“Which Daughter Is Yours?” the Duke Asked — Her Father Introduced Three Girls and Left Clara in the Shadows, Never Dreaming the Duke Would Uncover Why She’d Been Hidden for Fourteen Years… and Choose Her as His Duchess

PART 5 

William’s invitation remained suspended between them. Lord Bennett recovered first. “Your Grace — Clara cannot possibly accompany you.”

William turned his head. “I believe Lady Clara can answer for herself.”

Clara felt her father’s stare before she looked at him. The warning in it was familiar. Obedience first, consequences later.

“I would be pleased to come,” she said.

Bennett’s jaw hardened. “She would require a companion.”

“Naturally.” William’s gaze returned to Clara. “My widowed aunt, Lady Margaret Ashford, will accompany us. Ten tomorrow morning.”

“Ten.”

The following day arrived bright and cold. Clara wore a plain brown riding habit and found William’s carriage waiting outside Bennett House precisely on time. Lady Margaret proved to be a silver-haired woman with intelligent eyes who greeted Clara warmly, then spent much of the journey discussing a novel while William and Clara examined estate maps opposite each other.

At the first farm, Clara expected introductions. Instead, the tenant’s wife came through the cottage gate and stopped short. “Lady Clara Bennett?”

Clara blinked. “Mrs. Turner.”

The older woman’s face brightened. “I haven’t seen you since your mother brought you here.”

William looked between them. Clara had been eleven then, but she remembered the whitewashed cottage and Mrs. Turner’s blackberry preserves. “I didn’t realize this was once Carter land,” Clara said.

Mrs. Turner glanced toward William. “It bordered your mother’s property, my lady. She helped us through the winter. Your father refused the drainage repairs.”

William’s attention sharpened.

They continued toward the flooded lower field. Clara crouched near a ditch, ignoring the mud gathering at her hem. “The water has nowhere to go. This channel was deepened, but the outlet wasn’t.”

William stood beside her. “My steward recommended another ditch.”

“Then you’ll have two ditches carrying water to the same obstruction. Cut a single outlet channel here, angled toward the lower boundary, and both fields will drain into the stream instead of each other.” She traced the line with her finger in the mud. “It will cost a third of what a second ditch would, and it will actually work.”

He looked toward his steward. The man cleared his throat and crouched to examine the ground she had indicated. “Lady Clara is correct, Your Grace. I ought to have seen it myself.”

William’s mouth moved slightly. “How inconvenient for my dignity.”

Clara glanced up. “You appear to be surviving.”

“Barely.”

Mrs. Turner watched the exchange with open curiosity, and something like satisfaction, as though a private suspicion of hers had just been quietly confirmed.

At the second farm, a tenant recognized her name and asked, without any particular ceremony, whether she thought the new seed drill worth the expense; Clara answered him as plainly as she had answered William, and the man nodded and went back to his plowing entirely reassured, as though consulting her had been the most ordinary thing in the world. William noticed that too — noticed how easily these people trusted her, how naturally they turned to her rather than to him, a duke standing not six feet away.

At the third farm, an elderly farmer removed his cap. “Your mother was a good landlord, Lady Clara.”

Clara stopped. “You knew her?”

“Everyone here did.” His expression softened. He nodded toward a low grey boundary stone half-buried in weeds at the field’s edge, the name CARTER worn faint into its face. “That stone’s marked her family’s land since before you were born. And we knew you once. Carter Meadow would be yours someday.”

Clara’s breath caught. William heard it. “Carter Meadow?”

The farmer pointed beyond a line of bare trees. “Three hundred acres east of the river, Your Grace. Best grazing land in the district.”

Clara stared toward the distant fields. Her father had told her that her mother’s property consisted of investments and a small cottage. Nothing about three hundred acres. Nothing about a boundary stone with her mother’s name on it, standing in plain sight of tenants who had known the truth for years while she had not.

She thought of every ledger she had balanced at his desk, every lease she had read by candlelight while believing she owned nothing at all. The realization did not arrive as surprise so much as recognition — as though some quieter part of her had suspected this for years and only now been given permission to know it.

William did not question her until they were walking back toward the carriage. Lady Margaret had gone ahead with the steward, leaving them within sight but beyond easy hearing.

“You didn’t know?”

“No.” Clara folded her cold hands together. “Apparently I am becoming accustomed to discovering pieces of my life from strangers.”

William’s voice softened. “Does Bennett control the land?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then we find out.”

She stopped. “We?”

He stopped as well. Wind moved through the bare branches above them. “If you prefer — you.”

Clara studied his face. There was no eager promise to fix everything. Only an offer to stand near the problem. “Why are you doing this?”

William looked toward the fields before answering. “Because the first night I met you, your father pretended you were barely part of his household. Since then, I have watched that same household rely on your judgment while denying you any authority.” His eyes returned to hers. “Now tenants on land you didn’t know existed remember your mother telling them it would belong to you.”

Clara swallowed. “That explains your curiosity.”

“Partly.”

“And the rest?”

For the first time, William seemed uncertain. “I have not decided what to call the rest.”

Clara’s fingers loosened. “How diplomatic.”

“Cowardly, perhaps.”

“I wouldn’t have expected a duke to admit that.”

“You are discovering my defects at an alarming rate.”

A quiet laugh escaped her before she could stop it. William stared at her for half a second too long. Then Lady Margaret called from the carriage, and the moment broke.