Dukes Prefer Blondes (The Dressmakers 4)

The boy Jos displayed even more hostility than Jane had treated them to, and in the same vein.

Having left the boys’ area with the same kinds of dismissive comments he’d used in the girls’ schoolroom, Radford led Clara and her maid outside. He said nothing. They said nothing—­shocked speechless, no doubt—­but hurried along with him to the hackney stand in Hatton Garden, where they climbed into an ancient coach.

“That’s all?” Lady Clara said once the vehicle was moving. “How many more ragged schools must we visit before we learn anything?”

“Were you not paying attention?” he said. “They told us everything.”

“They all seemed to know you,” she said. “Those girls . . . Jane . . .” She trailed off and looked out of the window, though he’d defy her to see anything through the scratched, dirt-­encrusted glass.

“They know I don’t need every syllable spelled out for me,” he said.

“Speaking of syllables, I could barely understand Jane,” she said. “The boy—­Jo, was it?—­might as well have been speaking Mesopotamian.”

“Nor why your ladyship ought to understand, I can’t guess,” Davis said. “And to think I should see my lady in a place alongside the likes of those creatures, and that insolent girl’s rags touching your skirts.” She glared at Radford.

He shrugged. “You can burn milady’s attire later. In the dead of night, if you like.”

“And how should we do that without attracting attention, sir?” the maid said, making the sir sound like you fiend from hell. “Do you suppose I spend any time in the kitchen, that they wouldn’t wonder at it? Do you imagine a dress burned in my lady’s bedroom fireplace wouldn’t set the whole house talking, and her ladyship’s mother hear of it?”

“Send the dress to me, or leave it for me somewhere,” he said in a bored voice. “I’ll burn it.”

“Never mind the dress,” Lady Clara said. “What did you learn?”

“That Jane referred to a party who liked cutting ­people.”

The maid looked at her mistress. “Why will you not let me kill him?” she said. “This is a horrid man. Your ladyship has got mixed up with some horrid men, ever since—­”

“Do be still, Davis,” Lady Clara said. “I’ll thank you for not airing my dirty linen in Mr. Radford’s hearing.”

His unwanted self, meanwhile, who’d been meditating upon her virginal bedroom, promptly set about imagining her linen, every layer of it, starting with the uppermost—­corset and petticoat—­and working his way down to chemise and skin.

“Curdle my blood all you like, Mr. Radford, since it amuses you so much,” Lady Clara said. “But eventually I should like to know what you discovered.”

“Firstly, it was clever of me to bring you along,” he said.

“Clever!” she said. “Of you! I was the one who had to pass the examination.”

“If you hadn’t passed, it wouldn’t have been clever of me but unintelligent and counterproductive,” he said. “But Jane was jealous of you—­”

“Jealous?”

“Streetwalkers are competitive about men and undiscriminating,” he said. “She wanted to show me she knew what you didn’t. The boy Jos showed off because he’s a boy and you’re an attractive female, even with whatever that muck is on your face.”

The composition dulled her complexion and made it seem rough. It couldn’t conceal her beauty, though, even from the most unobservant and dull-­witted boy, which Jos was not.

“A blend Davis made for me,” she said. “Jos was—­what? Nine years old?”

“Fourteen,” Radford said. “Their bodies might be stunted, but they age more quickly in the rookeries than in Mayfair. He wanted a closer look at you. And maybe he was curious what clean smelled like. He knew he had to pay for the privilege, and so he gave me what he had. In short, your ladyship was wonderfully useful in untying tongues. At last we know who has Toby.”

Freame, as he’d suspected. Of all the gangs in London, the boy had to get himself led into that one. Thanks to Chiver, which made the motive plain.

“I don’t,” she said.

“Maybe you’ll solve the puzzle on your own, if you care to waste valuable mental energy upon that rather than escaping matrimony,” he said. “But I’m not in a humor to indulge your idle curiosity further.”

Lady Clara had taken a great risk going with him this day. He should never have let it happen. He could have learned what he needed without her, though it wouldn’t have been nearly so easy.

Very well. He’d made a mistake. He’d correct it.

“Idle! You said a moment ago—­”

“Your maid doesn’t approve, and all the evidence supports her,” he said.

“Davis isn’t my mother,” she said.

“Don’t make me tell your mother,” he said. “I don’t like nosing on my friends any more than Jane does, but like her, I’ll do it if provoked sufficiently. You’ll soon reach Oxford Street. I’d better disembark here. I need to talk to some fellows at the Bow Street Police Office.” He signaled the coach to stop.

“Mr. Radford, you are the rudest man—­”

“So I’m told,” he said. “Obnoxious, too.” The coachman was taking his time about climbing down to open the door. Radford wrestled with the window, muscled it down, and turned the handle.

He had the door open when Lady Clara grabbed his arm.

“Mr. Radford—­”

“My lady!” the shocked maid cried.

He was shocked, too, at the intimacy, and that wasn’t all.

Lady Clara did not take her hand away.

A small, slender, lady’s hand, gloved and weighing next to nothing. He should have scarcely felt her touch, but it shot through him as sharply as a dagger thrust, and his blood seemed to rush to meet it.

“You may not dismiss me so easily,” Lady Clara said.

“May I not?” He covered her hand with his, and he felt her tense. Davis turned bright red and grabbed her umbrella, meaning to brain him, no doubt. He didn’t care. Indignant women had hit him before, fo

r much smaller cause.

He lifted her ladyship’s unresisting hand. She was too shocked to resist, no doubt. He brought it not an inch below his lips, as was proper, but to his mouth. And he kissed—­not the air, as politeness required, but the unresisting hand. Lingeringly. And drank in the tantalizing trace of scent that was her and nobody and nothing else.

“Farewell, dear, dear lady,” he said. “Thank you for a most entertaining morning. With any luck, we’ll never meet again.”

He released her hand and stepped calmly out of the carriage, still smiling.

He closed the door and his smile faded. He thrust a coin at the dilatory coachman, warned him not to charge the ladies, shooed him back to his box, and stepped back onto the pavement.

Radford watched the coach trundle along Broad Street, and cursed himself.

Clara stared at the hand he’d kissed.

When she’d touched him, the whirl of feelings startled her so, she’d almost pulled away. She didn’t know what to call them. All she knew was that it felt as though she’d come in from the cold and reached out to warm her hands at a fire.

And then. And then . . .

She was not a child, and she wasn’t as innocent as she ought to be, but when his hand closed over hers . . .

Longing and longing and longing.

She’d longed for things before—­freedom, adventure, forbidden books and places—­but never for a man’s company. And this wasn’t like the other kind of wanting. Those were perhaps no more than wishing. This was deep and aching and bewildering.

Stay, she’d almost said.

He’d stayed only another moment, only time enough to kiss her gloved hand and shatter her world.

It was the warmth of his mouth through the thin leather. That was all it took. She’d felt it race to her heart and make it beat faster, and she didn’t know how he could do that and she couldn’t ask him because he’d gone.

She remembered the boy, so long ago, who’d said, “Stay.”

“It seems as though I did,” she murmured.

“My lady?”

Clara looked up to find Davis watching her. “Nothing.”