A Duchess by Midnight (2 page)

As young Clara
Witherspoon said goodbye to her father, she had no way of knowing it would be the last time she wrapped her thin arms around his stocky barrel or inhaled his woodsy scent. If she
had
known about the dire events that were about to transpire she would have been certain to embrace him a bit longer and a bit tighter, or perhaps she might have refused to let him go all together.

Unfortunately, she had no way to see into the future and so she let him leave as she always did and he tousled her hair as
he
always did and she retreated to the third floor of their country estate to watch from the highest window as her beloved father said goodbye to her considerably less beloved stepmother and two new stepsisters.

Clara may have only met Lady Irene Farnsworth – Lady Irene Witherspoon now – four days ago, but four days was more than enough time for her to form a rather unfavorable opinion of her father’s new wife.

For one thing, Lady Irene wore far too much perfume. It enveloped her in a cloud of musty flowers wherever she went, making Clara loathe to stand within three feet of her. For another thing, the way Lady Irene spoke to Clara in front of her father was
not
the same way she spoke to her behind closed doors. The differences were minimal – a nasally inflection in her tone, a glint of annoyance in her eyes, a whiteness in her knuckles – but to a child as sensitive as Clara they might as well have been night and day.

Now she was stuck with Lady Irene and her two daughters for an entire month while her father traveled to London on business! It was horrible. It was awful. It was–

“What are you doing up here?” Her thin, high-pitched voice as unmistakable as her mother’s, twelve-year-old Henrietta Farnsworth opened the door to Clara’s private lookout spot without bothering to knock and waltzed inside the small, sunlit room with her nose in the air and her arms clutched around her new pet, a fluffy white kitten she had named Oscar.

Clara took a step back from the window and crossed her arms, knobby elbows sticking out the side. “Nothing,” she said defensively. “What are
you
doing up here?” She knew in her heart that she needed to be kinder to her stepsisters even though they had not been very kind to her, but it was proving to be rather difficult. While Lady Irene had at least made an effort to disguise her true feelings in regards to her new daughter, Henrietta and Gabriella had made their contempt for Clara plainly known. She did not know where their animosity stemmed from, although she suspected it had something to do with the suddenness of their mother’s marriage.

What she did not know – but would come to discover in time – was that her stepsisters were viciously jealous creatures who coveted things not because they wanted them, but because others had them and they did not.

“Mama sent me to find you. She would like you to meet her downstairs in the drawing room.”

It was a simple enough request, although the smirking curve of Henrietta’s lips warned of darker intentions. The muscles in Clara’s tummy clenched tight. She was not looking forward to the next four weeks by any stretch of the imagination, but she planned on getting through her father’s absence by keeping herself busy with a variety of her favorite activities including horseback riding, helping Mr. Plum with the vegetable garden, collecting bouquets of wildflowers to decorate the house, and feeding the ducks down by the pond.

Not on her list?

Meeting with Lady Irene.

“I would prefer to remain here,” she said, a mutinous frown tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“In this dusty old place?” Henrietta’s nose wrinkled. “How odd.”

“It is not odd,” Clara protested. “It is quiet and peaceful. Or rather it
was
quiet and peaceful,” she muttered under breath with a meaningful glare at her intrusive stepsister. She had hoped that the third floor attic would be the one room in the house she could spend her time uninterrupted, but it seemed even this sanctuary was to be taken from her.

“Well I think it smells and Oscar agrees. Don’t you, Oscar?” Grabbing the kitten’s tiny chin Henriette forced him to nod his head up and down. “See? Even
he
thinks it smells and he’s just a cat. Now are you coming downstairs or not? Mama is waiting.”

She is not my mother
, Clara thought silently. She would have said the words out loud, but she really was trying her best to keep an open mind where Lady Irene and her daughters were concerned. It was what her father would have wanted, and there was no one else in the world Clara hated to disappoint more than him.

He was the only parent she had ever known; her mother having succumbed to a wasting sickness when Clara was just three years of age. From what she had learned from her father and the servants she knew her mother had been a soft-spoken, kind, gracious woman with a love for animals and nature that she had passed on to her only daughter. Sometimes Clara dreamed about her, but the dreams were vague and blurred by time. The only thing she could remember with any clarity was a whimsical smile, the soft scent of lavender, and a loving kiss being placed upon her brow.

A life-size portrait of her mother hung above the fireplace in the front parlor. Unlike most portraits where the subject was painfully stiff the late Lady Gwen had been painted in the middle of a flowering meadow, her strawberry blonde hair teased by an invisible breeze as she smiled dreamily up at the clear blue sky.

At the end of every day Clara made it a point to visit her mother in the parlor. Sometimes she would speak, but often she would merely study the painting with naked longing as she wished for the impossible.

It was a small comfort to know that she was growing up to look exactly like her mother. A miniature replica, Father had proclaimed more than once, his face beaming with pride. Although Clara’s features were still rounded with childhood and were not yet as well defined as her mother’s had been, they shared the same tumble of titian curls, large blue eyes, and sprinkle of freckles across their delicate noses and rosy cheeks.

At only twelve years of age Clara already had the makings of becoming one of the greatest beauties the
ton
had ever seen.

Something her new stepmother was darkly aware of.

“What does she want?” Clara asked. Her gaze fell to Oliver as the kitten squirmed and tried to free itself from Henrietta’s tight grasp. She had made the mistake of telling Lady Irene that her father was going to give her a kitten for her thirteenth birthday. The next day Oliver had arrived, bundled up in a basket and wearing a big floppy bow. At first Clara had thought the furry little feline was intended for her and she’d been beyond delighted, but her excitement had been short-lived when she learned Oliver was a gift for Henrietta and was not to be touched. It was her first inclination there was more to her stepmother than met the eye.

“I believe he wants to get down,” she said when Oliver began to struggle in earnest.

“Nonsense.” Ignoring his obvious discomfort, Henrietta clutched the kitten more firmly against her chest. “He is merely tired of being stuck in this dirty, dusty, musty old room. Aren’t you, Oscar?”

Clara gritted her teeth. She wasn’t surprised Henrietta did not understand the rustic charm of the attic. Like her sister and her mother, Henrietta only seemed to like new, sparkly things. The brighter and the more expensive the better. “If he doesn’t like it then perhaps you should leave.”

“If I return downstairs without you Mother is going to be very perturbed.”

“Isn’t she always?” Clara said before she could stop herself.

Henrietta’s face pinched together in a rather unflattering manner as her eyes narrowed. Like Clara, she and her sister were rapidly growing into miniature replicas of their mother. Unfortunately, the baron’s second wife was not nearly as comely as his first had been.

It was not that Lady Irene was undesirable to look at. When she smiled she was actually quite pretty, although her dour disposition did not lend itself to very much smiling. It also did not help matters that she wore her dark hair pulled back in a chignon so tight it stretched the skin across her entire forehead, giving her face a rather skeletal appearance that made her long nose seem even longer and her thin lips look even thinner.

“Only because she has
you
as a stepdaughter,” Henrietta said snidely.

“I have not done anything!”
Or at least not very much of anything,
Clara added silently. She supposed she could have been more agreeable, but it was growing increasingly difficult to be nice when she was met with cold animosity at every turn. Oh,
why
had her father married such a wretched woman? Try as she might she had yet to discover Lady Irene’s appeal.

“Girls!” As though she knew she was being discussed, Lady Irene’s voice rang through the house, its sharp tone causing both Clara and Henrietta to instinctively flinch. “Girls, come down here at once! My patience has reached its limit! If you are not standing in front of me in three seconds you shall both go without supper tonight.”

“Now look what you’ve done,” Henrietta hissed before she whirled around and bolted out the door, her footsteps echoing on the creaky spiral staircase as she raced downstairs.

Clara followed much more reluctantly. She did not know why Lady Irene wanted to see her, but she knew it couldn’t have been for anything very good. Dragging her feet, she slowly made her way to the parlor. With only eighteen rooms – not including the attic – Windmere was not very large manor, but it gave the illusion of space with clean lines, high ceilings, and large windows. The true beauty of the estate, however, rested with its land.

Tucked away down a long, winding, tree-lined drive, Windmere was comprised of nearly fifty acres, most of which were fields and meadows. Gardens were plentiful and flowers bloomed from spring to fall, adding vibrant color to an already beautiful landscape. A small barn housed the livestock, including Clara’s beloved pony, and behind the barn there was a little stone cottage where the grounds keeper and his wife lived.

Windmere may have been the only home Clara had ever known – unlike his peers, the baron did not keep a second residence in London – but she loved it beyond reason and could never imagine living anywhere else.

“You wanted to see me?” she said as she stepped into the parlor. Lady Irene was sitting by the window in a gilt edged chair upholstered in gold brocade. It was but one of many new pieces of furniture Lady Irene had purchased since her arrival. Suffice it to say the baroque style of decorating was not what Clara would have chosen, but then she was not the mistress of the household. Something which Lady Irene seemed to take particular pleasure in reminding her anytime they had one of these ‘chats’.

Henrietta hovered by her mother’s side, her face expressionless save the faint hint of a smirk curdling at the edges of her mouth.

Oliver was nowhere to be seen.

“Well it is about time,” Lady Irene said sharply. “I have been waiting for nearly ten minutes.”

“I am sorry to have kept you waiting.” Anticipating the unpleasantness that was about to befall her, Clara shifted her weight from foot to foot as her hands twisted behind her back. “I was all the way up on the third floor.”

“So was my daughter, although she managed to get here a good two minutes before you. I wonder why that is? Never mind.” Lady Irene gloved hand swooped through the air in an elegant wave of dismissal. “Your perpetual tardiness is not what I have called you down here to discuss. Henrietta, leave us.”

With one final sneer in Clara’s direction that she made certain her mother could not see, Henrietta marched daintily out of the parlor and closed the door behind her.

“You know,” Lady Irene mused as her gaze deliberately moved down Clara’s slender frame inch by uncomfortable inch, “you really do look like your mother.”

Clara bit her lip as she waited for the proverbial second shoe to drop. When it did not come the twisted knot of tension that had gathered between her shoulder blades the moment she’d stepped into the parlor loosened ever-so-slightly. “Thank you.”

“Oh, did you think that was a compliment?” Lady Irene’s mouth curved even as her pale blue eyes hardened into chips of ice. “How adorable.”

Had Clara been previously exposed to the cattiness of women she might have known how to respond in kind, but she had lived a sheltered life at Windmere and so she only smiled uncertainly as the knot between her shoulders rewound itself into an even tighter ball.

“Is there something you want of me, Lady Stepmother?” she inquired politely.

“Do have a seat, Clara. There is much we need to discuss.”

Walking woodenly across the parlor Clara sat on the very edge of a new chaise lounge upholstered in the same garish gold brocade as the chair Lady Irene was sitting on. Not knowing what to do with her hands she rested them on top of her knees after a few moments of fidgeting and crossed her legs at the ankle. This was the part she hated the most. When Lady Irene would stare at her in silence as though judging her for crimes she had yet to commit.

“Your father left this morning,” Lady Irene said at last.