SHE WORE NO JEWELS TO THE BALL—UNAWARE EVERY NOBLEMAN THERE HAD COME FOR HER

Chapter 4

Her aunt was crossing the floor toward her. Lady Beatrice’s face was very smooth and very white. Lydia trailed behind, her pearls swinging.

“Clara,” her aunt said quietly when she reached her. “Come and sit.”

Clara sat. Her knees did not feel like her own. The chair by the window received her like an old friend. She placed her hands flat in her lap. The right one shook a little. The left one had been held by a duke, and it shook too, but for a different reason.

“What did he say to you?” her aunt asked. Her voice was sweet for company, but Clara knew the underneath of it.

“He asked me to dance. And I danced.”

“And what else?”

“Nothing, Aunt.”

Lady Beatrice looked at her for a long, long moment. Then she smiled. It was not a kind smile.

“Of course,” she said. “Of course nothing. He was being charitable. Men of his station sometimes are. It is a kindness. Do not mistake it for anything more.”

“No, Aunt.”

“Lydia,” said Lady Beatrice, turning, “go and tell the players we shall have another quadrille.”

Lydia went. Lady Beatrice stayed. She bent close to Clara’s ear. Her breath smelled of cherries and the small sweet biscuits she had been eating from a footman’s tray. She spoke very softly, in a voice no one else could hear.

“You came into this house with nothing, and you will leave with nothing. You will not embarrass me. Do you understand me, Clara? You will not embarrass me. He came for amusement. They always do.”

Clara did not answer. She turned her face to the window. The rain ran down the panes in slow lines. She counted them. There were twelve.

She did not sleep that night.

She lay on her narrow bed in the small room at the back of the house, and she watched the gray light come slowly through the curtain, and she thought about the bare hand he had held out to her. The small white scar across the knuckle of his thumb. The way he had said her father’s name. No one in this house had said her father’s name aloud in five years.

Five years. She counted them on her fingers in the dark. Five years she had lived in this house. Five years of silence about her parents. Five years of plain gray silk and counted windows and a small private routine that was her armor.

Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow he would call.

She did not believe him. She wanted to believe him. She did not believe him. She had learned not to believe in things here, in this house. It was easier not to begin again now.

But he came.

He came at three in the afternoon, when the rain had stopped and the sun had broken through the clouds and the wet streets of London shone silver. He came in a plain black carriage with no crest on the door — which was its own kind of statement. He came alone.

Clara was in the small back parlor, mending the cuff of her aunt’s morning gown. Lady Beatrice had said the lace was loose and a lady’s maid could not be trusted with such fine stitching. The needle moved through the muslin slowly. Her thoughts moved more slowly than the needle.

The bell rang at the front of the house. She did not lift her head. She heard the butler’s footsteps in the front hall. The front door opened. A voice she had heard once before, low and even, asking after her.

The mending fell out of her hands.

She did not have time to stand before her aunt came sweeping into the parlor, her face transformed, her smile bright and dangerous.

“He is here,” Lady Beatrice said. “Clara, he is here. He has asked for you by name. Up, child, up quickly. Smooth your hair. Where is your shawl — the blue one, the good one. Lydia, Lydia, bring me the blue shawl from my room.”

“Aunt,” said Clara. “He did not come to see Lydia.”

“Of course not. Of course not, dear. But you will receive him in the drawing room, and I shall receive him with you, because that is proper.”

“He did not come to see you either.”

Lady Beatrice stopped. Her smile did not move, but the color in her cheeks shifted slightly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“He came to see me, Aunt. He said he would. I shall receive him alone.”

For a moment, her aunt only stared. Then her hand came up very fast and caught Clara’s chin. Not hard, but hard enough to hold her. Her thumb pressed into Clara’s jaw.

“You will receive him in the drawing room,” Lady Beatrice said softly. “And you will speak only when spoken to. And you will not, under any circumstances, give that man reason to think he might find a future in this house. He will not. He cannot. He is doing a thing, child. Men like him do things. They tire of them within the fortnight. And when he tires, you will be left with nothing but your name in the mouths of women who will not have you in their drawing rooms. Do you understand me?”

Clara held very still. “I understand you, Aunt.”

“Good.” The hand released her chin. There would be a mark there tomorrow. There had been marks before. “Now go. And do not embarrass me.”