CHAPTER 3

“Rather than not wishing to inconvenience me? I take the snub, but your concern for my team is still admirable.”

Clara gave him a little smile and accepted the arm that he offered. He handed her up into the curricle, tucked a thick rug about her and offered her a hot brick for her feet. Despite the chill of the day she felt snug. Fleet leapt up beside her and took up the reins. Clara noticed immediately that they did not travel with a groom and prayed that Mrs. Boyce had not observed the fact from her vantage point behind the drawing room curtains. It certainly made matters easier for her, for she wished to have no eavesdropper on their conversation; on the other hand it also made her a little nervous. She could not expect standard decorum from Fleet. In fact, she never knew what to expect from him. That was half the trouble.

“I confess I was a little surprised to hear from you, Miss Davencourt,” Fleet said with a quizzical smile, as he moved the horses off at a brisk trot. “The terms of our parting left me in no doubt that you wished never to see me again.”

Clara smile back with dazzling sweetness. “You are quite correct, your grace. As I intimidated in my letter, only the direst need led me to contact you. I hoped that out of the friendship you have for my brother, you would agree.”

Fleet sketched an ironic bow, “And here I am, Miss Davencourt, at your service. How comforting it must be to know that you may appeal to my sense of honor and know that I will respond immediately.”

Clara’s lips twitched. “You are all generosity, your grace.” She looked up and met the intense blue of his eyes. “I hope,” she added politely, determined to get the awkward part out of the way as soon as possible, “that we may put the past behind us. I am older and wiser now, you—

“Yes?”

“You, I suspect, are you exactly as you were two years ago.”

Fleet inclined his head. “I suspect that I am.”

“So we may understand each other and be friends?” Clara finished.

There was a pause before Fleet spoke, as though he were weighing her words and found them lacking in some way she could not quite understand. “If you say so, Miss Davencourt,” he said slowly.

He shot her another look. Clara felt her nerves tingle. She had always known Sebastian Fleet to be shrewd; those members of the ton who declared the duke to be nothing more than an easygoing rake did not understand him at all. The sharpness of mind behind those cool blue eyes had been one of the things that had attracted Clara to him in the first place. But she should not be thinking on that now. Dwelling on his attractions was foolish. She was no longer a green girl of one and twenty to fall in love with the most unobtainable duke in society.

The breeze ruffled Seb Fleet’s dark golden hair, and he raised a hand absentmindedly from the reins to smooth back the lock that fell across his forehead. Contrary to both fashion and common sense, he wore no hat. The very familiarity of his gesture jolted Clara with a strange pang of memory. They had been in company a great deal together at one time but it was illusory to imagine that they had ever been close. Fleet had squashed that aspiration very firmly when he had rejected her proposal of marriage. No one ever got close to Sebastian Fleet. He did not permit it.

She knew she should not raise old memories but Clara had never done as she should. “When I proposed to you...” she began.

Fleet’s brows snapped down in a thoroughly intimidating way. “I thought we were not speaking of the past, Miss Davencourt.”

Clara frowned. “I would like to say my piece first.”

Fleet sighed with resigned amusement. “I was under the impression you said your piece when we parted. Arrogant, proud, rude, vain and self-satisfied were all epithets I took to heart at the time and have not forgotten since.”

“And,” Clara said, “I imagine you have not altered your behavior one whit as a result.”

“Of course not.” Fleet flashed her a glance. “Naturally I was flattered by your proposal but I made it clear I am not the marrying kind.”

“Being too much of a rake.”

“Precisely.”

“I thought it was worth asking you anyway,” Clara said, with a small sigh.

Seb smiled at her, a dangerously attractive smile.”I know,” he said. “It is one of the reasons I like you so much, Miss Davencourt.”

Clara glared at him. “You like me—but not enough to marry me.”

“You are mistaken. I like you far too much to marry you. I would be the devil of a husband.”

They looked at each other for a moment. Clara sighed. She knew he liked her, which was half the trouble. They liked each other very much and it was a perilous form of friendship, forever in danger of toppling over into forbidden attraction.

Fleet turned the conversation decisively. “Tell me what I may do to help you, Miss Davencourt.”

Clara hesitated. “I suppose it was unorthodox of me to write to you.”

Fleet glanced at her. There was a smile in his eyes. “In so many ways. Most young ladies, particularly with the history that is between us, would think twice before pursuing so rash a course.”

They had turned in to the park. It was too cold a morning for there to be many people about, but Clara found it pleasantly fresh, if chilly. Autumn leaves and twigs, turned white with frost, crunched beneath the horses hooves. The sky was a pale, cloudy blue with faint sunshine trying to break through. Clara’s cheeks stung with the cold and she burrowed her gloved hands deeper under the fur lined rug.

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