Chapter 12
T he sun had barely crested over the rooftops of Mayfair when scandal arrived.
Clara sat at the breakfast table, teacup poised halfway to her lips.
Her free hand clenched beneath the linen-draped table, fingers tightening on her skirts as though to steady the storm gathering inside her.
The scent of bergamot rose in gentle curls of steam, twining with Clara’s mounting apprehension.
Her mother swept into the room in a rustle of silk, the sharp clack of her heels punctuating the air.
“Clara.” Lady Shipley’s voice was tight with indignation, her hand brandishing a folded paper as though it were a dueling pistol. “The Mayfair Whisper. Of all the gutter rags to mention our name.”
Clara set her teacup down with care, though her fingers trembled ever so slightly against the porcelain, betraying the tension tightening in her chest. “Our name, or mine?” Clara asked. She held her breath, bracing herself for whatever her mother would say next.
Lady Shipley thrust the paper at her. “Page two. Below the business about Lady Renshaw’s scandalous new footman.”
Clara unfolded the sheet and scanned until her eyes landed on the headline:
A Pretend Passion? The Curious Case of Lord Oakford’s Intended.
Her stomach sank. She read in silence:
Society has been positively enchanted by the whirlwind betrothal of Lord Oakford and Lady Clara Mapleton.
Yet whispers abound: Is the match all it seems?
No date has been set, and sources suggest Lord Oakford’s notorious past may not be entirely behind him.
One cannot help but wonder—are hearts truly engaged, or is this an arrangement of convenience?
Clara closed the paper slowly, fingers tightening over the crinkled edge.
“How dare they?” Lady Shipley fumed. “That odious paper has maligned half the aristocracy, but this is a new low. To insinuate?—”
“That my engagement is a ploy,” Clara said, voice low, the words catching in her throat. Her hands tightened around the paper, knuckles white, as though trying to hold herself together by sheer force of will. “That I am a fiction.”
Her mother halted, mouth open. She recovered quickly, brushing invisible lint from her sleeve as she took the seat opposite. “This is precisely why we must move quickly. Set a date. Publish the banns. Perhaps secure a special license.”
Clara’s jaw tensed. “You sound as though I’ve done something wrong.”
“You have done nothing,” her mother said, though her tone was clipped. “But neither have you done anything to silence the wolves.”
Clara rose, her chin lifting with forced calm, though a spark of something fierce flickered behind her eyes. “Let them whisper. It is all they know how to do.” It was defiance, yes, but laced with the sharp sting of fear. “I shall ready myself for morning calls.”
As she retreated from the breakfast room, her spine straight, her expression serene, Clara’s thoughts churned like storm waves. It was not only the article that stung. It was how uncomfortably accurate it felt.
The morning call at Lady Brackendale’s residence was more interrogation than social visit.
Clara had steeled herself during the ride over, rehearsing polite responses and summoning every ounce of composure.
But now, facing the keen-eyed matrons and their too-sweet smiles, unease prickled beneath her skin.
Each question felt like a needle threading doubt through her carefully constructed facade.
Lady Brackendale began as she poured tea, while Clara braced herself, her breath hitching ever so slightly as her fingers curled in her lap beneath the table, hidden from view. “You have been positively glowing of late, Lady Clara. A woman in love, I daresay.”
Clara’s fingers tightened subtly around the delicate handle of her teacup. A smile touched her lips, but it did not quite reach her eyes.
The other matrons nodded, their smiles too practiced.
“Thank you,” Clara said smoothly. “I am quite content.”
“Oh, and when is the happy day?” chimed in Lady Ellerby. “We are all simply dying to attend.”
Clara’s cup stilled just shy of her lips. “We haven’t yet set the date.”
A hum of interest rippled around the room.
“Oh?” Lady Brackendale’s tone was honey-sweet and lined with venom. “How unusual. Most engagements are announced with a date at once.”
“Of course,” Lady Ellerby added. “Sometimes delays mean nothing. And other times…”
Lady Brackendale sighed. “Well. I do hope there will be no… complications.”
Clara waved her fan with a nonchalance she did not feel.
“The only complication is how to outshine Lady Audrey’s wedding,” she said with a practiced ease, though a sliver of dread coiled low in her stomach.
Her gaze flicked briefly toward the hearth, avoiding the sharp eyes trained on her, willing herself to sound lighthearted when her composure teetered on the edge of fracture.
“I assure you, Lord Oakford and I are quite happy.”
The conversation drifted onward, but the fire in Clara’s chest burned hotter with every minute. That article had drawn blood, and the sharks were already circling.
Later that afternoon, Clara joined Eden and Alice in the drawing room, seeking solace in the guise of idle companionship. Eden looked up from the embroidery she was pretending to work on, while Alice glanced up from the novel in her lap, raising a brow. “To the engagement?” Eden asked.
“To the pretense. To the lies. I thought I could manage it, but—” Clara dropped onto the settee beside them. “It is all becoming too real. Or too false. I do not even know anymore.”
Alice exchanged a look with Eden before setting her book aside. “You have fallen for him.”
Clara’s shoulders tensed, and a flush crept up her neck.
For a heartbeat, she could not speak. Her gaze drifted to the window, where the light slanted low across the garden, casting the flowers in golden hues that mirrored the quiet ache blossoming in her chest. The beauty of it caught her off guard, stirring something tender and vulnerable inside her, a reminder that even in the face of turmoil, moments of grace could still reach her.
“I think I am in love with a man I promised myself I’d never forgive,” she whispered, covering her face with both hands. “And I scarcely know what to do with that.”
Her breath trembled against her palms. She tried to suppress the flutter in her chest, but her heart beat too fast, as if it too had betrayed her resolve.
A wave of shame and longing crested and crashed within her, and behind her closed eyelids, she saw his face—the way he looked at her, the way he had looked at her, years ago and just yesterday.
The memory pierced her like sunlight through stained glass—beautiful, fractured, impossible to hold.
How could she feel this way? How could she not?
Silence stretched between them, broken only by the soft rustle of thread and the quiet turn of a page.
“And do you trust him?” Eden asked finally.
Clara dropped her hands. “No. Not entirely.”
“But you want to,” Alice said gently.
That truth lay between them, painful and gleaming.
Clara gave a noncommittal shrug, the corner of her mouth tilting up.
“Then perhaps the question is not whether you can trust him,” Alice said, “but whether you can trust yourself.”
Clara looked up, startled by the sharpness of that truth. And despite herself, she felt it burrow deeper than she cared to admit.
At half-past five, a note arrived, written in Crispin’s bold hand: Come to the terrace at seven. We need to speak. The words were simple. The implications were not.
Clara stood in front of her dressing mirror, unsure if she was preparing for battle or surrender.
Her breath fogged on the glass as she studied her reflection, one trembling hand hovering over the velvet ribbon at her throat.
The silk of her gown whispered against her skin, cool and smooth, yet it did little to soothe the tightness blooming in her chest with each shallow breath.
The sensation, though soft, only underscored the tension coiling beneath her composure.
A thousand thoughts circled. Was this courage or folly?
Did she go because she hoped he would confess something real…
or because she feared he never would? The reflection staring back at her didn’t hold the answers, only the storm of emotion she could no longer contain.
Her fingers brushed the ribbon at her throat, hesitating as though untying it might unravel not just fabric but her final strand of resolve.
The cool satin teased her fingertips, a stark contrast to the heat curling low in her belly—a heat born of confusion, desire, and a yearning to know how this ended.
What if he asked her to continue the charade?
What if he didn’t? What if he saw more than she was ready to show?
Before long, Clara stood on the terrace, Crispin a few paces away.
“It would seem the tables have turned on us,” Crispin said.
“What do you propose? That we announce we were merely amusing ourselves at the expense of the ton? I most certainly will not find a suitor now.”
“No.” His voice was low. “I propose we leave. Just for a little while. My family estate in Kent is quiet. No whispers, no masquerade. Just… us.”
She stared at him. “Running away solves nothing.”
“I am not running,” he said. “I am trying to give us space to figure out what this is.” He stepped forward again. “I am trying not to lose you before I have had the chance to earn you.”
Her throat tightened. “You think hiding in the country will fix what’s broken?”
“I think it might help us see clearly. Without the noise.”
Clara looked away. “And when we return? What then?”
He did not answer right away. Instead, he reached out and touched her hand. “I know I hurt you. I know I ruined what might have been. But this… what we have now… it is real. For me, the game has ended.”
She should have stepped back. She didn’t.
Her thoughts tangled—fear of what she was risking, longing for something she did not know him capable of, frustration at how little control she had over her own heart. It was all too much.
Clara surged forward, pressing her lips to his.
His arms closed around her, fierce and unyielding, as though anchoring himself to something he had nearly lost. He pulled her flush to his chest, and the kiss deepened—no longer a question but a declaration.
Heat surged, wild and dangerous. Her fingers tangled in his cravat. His hands splayed at her waist.
She gasped when his mouth found the curve of her neck. “Crispin?—”
He stilled. “Tell me to stop.”
She could not.
Crispin’s hand slid slowly down her back, the warmth of his palm trailing like fire across her spine, igniting nerves she had not realized were exposed. His touch found the silk of her stocking and then the bare skin above, his fingers tracing the tender curve of her thigh.
Clara’s breath hitched, her knees weakening under the onslaught of sensation. He kissed her again, more deeply this time, his mouth claiming hers with a hunger she hadn’t known he possessed.
His hand cradled the side of her face, anchoring her even as the world tilted beneath her feet.
Her fingers trembled against his chest, caught between wanting more and fearing the fall. She felt the strength of him—the surety, the heat—and for a heartbeat, she gave in to it, to him.
His body was solid against hers, the heat of his skin seeping through layers of silk and lace.
A tremor rolled up her spine as his hand grazed the delicate skin above her stocking, a whisper of pleasure and danger coiling low in her belly.
Her breath caught, her heart thundering a warning she didn’t want to hear.
She wanted to lose herself in the sensation, in the illusion of safety his arms offered.
But even as she leaned into his kiss, a flicker of dread whispered beneath the desire.
And then, clarity. A sudden, searing jolt of recognition that no matter how fiercely she craved his touch, that if she surrendered fully in this moment, there would be no going back. Not for her body, and not for her heart.
Clara broke away, breathless. Her bodice askew, her skin flushed.
“I can not,” she whispered. “Not like this. Not when I do not know where this ends.”
He stepped back, chest heaving. “Clara…”
But she was already walking away, back toward the door.
“I need to think,” she said over her shoulder.
She didn’t look back.
A breeze stirred the hem of her gown as she disappeared into the house, vanishing.
Her footsteps echoed faintly across the parquet floor, the distant tick of the drawing room clock marking each heartbeat.
The scent of lavender sachets still lingered in the air, mingling uneasily with the wild perfume of crushed petals and the lingering heat of Crispin’s touch on her skin.
It was a discordant harmony, domestic calm against untamed desire, that made the air feel too close, too intimate, too real.
Her lips still pulsed with the memory of his.
It was exhilarating. Terrifying. She had kissed him and wanted to do it again.
Craved the feel of his lips on hers. And that frightened her more than any gossip the Mayfair Whisper could publish.