The Proposition, page 24
The frost in his gaze penetrated her, and her blood ran cold. Clemency tried to force her hand out of his grasp, but he only gathered her closer, his other hand clamping down on her hip, keeping her anchored to his side. Some of the other dancers had begun to stare, and while a chill ran through her, her face flamed, burning with sudden fear and shame.
“You have discovered some of Mrs. Chilvers’s secrets, but I’m afraid not all. Your sister and that Chilvers widow are engaged in a most scandalous arrangement, which you must have known or at least assumed,” he sneered. “What would the ton say if they knew? If I made their letters public? Your sister would be disgraced, and you the cause of all her unhappiness.”
Nora and the widow? Clemency almost buckled, not out of shock that her sister might love a woman, but that Nora would keep such a thing from her. It did make sense to her then—the urgency with which Nora had wanted her to deliver the letter, and both of the women widows…They must have found such comfort in each other, in their shared experiences and similar status in the world. And now Turner could use that love against Nora, and the thought of it made Clemency ill. If Mrs. Chilvers’s criminal activity came to light, it would only reflect even more poorly on her sister.
She gripped him back, but only because she had become dizzy. The circle of the dance felt impossible to endure, the room suddenly rocking from side to side.
“Chilvers provided useful documents to claim my son as a ward, but I can do it with or without her. You’ve accomplished nothing, really; that boy is mine by rights. A man always has a right to his son. Ferrand will be entirely without recourse when I have the boy under my control.”
“No.” Clemency finally found her voice, gasping. “Delphine…You will not wound her that way. You will not hurt her, and you will not hurt Honora—”
“Me?” He had the audacity to laugh, crinkling up his eyes as he threw his head back. “I would not dream of hurting them, not, of course, if you keep your promises, Clemency, and marry me. I will even give up on claiming the boy as my ward. You see? I promised you a baron, and now in the eyes of the Crown I am one. You might try to prove otherwise, but Ede is too powerful, too connected, and too close to all of this nasty business. The man so hates a scandal—one whiff of your intentions and he will crush you and Ferrand like the scrabbling rodents that you are.”
“He would turn on you first,” she hissed. “You are the source of all his woes.”
“Perhaps. Care to take that gamble?”
Somehow, through the flames searing against her cheeks and the dizziness overcoming her, she saw Audric, tall and brilliant, slicing his way through the crowd. People parted for him, aware, as she was, of his solemn, powerful presence. The cello and violins raced toward the climax of the dance, the circle spinning faster, Clemency carried along by it, and by the man clutching her with painful force. If only the floor could swallow her up, disappear her from this nightmare…
Why had he chosen that moment, of all moments, to appear?
And yet he could not save her, and his radiance, and his clear emerald eyes, and the sweet, knowing curve to his lips, none of it could intervene.
I must save myself.
“I cannot let you do this,” Clemency told him through clenched teeth. It was her turn to clutch him, letting her fingers bite into his sleeve, into his arm. “I will fight you, Boyle, for I am not the naïve young woman you persuaded with your pretty words and empty promises.”
“You will not fight me,” he grunted, giving her the small satisfaction of showing pain for the force of her grip. “You have not a soldier on the field, Clemency. The war is over, and I have won.”
“No—”
Before she could speak another word, Turner Boyle had turned to the short young couple dancing to their left. The woman of the pair, obviously a little deep into her punch already, beamed up at him with a sweat-sheened pink face.
“Good evening!” Boyle called to her over the music. “Tell me, have you heard the latest gossip of out Round Orchard?”
“Oh?” The young lady frowned but then shook her head and giggled. “Is it terribly wicked?”
“It concerns a widow by the name of Hono—”
“Lord Boyle!” Clemency stomped, hard, on his foot, and mercifully he shut up, tearing his attention away from the other couple. “Stop! Stop this instant.”
“Then relent.” His smile held the cold white gleam of a string of cheap pearls. Clemency shivered and bowed her head and felt a surge of pain at the base of her skull. “Or shall I say more?”
“Why?” she wheezed, breathless with confusion. The dance would end soon, and they would be expected to part and smile, and bow, but she felt too weak to do any of those things. “Why would you want to marry me when you have nothing but contempt for me and my family? When we so clearly revolt each other?”
“There are other rich women,” Boyle said with a shrug, loosening his grasp on her at last. She sagged. “But I would not have the power over them that I have over you. Step one toe out of line in our marriage, my sweet, attempt to outmaneuver me or contact Mr. Ferrand and Delphine Ferrand’s child will be mine. Your sister’s life? Ruined. Mrs. Chilvers? Ruined. How freeing, don’t you think? To be the husband I want to be, and not the husband you or anyone else expects me to be. I suspect it will be rather liberating.” His smile turned brilliant, and it even reached his dead, cold eyes. “Yes, I suspect I will infinitely enjoy being a married man. The delicious icing on top is that I have taken you from Ferrand; he will likely flee back to France and never show his face in London again.”
Clemency could not risk exposing her sister’s secret, and she could not risk gentle Delphine’s awful dealings with Turner Boyle becoming public knowledge. She was stuck, trapped, and as the dance ended and they made their curtsey and bow, she and Turner came back together, and his hand closing over hers was like the sealing of a tomb.
Her mind raced while her body went completely still. Across the floor, Clemency found Audric, felt his eyes drill into her. His happiness, his anticipation, was palpable in the high, tight line of his shoulders. There he was, ready to swoop in and be at her side, to humiliate the man that would humiliate them both, and Clemency could do nothing but let her face fall.
A wave of regret washed over her, but there was nothing to be done. She simply closed her eyes hard, once, then opened them, hoping Audric could detect the sadness in her gaze. Then she shook her head, and looked down at the floor, and let Lord Boyle lead her away.
23
Clemency was drowning, and the last thing she remembered seeing was the flicker of shock and recognition in Mr. Ferrand’s eyes. Her legs went numb, and she felt Nora and Tansy at her sides, their sure, soft hands keeping her upright as she dipped toward the ground.
“Air!” she heard someone, most likely William, say. “By God, move, the lady requires fresh air!”
The faces in the ballroom became nothing but a nauseating blur as she was rushed away from the dancers. Boyle was somewhere, she knew, gloating over his victory. She couldn’t stand to think of him, of the life she must now forfeit to him in order to protect Honora and Delphine. And she was not even allowed the honorable step of explaining to Mr. Ferrand why, with no warning or good reason, she had chosen the horrid Boyle over him. How could he forgive her for spurning him in such a callous way? Had he done the same to her, her heart would have shattered.
Well, shattered into an even finer dust than the pulverized mess her heart had become.
“Nora,” she whispered, leaning against her sister. “I am not well.”
“Of course, dearest, we’ll leave at once.”
The colder air outside proved a blessing, but it offered only temporary relief. Clemency opened her eyes wide enough to realize they were lifting her into Tansy’s family carriage, and Nora was stepping in behind her. When the door closed, the muted warmth and silence became instantly unbearable. She cried. Great, shivery, and sucking sobs that sounded more like someone dying from the cold than someone suffering their heart-death.
“What is the matter? Oh, Clemency, you are so pale!” Honora clung to her, held her. “What has happened?”
“I—I—cannot—say….” She could hardly get the words out between sobs.
“But you must tell me. You have me so horribly worried.”
Then Honora would have to remain worried. Her concern could not be addressed, for Clemency knew her sister well and felt sure that Honora would throw herself on the deadly sword of London gossip if it meant freeing her sister from Boyle’s clutches. But she refused to hurt Nora that way, to tear her away from Mrs. Chilvers, and give Delphine’s child to Boyle.
The future joy and contentment of two women had to take precedence over her immediate unhappiness.
She sobbed harder.
“Has something transpired between you and Mr. Ferrand?” Nora pressed. Clemency felt numb all over, and though the carriage rocked fiercely, she barely noticed. “I hardly caught sight of him before you collapsed. Oh, tell me what is the matter! You must!”
Inadvertently Nora had given her the words she needed. Putting them in the right order and speaking them coherently required every sinew of concentration. Her voice shook, but she managed to whisper, “Yes. Something transpired. Whatever understanding was between us is…” Say it and have done. It’s gone. Say the word, say the hardest word in the English language. “Gone.”
Honora fell abruptly silent, her hands stilling on Clemency’s shoulder and side. For a moment, there was nothing but the strike of hooves over cobbles, the creaking of the carriage door, and the call of the driver as they raced back to the Bagshots’ home.
Softly, as if any sound at all might undo Clemency completely, Honora murmured, “And…And Boyle? What is to become of you two? Dare I ask, sweet sister?”
Clemency curled in on herself and indulged in one more rattling cry. Her face felt fit to burn, covered in a sluice of hot tears. How could it be said at all? And if spoken aloud now, in confidence with someone she loved and trusted, how much truer and more final did it make this lifelong sentence?
Tell her the truth. Do not suffer alone.
But what was braver? Taking this bullet to the heart spared two others. The mathematics were obvious. When it was finalized, Clemency told herself, she must never consider herself a martyr. This was her mistake, her doing; she could blame nobody for the curse of Turner Boyle but herself. She had been the one to believe his lies, to listen to his promises over the wise, sober words of Olympe de Gouges, of Mary Wollstonecraft. Of Bethany Taylor.
It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men, wrote Wollstonecraft. And oh how Clemency felt that acutely now. None of this pain or torment would have come had she held fast to her beliefs and simply avoided both Boyle and Audric.
She would not forget again.
“It appears…” Clemency whispered, becoming strange and vacant. The pain was unbelievable, and she wondered if the absence of that pain would somehow sting too. A remembrance of a remembrance of what might have been for her and Mr. Ferrand.
Audric, forgive me.
“It appears that where Turner Boyle is concerned I remain…entangled. Mrs. Chilvers will not have her secret exposed after all.”
She wondered if Honora understood every way in which Clemency meant that. The carriage was quiet again. Clemency imagined a house, vibrant, full of life. A family lived there, but one by one they left and took their belongings. Then men came and put all their possessions into crates, and covered the sofas and tables with silky white sheets. The house gradually became empty and dark, no candles burning in the windows, and no laughter heard in the halls. Love left it as the dust settled, until all the tears cried and kisses exchanged and hands held were not just a distant memory but ghostly and distorted.
Love a haunt, and her the hollow, darkening house.
* * *
—
When Audric’s fourth letter went unanswered and unacknowledged, he knew it was time to believe a once impossible notion: that Clemency Fry had chosen another, and she had chosen his sworn enemy.
He watched the priceless vase sail across the room and smash into the far wall with a vague, detached pleasure. The sound ought to have resonated deep in his chest and released the hot knot of agony coiled there. Yet he craved to throw more. He found an empty brandy bottle in reach and hurled that too. A powder of glass shimmered like ice under the sitting room window, the accrued detritus of his confusion and his rage.
The bottle shattering against the wall covered the sound of the door opening behind him. His man Ralston cleared his throat and kept his voice to a respectful murmur.
“Sir, your sister is becoming rather concerned.”
Delphine. God. How would he ever make sense of this for himself, let alone poor Delphine? They might have been a little family, strange in their way but content.
Robbed. Robbed of his moment of vengeance, robbed of love, robbed of…
Her. Happiness.
Audric squeezed his eyes shut. He had never been a graceful loser, and now, in this moment of greatest humiliation, when his temper ought to flare beyond reason or fathoming, he could only muster concern for Clemency and Delphine.
Something must have happened. The phrase—no, the truth—repeated in his head, a maddening refrain.
Something must have happened. She loved me. She loved me. Something must have happened.
But what? But what? He knew, in his bones he knew, that Turner Boyle was somehow to blame, that he had outmaneuvered them in the last, most important moment. Not just because he had been there, holding on to a ghastly pale Clemency with a gloating sneer. He had made some kind of threat, or perhaps concocted an elaborate lie about Audric and his sister that convinced Clemency to quit their acquaintance.
Yet she was a smart woman and wise to Boyle’s ways. They had all the evidence, so why abandon their plans? It was risky, naturally, but they had worked so hard. And what could make her withdraw her affection so abruptly? He would not sleep nor know peace until he had answers, and he had learned through the observations of Lee Stanhope that William and Tansy Bagshot, accompanied by Honora and Clemency Fry, had unexpectedly quit their London house and returned to Round Orchard.
Turner Boyle had gone with them, departing in the same carriage as Clemency.
“Ralston? Prepare the house. We will be leaving for the country at once.” He ran a trembling hand over his face from forehead to chin. “I find suddenly that I despise London.”
“Sir, if your intention is to nurse the sting of Miss Fry’s—”
“Leaving,” Audric declared. “At once. Par Dieu, I will pick at this scab to my heart’s content, Ralston. No man or god may stop me. I will have answers, and after that? Satisfaction.”
24
One day bled into another while Clemency found that the lonely house of her heart did not wish to remain so. Visitors tried to come and go, and each attempted entry proved harder and harder to withstand. She had to keep herself locked tight, but even a gentle knock on the door hurt and hurt deeply.
Five days after the doomed assembly, she stood at the garden door of her family’s home, watching spring jut its way through the soft earth, daffodils unfolding tentatively despite the lingering spring chill. Those innocent shoots poked above the gleaming mud hoping for the tenderness of sun and finding more mercy than Clemency. She had wanted to find solace and reprieve in that old house and in the changing season, but it served to remind her of what she could not have—early morning walks with Audric across the sprawl of his grounds, long rides through the country, a spontaneous trip to Dover to wander the cliffs in warming weather. Now none of it would happen, and she could not feel the spring, only that stubborn winter chill.
A few slants of sunlight climbed their way across the stone path, over the well spigot, gaining ground toward the house, and toward her slippers, positioned just against the threshold.
She clung with both hands to the frame, nervous that even a slight breeze might tip her one way or the other. That day would be her wedding day, and while the house woke up around her and began to descend into matrimonial preparation and chaos, Clemency stood empty-stomached and empty-hearted, faced toward the house Audric still possessed but did not inhabit, her eyes becoming fixed on the narrow stream that she had tumbled into and that he had pulled her from. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel the sure strength of his hands as he gathered her up and out of the muddy water.
Before she could command her body to behave, she had taken six steps out the door, striding across the garden and toward the border of their properties. There it was, that peaceful river, now an unmistakable Rubicon. There had been a flurry of activity at his house in recent days, but Clemency knew it could signal only one thing—he was preparing to abandon that estate, the last tie between them slashed away. But she went anyway, suddenly possessed, eyes filling with tears as she picked up speed along the stone path.
Go to him, go to him, go to him. It is not too late….
“Dearest? Where are you going? Mother is frantic; it’s time to depart for the church.”
Clemency froze. A moment later Honora’s hand landed lightly on her elbow. “Clemency? Are you well?”
Too late.
“Certainly.”
Her sister sighed, turning her carefully back toward the house. “There have never been any secrets between us. It hurts so that you should choose to keep some from me now.”
