Chapter 7
The dinner at Estella's was a disaster. At least so far as Clarissa was concerned. No one else seemed to notice.
Indeed, everyone else seemed to be having a marvelous time.
Estella was a gracious hostess. Her new acquaintance, Thea, had held a brief conversation with Clarissa before turning her attention to a pamphlet she'd apparently smuggled in.
The Duchess of Ashworth ensured that the conversation ran smoothly, and that everyone but the preoccupied Thea was included. John, of course, was being his usual steady, pleasant self. Even Lord Blackwood was making a heroic effort to be sociable.
And Lord Stratton. "Kit," as he'd instructed her to call him…
Kit was being charming. So desperately, relentlessly, magnificently charming that Clarissa had a bizarre urge to throw a bread roll at his head.
He complimented Estella's table arrangements. He asked Lord Blackwood about his estate improvements with what appeared to be genuine interest. He engaged Thea in a conversation about probability theory that Clarissa suspected he understood not one word of.
He was witty without being unkind, attentive without being cloying, and when he laughed, every person at the table warmed to him by several degrees.
It was revolting.
Mostly because if Clarissa hadn't overheard him and his aunt discussing her, she would have been charmed too. Absurdly so.
Some distant part of her brain understood that were she not in on the act, she'd have been taken in like the veriest fool.
Again.
Because, as she was beginning to understand—she was a fool. At least when it came to men.
Even now, as she sat there sipping her soup, listening to Kit entertain the table at large with a ridiculous tale about his attempt to hunt foxes with visiting royalty, all she could think was…
Is this true? Is any of it true? Oh, not the hunting part. She couldn't bring herself to care if he was exaggerating all that. But the rest of it. His warmth, his laughter. That sparkle in his eyes that seemed to exude kindness and empathy. Was any of it real?
She had no idea. All she knew for certain was that underneath all that handsome polish was a man who had negotiated a fee to pretend to find her interesting.
And the fact that he was so good at the pretending made it worse.
Because how was she supposed to tell the difference between Kit performing and Kit being real?
She couldn't. That was the answer. She couldn't tell. And that terrified her, because she'd spent a year believing Edmund was real, and look how that had turned out.
So she sat with her hands in her lap and her mouth firmly shut and she was, by any objective measure, the dullest dinner guest in London.
"Lady Clarissa." Estella turned to her with a bright smile. "You must tell everyone about your stories."
Clarissa's eyes widened in alarm. "My—"
"The ones you write for Lord Alderton's daughter," she continued. "John mentioned them. They sound absolutely wonderful."
Every head at the table turned in her direction.
Drat. She hadn't prepared for this. She'd rehearsed responses for every predictable conversation she could imagine. The weather. Her family. Her travels.
But she had not anticipated this. And now, quite suddenly, she found herself the center of attention, with no rehearsed response.
"They're not really stories," she heard herself say.
"They're more like—well, they started as letters, because Lucy was so cross that her father had left for London without her, and I thought if I wrote her something amusing it might help.
But then the first one ended abruptly because I ran out of paper, and she wrote back demanding to know what happened to the princess, and then I had to write another, and now I think I'm on the seventh installment and the princess has acquired a talking horse and a nemesis who keeps stealing her shoes, and I'm honestly not entirely sure how we got here. "
She stopped. The table was staring at her. Oh drat. She'd done it again. She'd opened her mouth and let everything come tumbling out.
But Estella was beaming. Thea looked up from her pamphlet with something resembling interest. And Kit—
Kit was watching her with an expression she couldn't read. Not the charming smile. But she did catch sight of that silly dimple. How did a man make a dimple seem…well, manly?
It wasn't right. It was vexing, really. But she looked away from him quickly. No dimple would take her in, thank you very much. And she spent the rest of the main course saying as little as humanly possible.
After dinner, the party moved to the drawing room.
Estella played something on the pianoforte.
Thea returned to her pamphlet, openly now.
Lord Blackwood stood by the fire looking grim as ever.
And Clarissa found herself by the window, staring at a painting of a horse that was not nearly interesting enough to warrant the attention she was giving it.
"You're avoiding me."
She turned to find Kit leaning against the windowsill beside her, a glass in his hand, the picture of elegant ease. "I beg your pardon?" And then, before he could say it again, she added, "I'm admiring the painting."
It sounded like a lie. Probably because it was one.
He tilted his head. "Can I ask you something?"
She braced herself. "If you must."
"Do you really not remember me?" He said it lightly, but his eyes searched hers with an odd intensity.
She held his gaze. She had committed to this petty lie in the duchess's drawing room, and she would see it through.
The alternative—admitting that she'd recognized him and had lied out of sheer spite…
Well, that was too humiliating. And hadn't she been humiliated enough? So she widened her eyes and forced an innocent expression. "Remember you, my lord?"
"Never mind. My mistake." His smile was easy. "And it's Kit, if you please."
From across the room, Estella's pianoforte filled the space between them. The silence between them stretched. The urge to fill it was almost unbearable.
"Can I ask you something else?" Kit's voice was quieter, and the moment felt more intimate than it ought.
She didn't answer. Really, she didn't trust herself to open her mouth.
His mouth twitched as if he could read her thoughts. "Why are you here? Not at this dinner, I mean in London. Doing this. Going along with my aunt's scheme."
She shifted, the words irritating enough that she fought a huff.
His aunt's scheme. As if he had no part in it?
As if he was not benefiting from it? She managed to keep those thoughts to herself, but the effort made her next words come out colder than intended.
"Your aunt offered her patronage. I have accepted. I do not see where the confusion lies."
"Of course you do," he said.
Her brows shot up. "I beg your pardon."
"I understand that having my aunt's patronage is a boon." He waved a hand is if this was so obvious it was hardly worth a mention. "But I'm confused as to why."
"Why?" she echoed.
"Why are you here at all? Why are you in London for the Season?"
"Why am I here?" She was starting to sound like a parrot.
"Yes," he said. "I assume it's to find a husband, but is this what you want? Is this how you wish to go about it?"
She gaped up at him. Was he serious? Did anyone wish to be in such a pitiable state that a formidable dowager duchess was forced to pay a man to court her?
Was he truly so oblivious or did he just want to hear her say it aloud?
She was desperate. Unwanted. And he, of all people, ought to know just how desperate she was.
She studied his expectant look. She'd thought him irritatingly charming, and perhaps obnoxiously confident. But she had not pegged him as cruel.
But his eyes were filled with curiosity, not mockery. And Clarissa forced herself to piece together an appropriate answer. "I am here because I have been considering my options, my lord. And those options are, at present…limited."
He seemed to be waiting for her to say more. She tried to keep her mouth shut, she really did.
But then she heard herself saying, "Obviously it's not how I'd wish to go about it, but my parents want me to find a match— I mean, I have to find a match, don't I?
It's to be expected, and truthfully, I haven't made a good start of it, and the duchess is offering to help, and I— That is…
" She drew in a deep breath, noting with a sharp pang of regret that his lips were twitching with the urge to laugh.
She just barely held back a sigh as she finished, "It's practical. "
"Practical," he repeated, as if tasting the word. "Is that what you want? Something practical?"
Anger flared again at his easy words. "What I want is irrelevant."
"It's the only thing that's relevant." He said it simply. And for the first time since she'd met him, he wasn't smiling. "What do you want, Lady Clarissa?"
For once, Clarissa didn't have to force herself to be quiet. She was shocked into silence. Her eyes felt impossibly wide as she stared up at him.
What do you want?
Such a simple question, but she couldn't remember ever hearing it before. Not aimed at her, at least.
Clarissa had been told what to want by her parents, and what to hope for by Edmund, and what to settle for by the ton. But to be asked what she wanted sent her mind into a spiral.
"I want—" She stopped. Then she tried again.
"I want to have a choice. That's what I want.
I want to choose. My parents chose the marquess.
Edmund chose a vicar's wife. Even this arrangement, it's the duchess choosing, isn't it?
Someone else deciding what's best for me, and I'm just meant to go along with it because I clearly can't be trusted to—" She was talking too fast. "I want options.
That's what I want. I want to choose. For myself.
A husband, a home, a family, yes. I want all that.
But I want it to be my choice. Not my parents' and not because I'm desperate and not because some man took pity on me. "