Page 2 of The Boys of Summer
He couldn’t come up with an answer to that, so he shrugged. “I’ll be your friend, but we can’t tell anyone. Not even your great-aunt. We’ll get in trouble.”
Clarissa knew what it was to keep secrets. “I can do that.”
Chapter One
From the diary of Lady Helmsley: May, 1828
If there is one thing I have learned in my long life, men only want what is forbidden to them. Show it to them, tell them they cannot have it, and then watch them make fools of themselves until they obtain it. That will be my strategy when Cecil arrives here. The girl is too painfully shy and reserved to catch a husband on her own. I will do what I must to see her properly wed and not foisted off on one of my worthless nephew’s cronies. I will be victorious and then I shall gloat about it at length whenever I am forced to be in attendance with all of my wretched relatives. Perhaps it will make me so insufferable in their eyes they will cease to invite me. One can only hope.
Clarissa smiled politely at the other guests gathered in the gracious drawing room though her expression belied her inner turmoil. She was constantly looking over her shoulder, anxiety riding her relentlessly. That was what happened, she supposed, when one ran away from home at the rather advanced age of six and twenty. At her side, Lady Helmsley—her Great-aunt Agatha—was surveying the crowd gathered for the house party hosted by the Viscount and Viscountess Marchwood. While her great-aunt’s assessment was just as critical, it was for very different reasons.
“I do wish,” Agatha said, “That you’d shown such interest in catching yourself a husband a few years earlier. It’s much easier to do so when one’s age doesn’t begin with the number two.”
“I’m hardly decrepit,” Clarissa protested.
“No. Decrepit would be preferable. My dear, men want wives who can give them children—or they already have children and are looking for companionship in old age. I wouldn’t have you marry a man with one foot in the grave, therefore a younger man who has not yet had an heir is the only option. And your age, like it or not, is a detriment.”
Thinking of Squire Timble, her father’s friend and neighbor whom he wished her to wed, Clarissa shuddered. That ultimatum issued by her father, before he departed for a hunting trip to the north, was the very reason she’d slipped away and come to visit her great-aunt. She hadn’t told her that the visit was not sanctioned by her father. It might have prompted her great-aunt to send her away and she simply could not risk that. She had to find a more tolerable husband or her father would drag her, kicking and screaming if need be, down the aisle to the vile squire. With his leering gaze, age spots and fetid breath, the man repulsed her entirely.
“What should I do?” Clarissa asked.
“Well, my dear, shy as you are, you are going to simply have to persevere through your own discomfort. Talk, flirt, dance—while there are only a few eligible men here, one could still be a potential husband for you… well, within reason,” Lady Helmsley replied.
“Within reason? What precisely does that mean?” Clarissa asked. She was almost afraid of what her very outspoken great-aunt’s reply would be.
“My darling girl, you are beyond lovely… but alas, your looks are not exactly the fashion of the day, are they? You’re very plump, though certainly not unpleasantly so. And you are so very tall. Men do not like to be towered over by their wives. It makes them very uncomfortable.”
Too plump, too tall, too old.She was always too much or too little of something or other. For once in her life, Clarissa thought, she’d like to be just enough.
“It’s a terrible injustice in the world, my dear, that a woman must be young, beautiful, fertile, docile, intelligent but not well-read, capable but not managing, and also possess at least some degree of fortune to be deemed eligible. But a man… a man must only have a heartbeat and either a titleorwealth,” Lady Helmsley mused.
A frisson of awareness settled over Clarissa then. It was the very uncomfortable sensation of being watched. Fearful that it was her father, that one of the servants might have betrayed her and written him about her unsanctioned trip to Southampton, she glanced about the room as surreptitiously as she could. When her gaze landed on the tall, dark stranger who stood near the entrance to the room, her heart stuttered in her chest before settling into a normal, if somewhat rapid rhythm. He was terribly large. Tall with broad shoulders and a wide chest, he seemed to dwarf everyone around him.
“Who is that gentleman?”
“Which one, dear?”
“By the door,” Clarissa said, ducking her head so that she wouldn’t be caught staring.
“Ah… he’s a duke. I don’t remember his actual title. When I heard that he was a duke, I knew he was out of reach. Best not to even waste your time with him. He’ll be looking for a wealthy and very well-connected bride, I’m sure. Set your sights a bit lower, Clarissa, or you will only be disappointed.”
“He’s staring,” Clarissa said, quietly fuming at her great-aunt’s unintended insult. “I haven’t my set my sights for him for heaven’s sake. I simply wished to know who he is and why he is so very interested in us!”
Agatha frowned. “I couldn’t say, dearest. But it is terribly rude. Turn away and ignore him.”
Clarissa would have done so, except he stepped forward, away from the wall where he’d been nonchalantly leaning and was making his way directly toward them. “Oh, no! Oh, no! He’s coming this way.”
“Turn away! Now,” Agatha insisted. “Duke or no, such rudeness will not be tolerated! I’ve a mind to give him the cut outright. Let us go and have a word with our hosts. We really must thank them for your last minute inclusion.”
*
Lord Augustus AlexanderBrandeis, Duke of Atherton, was not one for taking the waters in places like Southampton. Nor was he one for the ridiculous entertainments that were the hallmark of house parties. But he was a man on a mission—a quest even. Luckily, he was acquainted with the host, Henry Meredith, Viscount Marchwood, from their days at school together and had been able to secure a last minute invitation to the house party.
From the moment he’d entered the drawing room, he’d been searching the faces of the gathered guests. When his gaze had landed upon her, he’d simply known. Fifteen years might have changed them both to varying degrees, but he would have known her after a hundred years, so it hardly mattered. As he made his way toward them, he saw Lady Helmsley take her great-niece’s arm and lead her quickly in the direction of their hosts. Rather than be dissuaded, Augustus simply altered his course and made for the viscount and viscountess, as well.
He could hear the low hum of their conversation as he approached, though he could not quite make out what they were saying. But then Marchwood looked up, smiled in his direction and called out a greeting.
Closing the distance between himself and the small group, he never took his eyes off the young woman who’d been naught but a child the last time they’d spoken. Hell, they’d both been children, though he doubted he’d ever possessed the same degree of innocence that she had. No one could retain their innocence in the presence of his father.
