Chapter 6
“Ican’t believe he bloody refused me,” Aaron grumbled for what had to be the twentieth time as the carriage—the other carriage, as the one from the accident had indeed proved beyond repair—rumbled up to Metford Manor.
“We could have stayed home,” Clio pointed out … just as she had done all twenty times before.
And, because apparently neither of them knew when to quit, Aaron kept his subsequent reaction identical, as well: he scowled.
He’d been doing so much scowling the past day that he was going to be lucky if he didn’t injure himself.
Clio had not been successful in explaining that there was no scandal in what had happened with the Duke of Metford. After all, if carriage accidents were a scandal, then hack drivers would be the most notorious figures in London.
Aaron had not been moved. She could only hope that this duke fellow could convince him.
Her hopes weren’t high—she’d been the recipient of the duke’s highly doubtful charm offensive herself the day prior—but men were dreadfully perverse when it came to listening to one another over their beloved sisters whom they’d known all their days.
Clio’s only consolation was that Phoebe was as annoyed with her husband as Clio was.
A short, round butler let them into the drawing room of the house, a very un-butler-like bounce in his step as he did so. The butler’s good cheer made Aaron’s dour aspect all the starker. He stood, staring angrily out the window, until the Duke of Metford arrived.
And then the atmosphere in the room was even more repressive and forbidding.
“How can I help you?” the duke asked sternly. His words were polite enough, but his tone said that their arrival was a huge inconvenience.
But Aaron had withstood French cannons, not to mention their parents’ lifetime of neglect. He was unmoved by one irritable duke.
Clio, by contrast, found that she was annoyingly moved.
The Duke of Metford was still wearing simple clothing, but it was clearly well-made, and he’d had a shave since she’d encountered him in the street yesterday, and his long, dark hair was neatly combed back from his face.
It was decidedly unfussy, as far as gentlemen’s attire went. Really, it wasn’t fashionable at all.
And maybe that was what struck Clio about it. He was so … different. There were the hard planes of his face and the intense glower in his blue eyes. With his hair pulled back, she could see that there were several thin scars leading toward one of his ears.
Rugged. The word popped into her head. He looked rugged.
“I’m certain that you must know why we are here,” Aaron said, drawing back his shoulders to make himself look as tall as possible. Clio fought not to roll her eyes. Men.
The duke frowned. “No,” he said.
After a beat, it was clear that he intended to say nothing else.
Aaron looked even more furious. He frowned ferociously. The duke mimicked the expression.
“This is how you are going to behave, then?” Aaron asked in a tone of voice that Phoebe called his Admiral’s Tone.
“You asked a question; I answered,” the duke replied.
There was another silence.
God above, this was ridiculous.
“Do the two of you plan to solve things by seeing who can frown harder?” she interjected, hoping that this would, at least, lighten the mood enough to get things moving.
It did not help. They just both started frowning in her direction.
Aaron’s frown didn’t affect her. But the duke’s …
Strangely, it made her throat go dry.
“This isn’t a laughing matter, Clio,” Aaron said sternly. “We have already delayed long enough. In a matter of hours, the entire city will be talking about the … indiscretion that the two of you showed yesterday.”
The duke’s brows rose at the word indiscretion.
“So, next time,” he said, low warning in his tone, “you would prefer that I leave your sister trapped in a dangerous conveyance on the cusp of collapsing? I don’t have a sister myself, but if I did, I likely would have preferred to keep her alive, but maybe you’re a different kind of man.”
“There isn’t going to be a next time,” Aaron snapped.
Hector raised his eyebrows. “But yesterday, you anticipated that there would be an accident? Strange that you didn’t warn her.”
“No,” Aaron said, “but—“
“Then,” the duke interjected with no small amount of bravery; nobody interrupted Aaron except Clio and Phoebe, “ye cannot say for certain that it will not happen again.”
Clio couldn’t help it; she snorted quietly into her hand. Both men paused in their argument to glare at her again. She tried to look as innocent as possible.
“What I am saying,” Aaron gritted out between clenched teeth, “is that there will not be another scandal.”
The duke looked positively disgusted. “There shouldn’t be any kind of scandal now,” he said. “What kind of society are you people running in this city, where a man saving a woman from dying is somehow scandalous? Where I come from, you might thank a man for saving your kinswoman from being killed.”
Clio swallowed, trying to summon some moisture to her dry throat. She wished that everyone could stop talking about how near she’d come to disaster. She was trying not to think about it, lest she never manage to enter another carriage in her life.
“Where you come from is immaterial.” Aaron’s eyes were flashing dangerously.
Clio tried to think of the last time she’d seen a man—one who wasn’t a member of their family already—defy her brother.
She couldn’t come up with any examples. “Here, embracing a woman in the street is scandalous, no matter what preceded it. You will do the honorable thing and marry my sister to save her from ruin.”
He said this with the self-assured air of a man who felt confident he’d just gotten in the final word, like he expected both Clio and the duke to hear his proclamation and submit at once to his clearly superior logic.
They did not.
Clio rolled her eyes.
And the duke let out a sharp bark of laughter.
“Your arse, I am,” he scoffed, which was a somewhat offensive rejection of Clio’s hand in marriage, but she had to give him points for flair.
“If you want to make someone marry her, talk to the coachman who set the balance on the carriage so awry that it was destined to tip over sooner rather than later. I will not be involved in whatever nonsense you aristocrats get up to. I am only here for a few weeks; as soon as my business is concluded, I will return to the north, where I will happily forget that any of you ever existed.”
“No,” Aaron countered, and suddenly Clio found that she had put up with this nonsense for far too long, “you will—”
“Enough!” Clio surged to her feet. “I have had just enough of the two of you talking about me like I’m not even here! Honestly, how can you even listen to yourselves act as though I am no more than–than a prop in this argument of yours?”
Stubbornness settled over Aaron’s features in a mulish mask. The duke was far more difficult for Clio to read.
“Clio,” her brother said sternly. “This is not the time—”
“This is not the time?” she echoed incredulously. “When would be the time, then? When you’ve dragged me down the aisle to a man who doesn’t want me? You’ve already dragged me back to England—wasn’t that enough? Must you force me into a situation that will trap me here forever?”
She could tell that she was going a bit far by the way that Aaron’s expression went suddenly stricken, but she couldn't seem to stop herself. The words, the frustration, had been bottled up for too long.
“And you,” she whirled on the duke. “Thank you ever so much for insulting me in no uncertain terms. You do realize that you could have said no without acting as though I was a millstone being lashed around your neck before being thrown into the sea? But then that would have denied you the chance to put the princess in her place, right?” She huffed a humorless laugh.
“Well, fret not. I am leaving. I won’t annoy you with my pending ruin any longer. Enjoy hiding in the north.”
And with that—which felt like a rather good parting line, if she did say so herself—she turned on her heel and stalked from the room.
The worst part of it all was that she couldn’t actually leave the grounds. She had to wait, arms crossed and expression forbidding, in the carriage.
Stupid brothers. She would have abandoned him, but Aaron paid the carriage driver, and the man would probably balk at leaving his employer stranded.
Eventually, Aaron emerged, conflict brewing in his expression.
“Clio—”
“No,” she said flatly. If he wasn’t going to hear her, she wasn’t going to hear him.
“But—”
“No,” she said again. She turned her face out the window as the carriage began rumbling away from the street. She didn’t know what she was going to do next, didn’t know how she was supposed to weather the storm of the scandal that would no doubt arrive on her doorstep any moment.
But it seemed that she was going to have to figure it out herself. But that was better, surely. At least she would be in command of her destiny … even if that meant going it alone.