Page 95 of The Heiress's Daughter
8) Love.Love.
The ultimate prize. It was a gamble, a risk, but worth it in the end. If she won.
She put the list aside, her mind made up. She had to talk to him, no matter how difficult or embarrassing it would be.There was no real choice. He might lie to her, but at least she would have tried.
The following night Clarissa and Mrs. Price-Jones attended a rout with Izzy and Leo. It was Izzy’s first public outing since her return from their honeymoon, and she was keyed up with excitement. She was wearing a new dress that was part of her trousseau, in vivid emerald silk that exactly matched her eyes. “So good to be out of those dreary whites and pastels,” she confided to Clarissa, who was wearing a dress in the palest biscuit color. “Won’t be long before you can wear lovely bright colors, too, like Mrs. P-J and me.” She cast a sideways glance at Mrs. Price-Jones’s outfit—red, green and purple—and winked.
“I don’t mind soft colors,” Clarissa said.
“Yes, but once you’re married to Lord Randall, you can wear whatever you like.”
“It’s not a real engagement,” Clarissa reminded her.
Izzy just laughed.
After greeting their hosts they began to circulate, meeting up with friends and making new acquaintances. After a while, Clarissa noticed Izzy in close conversation with Lady Snape. Lady Snake. She hoped that the woman wasn’t being nasty to her beautiful sister. Izzy had been on her honeymoon when Clarissa had first met that unpleasant lady. She’d seemed a very bitter, jealous type.
The next time she saw her sister she was talking with the lady who had warned Clarissa not to fall for Race. Clarissa still didn’t know her name.
A little later she noticed her talking to another dashing-looking sophisticated woman, and shortly after that, Izzy fell into conversation with the very elegant, rather daring Lady Windthrop.
All the women she’d been talking to this evening were attractive, very modish and with a…well,reputationwastoo harsh a description, but they were certainly not regarded as paragons of respectability. Oh well, her sister was a married woman now, and a countess, and Clarissa supposed it wasn’t surprising if Izzy decided she wanted to move in a faster set.
No doubt Izzy had found her pre-marriage society a little…tame and was relishing her new freedom. It was inevitable that some changes would occur after marriage. And there was no doubt that Izzy was very happy in her marriage, and that, Clarissa told herself, was all that mattered.
Mrs. Price-Jones was also circulating among a rather younger set than her usual companions, closely followed by her two silver-haired suitors. She smiled, watching each one subtly trying to outmaneuver the other. Then Lord Randall appeared at her elbow—she hadn’t even seen him arrive—and informed her that dancing was about to commence in the other room, and she forgot all about her sister and her chaperone.
They danced a country dance, and it was just as well it was one Clarissa knew well, as her mind was wholly occupied with just one thought: how to ask Lord Randall about his rakish reputation.
In the end, she achieved it without finesse, nerving herself to say bluntly at the end of the dance, “Lord Randall, we need to talk.”
He raised his brows. “I thought you seemed preoccupied this evening. Is it serious?”
She swallowed. “Very. I need to talk to you in private.”
He glanced around at the crowded rooms filled with chattering people. “No chance of privacy here, then. Can I call on you?”
“No, because Mrs. Price-Jones would be sure to sit with us. She did when Leo was courting my sister. Never left them alone together for a minute.” Izzy had met Leo in secret, in the summerhouse, late at night. Clarissa didn’t want to dothat, not for the kind of talk she had in mind. The summerhouse was a place for romance.
Besides, she didn’t want Milly or anyone else crashing in on her private talk.
He thought for a minute. “Your chaperone doesn’t ride.”
“No, but Izzy does and she’d probably want to come with us.”
“The summerhouse in the garden?”
“No.” Both Izzy and Zoë used it.
“Very well, how about I call for you tomorrow morning to take you for a drive in my curricle. I recall the way your indomitable chaperone squeezed herself into Clayborn’s phaeton, but only two can fit in a curricle. And since we’re betrothed, a drive in the park in an open carriage is perfectly comme il faut.”
She nodded. “Very well then.” It wasn’t ideal, trying to talk while he drove, but she couldn’t think of any other way to be alone with him.
“At ten o’clock tomorrow morning?”
She nodded, feeling slightly sick. There. She’d done it. Set up the meeting. Now all she had to do was get through the rest of the night somehow until ten o’clock. And then…She shivered.
But it had to be done. Her future depended on it.
