because otherwise he’d realize what she was up to.

“Furthermore, if I’m to please Mama and be a duchess, I should like to be one whose life isn’t tediously repetitive,” she said. “All you’ve told me proves the Duke of Malvern will present a stimulating challenge to my wits and ingenuity. Clearly he needs someone like me to put his household in order. You’ll do for estate business, but that means property and legal matters.” She waved a slender hand. “The agent and land steward and such.”

“I’m overjoyed to know I’ll do in some paltry fashion.” His voice was choked.

“But His Grace requires a woman to take charge of domestic affairs. I was strictly trained to oversee a ducal household. Because I was supposed to marry Clevedon, you know—­”

“My cousin isn’t Clevedon!” he said. “Bernard is gross! The day you saw him, all those years ago? That was Bernard at his best. He’s disgusting.”

“So are paupers, yet you undertake the challenge of seeking justice for them.”

“I don’t have to live with them!”

“His Grace owns several houses, all of them large,” she said. “I need not see more of him than I can tolerate.”

“He’s intolerable!” Radford said. “How can you, Clara?”

She looked toward the fire. “My mother always says that.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw him clench his hands, then unclench them.

“I did not nurse you back to health only to see you throw yourself away on Beastly Bernard,” he said.

She glanced at him. His color had returned and he seemed as composed and remote as usual, but the ghosts in his eyes told the same story his fisting hands had told.

“Mama wants me to marry a duke,” she said. “She’ll be mortified if I don’t, and her poisonous friend Lady Bartham will make her life unbearable. It’s my duty. The trouble is, I threw over Clevedon, and youngish dukes aren’t thick on the ground.”

“Drat you, Clara, you don’t need a duke.”

“But Mama—­”

“To the devil with your mother,” he said. “You need me, you stupid girl.”

The silence between them became so fraught that the burning coals’ soft crackle sounded like artillery fire.

Heart galloping, hands sweating, she raised her eyebrows, but not very much. “Do I?” she said coolly.

Radford realized what he’d said only after he’d said it, which showed the state of mind he was in. Or out of.

He folded his arms and walked to the window and looked out. He saw nothing but what roiled inside his head.

“This is absurd,” he said to the glass.

“Certainly it is,” she said. “I can’t think what on earth I’d need you for, unless I was in dire want of aggravation.”

He turned back to her. “You will not marry Bernard.”

She sat in perfect duchess posture, spine straight, chin aloft.

“I will,” she said. “Unless I get a better offer. I have to marry somebody.”

Me! his other self shouted. Marry me!

He’d all but said it a moment ago. But not precisely.

He glared at her. Then he stalked to the fire. One of the mantelpiece ornaments depicted the naiad Daphne in the process of turning into a tree. He moved her an inch to the left. He remained there for a moment, his hand on the mantelpiece.

It was a pose he’d taken many times before, hand on the jury rail, head bent, as he prepared to speak. The trouble was, this time he was on both sides of the case. He needed to represent Reason. His other self was opposing counsel, aka Throw Caution, Intellect, and Basic Facts of Life to the Wind.

“You’re going to try to wriggle out of it,” she said. “I can tell.”

She could tell a great deal too much. He remembered the way she’d taken note, in no time at all and despite fear for her life, of Jacob Freame and Chiver. She’d noted what they looked like, what they wore, and every detail of the carriage apparently aiming for her in Charing Cross.

“I spoke in a passion,” he said. “The notion of your marrying Bernard was so revoltingly imbecile as to cause a temporary derangement of my senses.” When she’d spoken of Bernard wanting sons, the image had arisen in Radford’s mind of Bernard in the process. With her. For a moment he’d believed his brain would actually explode.

“Your illness has brought about an intimacy that would never have happened in normal circumstances,” he said. “I will not deny . . . affection.”

Love! his other self roared. You love her, you pompous ass!

“If there were no . . . affection, I should take advantage of your confusing, at present, feelings of gratitude with . . . stronger feelings,” he said. “I should consider your large dowry and do what I could to compromise you, thus forestalling parental objections. Your family would hate me forever, but everybody hates me. Meanwhile, I should have a beautiful wife who owns the closest thing to a brain I’ve ever observed in a female, whose influence would further my career, and whose dowry would make life comfortable until I achieved the level of success I intend.”

Who would make me happy. Whose face I would be so grateful to see on the other side of the table at breakfast. Whose voice I would be so grateful to hear the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning.

“But,” she said. “There’s always a but.”

“Use your head,” he said. He moved away from the mantelpiece, farther away from her. “You’re not for me nor I for you. The novelty of living in chambers and being a barrister’s wife would soon pall. It’s nothing like the challenges you’ve been trained to manage, and the society is a different class of persons. Not to mention how disagreeable I am to live with. Ask Westcott. One of these days he’ll shoot me and the jury will call it justifiable homicide.”

“I could shoot you just as well as he could,” she said. “And I’d probably have more fun doing it.” She waved a hand. “Never mind. You’re quite right. I’ve been foolish.”

“You’ve been ill. Naturally, you—­”

“I thought the man who had the courage and stomach to look after me during a thoroughly disgusting disease—­a man who’d take full responsibility for my survival—­who’d trust only to his brains and wit and patience and c-­compassion . . .” Her voice wobbled.

“Clara.”

She put her hand up. “I’m not done. This is my closing speech, my learned friend, and you will let me say it through.” Her eyes glistened, but she blinked back the tears, swallowed, and went on, “I thought such a man was everything a man ought to be. I thought this was the kind of man a woman could live with happily, whether or not he was a duke and no matter how many large houses he didn’t have. Silly me, I wanted the kind of man I could love and respect, one I’d be proud to help advance in his profession—­because he’ll need a great deal of help, given his complete lack of tact, let alone charm. I wanted the m

an who saw me not as this year’s fashionable beauty, not even as a proper lady, but as I was, and as a friend and companion. I don’t see why I’m any less capable of putting up with you than Westcott is, but you seem to think so, and you’re a professional arguer. And you seem to think I should never be happy unless I married a duke. And so I will take counsel’s advice. I’ll marry Bernard.”

“You will not—­”

“I’m not joking,” she said. “This is not an idle threat. I’ve thought it through. I can do him a great deal of good. And don’t remind me that he’s monstrous, because you’ve made that abundantly clear. You’re monstrous, and you don’t frighten me in the least. On the contrary, you amuse me. He’s monstrous in a different way, yet I reckon he’ll amuse me, too. But, we’ll see what I make of him, won’t we? Well, then. Not injured, sir? No swooning? No tears? Excellent. Good day, Mr. Radford. Thank you for saving my life.”

He told himself that all women were in varying degrees non compos mentis, on account of lacking the intellectual faculties conducing to rational thought. He told himself that if anybody could make something of Bernard, she could, and if the prospect struck him as macabre—­if not suicidal—­that was emotion speaking.

Had not certain of the King’s several sisters, desperate to escape prolonged spinsterhood, married obese old men? At least one of these ­couples had been reputed to enjoy a happy marriage.

“You’re welcome,” he said. “Good day, Lady Clara.”

He went out of the room. As he closed the door, something crashed against it and shattered. He kept on walking.

Chapter Eleven

This word bar is likewise used for the place where Serjeants and counsellors at law stand to plead the causes in court; and where prisoners are brought to answer their indictments, &c. whence our lawyers, that are called to the bar, are termed barristers.

—­Thomas-­Edlyne Tomlins, The Law Dictionary, 1835

Clara glared at the Cupid.

She itched to throw him as well as the clock he was attached to at the door as well, but then she’d be acting like a spoiled child.