The Courtesan's Daughter by Claudia Dain Page B

else did you marry at twenty a girl of your father’s choosing, begetting an heir within the year? How is Alston, by the way?”
    “Thriving,” Cal said. “But do not seek to drive me off my point. I married, yes; I did my duty and produced an heir. Was I happy? Is there happiness to be found in responsibility? Yes, of a sort. But did I love the girl chosen for me? No. You know yourself I said a prayer of thanks the day Sarah died. Another year together and we would have drawn blood.”
    “Yet you did your duty. Your father was content.”
    “Yes, and in the ground himself a scant month before Sarah. It does no good to please the dead. Please yourself. That is what life teaches.”
    Ashdon was shaking his head before Cal had even finished. “I cannot. His hurts, his wounds, are mine.”
    “His wounds are imagined,” Calbourne urged. “Let this die with him, Ash. What can be gained from a marriage with Sophia’s brat? ”
    “Revenge,” Ashdon said softly, looking at Sophia.
    “Revenge is overrated. By refusing you, Lady Caroline had denied you a path to your own destruction. I may kiss her in thanks,” Cal said, trying to jest when the mood between them was leaden.
    Ashdon smiled and looked down at his feet.
    “What?” Cal said. “This is the end of it. She has refused you. You will move on.”
    Ashdon shrugged and kept smiling.
    “Tell me,” Cal commanded, sounding very ducal.
    “She has refused to be my wife, that is true. She has made her choice,” Ashdon said, looking at his friend with glittering eyes. “What’s left now but for her to be my whore?”

Nine
    “OAF,” Caro said as she was being laced into fresh, dry stays.
    “You did it yourself,” Anne said, holding Caro’s new gown, a cream white silk with tiny florets of icy white embroidery on the sleeves, while the maid laced the stays.
    “Did it myself? When he was practically chasing me around the room? What else was I to do? Stand in place and let him throttle me?”
    “You exaggerate,” Anne said calmly.
    “I most certainly do not. You did not see his eyes. They were positively lethal. And I always thought blue eyes were so pleasant, so cheerful, before now. That oaf has ruined blue eyes for me forever.”
    “Better to have blue eyes ruined than be ruined yourself,” Anne said in an undertone.
    “What was that?” Caro said stiffly as the maid tied off her stays.
    “Just talking to myself,” Anne said.
    “You were not,” Caro said, dismissing the maid, “but I hate to call you a liar to your face.”
    “Isn’t that what you just did?” Anne said, grinning.
    “Not exactly, no,” Caro said with an answering grin.
    “Well, I suppose I can’t exactly take offense then, can I? How fortunate for me that I don’t offend easily.”
    “No, how fortunate for me. ”
    “You are fortunate in all things, Caro,” Anne said more seriously. “Don’t toss fortune into the wind, especially not in the name of revenge.”
    “Revenge?” Caro said, staring at herself in the mirror and toying with a curl next to her left ear. “I don’t have a vengeful bone in my body.”
    “Then vengeance must reside elsewhere,” Anne said dryly. “Perhaps in your liver?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous, Anne.”
    Anne grinned and stood behind Caro to gently fuss with her hair. “You sound just like your mother.”
    “That’s to the good, I think,” Caro said, her hands falling to her sides.
    “In most ways, yes, I think so as well,” Anne said softly, staring at Caro in the mirror. “I admire Sophia. She lifted me out of a life that … well, that was beyond bearing, really. Almost beyond comprehension. I’m quite certain that I’d be dead by now, if not for her generosity.”
    “You’d be fine. You’d have survived.”
    “As what?”
    “I don’t know, perhaps as a—”
    “Courtesan?” Anne finished for her.
    “There are worse things,” Caro said defiantly.
    “How would you know?” Anne countered.
    Caro lifted her chin and