Dukes Prefer Blondes (The Dressmakers 4)

Very soon she’d need no help at all, and he’d have no excuse for staying.

As it was, what he had for an excuse had grown woefully thin.

Radford had some hard thinking to do, and it ended in a hard decision.

On Monday, Clara sat in a chair by the bedroom window, reading Foxe’s Morning Spectacle while Davis went about her usual tasks.

When the maid came out of the dressing room with an armful of linen, Clara said, “Measles?”

“I beg your pardon, my lady.”

Clara read: “ ‘Lady C____ F____, eldest daughter of the Marquess of W____, remains in London with a near relative of his lordship. Lady C____ has been suffering extremely from an attack of measles, which has lasted unusually long but from which she is now recovering.’ ” She looked up from the paper. “Did I not have measles when I was a child?”

“Yes, my lady, but that is what Lady Exton has told ­people who called. It’s kept visitors away. She said it would keep the family from hurrying back to London, because nobody remembers who had them and who didn’t.”

True enough. All the childhood ailments had run through the nursery at one time or another, but not everybody had caught every one of them. Since it was the nursemaids who looked after the young patients, and since nursemaids tended not to stay for long—­the Fairfax children being little savages—­no one could be sure who’d had what.

“Everybody says it’s more troublesome after childhood,” Davis said. “Especially dangerous for young gentlemen, they say. Like your brothers.” The maid paused. “Lady Exton worried that word would get about of your being ill. I believe measles was Mr. Radford’s suggestion.”

“Not very glamorous,” Clara said. “But more so than . . .” She tried to remember if anybody had ever told her. “What was it I had?”

“Typhus was Mr. Radford’s diagnosis, my lady.”

“Good grief.”

“Indeed.”

“Yet I lived.”

“So it seems.”

Thanks to him. Typhus!

“Then measles will do nicely,” Clara said calmly. “It won’t cause Mama heart failure.”

“No, it won’t, my lady. He thinks of everything.”

Clara looked up, but the maid was carrying the soiled linen out of the room.

Not half an hour later, the three Noirot sisters turned up, obviously unafraid of measles and, in the Duchess of Cle­vedon’s case, undeterred by an advanced state of pregnancy.

Clara told them nothing of the truth, but she did try on the clothes they brought her, their idea of convalescent gifts.

Tuesday 13 October

I’ve come to say goodbye,” Radford said.

The weeks of looking after her and hiding his anxiety had caught up with him at last, and he’d slept most of yesterday. At one point, he’d been distantly aware of visitors descending on his patient—­who was no longer his patient, he reminded himself.

The callers had been women. They were, moreover, women whose otherwise flawless English betrayed to his sharp ears a Parisian upbringing.

It wanted no brain power at all to deduce their identities. These were the famous modistes of Maison Noirot. They bustled along the corridor, talking, sometimes all at once, and he could hear their voices until, after a few minutes, they closed Lady Clara’s bedroom door.

A moment ago he’d closed her bedroom door, too, not thinking about propriety, because he hadn’t needed to before.

Lady Clara set aside the book she’d been reading, and folded her hands in her lap.

He’d become so used to seeing her in her nightgown. Later, as she became stronger and able to leave her bed for stretches of time, she’d worn a simple wrap over the nightdress. Now she was dressed in the elaborate dishabille women called morning dress.

Hers comprised a cloud of embroidered muslin, the sleeves full to the elbow and snug on her lower arms. It fit snugly over her bosom and waist as well. Yards of lace and ribbons garnished the concoction, and a pink sash, tied in a bow at her waist, called attention to her figure’s lush femininity. As though any man with working eyesight needed this pointed out.

Instead of the virginal nightcap, she wore a lacy cap trimmed in pink, from which a pair of lacy pink lappets dangled over her shoulders to point to her bosom, in case one didn’t know the way.

In case one hadn’t undone a button there, once.

A lifetime ago, it seemed.

With her return to what she’d deem proper dress, he saw the wall between their two worlds go up.

Which was exactly what any rational man would expect to happen.

The rational man knew that everything would revert to what it was before. She’d been ill, that was all. She hadn’t changed into somebody else. This was the reason a rational man stood here, saying goodbye.

“Did my sister-­in-­law and her sisters frighten you yesterday?” she said.

“Women do not frighten me,” he said. “Even somewhat French women.”

“No, of course not,” she said. “How silly of me. Naturally you deem it time to go. You’ve taken care of me. Now you must go back to Herefordshire and take care of your beastly cousin.”

He advanced further into the room. “You ought to sit nearer to the fire,” he said. “After an acute illness, one is more susceptible to chills. Stand up, and I’ll move the chair.”

She rose in a flurry of rustling muslin. “I suppose you can’t help yourself,” she said. “It must be in the ducal bloodline, this dictatorial manner.”

He took up the chair and set it nearer the fire. Then he drew the screen to precisely the place where it would shield her from excessive heat while allowing sufficient warmth.

“You’re every bit as dictatorial,” he said. “If I didn’t tyrannize you, you’d tyrannize me.”

“Of course I’m tyrannical,” she said. “I was brought up to be a duchess.”

The words struck like a blow to the head and to the heart simultaneously. Inwardly, he reeled. Outwardly he went very still. For a moment only. To collect himself.

Only the fire’s crackle broke the room’s taut silence. Then she crossed to the chair and sat, muslin whispering, lace fluttering.

“My mother will not settle for less,” she said.

He was not in the least surprised. He wasn’t cast down. He couldn’t be, because he’d told himself exactly this. She wasn’t for him. She’d never been for him. He was not a man who deluded himself. He’d seen the facts from the moment he’d recognized her, the day she’d appeared in the Woodley Building, a place where she clearly didn’t belong. He and she came from different worlds. She might as well have lived on the moon.

“Perhaps I ought to marry Beastly Bernard,” she said before he could step far enough away from himself to fashion a rational sentence. “He sounds as though he needs someone like me desperately. Being despotic, I should not have much difficulty making something of him. In my experience, men like Bernard are not at all difficult to manage.”

Radford stared at her. It took a moment for his brain to connect to his tongue.

“Bernard,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “He’s the duke in the family, is he not?”

Clara’s heart pounded so fiercely, she thought it must break through her chest. She needed all two and twenty years of ladyship training to maintain her composure.

“Are you delirious?” he said.

“On the contrary,” she said, “I view the matter dispassionately. I’ve been near death—­”

“You were never near death while I was by,” he said sharply.

“But had you not been by,” she said, “my life would have ended, courtesy Dr. Marler, with my having done almost nothing of value beyond rescuing a not very intelligent boy for his sister’s sake. I realized I had frittered away my time.”

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; “You’re only twenty-­two!”

“It’s past time for marrying,” she said. “Nearly every girl who made her debut with me is wed. Some have children. I’d hoped for—­ Well, it doesn’t matter, because that was silly. I’d considered never marrying, but that was silly, too. I ought to have realized that being an eccentric spinster could not suit me. Especially living in a tent.”