Page 20 of The Trouble with True Love

Rex grimaced, his foggy memories of the other night becoming clearer with every word his butler spoke.

“She has expressed the wish to discuss with you the matter of your recent conduct.” Whistler’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Do you wish to receive her?”

He ought to, he supposed. Let her call him on the carpet and have it over. After all, the fight was probably his worst offense, and it wasn’t as if that had beenhisfault. Lionel had struck first, and Auntie would surely agree that any chap had the right to defend himself. Once he explained—

He broke off that train of thought to reconsider. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if he really could explain, for he couldn’t betray Lionel’s confidences. As for the grievance Auntie had against him regarding Miss Deverill, he certainly couldn’t tell Petunia it was his naughty suggestion about kissing the girl that had spurred her to depart the dance floor. And, he thought, lifting the mirror in his hand for another look, his battered face would hardly help him to regain his aunt’s goodwill.

He handed the mirror to Cartwright and returned his attention to his butler. “You did explain to Lady Petunia just how serious my injuries are?”

“I said you had concussion, my lord, and would probably be unwell for several more days.”

With that, Rex decided the best thing to do was to let things lie and allow Auntie’s temper to cool. In the meantime, he could perhaps fashion a palatable way to explain the fight without having to reveal anything about Lionel’s secret affair with Lady Geraldine Throckmorton. As for the rest...

His gaze moved to the crumpled sheet of newsprint on his dressing table as more memories of the other night came back to him. “Tell my aunt that my head injury—mymassivehead injury—still prevents me from receiving visitors,” he said, turning to the butler. “I will call on her when I’m fighting fit. When I’m feeling better,” he amended as Whistler raised an eyebrow.

“Very good, sir.”

The butler departed, and Rex reached for the wadded-up newspaper cutting He’d pay Auntie a visit in a day or two and find a way to make amends, and in the meantime, he’d see Lionel, try to patch things up there. As for Miss Clara Deverill...

Rex set his jaw grimly as he smoothed out the scrap of paper in his fingers. Where she was concerned, he had no intention of making amends or patching things up. Quite the contrary. When it came to her, he was itching for a fight.

Chapter 6

Newspapers had been the mainstay of the Deverill family for many years, once encompassing a vast journalistic empire that in its heyday had included seventeen newspapers and twelve magazines. Clara’s father, however, had never been much of a businessman, and under his tutelage, the business built by the two previous generations had rapidly deteriorated, dwindling at last to only one paper, theWeekly Gazette, with its offices in what had once been the family’s own library.

It was Irene who had salvaged this last vestige of the Deverill newspaper chain, a fact which had often led Clara to laughingly accuse her sister of having ink, rather than blood, running through her veins. For her own part, though Clara enjoyed reading the papers, she’d never really shared Irene’s passion for the business of running one.

Clara’s primary ambition in life had always been a simple one: to marry and have children, but hampered by her acute shyness, she’d found this goal an elusive one to achieve. Making matters worse, her father’s estrangement from her mother’s family had left her few opportunities to move in society and meet young men. She did have one marriage proposal to her credit, but the unappealing circumstances under which it had been offered had impelled her to refuse it, and since then, no other chances for matrimony had presented themselves.

Clara knew that if she was ever to achieve her most cherished dream, she had to find a way to overcome her reticence with strangers and take an active rather than passive role in her future, so when Irene married Torquil, Clara had accepted the invitation of the duke’s family to stay with them for the coming season, and despite the extension of Irene’s trip and Jonathan’s now-permanent defection, Clara had no intention of abandoning her own plans.

She soon discovered, however, that Fate was not going to make this easy. For one thing, Mr. Beale was becoming more truculent with each day her brother did not appear. She knew she ought to tell him the truth, that Jonathan wasn’t coming after all, but afraid he’d quit, she kept putting it off. She tried her best to ignore his sour demeanor and work with him as amicably as possible, for at present, she had a much more serious problem than one cranky editor.

Clara stared down at the two letters in front of her, the same two letters to Lady Truelove that she’d been perusing in the tea shop the other day. Many more letters had come for the columnist since then, of course, but these two had engendered within her a powerful sense of empathy. She badly wanted to find solutions for them, perhaps because she knew that in doing so, she might also find a solution for herself.

But as she sat at her desk studying their letters, she was forced to acknowledge that no advice for either of these correspondents had magically invaded her brain since that afternoon at Mrs. Mott’s. And Lord Galbraith was not located within earshot to provide her with any inspiration.

In a way, that was rather a pity. For though the man’s advice to his friend had been morally appalling, it had been based on a solid, if cynical, awareness of human nature. He’d make, she realized in chagrin, a better advice columnist than she was proving to be. He knew a lot about people, particularly women. And he certainly knew how to charm them. Hell, she knew him for a rake, she didn’t like him a jot, and hadn’t a shred of respect for him, and yet, as a woman, she’d felt his pull like the force of a magnet.

Ravish you would be a sight more likely.

Remembering those words, Clara felt rather aggrieved. The only time in her life a man had ever expressed the desire to ravish her, and it had to be a man she had no use for. Just her luck.

A kiss during a dance would break quite a few rules, wouldn’t it?

“Enough rules to ruin a girl’s reputation,” she muttered, and with that, she reminded herself that she had work to do and returned her attention to the task at hand.

After several moments of consideration, she decided to focus her efforts on the Devastated Debutante. After all, the girl was someone with whom she had so much in common. If she could determine how to advise her, maybe she could apply that same advice to herself.

A knock on the door interrupted her contemplations, and Clara hastily pulled a handful of other correspondence over the letters she was studying. “Come in,” she called, and when the door swung wide, Evie came through the doorway.

“The evening papers, Miss Deverill,” the secretary said, bringing them to Clara’s desk.

“Are our competitors penning anything of interest?” she asked, even as she appreciated that she could not allow herself to be distracted by any of the competition’s juicy tidbits.

“Nothing much.” The secretary set the stack on one corner of Clara’s desk. “TheLondon Inquirerhas an advice column now. They are calling it ‘Mrs. Lonely Hearts.’”

Clara gave a snort of derision. “Mrs. Lonely Hearts? Mrs. Copycat is more like it.”

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