The Inheritance by Joan Johnston

uncountesslike sound. “You underestimate yourself, Daisy. You’re a beautiful young woman. He’s a man. There’s no reason why you can’t get him to propose marriage.”
    Daisy rose and began pacing again, like a sleek cat in a small cage. “Don’t, Priss. Can’t you see how impossible all this is? I simply can’t do it. I’m not like you. I don’t know how to flirt. I haven’t the vaguest idea how to attract a man’s attention.”
    “You got him to kiss you,” Priss retorted.
    Daisy flushed. “That may be true, but I’m not sure exactly what I did to provoke him into it.”
    “Trust me. You’ll figure it out,” Priss said.
    “Do you really think a savage like His Grace can be tamed enough to make a docile husband?”
    Priss shook her head. “No, of course not. But you wouldn’t want a docile husband.”
    “Tony—”
    “Tony is dead and best left in the grave,” Prisssaid. “Whatever he was, he wasn’t a husband to you. Not in the year I knew you before he died, anyway.”
    “How dare you—”
    Priss rose and confronted her friend. “I dare because I’ve come to care about you over the past two years. You’re the sister I never had, Daisy. I’ve never before said a word against Tony, but I’m warning you, don’t hold him up to me as the model of a good husband. He wasn’t.”
    “But I loved him!”
    Priss put a hand on Daisy’s shoulder. “Yes, you did, more’s the pity. He didn’t deserve you. But that was then, and this is now. You have to start thinking about yourself and what you want.”
    “I want to stay at Severn Manor,” Daisy said. She would never have children, but there were others for whom she could and did care. “I want the servants and tenants to be taken care of. And I want to have some say in the management of the estate. I don’t want to give that up.” She needed to feel useful. She needed to feel like her life had purpose.
    “Fine,” Priss said. “What are you willing to do in order to achieve those things?”
    “Are you asking whether I’d be willing to marry the duke?”
    “If necessary,” Priss said.
    Daisy’s lips firmed. Her shoulders straightened and her chin came up. “I’d do anything to protect Severn Manor. Even marry a barbarian.”
    “What’s that about a barbarian?”
    Daisy whirled and found herself facing the Earl of Rotherham. “Nothing of consequence,” she said.
    He bowed. “Welcome to Rockland Park, Your Grace.”
    “I wish you would dispense with such formality, Charles,” Daisy said with asperity. “I consider you my friend. If Priss is willing to accede to my wishes, I don’t see why you won’t.”
    “Very well,” he said with a grin. “I’ll just ignore you and say hello to my wife.”
    Gray streaked the earl’s black hair at the temples, but even though Charles Warenne was in his early forties, he had the look and build of a younger man. When his dark-brown eyes lit on his much younger wife, they were filled with love.
    Daisy was happy that Tony’s friend should have found so much joy in his second marriage. Not that the earl’s first marriage hadn’t been a love match as well, but Charles had lost his wife to childbirth and had been alone for fifteen years before he found Priss.
    Priss reached out a hand, and the earl twined his own with hers. Daisy should have felt embarrassed by the demonstration of so much affection between man and wife in public, but she had learned, over the two years since Priss had come into the earl’s household, to accept such gestures as natural behavior between them.
    Daisy felt a constriction in her chest and realized she wanted that kind of love for herself. There was little chance of that now. Not if she married the duke. And it began to seem more and more likely that she would. If she could just figure out a way to have him propose.
    “Has the duke arrived?” Charles asked Daisy.
    “Yes, he has.”
    “I’m looking forward to seeing him.”
    “Perhaps that can be