Page 94 of The Heiress's Daughter
“Clarissa? What do you think?” Izzy asked.
Clarissa screwed up her nose. “I don’t like it,” she said eventually. “It’s like spying, and I don’t want to spy on him. And besides, it would be horridly embarrassing—can you imagine asking people something so…so…?” She shuddered.
“It’s not really spying,” Izzy insisted. “And this way you would find out without having to confront him at all.”
Clarissa shook her head. “No, I’ll just have to find the courage to talk to him about it.”
Izzy frowned. “But even if you do find the courage, what if he lies? You said that yourself, if you remember.”
“I know, but what else can I do?”
“Follow my plan,” Izzy said, exasperated. “It could even be fun.”
But Clarissa was adamant. “No, I don’t like it. Apart from stirring up who knows what kind of gossip, it’s not fair to be going behind his back like that.”
“But—”
“No,” she said. “I won’t do it. Now, I must go and change. I have morning calls to make this afternoon and Mrs. Price-Jones will be waiting.”
Izzy and Zoë watched her go.
“She’s lovely, Clarissa is,” Zoë said. “But she ain’t going to do nothing to help herself, is she? She’ll do anything to help someone else, but when it comes to sticking up for herself she’s like, I dunno, all honey and fluff inside, like a syllabub.”
Izzy nodded. “I know. Our father and her mother sucked all the confidence out of her.” She gave Zoë a mischievous look. “But if she won’t do it, I will. And now I come to think of it, it’s better this way. She’s unmarried and her reputation is too fragile for something like this—especially since that Clayborn scandal—but I’m a married woman now and can get away with a lot more.”
In bed that night, Clarissa thought over the talk she’d had with her sisters that morning. She’d thought and thought and thought, and had come to an uncomfortable conclusion: she had two choices—go on as she had been going, which meant being miserable and torn and uncertain and eventually breaking her betrothal to Lord Randall—or take her courage in her hands and ask Lord Randall about his rakishness. Which would lead to…she wasn’t sure what. But it would besomething.
Oh, but the very thought of confronting him about such a delicate subject made her squirm.
But if she didn’t…
She thought about her visit to Lady Tarrant and her dear little baby. She’d held little Ross in her arms, and he was so tiny and so precious, with his earnest gaze and his tiny starfish hands with their minute, perfect fingernails…
She wanted a baby. She wanted to be married and to have a baby of her own. And, she finally admitted to herself, she wanted Lord Randall. She’d tried and tried not to fall in love with him, but it had proved impossible.
She slipped out of bed, turned up the gaslight and fetched the list she’d made so long ago.
1) A man as unlike Papa as possibleand4) Kindness, especially to children. And animals.
She thought about the way he’d been with the little girls. He might be a rake, but he was nothing like Papa. Lord Randall would make a wonderful father. And even if he was unfaithful, he would be kind to her and any children they had, she was sure.
2)Handsome.Attractive. To me. And interesting.
That went without saying. She was wildly attracted to him, to the extent that every other man she met paled into insignificance.
6) No fortune hunters.
He was rich, so that wasn’t an issue.
5) Respects me.
She thought he did, at least he didn’t ride roughshod over her opinions like some men did. And he listened to her, truly listened.
She sighed. It all came back to numbers 3 and 7:
3) Fidelity. 7) No rakes.
Ah, that was the rub. He was a notorious rake. Could she trust him to be faithful? And if he wasn’t, could she bear it?
