heels. “Your mother and I don’t mind a bit of high spirits. Wild oats, drunken tomfoolery, that sort of thing. But tearing off to Gretna Green with the Haddonfield girl exceeded the bounds. I could not keep the general contours of the situation from your mother, and she will be some time getting over the shock.”
Papa’s lecture hadn’t changed in the fortnight since he’d interrupted the best fun William had had since the fourth time he’d been sent down from university. Papa had broken the unspoken rules by allowing Mama to learn of William’s excursion with the Haddonfield girl—though Lady Della was quite long in the tooth as girls went—and Mama had been merciless in retaliation.
“Clarice don’t want to marry me,” William said for the thousandth time as he propped an elbow on the mantel. “She never has.”
Papa laced his hands behind his back. “Did she say that?”
“She don’t have to say it. She don’t like me, and I ain’t too keen on her either.” Clarice pretended to be shy, but William knew her type. She would hoard her marital favors and make him beg and wheedle until he lost patience with her games. Then she would sulk and pout and try to make him feel guilty. Breaking off the engagement was the only gentlemanly thing to do, and if Clarice had a brain in her Frenchie head, she’d admit it.
But she didn’t have a brain in her head. She had an abacus where her heart should be and parents who knew damned good and well she wouldn’t do any better than a baronet’s son.
“Her charms will grow on you once you’re married, believe me, lad.” Papa opened the humidor on his desk and withdrew a pair of cheroots. “Your mother and I were nearly strangers until the wedding night. We found our way forward nonetheless.”
So why am I an only child? William had never asked that of either of his parents. They weren’t an affectionate pair, but they were allies. Witness, they’d ganged up on William regarding this marriage, and now Papa had broken male ranks to help load Mama’s scolding-cannon with heavy shot.
William accepted a slim Havana from his father, held a spill to the hearth fire, and lit his cheroot. “Clarice won’t let me smoke,” he said. “She don’t even let me kiss her.” Not quite the whole truth. Upon the occasion of their engagement a month or so ago, Clarice had allowed William under her skirts.
But only the once, and she’d refused to permit him even a peek at her bubbies. She had turned her face from him and endured his lovemaking with a martyred air.
Hell of a way for a fellow to plight his damned troth, with the lady acting as if he was late to choir practice and wearing dung on his boots.
“Clarice is playing hard to get,” Papa replied, propping a hip on his desk. “Your mother was the same way, but she wanted her own household and her own pin money. I daresay she wanted a child. She reconciled herself to her situation with eventual good grace. Clarice will too.”
“I won’t reconcile myself,” William said, blowing a smoke ring and watching it waft across Papa’s study. “You can drag me to the altar, and I’ll stand beside Clarice as mute as a marble statue. I’m already in disgrace for that bit with Lady Della. Backing out of the wedding won’t cause any more scandal.” The scheme with Lady Della had almost worked, damn the luck. Another quarter hour, and even Papa would have agreed that William had to marry the earl’s curvy little daughter rather than la-di-da émigré Clarice.
Della Haddonfield didn’t put on airs. She was a fetching little heifer, too, not a dried-up Frenchie nun, and Della, whatever her faults were, had a temper. William adored gaining the upper hand with a woman who had a temper. Della had bigger bubbies than Clarice, too, and William had a fondness for a bouncy pair of bubbies.
“You will marry Clarice, William, and you will do it Monday next. I have the special license.”
William pitched his cheroot into the fire, though he’d taken only a few puffs, and good cheroots were dearly bought.
“I don’t care if you have a bloody decree from the king, Papa. You can’t make me shackle myself to a cold, Frenchie bitch.”
That was a little harsh—Clarice was practical, and her parents were calling the tune—but William’s parents responded to hyperbole. He’d learned that before he’d been breeched.