She Grabbed a Stranger to Escape Her Ex — Not knowing He’s a Duke!

Chapter 6

The house in Marylebone was smaller than Clara had expected. There were snowdrops in a pot by the step, and the paint on the door was peeling. It took her four minutes to make herself knock.

Della Rose opened the door herself. That was the first thing Clara had not known—that there was no servant. She was perhaps thirty, and had been very beautiful, and still nearly was. She went white when she saw who was standing on her step, and got the door half shut before Clara spoke.

“I have not come to shout at you.”

“Then you have come with a lawyer.”

“I have come with my aunt. She is in the carriage. She will stay there if you would rather.”

Clara’s hands were shaking inside her gloves, and she let them.

“Mrs. Rose. I have been two years being told I am a madwoman who accosted you in a theater. You were there. You know what happened. I looked at you for four seconds. And then I left the box.”

Della Rose stood in the doorway for a long moment.

“You had better come in,” she said. “It is cold.”

The parlor had good furniture in it and no fire. Clara noticed that, too.

“I am to be turned out in April,” Della said without being asked. She sat down opposite. “He is to be married. He told me in October. The rent is paid to Lady Day. After that, I may do as I please. And I have a boy of eleven at school in Highgate. That is paid to the summer. And not past it.”

“I am sorry.”

“Don’t.” It came out sharp. “Do not you be sorry for me. That is not—you do not get to do that.”

“All right.”

They sat.

“He came in November,” Della said at last. “With a paper for me to sign. About the theater. I said that is not what happened. And he said—” She stopped. Started again. “He said it was near enough. That I would remember it better when I had read it a few times. That a woman in my position ought to think about the summer term at Highgate.”

Clara sat very still.

“I signed it,” said Della Rose. “I want that said plainly, because I will not have you thinking I was brave. I signed it in November. I have read it eleven times since. And I have begun to remember it his way. Exactly as he said I would. And that frightens me worse than the rent does.”

“Mrs. Rose.” Clara’s voice came out steadier than she felt. “I have to ask you about the garnets.”

Della looked at the empty grate.

“He gave me a garnet set in March of twenty-six. He said they were his mother’s.”

“They were mine.”

“I know that now. I knew it about four seconds after you looked at me.” She was not crying, but her face had gone hard with the effort of it. “I gave them back to him that night. He laughed at me.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“I have thought about that box for two years, Miss Ashworth. I sat in it in another woman’s jewelry, and I did not know. And you looked at me. And there was nothing in your face.”

She stopped.

“There was not anything in your face at all. That is what I could not get past. You just looked. And went. And I remember thinking—she has done this before. Not the theater. The going.”

Clara found that she could not say anything.

“He told me you were cold,” said Della Rose. “He told me that all the time. He told me you had never once looked at him the way I did. That it was a mercy to him, what we were doing.” She laughed, and it was an awful sound. “He tells you the same about her, I expect. The Croft girl. Whoever is next.”

“He does,” said Amelia. “He will.”

The clock went on.

“There is a thing I have,” Della said abruptly. “I do not know if it is worth anything. I have kept it two years out of spite and not sense.”

“What is it?”

“The lease on this house.” She was already getting up. “I signed it. Him and me both. In February. My name and his, because a woman alone could not take it. And he would not have his own name on it alone. And the man of business made him put in the date the agreement was made—which was the ninth—and the day I moved in, which was the twenty-second.”

She came back with a folded paper and stood holding it.

“The ninth of February,” said Della Rose. “Now—when did he take your mother’s things to be cleaned?”

“The second week of January.”

“So he had your jewelry in his pocket,” Della said, “when he sat in an attorney’s office and signed a paper to put me in this house. And he was engaged to you until March.”

She held the lease out.

“Mrs. Rose—if you give me this, you will be turned out in April. There will be no summer term at Highgate.”

“There is no summer term at Highgate anyway,” said Della Rose. “He told me that in October. I have been pretending otherwise since.” She pushed the paper into Clara’s hand. “Take it. And do not you thank me, either. I am not doing it for you. I signed a paper in November that said you shouted at me. I have been reading it till I believed it. I would like to have done one thing about him before I am finished.”