Lady Clara, the fan-favorite character from Loretta Chase’s New York Times and USA Today bestselling Dressmakers series, finally gets her own happily ever after!
Convenient marriages are rarely so…exciting. Can society’s most adored heiress and London’s most difficult bachelor fall victim to their own unruly desires?
Biweekly marriage proposals from men who can’t see beyond her (admittedly breathtaking) looks are starting to get on Lady Clara Fairfax’s nerves. Desperate to be something more than ornamental, she escapes to her favorite charity. When a child goes missing, she turns to Oliver Radford—a handsome, brilliant, excessively conceited barrister.
Having unexpectedly found himself in line to inherit a dukedom, Radford needs a bride who can navigate the Society he’s never been part of. If he can find one without having to set foot in a ballroom, so much the better. Clara—blonde, blue-eyed, and he must admit, not entirely bereft of brains—will do. As long as he can woo her, wed her—and not, like every other sapskull in London, lose his head over her…
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A
short time later
“Look 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.”
“Firstly, nobody was
injured but a dog it’s obvious nobody cared about,” the gentleman said.
“Otherwise the creature would have been a degree more alive to begin with.
Secondly, one doesn’t pester the police about the demise, violent or otherwise,
of a mere canine unless its owner is an aristocrat. Thirdly, it’s now clear the
fellow was aiming for me when you stepped in the way. I couldn’t see him
clearly through the”—he gestured at her hat, his mouth twitching again—“the
whatnot rising from your head. But Whippet Face . . .” Now he smiled. It wasn’t
much of a smile, being small and quick, but it changed his face, and her heart
gave a short, surprised thump. “He’s been trying to kill me this age. He’s not
the only one. Hardly worth troubling the constabulary.”
He gave her the briefest
nod, then turned and strode away.
Clara stood staring
after him.
Tall, lean, and
self-assured, he moved with swift purpose through the sea of people surging
over the streets converging on Trafalgar Square. Even after he entered the
Strand, he didn’t disappear from sight for a while. His hat and broad shoulders
remained visible above the mass of humanity until he reached Clevedon House,
when a passing coach blocked her view.
He never looked back.
