Playing to Win (20 page)

"Clarissa, you are far too
well-educated to be happy with an illiterate
clodhopper!"

Her temper flashed again. "Yes—more’s
the pity! And you need not tell me that I am no fit wife for a
gentleman.
I know that, too."

"Then whom do you picture, sharing this
rustic life with you? Where will you find your gentle,
scholarly—yet oddly impoverished!—companion?"

She lifted her chin defiantly at him.
"You asked me to describe my ideal, and I have done so! I did not
say I expect to find it."

"You won’t!" he told her bluntly. "In
fact, Clarissa, here is your dilemma in a nutshell: Every man whom
you could possibly consider marrying will deem you
unmarriageable."

He leaned back in his chair, certain
that he had just flung down the card that would take the trick. But
he had not. Clarissa’s hands clenched on the arms of her chair, and
her voice shook with emotion.

"That is not true! You speak as if
everyone was reared to consider only the surface—to seek only
worldly gain! For that is what
you
seek, in marriage and in
everything else! You have made that clear! But not everyone is
brought up so. Not everyone is taught to study
only
their
own advantage! It may be difficult for you to believe, Mr.
Whitlatch, but there are people who place a high value on inner
qualities! On—on—character! And temperament! And virtue!
And—"

Her voice became wholly suspended in
tears. She dug fiercely in the mending basket at her feet,
extracted a handkerchief, and defiantly blew her nose.

Mr. Whitlatch was thrown off balance.
He found himself struggling once again to suppress the pangs of
conscience.

Blast the wench! He had injured her
rubbishing
feelings
again! But it was for her own good. The
sooner Clarissa faced reality, the better off she would be. It
would do her a great disservice to encourage such a dangerous
fantasy. The mores of the World were universal.
Unalterable.

He scowled. "Marriages may be made in
heaven, but so long as they are contracted here on earth, they will
remain what they have always been: commercial pacts."

He had meant to adopt a patient, firm
tone with her, suitable for pointing out the magnitude of her
error, but somehow he missed the mark. Even to his own ears, he
merely sounded sulky.

Clarissa’s wet eyes widened accusingly.
"You told me yourself you hoped to marry for love!"

He stifled an impatient exclamation. "I
hope
to marry for love! But I
plan
to marry well. I
intend to have both, if the two are not incompatible. But only a
fool lets his heart rule his head. That is the way of the world,
Clarissa."

"No one is more aware of that than I!"
She sniffed, refolding the damp handkerchief with shaking hands. "I
do not expect to marry, but I do not concede that it is impossible.
I am sure there are educated, virtuous, gently-bred men who might
overlook my—my lack of connections."

He stared incredulously at her. "This
is delusion! Only the lower classes marry solely for love. One of
the things an educated man learns while being educated is to seek a
bride as high as he may! Where will you find an intelligent man who
is indifferent to his wife’s background? What sort of a man is
reared to care for virtue alone in his bride?"

Clarissa’s spine straightened. Her eyes
blazed in her lovely face. She looked magnificent.

"A vicar’s son!" she cried, in the
manner of one throwing down a gauntlet.

Mr. Whitlatch’s jaw dropped. So this
was the secret wish of Clarissa Feeney’s heart. To marry a vicar’s
son. She dreamed of someday meeting a mild-mannered, unworldly
nincompoop who would place his trust in Heaven and wed her for
love.

He threw back his head and roared with
laughter. He laughed until tears gathered in the corners of his
eyes. He laughed until he choked. Then he wiped his streaming eyes,
shaking his head and gasping.

"Oh, Clarissa! Oh, Clarissa, that’s
rich!"

"I fail to see the joke," said
Clarissa. Her voice was small, and shook a little.

Trevor looked at her, and the sight of
her hurt feelings sobered him a bit. His laughter subsided into a
lopsided grin.

"The joke," he explained, "is that I am
a vicar’s son."

This time it was Clarissa’s jaw that
dropped. The door swung noiselessly open and Simmons stepped into
the room. "Dinner is served, sir," he announced in sepulchral
tones.

Chapter 13

Clarissa set down her fork with a sigh.
"Two persons cannot possibly do justice to this dinner," she said,
with real regret. She gazed at the barely-touched platters of food
arrayed before her, and shook her head in disturbed wonder. The
unnecessary magnificence of this meal struck her as decadent. It
was costing her a severe struggle to hold her tongue on the
subject.

Mr. Whitlatch had offered her a hasty
apology when dinner was announced, and she had swallowed her
distress and accepted it. No good alternative had presented itself
to her; she was, however unwillingly, a guest in the man’s home.
And once she had consented to dine alone with a single gentleman,
an action she knew perfectly well would ruin her if it ever became
known, she was in a poor position to object to the uncalled-for
lavishness of the dinner. Or, for that matter, to cavil at the
seating arrangement. Mr. Whitlatch was seated at the head of the
table, with Clarissa at his left hand rather than at the
foot—improper for dining
tete-a-tete,
but, as Trevor had
pointed out, far more convenient. Her host had yet again chosen
convenience over propriety. He was certainly consistent.

Now he was grinning at her over the rim
of his wine glass. "You sound as if you don’t approve."

"I do not," she said earnestly,
relieved to speak her mind at last. "It is a shocking waste, sir.
There are many hungry people in the world."

Her companion appeared utterly
unrepentant. Even at dinner he lounged at his ease, leaning on one
elbow in a way that would have earned him instant dismissal from
the table at Miss Bathurst’s Ladies’ Academy. His dark eyes gleamed
with amusement.

"I am happy to say that you need not
add this meal to the list of my iniquities. Whatever was not grown
in my own gardens was purchased at fair market value."

She blushed for her rudeness. "I beg
your pardon! I did not mean to criticize you."

His swarthy features lit with that
peculiarly engaging grin of his. "You didn’t offend me, if that is
what you mean."

No; she was fast reaching the
conclusion that it was impossible to offend Mr. Whitlatch! He
seemed to have no notion of the rules governing polite conduct. Why
did she find his utter lack of propriety
attractive?
Really,
the effect he had on her was inexplicable.

She eyed him doubtfully. "Are you truly
a vicar’s son?" she asked.

He chuckled. "Shocking, isn’t it? To
have fallen so far!"

She flushed scarlet. "Oh, dear! I ought
not to blurt out such a question. I beg your pardon."

He set his wine glass down and took up
his fork again. "You know, I wish you will rid your mind of the
notion that I am a fragile fellow, forever needing to have my
pardon begged."

Clarissa watched, fascinated, as he
carved off a bite of roast chicken with as much relish as if he had
not already eaten enough for two people. "Oddly enough, I was just
thinking that," she said politely. "You are amazingly
thick-skinned, sir."

"Um," he agreed, chewing. "Never take
offense where none was meant. ‘S’one of my rules."

Her eyes twinkled. "What an excellent
rule. I imagine you frequently wish that others followed
it."

Good heavens, the man did not even take
offense at
that!
He chuckled, and lifted his wine glass to
her! Despite her best intentions, she burst out
laughing.

"That’s better," he said approvingly.
"The way you were eyeing that ham and yawping about the poor, I
thought you were planning to read me a lecture. I’d much rather you
laughed at me."

"I ought not to laugh, sir," she said
ruefully. "It is no laughing matter, after all! I am sure my time
would be better spent in reading you a lecture, as you call
it."

"On the contrary! Your time would be
completely wasted."

She smiled. "I cannot believe you to be
completely lost to virtue, Trevor, after all your kindness to
me."

A swift frown momentarily darkened his
features, and she felt him withdraw from her in some indefinable
manner. The moment passed so quickly, however, she was not sure she
had seen it. Almost immediately he was teasing her
again.

"I am immune to rudeness of every sort,
Clarissa. I go further: I welcome it! I draw the line, however, at
sermons delivered over dinner. My kindness, as you have erroneously
called it, does not extend that far."

She gave another gurgle of laughter.
"You have patiently borne with my preaching already, I think! I do
not blame you for desiring a change. What rudeness shall I inflict
upon you next?"

He chewed thoughtfully, pretending to
consider the possibilities. "You had begun very nicely, I think,"
he suggested.

She bit her lip, dismayed. "Oh, dear!
Had I?"

He swallowed another mouthful of wine.
"Yes," he said simply. "You were expressing doubts about my
parentage."

She choked. "You know perfectly well I
never meant it so! I expressed only my amazement that someone so—so
unconventional—began life as a vicar’s son."

"Ah. Perhaps it will clarify matters if
I explain that I was my father’s
third
son. By the time I
arrived, it was abundantly clear that both Philip and James were
going to follow in Papa’s saintly footsteps. It would have been
redundant for me to do the same."

"Whose footsteps did you follow,
then?"

"My uncle’s. They led me, originally,
to the East India Company."

Clarissa coaxed the tale from him, so
engrossed that she barely noticed the servants’ silent removal of
the dinner plates. Her host’s casualness had its natural effect and
she soon abandoned decorum, placing her elbows on the table and
leaning her head on one hand, raptly watching the candlelight
flicker across the strong planes of Mr. Whitlatch’s face as he
talked.

He spoke with affection of his dashing,
eccentric uncle, Zachary Whitlatch, and the knack for business he
had apparently inherited from him. Pious Philip and scholarly James
had felt themselves marked for the Church at an early age, but
young Trevor had taken to his uncle’s seafaring vocation like a
duck to water. With his parents’ fond blessing, Trevor accompanied
his uncle on several trial voyages, and then left home for good at
the age of sixteen to become his childless uncle’s protégé and
heir.

By the time he had described his early
career, the candle set between them was burning low in its socket.
He picked up a pair of snuffers and leisurely removed part of the
wick. As the light intensified slightly, Clarissa sighed and
blinked a little.

"It must be wonderful to be a boy, and
go to sea," she said dreamily. "I have always longed to see the
world."

He shot her an amused glance. "It’s
wonderful only so long as one remains, in fact, a boy," he told
her, finishing his attentions to the candle. "These days, I only
enjoy being at sea for the first week or so. Then it becomes a dead
bore."

"A bore!" she exclaimed. "How is that
possible?"

He tossed the snuffers back onto the
tablecloth and leaned back, grinning at her indignant expression.
"Bad food, low company, cramped quarters, nothing to do—and by the
second week, I promise you, one is well-advised to stay upwind of
the crew."

She had not thought of that. "Oh, dear.
But then, at the end of the voyage—India!" The sparkle returned to
her eyes.

He laughed. "Sometimes. Sometimes other
places."

"Tell me about India. Tell me
anything
about India."

"India? Faugh! I dislike India. It is a
sad, rubbishing sort of place."

She placed her hands over her ears.
"No! Oh, you horrible man. You are teasing me!"

He laughed out loud at her reaction.
"Shall I bore you with tales of my business ventures? I’ll grant
you, those who never leave England miss a great deal. If it weren’t
so tedious to cross the sea, I believe I would recommend travel to
everyone. Travel for pleasure, that is."

"I have never been anywhere," Clarissa
said wistfully.

He reached over and caught her hand in
his. "Where would you like to go, Clarissa?" he whispered, in the
voice of a conspirator. His eyes gleamed with mischief and he
waggled his eyebrows, forcing a giggle out of her.

"Gracious, I don’t know!"

"Bombay? Marseilles? Venice?
Boston?"

"Oh!" she cried, her eyes like saucers.
"Have you been to all those places?"