Page 69 of The Heiress's Daughter
As Race threaded his way through the crowd, snippets of conversation reached his ears. “Did you see? His breeches were quite unbuttoned…”
“Shefollowedhimin—I saw her.”
“How far do you think they got before…?”
“…always thought she was too good to be true.”
“…said they had an understanding…”
“…an heiress, you know…”
Race wanted to stop and confront the gossips, but he gritted his teeth and kept walking. Confronting them would just feed the harmful talk about Clarissa.
A small clot of people still lingered around the doorway to the anteroom, several people with their ears pressed to the door.
“Excuse me,” he said in freezing accents. “Don’t you have better things to do, better places to be?” He raked them with a contemptuous stare until most of them fell back and began to wander off.
He entered, closing the door firmly behind him and paused. He seemed to have walked in on an argument.
“I won’t! I don’t care if people talk. I don’t care what they say,” Clarissa was saying in a low, vehement voice.
Her chaperone responded, “You must. And I’m sure he will do it. That man has a soft spot for you. He’s very protective.”
“I won’t ask it of—” Clarissa broke off, seeing him. “You’re not going to duel him, are you, Lord Randall? Please tell me you won’t.”
“There will be no duel,” Race said curtly. So, after all that had happened, she still worried about the villain? Surely not? “At least, not with me,” he added. Grantley was another matter.
“Oh, I’m glad.” Her whole body seemed to relax.
“You did deal with him as he deserved, I hope?” The chaperone smoothed the shawl around Clarissa’s shoulders.
“I did. He’s gone. You won’t see him again.” He hadn’t taken his eyes off Clarissa. “Are you sure you’re all right, Miss Studley?”
She nodded, her smile a little wobbly but heartbreakingly brave. “A bit shaken up, but you arrived just in time. Thank you.”
“But her reputation is ruined,” Mrs. Price-Jones declared.
“I told you, I don’t care about that,” Clarissa said quickly. “It doesn’t matter in the least.”
But it mattered to Race. He’d heard the speculation—curious and malicious—that had arisen in just the last few minutes. It was only going to get worse, as versions of the event were passed around, growing in outrageousness as they went. She didn’t deserve to be gossiped about like that.“Was there an understanding between you and Clayborn?” He had to know.
“No!” she said indignantly. “There wasneveranything like that between us. He did ask me to marry him, I admit, but I refused him. More than once.”
Which meant the swine had asked her more than once.
“She needs to be betrothed,” Mrs. Price-Jones said with a meaning look at Race. “There will still be a scandal, but a betrothal would make everything better.”
“I won’t—” Clarissa began.
He stared at the chaperone in outrage. “You mean you would condone her betrothal to that swine?”
The woman rolled her eyes. “Not to him of course! Someone else. Someone respectable.” She eyed him meaningfully.
Race frowned. Did she mean him? He was hardly respectable, at least as society saw things.
Mrs. Price-Jones continued. “A betrothal would protect Clarissa from the worst of the scandal. It would direct talk away from the unsavory events that took place in this room, and focus it on the betrothal.” She looked at him. “So, Lord Randall…?”
Clarissa shook her head frantically. “No, no, you cannot ask it of him.”
