Page 12 of Scandalous Heiress
“Enough people learned of it to give you and me a reputation.”So that Perry Drummond thought he could ruin me a little more.
Ezzie sat back, repentance on her sweet round face.“I forgot.I’m sorry.Of course, you’re right.It’s my fault.Lord Drummond wouldn’t have been so forward with you if it hadn’t been for our escapade in Cherbourg.”
She clutched Ezzie’s hand.“Not your doing at all.I encouraged Drummond’s kisses.”That he did it as a lark was the worst betrayal.What I get for believing in romance.
Ezzie sighed.“I wonder if I can truly trust any man.They always seem to have rough edges.”
“We all do.Men and women.The sticking point is, that some don’t care to acknowledge their own.Or reform.”
Her friend sighed.“But I do like Victor as much as Richard.”
Ezzie could find good in the devil.“I’m sure he’s worthy of that, Ez.”
“What ifIset my hopes on him?”Ezzie sounded half-kidding.
“You might.”Ada opened a hand as if to say,why not?Ezzie wasn’t formally engaged to Richard Cole yet.If the infamous Marquess of Ridgemont was not yet ready to ask her the right question, many in town expected him to propose to her.Yes, if she preferred Lord Victor, her change of heart might cause a ruckus.But must she wait forever for a man who up to now was taking his sweet time?He’d even indulged in an affair these past nine months that left London atwitter.Not in such a big hurry was the notorious Ridgemont.“No one says you can’t.Or shouldn’t.”
“I won’t if you like him, Ade.”
“But I don’t.”That’s all I’d need—a man with his own scandalous past.“He’ll live abroad and I don’t care to leave Britain.So there you have it!”
Ezzie bit her lower lip.“I feel desperately sorry for him.”
“He seems to have recovered.”Recovered to the point that he’s indifferent to women.
Ezzie thought on that a minute.“Do you think so?”
“It had to have hurt him.Men cannot stand that sort of thing.In olden times, they clamped their wives in chastity belts.”
“I bet he wished he had done that.”Ezzie frowned.
“I would’ve liked to know him before his wife did him in.”Ada would give him the benefit of the doubt that he’d once had red blood flowing through his veins.
“Hear, hear!He’s no iceberg, Ada.Look how he loves his children.And his mother.”
“That he does.”The man was not a cold fish through and through.
“I could love him.”
Ada examined her friend.She loved Ezzie’s spontaneity, her willingness to love freely and without reservation.But she questioned what, if any, instinctive discretion Ezzie possessed.“What about Richard?”
Ezzie demurred, raising her shoulders and sighing into the cushions.“Well, of course.”
Which meant what?Ezzie knew about Richard’s recent scandalous seduction of the Prince of Wales’s mistress, a married woman—and she didn’t care about Richard’s peccadilloes.She’d been taught by her mother to care only about catching an English nobleman of means and title.Ada had yet to meet Richard Cole so she couldn’t speak from first-hand knowledge of the man, but she’d agreed to this house party at Ezzie’s insistence.
“I need your perspective, Ada,” she’d pleaded with her for weeks.“I like him, despite what gossips say.And you know that over the years, I’ve had few prospects.Not any my mother would bless.I’ve got to pursue this with Richard.My mother would send me to the jungles of Brazil if I didn’t.A duchess is what she wants of me.”
For the past few months Ada had tried to dissuade Ezzie from her fixation on the marquess.She couldn’t talk any sense into her nor could she point to any other man who might be interested in Ezzie and therefore be a proper suitor.So then, against the force of Esmerelda Moore’s battleship mother, logic had little sway.
Add to that, even though Richard had not yet approached her parents for permission nor begun the discussions of finances for her dowry, pin money and widow’s portion, he had indeed all but notified society he intended to ask for her hand.By Ezzie’s own accounts, he had kissed her often in public.In private, he had put his lips to other more scandalous part of her body.His hands, too, if Ada interpreted her friend’s blushes correctly.That alone defined him morally and ethically as her betrothed, even if society knew nothing of that intrusive behavior.
So of what challenge was Richard’s brother, this cool fellow who appeared like a genie from a distant land?He was probably cut from the same cloth as his brother.The younger learned from the older, wasn’t that the way of it?Birds of a feather and all that.
Ada was there to help her friend see reason.About men, money, and British society, God rest their aristocratic souls.“You know nothing of this brother, Ezzie.”
“True, of course.I should focus on Richard,” Ezzie admitted.
“Exactly.It’s not Victor who will propose to you this week.”
