Chapter 4
Clara thought the entire world was shifting underneath her feet. When she said she trusted him, she hadn’t thought that he was going to announce her as his wife to the entire gathering.
In the back, Helena’s mouth dropped open, and she took a step forward. Whispers immediately erupted all around the room.
“What are you doing?” she hissed, but he placed an arm on the small of her back.
“You said you trusted me. Now come.”
“I must talk to Helena, and you—”
“We cannot talk to anyone right now,” he said quickly. “Come.”
Together, the two of them made their way past the crush of people and out of the ballroom.
The baby stirred in her arms again, and she looked down at the little bundle. She had to protect him, whoever he belonged to; he was merely a baby. Her mind flashed back over the last few minutes. The young man who had handed her the child had looked absolutely terrified.
And what kind of trouble was Arabella in? A child with a man she did not know that well and out of wedlock?
She’d been held captive in Italy? Escaped? It was as though Clara was suddenly stuck in her very own gothic novel, and not only that, she was now a main character.
Her head spun, but the more they walked on, the more whispers erupted, and she was beginning to realize that Arabella wasn’t the one currently in deep trouble. She was.
By handing her the baby as he had, the young man had put a target on her back. Everyone thought this child was hers. And now Julian, with his declaration, had done the same. What would her mother say?
“Clara,” Julian said. She blinked and looked up, just now realizing that they were already outside and in front of the carriage.
He had wrenched open the carriage door already and was offering his arm to help her up.
Holding onto him with one hand and the baby with the other, she made her way into the carriage.
He shut the door and came around the other side, joining her.
“What were you thinking?” she demanded. “Claiming me as your wife?”
“It is the only thing I could do to make sure that you and the child are safe. Everyone already thought that this child was yours—that you had gone to Scotland somehow and returned with an out-of-wedlock child. At least this way, you have a husband to go along with the tale.”
“Oh my goodness,” she said, breathing hard. The reality of it all crashed over her.
He took her hand in his and squeezed. “Please, you must remain calm.”
“Calm? I returned to society after a year away in Scotland and went to a ball I didn’t even want to go to.
Then, suddenly, a child is thrust upon me, supposedly the child of my best friend—who is in danger—and I am tasked with protecting the child, only to find myself suddenly at the center of a scandal and supposedly married to you? ”
He let go of her hand. “Well, you need not make the part about being married to me sound quite so dreadful. I am a duke, not a fishmonger.”
“I had no intention of marrying. Indeed, I had not expected to come out of this evening engaged at all. I had hoped to return after a dance, having shown my face, and then go to bed after drinking a large cup of hot chocolate and eating far too many pieces of marzipan.”
He smiled. “Well, there is marzipan at my home and hot chocolate too.”
“We are going to your home?”
“Well, we cannot go to yours. That reminds me—who was your chaperone?”
“Oh goodness,” she said and groaned. “Mrs. Wainscott. My mother sent her. She will be out of her mind. I do not much care for her, but I do not want her to be in high dudgeon about all of this.”
“I will send a note back to the ball and one to your family as well, promising to explain in the morning.”
“In the morning? And where am I to go tonight?”
“We already established we are going to my residence. We must make a plan after all.”
“A plan. I don’t even understand. You said this is Arabella’s child. That she had…”
“While in Italy, yes. She came to me about a month ago as I said. She told me that the young man she had involved herself with had left her with a child. He wanted the child but not her. He lured her to Italy under false pretenses, saying that his uncle was a count there and that they would be married and return as husband and wife with their little one. But it soon became quite clear that he had no interest in her, that she was nothing but a passing fancy to him and the child an inconvenience but an inconvenience he intended to claim. His plan was, it seems, for her to have the child, and then he would send her away while he kept the baby.”
“What?” Clara exclaimed. “That is unconscionable.”
“Indeed, it is. So, she pretended to go along with the plan, but after the child was born, she escaped from his grasp with the baby. Some servants helped her. She returned to England and availed herself of my financial help before disappearing again.”
“Why didn’t you help her more? Why didn’t you stop her from leaving?”
“You did not listen to me earlier at all, did you? I tried to. I offered, more than once, but she refused. I still do not even know who the man was.”
She considered this. As much as she wanted to be angry at someone in this moment, she knew Julian was perhaps not the best target.
“Bella has always been stubborn. If she thought that you were going to involve yourself, she likely would have kept it all to herself. She must have been terribly frightened to even come to you in the first place.”
“Indeed,” he said. “If she was afraid, I could have found her a place to hide. I have connections. This way, she is entirely on her own.”
“Perhaps she thought that if you were to help her using your connections, it would make it easier for the man to find her. You are not exactly inconspicuous.”
In fact, Julian was not only a wealthy duke. He was well connected in the House of Lords with many alliances. His reputation was stellar. The attention was on him often, especially when he dwelt at his estate near London.
“Arabella must be terrified of this man to do what she did. And that man who handed me the child, do you suppose he was a servant?”
“Indeed, he was,” Julian said. “When I followed him, I thought he was going to cry. He had an accent. An Italian one.”
“I did not pay any attention to it,” she admitted. “But now that you say it, yes, I think you are right.”
“He must be one of the ones who helped her escape. If she sent the child away to be hidden with you, then it must mean that, wherever she is, the man has found her, or at least is close, and she thought it no longer safe. We must do what we can to keep the child safe.”
“Of course,” she said. “Arabella has been one of my dearest friends since I was a child. But this way? Why did you say I was your wife?”
“So that the child can be under my protection. I do not know if Arabella sent the child away the way she did because she intended for people to think it was yours or if it was simply the young man who made that choice. In any case, everyone now believes this child is yours. And without a husband, there would be no protection for either you or the baby.”
“I know,” she said. “But how will we explain this? Everyone will think this child was born out of wedlock. I cannot have that stain upon my reputation.”
He nodded and tapped his fingertips together—a habit she remembered from the time they had spent in each other’s company years ago. It meant that he was anxious but also thinking.
“Very well. You have been in Scotland for one year. Correct?”
“That is correct.”
“That will be perfect,” he said. “We will say that I came to Scotland with Arabella when she visited you. In fact, during that time, I was at my country seat fighting a dreadful cold, so nobody would have seen me for a week or two. After that, we wrote to each other—not exactly proper, but I think we will get away with it in light of everything.” He looked at the baby, who was still sleeping in her arms. “We fell in love, married quietly, and you were with child quickly.”
“That is all well and good, but why wouldn’t we have simply declared our relationship?”
He took a deep breath and raised his eyebrows. “That is a very good question.”
Clara looked out of the window then it came to her.
“My fiancé left me a year ago.”
He looked at her, head tilted to one side. “I am aware. But exactly how does that …”
“We will say that we thought it inappropriate that I should move on so very quickly to not only be married but with a child when I had just been left by my fiancé. We thought it would be improper, so we kept our relationship from everybody, and then, when the child was born, we decided to have him in peace and only return to London once some time had passed.”
She did not remind him that Benjamin’s leaving her for the cousin of the Prince Regent had been quite the scandal and extensively talked about in high society. In fact, news of it had been on every tongue for weeks. She had heard of it even in Scotland.
“That is a good plan. We will say we married at Gretna Green.” He paused then snapped his fingers. “No, that would make it sound hasty. We will say that you visited me at my estate in Southampton, I obtained a special license, and we were married in my family parish.”
“Very well, but what if anybody should ask to see the record?”
He turned his whole body toward her. “I know you may not like this next part, but it is crucial for our plan to work. We must make it true. We must get married. The vicar at my home parish is a good man, and I think if I explained the situation to him, he would be willing to help us. Perhaps even enter the date of our supposed marriage in a suitably ambiguous way in the ledger so that it will appear as though we really did marry a year ago.”
“You would ask a vicar to lie for you?” she said, genuinely startled by this.
“Not lie. But perhaps if we simply ask him to make the nine in 1819 look slightly more like an eight, he would not be entirely opposed. Especially if he hears that Arabella is involved. He baptized her, after all, and me. After her parents died, he was such a comfort to her. Always supporting her and me. And when my parents died, he was our greatest supporter.” He paused then, and a shadow crossed his face.
For the first time this evening, it became apparent to Clara that he was afraid. He was afraid for Arabella. She reached out, balancing the baby with one arm, and placed her hand briefly on his forearm. His skin was warm beneath her glove, the fine hairs pressing through the thin material.
“She is clever,” she said. “She has always been clever. I am certain that she will be quite all right. She knows how to look after herself, and she knew that the two of us would care for her child. Or that I would, anyhow, since she did not involve you.”
“No,” he said. “She didn’t. I cannot believe that she didn’t at least leave the baby with me directly.”
“She couldn’t have. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. If you suddenly had a child in your care, it would have been very hard to explain.”
“I suppose,” he said quietly. “So are we in agreement? We are going to get married?”
She shook her head. “This must be the least romantic proposal a lady has ever received.”
Despite everything, the two of them laughed.
“Yes,” she said at last. “But you will have to explain it to my parents.”
“I will,” he replied. “Come morning, I will. I imagine they will not be too displeased, seeing that their daughter is now a duchess, and there is a little heir already.”
She nodded. “What will we do when Arabella comes back? She will want her child again, and everyone will think he is ours.”
He shook his head. “I do not know, and I do not have the capability at this very moment to think of every explanation. For the time being, all we can do is think about right now.”
Clara worried at her lips, another thought nagging at her. She didn’t want to say it out loud, but it seemed he had already figured it out.
“You worry for your reputation and for your future,” he said. “And I am sorry that this will rob you of the opportunity to marry a man you love. I want you to know that I am not opposed to annulling the marriage or even obtaining a divorce once Arabella is back and reunited with the child.
“There will be ways to explain things. I would settle a handsome jointure upon you, and I imagine your father will want to provide a dowry which will also be yours. You will not lack financially, and I will help you start over elsewhere. If you wish to go to the continent, I will help you. If you wish to go to the new world, I will help you. If you wish to weather the storm here, I will take all the blame for the eventual demise of our marriage.”
“You would do all this for me?” she said.
He blinked. “I would do all this for my cousin, who was like a sister to me, and for her son.” He paused. “And for you of course. I have known you since you were a child. You are—”
He said nothing further but looked out of the window. “I simply want to make things right for everybody.”
Silence settled upon the carriage as they left London and made their way toward Brixton where the Lynden estate stood.
“He will need a name,” she said suddenly. “We cannot continue to call him the baby.”
“He has one. His name is Horatio.”
“After her father,” she said with a small smile.
“Yes. His middle name is David, after mine. She regarded my father almost as her own since he took her in when her parents died.”
Clara nodded. There was a strange sense of peace about having the baby in her arms.
“I suppose we should call him David. Horatio is an unusual name, and if we name him so, people will ask why we would name our child after your uncle who has passed when your own father is also gone. It makes no sense.”
He nodded. “You have always been sharp, Clara. And of course, you are right. David it is.”
For the first time that night, he leaned over and peered down at the little bundle. “You know, I only saw him briefly when she came to me last month. He looks like my uncle and like my father which is no great wonder since they were brothers.”
Clara smiled. The scent of his aftershave reached her, a peculiar, woody mixture with hints of a meadow. It was pleasant. He had always smelled good. It was one of the things she remembered about him—the way his scent would sometimes linger in a room after he had already left it.
And now, it seemed, she was going to be married to the man who carried that scent.
Both of them sat quietly, looking down at the baby, until the carriage stopped a few minutes later in front of the estate.
“Well,” he said, “we are here. Your new home. I wish I could have shown it to you in daylight, but it will have to do for tonight.”
With that, he opened the carriage door and stepped out.
Clara rose, cradling the baby in her left arm.
She stepped to the carriage door and took Julian’s hand.
With his assistance, she stepped out into a life that was going to be so unlike the one she had expected to walk into when she had risen that morning.