Read Online Ruthless Charmer by Julia London - Free Book Online Page A

crossed to the window.
    Even though she continued on at Kettering Hall each summer, she saw him less frequently after that—rarely, if at all, by the time she was grown. But oh, how she had relished the many rumors that circulated about the Rogues of Regent Street! Julian was considered the most handsome scoundrel among them, the one who could turn a woman to butter with just a smile, which he apparently did with alarming frequency—if one listened to gossip, one would think he changed his attentions as often as he changed his shirt. Of course, now that she was older and more experienced in the ways of the world, Claudia understood men like Julian ultimately loved themselves above all else.
    Devil take him.
    Oh, all right. She had seen a different Julian when Valerie died. The Julian who stood vigil at Valerie's coffin in the black-draped drawing room as friends and family came to pay their last respects. He would not eat or drink for two days. When Louis Renault tried to coax him to come away, if only to rest, he had lashed out in grief, assailing those around him, begging them to leave him be.
    When the Redbourne coach pulled away from Kettering Hall two days later with her in it, Claudia had seen him in the chapel graveyard, down on his knees next to a fresh earthen mound, and her heart had shattered. She had sobbed all the way back to London for a man who was suffering beyond her compre-hension.
    She had never seen that Julian again.
    The worst of it was that with the benefit of time, she could see that Phillip really wasn't much different from Julian. In the end, she was nothing more to him than what women were to men in general—mere objects of pleasure, fundamentally insignificant to the world.
    After the sting of Phillip's death had passed, she had begun to look around her and really see the inequality between genders. Regardless of rank, women were chattel in English society: typically undereducated, living under a man's thumb, and completely subject to his whims. If Claudia had learned anything, it was that she wanted more from life than to be someone's hostess, wife, or lover. Yet how did she break the bonds of society's restrictions or social mores she had never even questioned before then?
    She had mulled it over for a time, feeling inadequate to the task, lacking the imagination necessary to force change. Then one day, she found the young daughter of a kitchen maid wandering about the main library. Happy to have a little company, Claudia had fetched a book her governess had read to her as a child and invited Karen to sit beside her so that they might read the book together.
    But Karen did not know her letters, and she was well past the age a girl should know her letters. Worse, Karen didn't seem particularly bothered by it. Claudia had known instantly what she must do.
    The very clear notion had come to her almost immediately: Women had to open their minds if they were to gain equality and respect. Girls had to be educated beyond rudimentary language and math so that they might fill their heads with endless possibilities. The girls of the lower class, who were the least likely of all to receive an education, needed her help the most.
    It was with great enthusiasm and a sense of purpose that Claudia embraced her worthy goal, and it was one that she had worked relentlessly toward since, her conviction strengthened every day by the women she met and the many dreams and aspirations they held, regardless of rank or situation. She used her position—or rather, her father's position as confidant to the king-—to further her cause. Her efforts, she would admit, had not always been met with great enthusiasm. Most men and women among the ton believed that the woman's place in the home and in society was as it should be and resisted any change. There were times that Claudia felt as if she was trying to move a mountain, but not once did she give up. In fact, she was enjoying a respite at Eugenie's before tackling her