Simply Perfect by Mary Balogh

soiree this evening instead of coming here.”
    The Duchess of Portfrey was smiling and beckoning from one of the tables and the Earl of Kilbourne was standing to draw out a chair for Claudia.
    It was unclear to Claudia if the marquess regretted the choice he had made. But she was very glad he had come. He had somehow restored her disordered spirits—even if he
had
been the unwitting cause of some of them. She could not remember when she had last laughed so hard.
    She was in grave danger, she thought severely as she took her seat, of revising her opinion of him and actually
liking
him.
    And here she was in the midst of a family group she ought to have left a few hours ago. And she had no one to blame for her renewed discomfort but herself. When had she
ever
before clung to a man for support and protection?
    It was really quite lowering.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    Claudia fell asleep—admittedly after a long spell of wakefulness—thinking about the Marquess of Attingsborough and awoke thinking about Charlie—
the Duke of McLeith.
    Oh, yes, indeed, she had come honestly by her antipathy toward the aristocracy, particularly toward dukes. It had not started with the odious and arrogant Duke of Bewcastle. Another duke had destroyed her life well before she met him.
    She had lived and breathed Charlie Gunning during her childhood and girlhood, or so it seemed in retrospect. They had been virtually inseparable from the moment he had arrived at her father’s house, a bewildered and unhappy five-year-old orphan, until he had gone away to school at the age of twelve, and even after that they had spent every waking moment of his holidays together.
    But then, when he was eighteen and she seventeen, he had gone away never to return. She had not seen him since—until last evening. She had not
heard
from him for almost seventeen years.
    Yet last evening he had spoken to her as if there had been no abrupt and ruthless ending to their relationship. He had spoken as if there were nothing in the world for him to feel guilty about.
    But what a delightful surprise!
    But where are you living?
    Where may I call on you?
    Had he really believed he had the right to be
delighted
? And to
call
on her? How dared he! Seventeen years might be a long time—almost half her life—but it was not
that
long. There was nothing wrong with her memory.
    But she firmly cast aside memory as she dressed for breakfast and her visit to Mr. Hatchard’s office later in the morning. She had decided to go alone, without Edna and Flora. Frances was coming to the house, and she and Susanna were going to take the girls shopping for new clothes and accessories.
    And since Frances came in a carriage and bore the other three off in it not long after a prolonged breakfast, Claudia found herself riding to her appointment in Peter’s town carriage. He had refused even to listen to her protests that she would enjoy the walk on such a sunny day.
    â€œSusanna would never forgive me,” he had said with a twinkle in his eye. “And I would hate that. Have pity on me, Claudia.”
    She was buoyed by high spirits as she rode through the streets of London, despite a niggling worry that the employment Mr. Hatchard had found for the two girls might not be suitable after all. Now that the time had come, she was fairly bubbling with excitement over the fact that she was about to put the final touch to her independence, to her success as a single woman.
    There was no longer any need of assistance from the benefactor who had so generously supported the school almost from the start. She had a letter for him tucked into her reticule—Mr. Hatchard would deliver it for her. It was regrettable that she would never know who the man was, but she respected his desire for anonymity.
    The school was flourishing. Within the last year she had been able to extend it into the house next door and add two more teachers to the staff. Even more