Dukes Prefer Blondes Read online

  The Society picked them up from the gutter—­if they were willing to be removed from that location—­and did everything possible to make them fit for employment. With practice, diligence, and good eyesight, most girls would learn to sew straight, tiny stitches at great speed, and they could be placed as seamstresses. Some, though, had the potential to rise higher—­for instance, to embroider fine muslins, silks, linens, wools, and these materials’ numerous combinations. Perhaps one or two might even possess the wherewithal to rise to become successful milliners or dressmakers.

  Bridget was fifteen years old. An unsuccessful flower seller, she had appeared on the Society’s doorstep after being assaulted and robbed who knew how many times, thanks to her refusing assorted pimps’ protection. She had been completely illiterate. She had turned out to be one of the most diligent students and an especially gifted embroiderer. In the display cases, her work always stood out.

  Outside the building, so, unfortunately, did her looks.

  “I can tell you what was in his mind,” Clara said. “He wasn’t thinking much beyond the fact of your being pretty and what males think when they see pretty girls.”

  Lady Clara Fairfax ought to know. Twenty-­two years old as of yesterday, she was the most beautiful and sought-­after girl in London, and according to some, in all of England.

  Small Drawing Room of Warford House

  Monday 31 August 1835

  Clara did not run screaming from the room. A lady didn’t run screaming from anywhere unless her life was in immediate danger.

  This was simply another marriage proposal.

  The Season was over. Almack’s had held its last assembly at the end of July. Most of Society had gone to the country. Yet her family remained in London because her father, the Marquess of Warford, never left before Parliament rose, and Parliament still sat.

  And so her beaux lingered in London. For some reason—­either they’d joined a conspiracy or had made her the subject of wagers in White’s betting book—­they seemed to be proposing on a biweekly schedule. They were beginning to wear on Clara’s nerves.

  Today was Lord Herringstone’s turn. He said he loved her. They all said so with varying degrees of fervor. But being an intelligent girl who read more than she ought to, Clara was sure that he, like the others, merely wanted to claim the most fashionable girl in London for his own.

  She’d inherited the classic Fairfax looks—­pale gold hair, clear blue eyes, and skin that seemed to have been poured like cream over an artistically sculpted face. The world agreed that in her these traits had reached the very acme and pitch of perfection. So had her figure, a model for one of those Greek or Roman goddess statues, according to her numerous swains.

  Her single flaw—­on the outside, that is—­the tiny chip in her left front tooth, only made her human and thus, somehow, more perfect.

  She was like a thoroughbred everybody wanted to own.

  Or the latest style of dashing vehicle.

  Her beauty surrounded her like a great stone wall. Men couldn’t see above, beyond, or through it. They certainly couldn’t think past it.

  This was because men only looked at women. They didn’t listen to women, especially beautiful women.

  When beautiful women talked, men merely made a greater pretense of listening. After all, everybody knew that women did not really have brains.

  Clara wondered what women were imagined to have in their skulls in place of brains or what men thought women did their pitiful excuse for thinking with . . .

  “ . . . if you would do me the inestimable honor of becoming my wife.”

  She came back to the present and said no, as she always did, kindly and courteously, because she’d been rigorously trained in ladyship. Moreover, she truly liked Lord Herringstone. He’d written odes to her, and they were witty and scanned well. He was amusing and a good dancer and reasonably intelligent.

  So were dozens of other men.

  She liked them, most of them.

  But they had no idea who she was and did not try to find out.

  Perhaps it was quixotic of her, but she wanted more than that.

  He looked disappointed. Yet he’d survive, she knew. He’d find another woman he would look at and not listen to, but that woman wouldn’t be so unrealistic as to expect him to. They’d wed and rub along together somehow or other, like everybody else.

  And one of these days Clara would give up hoping for more. One of these days, she would have to say yes.

  “Either that,” she muttered, “or become an eccentric and run away to Egypt or India.”

  “My lady?”

  Clara looked up. Her lady’s maid, Davis, had been standing in the corridor by the door during the marriage proposal. Though the door stood open, though any number of large footmen lurked in Warford House’s corridors, and though none of Clara’s infatuated swains would dream of uttering a cross word to her, let alone attempt to harm her, Davis remained ever vigilant. ­People said Davis looked like a bulldog, but looks, Clara very well knew, weren’t everything. Not many years older than her charge, Davis had been hired immediately after one of Clara’s many childhood contretemps, this time at Vauxhall. She protected Clara from fractures, concussions, drowning, and—­most important to Mama—­Clara’s becoming A Complete Hoyden.

  “Where is Mama?”

  Her mother usually entered close on the heels of rejected swains to wonder Where She’d Gone Wrong with her eldest daughter.

  “Her ladyship is in bed with a sick headache,” Davis said.

  This was probably because she’d had a visit earlier from her poisonous friend Lady Bartham.

  “Let’s go out,” Clara said.

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “To the girls,” Clara said. A visit to the Milliners’ Society for the Education of Indigent Females would give her a chance to do some good instead of brooding about men. “Please order my cabriolet.”

  Clara drove herself whenever possible, partly to reduce servants’ spying and tattling, but mainly to feel she was in command of something, even if it was one horse pulling a small, two-­wheeled vehicle. At least it was a dashing vehicle. Her eldest brother, Harry, the Earl of Longmore, had bought it for her.

  “We’ll stop on the way and buy some trinkets for the girls.” She glanced down at herself. “But I can’t go in this. They must see me in my finest finery.”

  When a proposal could not be avoided, she dressed as unflatteringly as she dared, to make her rejection sting less.

  The girls were another matter. The Milliners’ Society’s founders were London’s premier modistes, the proprietresses of Maison Noirot. They made Lady Clara’s clothes, and they had taught her that dress was a form of art and a form of manipulation and a language in itself. Twice they had saved her from what would have been catastrophic marriages.

  And so, for their girls, she dressed to inspire.

  Charing Cross

  A short time later

  Look out! Are you blind? Get out of the way!”

  Clara hadn’t time to see what she was in the way of when an arm snaked about her waist and yanked her back from the curb. Then she saw the black and yellow gig hurtling toward her.

  At the last minute, it swerved away, toward the watermen and boys clustered about the statue of King Charles I. Then once more it veered abruptly off course. It nicked a passing omnibus, struck a limping dog, and swung into St. Martin’s Lane, leaving pandemonium in its wake.

  Some inches above her head—­and plainly audible above the bystanders’ shouts and shrieks and the noise of carriages, horses, and dogs—­a deep, cultivated voice uttered an oath. The muscular arm came away from her waist and the arm’s owner stepped back a pace. She looked up at him, more up than she was accustomed to.

  His face seemed familiar, though her brain couldn’t find a name to attach to it. Under h
is hat brim, a single black curl fell against his right temple. Below the dark, sharply angled eyebrows, a pair of cool grey eyes regarded her. Her own gaze moved swiftly from his uncomfortably sharp scrutiny down his long nose and firmly chiseled mouth and chin.

  The day was warm, but the warmth she felt started on the inside.

  “I daresay you noticed nothing about him?” he said. “But why do I ask a pointless question? Everybody flies into a panic and nobody pays attention. The correct question is, Does it matter?” He shrugged. “Only to the dog, perhaps. And in that regard one may say that the driver simply put the wretched brute out of its misery. Let’s call it an act of mercy. Well, then. Not injured, my lady? No swooning? No tears? Excellent. Good day.”

  He touched the brim of his hat and started away.

  “A man and a boy in a black Stanhope gig trimmed in yellow,” she said to his back. Clara was aware of the tall, black-­garbed figure pausing, but she was concentrating, to hold the fleeting image in her mind. “Carriage freshly painted. Blood bay mare. White stripe. White sock . . . off hind leg. No tiger. The boy . . . I’ve seen him before, near Covent Garden. Red hair. Square face. Spotty. Garish yellow coat. Cheap hat. The driver had a face like a whippet. His coat . . . a better one but not right. Not a gentleman.”

  Her rescuer slowly turned back to her, one dark eyebrow upraised. “Face like a whippet?”

  “A narrow, elongated face,” she said. With one gloved hand, whose tremor was barely noticeable, she made a lengthening gesture over her own face. “Sharp features. He drives to an inch. He might have spared the dog.”

  Her rescuer looked her up and down, so briefly Clara wasn’t altogether sure he’d done it. But then his expression became acutely intent.

  She kept her sigh to herself and her chin upraised, and waited for the wall to go up.

  “You’re certain,” he said.

  Why should I be certain? she thought. I’m only a woman and so of course I have no brain to speak of.

  She said, more impatiently than she ought to, “I could see the dog was barely alive. No doubt boys would have tortured him or a horse would have kicked him or a cart would have rolled over him soon enough. But that driver knew what he was doing. He struck the animal on purpose.”

  The stranger’s keen gaze shifted away from her to scan the square.

  “What an idiot,” he said. “Making a spectacle of himself. Killing the dog was meant as a warning to me, obviously. A master of subtlety he is not.” When his gaze returned to her, he said, “A whippet, you say.”

  She nodded.

  “Well done,” he said.

  For an instant Clara thought he’d pat her on the head, as one would a puppy who’d learned a new trick. But he only stood there, alternately looking at her then looking about him. His mouth twitched a little, as though he meant to smile, but he didn’t.

  “That man, whoever he is, is a public menace,” she said. “I have an appointment or I should report the incident to the police.” She had no appointment. Her visit to the Milliners’ Society was a spur-­of-­the-­moment decision. But a lady was not to have anything to do with the police. Even if she got murdered, she ought to do it discreetly. “I must leave the matter to you.”

  “Firstly, nobody was injured but a dog it’s obvious nobody cared about,” the gentleman said. “Otherwise the creature would have been a degree more alive to begin with. Secondly, one doesn’t pester the police about the demise, violent or otherwise, of a mere canine unless its owner is an aristocrat. Thirdly, it’s now clear the fellow was aiming for me when you stepped in the way. I couldn’t see him clearly through the”—­he gestured at her hat, his mouth twitching again—­“the whatnot rising from your head. But Whippet Face . . .” Now he smiled. It wasn’t much of a smile, being small and quick, but it changed his face, and her heart gave a short, surprised thump. “He’s been trying to kill me this age. He’s not the only one. Hardly worth troubling the constabulary.”

  He gave her the briefest nod, then turned and strode away.

  Clara stood staring after him.

  Tall, lean, and self-­assured, he moved with swift purpose through the sea of ­people surging over the streets converging on Trafalgar Square. Even after he entered the Strand, he didn’t disappear from sight for a while. His hat and broad shoulders remained visible above the mass of humanity until he reached Clevedon House, when a passing coach blocked her view.

  He never looked back.

  He never looked back.

  Moments later, after she’d calmed both her maid and her tiger, Colson, and was giving her horse leave to start, the gentleman’s face flashed into her mind, and his voice with its husky overtone seemed to sound again from somewhere above her head. Like a shadow cast by a guttering candle, an image flickered in her brain for a moment. But it was gone before she could make it out. She shrugged, trying to push the incident out of her thoughts, and went on her way, though now and again she did wonder how he’d known to address her as my lady . . . and why he hadn’t looked back.

  Oliver “Raven” Radford, Esquire, didn’t need to look back. In the usual way of things, he would have sized up the tall, aristocratic blonde at the first glance. Fairfaxes being ubiquitous, their handsome features distinctive, even Society’s outsiders recognized them, and he calculated excellent odds of her being one of the many dubbed Lady This or Lady That.

  Yet he’d given her second and third looks, for three reasons.

  Firstly, his mind had refused to fully accept the evidence of his eyes. He was observant to a degree not usually associated with human beings—­some said he wasn’t, quite—­and his memory was equally inhuman. But yes, further examination proved milady’s attire to be as complicated and demented as his eyes had ascertained.

  Secondly, upon that further examination, he felt certain he’d met her before. But he couldn’t dredge up from his prodigious memory the time and place.

  Thirdly, he realized she’d surprised him.

  He couldn’t remember the last time anybody had surprised him.

  “Face like a whippet,” he murmured, and laughed—­startling passersby as he strode along the Strand. “Wait until I tell him. He’ll want to kill me twice, and by inches.”

  Don’t look back, you halfwit,” said the driver of the Stanhope gig.

  The boy, one Henry Brockstopp, better known as Chiver—­for his skill with a knife, or chive—­said, “That were her! The bleedin’ great bitch what come after me with the horsewhip a week or more back. I wish you’d run her down.”

  This, in any event, is the way his speech would translate into recognizable English.

  “Moron.” The driver backhanded the boy. “And have every last blue bottle in London after me? And the army, too? How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t touch a hair of a nob’s head unless you fancy a slow choke on the end of a rope and a nice lie-­down later on a sawbones’s dissecting table. With a lot of other ’prentice sawbones watching him pull out your liver and such, and all of them laughing at your tiny precious nuts.” He laughed. “Leave it to Raven to use the handiest female for a shield.”

  Jacob Freame, as all London’s underworld knew, had a fine sense of humor. He smiled when he squeezed shopkeepers for more protection money. He grinned when one of his bawds led a bumpkin into a brothel he wouldn’t come out of alive. He chuckled when his boys kicked in an enemy’s head. Always good for a laugh, our Jacob.

  “She’s big enough,” Chiver said sullenly, rubbing the side of his head.

  “She can be as big as she wants, because she’s quality,” Jacob said. “And when you see quality, you take off your hat and you bow low and you say yes ma’am and no ma’am and yessir and nosir. You kiss their arses, you hear me? Nobody cares what we do among our own sort. But you annoy the fine ladies and gentlemen, and trouble comes down on you like a ton of bricks. Do you understand, or do I have to kno
ck it into that thick head of yours?”

  “I understand,” the boy said. But he’d teach that Bridget Coppy a lesson, wouldn’t he? And the Long Meg wouldn’t like it much, neither.

  Jacob Freame glanced back though his prey was long out of sight. “Maybe another time, then, Raven, eh?” he said. And laughed.

  Environs of Covent Garden

  Not long thereafter

  Today Bridget Coppy was in charge of the Milliners’ Society shop. Here visitors could purchase articles the girls made, with profits going to the organization’s upkeep. Made by girls of dissimilar talents and experience, the items on offer varied in quality.

  “This must be yours,” Lady Clara said as she took up a splendidly adorned reticule from the case the girl had opened for her.

  “Y-­yes, my lady. Only there’s a mistake. That knot. It w-­wouldn’t—­” Bridget burst into tears.

  She turned away, her pretty face crimson, and hastily found her handkerchief. “Oh, I’m so sorry, my lady. So sorry.”

  A lady was never at a loss in any situation. She took pity on the less fortunate, even when she’d chosen to visit the less fortunate as an antidote to her own vexations.

  “My dear, I can’t even see the offending knot,” Clara said. “Your eyes must be very sharp, indeed.”

  “Yes, I’ve—­ No, I mean, it oughter be perfect. You can’t—­ Why, what if your ladyship had a dinner dress embroidered with floor de leezes and your ladyship looked down and there was a thread hanging off of one of them? Or—­or the bud was crimson when it oughter be rose? Or—­” Tears leaked out of the girl’s eyes, now as red as her face, and rolled down her nose. She turned away and sniffed, and vigorously wiped away the tears. “Please forgive me, your ladyship. Oh, if Matron sees me—­that’ll do it, that will.”

  “Matron’s nowhere about,” Clara said. “But if you’re so upset you can’t contain your feelings, the trouble must be very bad. Why, you’re one of the most even-­tempered and responsible girls here.”

  “Responsible!” the girl wailed. “If I was, would I be in this fix?”