A Duke in the Night(86)

Clara scrubbed at her eyes with her hands. So Rose didn’t know. It should have made her feel better, but all she felt was empty. “The Duke of Holloway bought Haverhall.”

Rose sat back with a thump. She was silent for a moment, and Clara couldn’t quite determine what she was thinking based on her expression. “I see,” she finally said.

“‘I see’? That’s all you have to say?” Clara was aware her voice had risen, but she didn’t care. “He had architects draw up development plans for Haverhall months ago.”

“What do you want me to say?” Rose asked. “I’m still saddened that we—that you—had to sell it. I’m not surprised Holloway, or someone with his sort of vision, bought it. But it helped save our family.”

Clara did not need Rose’s practicality and logic now. “He lied,” Clara spit.

“About what?”

“About why he was in Dover.”

Rose considered her for an unnerving moment. “I don’t think so.”

Clara stared at her. “You’re defending him? You hate him, Rose. The Duke of Doxies and all that? Remember?”

Rose winced slightly. “I might have been a little hasty in judgment.”

Clara gaped at her. “What?”

“I don’t hate him. Especially since my sister is in love with him.”

“I’m not in love with him.” She didn’t want to be in love with him. She could not be in love with him. Not after what he’d done.

“You’re a terrible liar. That is why you’re so upset right now. Not that he bought Haverhall, but because he bought it without telling you.”

“No.” Clara was shaking her head, anger and hurt boiling through her. “You were right about him, Rose, from the beginning. I was such a fool. He told me what I wanted to hear. He pretended to listen, pretended to agree with me, made me think he might…respect me.”

“Stop.” Rose brought her hand down on the desk with a smack.

Clara jumped and, with horror, realized that there were tears running down her cheeks.

“Just stop,” Rose said, a little more gently this time. “You’re wrong. The duke may have bought Haverhall, and yes, maybe he should have told you. But the rest…You’re wrong about him.” She sighed. “I don’t know how he feels about you, though I think I have a good idea. But I know he listened, Clara. Very carefully. And he…respects you very much.”

Clara wiped angrily at her eyes. “What August Faulkner respects is money. For him there will never be enough, and there is no room in his life for…anything that is not cold-blooded ambition. I was simply a means to an end—”

“Clara—”

“No, let me finish. I have no one to blame except myself. So if I’m upset, it is because I had delusions that I could change his priorities. Yet I knew who August Faulkner was. I knew where he came from and what drove him. People don’t change.”

“No, I don’t suppose they do.” Rose was examining the streaks of blue and red staining her fingers.

“You’re not making me feel better,” Clara mumbled. “You’re supposed to be on my side here.”

“Oh, I am.” Rose reached behind her neck and untied her apron, then passed it to Clara. “Dry your eyes. There’s something you need to see.”

*



The building sat on the very southern edge of London, where the tentacles of the city hadn’t yet engulfed the countryside completely.

The structure was solid and wide, three stories tall, and had the straight, clean lines that could be found in London only in new construction. It wasn’t fancy by any stretch of the imagination, the walls a nondescript stone, the roof a dark slate, the wide front door painted an equally dark gray. Plain, buff-colored curtains hung in the rows of windows that lined each story at regular intervals, fluttering gently where a pane had been opened to allow in the autumn air. A huge chimney ran up the east side, and a kitchen garden sprawled away from the side door, the backs of women and the occasional youth bent over garden tools and baskets visible in the still-lush greenery. On the southwest side, poles had been driven into the ground and clotheslines strung up between them, an array of sheets and petticoats flapping in the sunshine. A handful of women were pulling dry clothes down and replacing them with wet garments, and Clara could hear their faint chatter.

Behind the main building a second structure sat, even more plain than the first but with large, long windows. It put Clara in mind of a small warehouse, the likeness heightened by the wagon sitting in front of it, loaded with long wrapped bales of what looked like fabric.

“What is this place?” she asked as she and Rose stood on the short, wide drive.

Her sister remained silent.

Clara narrowed her eyes as a group of children, the oldest not more than six or seven, ran through the maze of drying sheets toward a knotted rope tied to a low branch of a massive oak just beyond. “An inn?” she ventured.

“Sort of.”

“A boardinghouse?”

“Sort of.”

“How many guesses do I get before you save me from myself?”

Rose studied the toe of her boot, not even cracking a smile.

Clara turned her attention back to the scene before her, noticing for the first time that there seemed to be only women and children present. “There are no men here.”