hair it was difficult for her to hide even the slightest of blushes.
‘Yes, we knew,’ Anne mumbled, suddenly very interested in the button on her spencer. ‘Lady Tillman wrote to us about it a week ago, wanting to make sure there would be nothing awkward between the two of you. I assured her there wouldn’t be.’
‘Without consulting me first?’
‘I was afraid if I told you, you wouldn’t come and I wanted you to. I see the way you are at Winsome, and how lonely and sad you appear sometimes, especially while watching the children or when you think no one is looking, and it breaks my heart. I want you to be as happy as Adam and I are and to have children of your own and all the things you lost when Alfred died. You won’t find them sitting in your room at home, but here with people.’
Clara swallowed hard. Only Anne could stop Clara from being angry at her when she should be steaming. She thought she’d been better about hiding her grief, but she hadn’t if Anne and Adam had gone to such lengths to make sure she came to this house party. Anne was right. Clara had travelled to Stonedown to take her first steps towards finding a new life. She’d already seen a number of new faces among the usual guests. Perhaps one of them would be someone like Alfred with caring eyes and a trustworthy heart, the kind of man who’d readily comfort a grieving and rejected young woman one Christmas morning instead of laughing at her. That man was not Hugh.
‘I realise Lord Delamare being here might be a little awkward,’ Anne continued, ‘but what happened between the two of you was a long time ago and since then he was happily married and so were you. There’s no reason why you can’t be polite and cordial to one another and no reason why his being here should spoil your week.’
Except Clara had already been less than cordial to him because he’d reminded her of the worst embarrassment she’d ever endured. This wasn’t at all how she’d imagined this house party beginning. ‘Even if we can be cordial to one another, more people than Lady Pariston are bound to remember what happened and bring it up, especially Lord Westbook and Lady Fulton and you know how cutting they can be. I told you what they said about me the last time we were here once the entire household heard of what happened.’
‘And a great deal has changed since then.’ Anne laid her hands on Clara’s shoulders. ‘There’s no reason why they and everyone won’t see anything but the confident woman before me.’
Clara wasn’t so generous in her perception of what people would see when they looked at her. She hoped it was a mature marchioness, but she feared, especially with Lord Delamare present to remind them, that they’d see nothing but the awkward young girl she’d once been. No, she was no longer an easily tricked country heiress, but a woman of experience and sophistication who would not have the wool pulled over her eyes by a scheming man and she would prove it to everyone, including Hugh. ‘Yes, you’re right. Just because he’s here doesn’t mean I have to speak with him or give him more than a curtsy and any required manners. In fact, if I can avoid speaking to him entirely, I will.’
‘Except that because of precedence, you’ll be sitting next to him at every dinner,’ Anne reminded, dropping her voice so as not to be heard by the gentlemen and ladies passing them as they went from the dining room to the billiards room.
Clara let out a frustrated sigh. If the footman hadn’t already dragged her travelling trunk up the stairs to her room, and if Mary, her lady’s maid, wasn’t already busy arranging dresses in the wardrobe, Clara would order her clothes packed up and the trunk put back on the carriage so she could return home. Except there was nothing for her at home except more nights alone, more days spent in reading and solitude or watching James and Lillie play and regretting that she had no child to play with them. She could leave and allow the melancholy to claim her or stay and remain on this path to being out in the world and open to the possibility of love and a better life. That, and proving that she’d changed, was why she was here and she wouldn’t allow Hugh to steal this from her the way he’d tried to steal her faith in herself six years ago. She intended to enjoy the season and she would. What Hugh did was immaterial to any of that.
* * *
Hugh examined the pages of the illuminated manuscript, trying to concentrate on the beautifully drawn and painted figures, but all he could see was Clara. The moment she’d entered the room, the only thing he’d been able to think about was the Christmas Eve ball when he’d held her in his arms. Her petite body had been languid against his when she’d curved into him with sighs as tender as her fingertips against his neck. Beneath the silk of her gown he’d been able to feel the press of her hips against his and when he’d caressed the line of her back, the sweep of his fingertips over the bare skin above the line of her bodice had made her shiver.
He’d sat across the table from her at Adam’s family home over the years, paying her no more heed than he would the younger sibling of any of his friends. It wasn’t until she’d entered Lady Tillman’s sitting room at the beginning of that fateful Christmas house party, her dark blonde hair done up in ringlets and secured with red ribbons, the plain cut of her dress unable to hide her curving hips or the fullness of her breasts, that he’d viewed her as a woman. Even when dressed in the simplest of fashions, she’d taken his breath way and he’d struggled not to stare at the womanly changes that had come over her while she’d spoken about the falling wheat prices and how they plagued the major landowners. Her girlish interests had changed as much as her figure. In those few moments she’d transformed from the gangling young sister of his closest friend into a lady he couldn’t take his eyes off, one worthy to become mistress of Everburgh Manor.
There hadn’t been any trace of that smitten woman in the one who’d turned to face him today, her full lips opening with surprise before she’d pressed them tight together in disgust. Marriage and loss had changed her as much as it had changed him. The simple young woman he’d fallen for had matured, her plain country styles exchanged for the elegance of London fashion, her once-adoring looks now cutting, but he deserved her anger. It was the grief he’d seen when she’d pored over the vellum that she didn’t deserve.
He turned the manuscript pages until he reached the one of the women crying at the foot of the cross. The mournful looks on their faces reminded him of how Clara had appeared when he’d watched her from across the room, hesitant to interrupt the private moment or to intrude on a sadness he was all too familiar with. While he’d watched her, the anguish and torment he’d suffered after he’d received the Christmas Eve letter six years ago informing him that Lord Matthews had finally agreed to Hugh’s requests for his daughter’s dowry, and that Hugh and Lady Hermione Matthews’s engagement could proceed, had rushed back to him. Along with it had come the regret that had tortured him in the carriage that Christmas morning when he’d ridden away from Stonedown and Clara. The memory of her distraught face when she’d faced him in this very room had torn at him along with the same accusation she’d thrown at him moments ago.
‘Fortune hunter. Bollocks.’ He slapped the book stand, making it rock before it righted itself. He hadn’t married Hermione simply for money, but out of duty to his family. The cold winters at Everburgh when his parents used to struggle to heat even a few rooms while his grandfather had squandered the family fortune on his actress second wife still haunted him, as did the strained and worried faces of his parents. After his grandfather’s hard living had finally killed him, the massive debts had fallen to his father to pay and their quality of life, which had never been high, had declined even further. Although his parents had done everything they could to shield Hugh from the reality of their situation, there was nothing their stories of knights and dragons could do to stave off the cold or place more food on the table. Then, when they’d been on the verge of leaving those days behind them for good, Hugh’s father’s heart had given out, worn down by years of struggles. At his funeral, Hugh had vowed that he would do everything he could to make sure that his mother would one day experience
