Dukes Prefer Blondes (2 page)

 

Chapter One

At the head of Whitehall-­street is the noted point of Charing cross; and immediately above it lately opened Trafalgar square, where is to be erected a splendid naval monument; and the new national gallery of the fine arts, now in building, is on the north side of the square.

—­Calvin Colton,
Four Years in Great Britain
, 1831–35

Environs of Covent Garden, London

Wednesday 19 August 1835

S
top it!” the girl cried. “Get off! I won't go!”

Lady Clara Fairfax, about to alight from her cabriolet, couldn't hear what the boy said, but she heard him laugh and saw him grab Bridget Coppy's arm and try to drag her away from the building she was about to enter. It housed the Milliners' Society for the Education of Indigent Females.

The horse safe in her tiger's keeping, her ladyship snatched up her whip, picked up her skirts, and ran toward the pair. She struck the boy's arm with the whip's butt end. He let out a high-­pitched oath.

He was a mean-­looking boy, red-­haired, with a square, spotty face. He wore the cheap, showy coat she'd learned to associate with the strutting ne'er-­do-­wells who infested the neighborhood.

“Get away from her, or you'll get more of the same,” Clara said. “Leave this place. You've no business here. Be gone before I send for a constable.”

The boy eyed her in an insolent manner. The effect was spoiled, however, by his having to stretch his head back and cast his beady-­eyed gaze upward a distance, for Clara was not petite and he was not tall. His gaze dropped to the whip in her hand, then to the dashing cabriolet behind her—­from which she didn't doubt her maid Davis had descended, brandishing her umbrella.

With a sneer, he said what sounded like, “You better hit harder'n that, you want me to feel it.” He didn't wait for her to hit harder, but set his hat at a very sharp angle and sauntered off.

“Are you all right?” she asked Bridget.

“Yes, your ladyship, and thank you ever so,” the girl said. “I don't know what was in his mind to come here. He oughter know his sort ain't welcome here.”

The Milliners' Society for the Education of Indigent Females housed and educated girls determined, against prodigious odds, to be respectable.

In the ordinary way of things, girls aiming to learn a trade became apprentices. But London's dressmakers could pick and choose their apprentices, and the Milliners' Society girls were outcasts or rejects for one reason or another: The majority were too old to be apprenticed and/or they were “fallen” or carried some other stigma.

The Society picked them up from the gutter—­if they were willing to be removed from that location—­and did everything possible to make them fit for employment. With practice, diligence, and good eyesight, most girls would learn to sew straight, tiny stitches at great speed, and they could be placed as seamstresses. Some, though, had the potential to rise higher—­for instance, to embroider fine muslins, silks, linens, wools, and these materials' numerous combinations. Perhaps one or two might even possess the wherewithal to rise to become successful milliners or dressmakers.

Bridget was fifteen years old. An unsuccessful flower seller, she had appeared on the Society's doorstep after being assaulted and robbed who knew how many times, thanks to her refusing assorted pimps' protection. She had been completely illiterate. She had turned out to be one of the most diligent students and an especially gifted embroiderer. In the display cases, her work always stood out.

Outside the building, so, unfortunately, did her looks.

“I can tell you what was in his mind,” Clara said. “He wasn't thinking much beyond the fact of your being pretty and what males think when they see pretty girls.”

Lady Clara Fairfax ought to know. Twenty-­two years old as of yesterday, she was the most beautiful and sought-­after girl in London, and according to some, in all of England.

Small Drawing Room of Warford House

Monday 31 August 1835

C
lara did not run screaming from the room. A lady didn't run screaming from anywhere unless her life was in
immediate
danger.

This was simply another marriage proposal.

The Season was over. Almack's had held its last assembly at the end of July. Most of Society had gone to the country. Yet her family remained in London because her father, the Marquess of Warford, never left before Parliament rose, and Parliament still sat.

And so her beaux lingered in London. For some reason—­either they'd joined a conspiracy or had made her the subject of wagers in White's betting book—­they seemed to be proposing on a biweekly schedule. They were beginning to wear on Clara's nerves.

Today was Lord Herringstone's turn. He said he loved her. They all said so with varying degrees of fervor. But being an intelligent girl who read more than she ought to, Clara was sure that he, like the others, merely wanted to claim the most fashionable girl in London for his own.

She'd inherited the classic Fairfax looks—­pale gold hair, clear blue eyes, and skin that seemed to have been poured like cream over an artistically sculpted face. The world agreed that in her these traits had reached the very acme and pitch of perfection. So had her figure, a model for one of those Greek or Roman goddess statues, according to her numerous swains.

Her single flaw—­on the outside, that is—­the tiny chip in her left front tooth, only made her human and thus, somehow, more perfect.

She was like a thoroughbred everybody wanted to own.

Or the latest style of dashing vehicle.

Her beauty surrounded her like a great stone wall. Men couldn't see above, beyond, or through it. They certainly couldn't think past it.

This was because men only
looked
at women. They didn't listen to women, especially beautiful women.

When beautiful women talked, men merely made a greater pretense of listening. After all, everybody knew that women did not
really
have brains.

Clara wondered what women were imagined to have in their skulls in place of brains or what men thought women did their pitiful excuse for thinking
with
 . . .

“ . . . if you would do me the inestimable honor of becoming my wife.”

She came back to the present and said no, as she always did, kindly and courteously, because she'd been rigorously trained in ladyship. Moreover, she truly liked Lord Herringstone. He'd written odes to her, and they were witty and scanned well. He was amusing and a good dancer and reasonably intelligent.

So were dozens of other men.

She liked them, most of them.

But they had no idea who she was and did not try to find out.

Perhaps it was quixotic of her, but she wanted more than that.

He looked disappointed. Yet he'd survive, she knew. He'd find another woman he would look at and not listen to, but that woman wouldn't be so unrealistic as to expect him to. They'd wed and rub along together somehow or other, like everybody else.

And one of these days Clara would give up hoping for more. One of these days, she would have to say yes.

“Either that,” she muttered, “or become an eccentric and run away to Egypt or India.”

“My lady?”

Clara looked up. Her lady's maid, Davis, had been standing in the corridor by the door during the marriage proposal. Though the door stood open, though any number of large footmen lurked in Warford House's corridors, and though none of Clara's infatuated swains would dream of uttering a cross word to her, let alone attempt to harm her, Davis remained ever vigilant. ­People said Davis looked like a bulldog, but looks, Clara very well knew, weren't everything. Not many years older than her charge, Davis had been hired immediately after one of Clara's many childhood contretemps, this time at Vauxhall. She protected Clara from fractures, concussions, drowning, and—­most important to Mama—­Clara's becoming A Complete Hoyden.

“Where is Mama?”

Her mother usually entered close on the heels of rejected swains to wonder Where She'd Gone Wrong with her eldest daughter.

“Her ladyship is in bed with a sick headache,” Davis said.

This was probably because she'd had a visit earlier from her poisonous friend Lady Bartham.

“Let's go out,” Clara said.

“Yes, my lady.”

“To the girls,” Clara said. A visit to the Milliners' Society for the Education of Indigent Females would give her a chance to do some good instead of brooding about men. “Please order my cabriolet.”

Clara drove herself whenever possible, partly to reduce servants' spying and tattling, but mainly to feel she was in command of something, even if it was one horse pulling a small, two-­wheeled vehicle. At least it was a dashing vehicle. Her eldest brother, Harry, the Earl of Longmore, had bought it for her.

“We'll stop on the way and buy some trinkets for the girls.” She glanced down at herself. “But I can't go in this. They must see me in my finest finery.”

When a proposal could not be avoided, she dressed as unflatteringly as she dared, to make her rejection sting less.

The girls were another matter. The Milliners' Society's founders were London's premier modistes, the proprietresses of Maison Noirot. They made Lady Clara's clothes, and they had taught her that dress was a form of art and a form of manipulation and a language in itself. Twice they had saved her from what would have been catastrophic marriages.

And so, for their girls, she dressed to inspire.

Charing Cross

A short time later

L
ook out! Are you blind? Get out of the way!”

Clara hadn't time to see what she was in the way of when an arm snaked about her waist and yanked her back from the curb. Then she saw the black and yellow gig hurtling toward her.

At the last minute, it swerved away, toward the watermen and boys clustered about the statue of King Charles I. Then once more it veered abruptly off course. It nicked a passing omnibus, struck a limping dog, and swung into St. Martin's Lane, leaving pandemonium in its wake.

Some inches above her head—­and plainly audible above the bystanders' shouts and shrieks and the noise of carriages, horses, and dogs—­a deep, cultivated voice uttered an oath. The muscular arm came away from her waist and the arm's owner stepped back a pace. She looked up at him, more
up
than she was accustomed to.

His face seemed familiar, though her brain couldn't find a name to attach to it. Under his hat brim, a single black curl fell against his right temple. Below the dark, sharply angled eyebrows, a pair of cool grey eyes regarded her. Her own gaze moved swiftly from his uncomfortably sharp scrutiny down his long nose and firmly chiseled mouth and chin.

The day was warm, but the warmth she felt started on the inside.

“I daresay you noticed nothing about him?” he said. “But why do I ask a pointless question? Everybody flies into a panic and nobody pays attention. The correct question is, Does it matter?” He shrugged. “Only to the dog, perhaps. And in that regard one may say that the driver simply put the wretched brute out of its misery. Let's call it an act of mercy. Well, then. Not injured, my lady? No swooning? No tears? Excellent. Good day.”

He touched the brim of his hat and started away.

“A man and a boy in a black Stanhope gig trimmed in yellow,” she said to his back. Clara was aware of the tall, black-­garbed figure pausing, but she was concentrating, to hold the fleeting image in her mind. “Carriage freshly painted. Blood bay mare. White stripe. White sock . . . off hind leg. No tiger. The boy . . . I've seen him before, near Covent Garden. Red hair. Square face. Spotty. Garish yellow coat. Cheap hat. The driver had a face like a whippet. His coat . . . a better one but not right.
Not
a gentleman.”

Her rescuer slowly turned back to her, one dark eyebrow upraised. “Face like a whippet?”

“A narrow, elongated face,” she said. With one gloved hand, whose tremor was barely noticeable, she made a lengthening gesture over her own face. “Sharp features. He drives to an inch. He might have spared the dog.”

Her rescuer looked her up and down, so briefly Clara wasn't altogether sure he'd done it. But then his expression became acutely intent.

She kept her sigh to herself and her chin upraised, and waited for the wall to go up.

“You're certain,” he said.

Why should I be certain?
she thought.
I'm only a woman and so of course I have no brain to speak of
.

She said, more impatiently than she ought to, “I could see the dog was barely alive. No doubt boys would have tortured him or a horse would have kicked him or a cart would have rolled over him soon enough. But that driver knew what he was doing. He struck the animal on purpose.”

The stranger's keen gaze shifted away from her to scan the square.

“What an idiot,” he said. “Making a spectacle of himself. Killing the dog was meant as a warning to me, obviously. A master of subtlety he is not.” When his gaze returned to her, he said, “A whippet, you say.”

She nodded.

“Well done,” he said.

For an instant Clara thought he'd pat her on the head, as one would a puppy who'd learned a new trick. But he only stood there, alternately looking at her then looking about him. His mouth twitched a little, as though he meant to smile, but he didn't.

“That man, whoever he is, is a public menace,” she said. “I have an appointment or I should report the incident to the police.” She had no appointment. Her visit to the Milliners' Society was a spur-­of-­the-­moment decision. But a lady was not to have anything to do with the police. Even if she got murdered, she ought to do it discreetly. “I must leave the matter to you.”