A Duke in the Night(57)

“You told me not to stop asking you hard questions,” Clara finally said. “And I won’t.” She turned and took a half dozen steps down the hall before she stopped and looked back. “So whenever it is that you find answers to those questions, you may take me out to dinner and share them with me.”





Chapter 14





It had been four days since Clara had left the Duke of Holloway in the north hallway, seething. She had seen him only twice, glimpses of him about the property as she had carried on with her classes and he had carried on with whatever business kept him in Dover. He hadn’t even appeared today to check in with Anne when she and the students had a day free. Clara told herself that it was better this way. That the distance was a good thing.

I want more than a temporary tryst.

Desire spiked and sent her insides fluttering. They had sounded decadent, those words that he had whispered in that hallway. Every wicked thing he had murmured in her ear had instantly infused her with a hot, achy restlessness that teetered on the edge of recklessness. Because she wanted the same thing. But no matter his words and pretty promises, whatever this was between them could only ever be temporary.

And the longer he avoided her, the more temporary temporary became.

She would never marry and sacrifice her hard-won independence to become a wife, and becoming his mistress was still out of the question. No matter how careful they might be, he was a duke and, as such, attracted far too much attention. Eyebrows would be raised in his direction at his odd choice, but such a relationship would destroy any possibility that she might ever teach again.

“My brother is avoiding me.”

Clara started, lost in her thoughts as she had been. She found Anne standing near the garden bench where she sat, peering out in the direction of the sea to where Clara could make out the shape of a horse and rider galloping along the ridge. August, she realized, recognizing the dark-haired man who rode effortlessly, as was obvious even from this distance.

“I’m sorry, Miss Hayward, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Not at all. Please join me.” Clara slid over on the bench, her eyes once again going to the figure racing the wind against the backdrop of the sky. “I would have thought the distance your brother has kept would please you,” she said, shoving a pang of longing back into the depths from which it had risen.

Anne sighed and came to sit next to Clara. “It does, I suppose.” She was frowning, her fingers wrapped tightly around the edges of a sketchbook. “He’s probably certain that I am still furious with him after he walked in on our art class. Though if anyone deserved to be furious, it was Lady Theodosia.”

“If Lady Theodosia stopped snickering long enough to be angry, I might agree with you,” Clara replied with a wry smile. “But to be fair, it might be more a matter of your brother avoiding me.”

“Avoiding you? Why?”

“Because I don’t think he liked what I had to say after his theatrical entrance into that studio. And his subsequent exit.”

“Whatever you said, I’m quite sure you were justified.”

“Yes. But that doesn’t mean he agreed.”

Anne looked down at her book. “He’s so stubborn sometimes. So unbending. Unwilling to look beyond the gilded box he’s built for himself. I find it maddening.”

“I can see that. But he cares a great deal for you, you know.”

Anne flushed slightly. “I know. I’m sorry. I do him a disservice by speaking of him like this. I just don’t know what to do sometimes. He refuses to listen. He refuses to see me. The real me. Not the person he thinks I should become.” She was twisting her skirts in her fingers, and with her hair pulled back in a simple braid, she looked painfully young.

Clara was silent for a moment as the horse and rider disappeared from view. She reached out and snapped off an errant rose that was pushing up against the side of the bench seat. “Why?” she finally asked.

Anne looked over at her, her forehead creased. “Why what?”

“Why does your brother not listen to you? Why does he think he knows what is best for you?”

Anne’s pretty blue eyes skittered away.

“You don’t have to answer me,” Clara said gently.

Anne put the sketchbook in her lap and smoothed her palms over the cover. “My father was incarcerated in debtors’ prison.”

“I know.”

Anne’s head snapped up, and she met Clara’s eyes with startled surprise. “You know?”

“Yes.”

Anne looked down again, her fingers worrying a loose thread on the binding that ran along the top of the pages. “My father was a wastrel. After my mother died, he was thrown into Marshalsea because the only thing that had kept him out up till then was what my mother had managed to earn sewing.” She hesitated. “I lived there too, when he was there. In Marshalsea.”

Clara felt the breath leave her lungs, even as understanding dawned. She should have guessed that. “For how long?” she asked carefully.

“Five years.” Anne’s fingers stilled on the edges of the book. “It’s not as if I weren’t free to come and go as I pleased during the day,” she said. “And August somehow managed to scrape up enough to pay the gaolers to ensure I didn’t end up in a workhouse. He managed to make sure that my father and I were fed, at least most of the time. And the roof over our heads may have sheltered more rats and flies than people, but all together, we didn’t freeze in the winter. Which was more than August had in those years.”