Silk Is For Seduction - Loretta Chase [113]
She moved away and gave a short laugh. “I’m concerned with her wardrobe, your grace. When will you get that through your thick head?”
What was she saying, what was she saying? She’d turned to him when Lucie disappeared, and they’d searched together, sharing the same hopes and fears. He cared for that child and he cared for her, and she knew it. “Two nights ago you said you loved me,” he said.
“What difference does that make?” she said. She turned back to him and lifted her chin and met his gaze straight on. “I still have a shop to run. If you can’t get hold of your wits and start acting sensibly, you’ll force me to leave England altogether. I’ll get nowhere with you causing talk and undermining me at every turn—you and your selfish disregard of everything but your own wants. Think of what you’re doing, will you? Think of what you’ve done, from the time you chased me to London, and the consequences of everything you’ve done. And think, for once, your grace, of someone other than yourself.”
She turned away and left him, and he didn’t follow her.
He could scarcely see through the red haze in front of his eyes. Rage and shame and grief warred inside him, and he wanted to lash back as viciously and brutally as she’d flayed him.
He only stood and hated her. And himself.
It was a long while he remained standing in the garden, alone. A long time while the anger began by degrees to dissipate. And when it had gone, he was left deeply chilled, because every last, remaining lie he’d told himself had been burned away, and he knew she’d spoken nothing but the plain, bitter truth.
Later that same Monday, the Duke of Clevedon visited the Court jewelers, Rundell and Bridge, and bought the biggest diamond ring he could find, the “prodigious great diamond” Longmore had recommended.
He spent the rest of the day composing his formal offer of marriage. He wrote it and rewrote it. It had to be perfect. It had to say everything he felt for Clara. It had to make clear that his heart could hold no one else. It had to make plain that he had put all his follies and self-indulgence behind him and meant to be the man she deserved.
Words came easily enough to him when he was writing. He’d always had a knack for an easy, conversational tone, where others would be stiff. When he wrote, thoughts sharpened in his mind as they did not always do when he spoke.
He’d always delighted in writing to Clara, and it wasn’t simply for the mental companionship. While sharing his thoughts and experiences with a kindred spirit formed a great part of his enjoyment, there was more to it. In the process of writing to her, he sorted and clarified his thoughts.
But he made heavy going of his marriage proposal. It was very late by the time he finished and memorized it, and by then it was far too late of think to going to Warford House. Clara would have gone out to a ball or a rout or some such.
He’d call tomorrow.
The Duke of Clevedon called at Warford House on Tuesday, naturally, though he knew the family were not at home to visitors—and for once Lady Clara was tempted to be not at home to him.
But when she told her mother she had a headache, Lady Warford said, “Lady Gorrell saw him yesterday leaving Rundell and Bridge. And here he is today when he can have you all to himself, instead of having to make his way through that crowd of bankrupts and mushrooms who hang about you. Surely you can put two and two together—and surely you can postpone indulging your megrims until after you hear what he has to say.”
A ring and a proposal was the tally Mama made. She might be correct, but Clara was not in the mood, for him or for her mother. Lady Warford had taken three fits only this morning, complaining that all the world was talking about the Duke of Clevedon and those “she-devils who called themselves milliners, and their wicked child,” who had very nearly cost him his life.
Of course, all would be forgiven once he put a ring on Clara’s finger, and Mama could lord it over her friends, whose daughters had snared merely earls and viscounts