She Fell Asleep in the War Duke’s Bed—While 59 Women Waited Below

Chapter 9

The Duchess of Ravenscroft received Clara in a small sitting room, not the grand salon. The choice of venue was deliberate — a smaller room meant less formality, but also less protection. No servants hovering. No witnesses.

“Miss Ashworth.” The Duchess did not rise. “Thank you for coming.”

“Your grace.” Clara curtsied and took the seat opposite the Duchess, though she had not been invited to sit.

For a long moment, the two women studied each other.

“I will not pretend to approve of this arrangement,” the Duchess said. “I have made my feelings clear from the beginning.”

“You have.”

“And yet you continue to see my son.”

“I do.”

“May I ask why?”

Clara considered the question carefully. “Because he sees me.”

The Duchess’s expression flickered. “That is a romantic answer. It is not a practical one.”

“Perhaps. But I have discovered that I am tired of being practical. I have spent my entire life being practical. I have attended the right events, worn the right gowns, smiled at the right people. I have done everything I was supposed to do, and I have been miserable. Then your son looked at me as though I was not a problem to be solved but a person to be known. And I have not been able to forget it.”

The Duchess was silent for a long time.

“You love him.”

It was not a question.

Clara considered lying. She considered deflecting. But she looked at the Duchess — at the weary lines around her eyes, at the tight set of her mouth, at the fear that Clara had not expected to find there — and she told the truth.

“Yes. I do.”

The Duchess closed her eyes.

“I did not want to believe it,” she said quietly. “I wanted to believe that you were a schemer, that you had planned this, that you were no better than the fortune hunters I have spent my entire life keeping away from my son. It would have been easier.”

“I know.”

“Love is not easy. Especially not for a man in his position. Especially not for a woman in yours.”

“I know that too.”

The Duchess opened her eyes. “If I oppose this marriage, I will lose my son.”

Clara said nothing.

“If I accept it, I will lose my standing in society. I will be the woman whose son married a merchant’s daughter. I will be whispered about. I will be pitied.”

“Or envied,” Clara said quietly.

The Duchess raised an eyebrow. “Envied?”

“Because your son chose love. How many mothers can say that?”

The silence that followed was different. Less hostile. More uncertain.

“Julian told me,” the Duchess said finally, “that you believe in albatrosses.”

Clara’s breath caught.

“He told you?”

“He told me that you believe love should choose freely. That you believe in returning to the one you have chosen. That you believe in crossing oceans to find each other.”

Clara did not know what to say.

“I have never understood my son,” the Duchess said. “He is too quiet, too controlled. I have spent years trying to shape him into the duke I thought he should be. It has never occurred to me that he might already be the man he was meant to become.”

She looked at Clara, and for the first time, her eyes held something other than cold assessment.

“Take care of him.”

“I will.”

“He does not show his feelings easily. But he feels them deeply. He always has.”

“I know.”

The Duchess nodded once. “Then I will not stand in your way.”

Clara left Ravenscroft Hall in a daze. She climbed into the carriage and sat there, her hands trembling, her heart pounding, as the realization settled over her.

She was going to marry Julian Blackwood.

Not because of scandal. Not because of duty. But because they had chosen each other.