The Courtesan's Daughter by Claudia Dain Page A

instead, do you want him?”
    It was miserable, what her mother was asking of her, to look inside her tumbled heart and try to see what lay hidden in its depths. She was seventeen, too young to be looking into something as darkly treacherous and unpredictable as a human heart.
    But as she was looking, the face of Lord Ashdon, that handsome, sardonic, impossible face, looked back at her. Her heart turned on itself and she caught her breath.
    “I do,” she said before she had quite got her breath back. “It’s shameful. He’s not the proper sort of man at all. But I do.”
    Sophia smiled and said, “I have yet to meet a man who is the proper sort, darling. I think that man must be the invention of poets and playwrights.”
    Yes, trust her mother to talk of poets and playwrights when her life was tumbled into the gutter. She had no husband, and no prospect of one, and the very man who had been purchased for her was now on an errand set to purchase her for himself and his debauched tendencies. Her heart did the impossible and dropped into her hips.
    “Caro? Are you listening?”
    “Oh, yes, Mother,” she said. She had not been listening. She had been listening to her heart, treacherous thing.
    “Will you follow my instruction? Do everything exactly as I say?” Sophia asked.
    Do everything her mother said? This was some parental trick, a lesson in obedience. What did Ashdon have to do with obeying her mother?
    “I … I don’t see how you can help, Mother. Things have proceeded too far, too much has been said.”
    “And let us not forget that slap,” Sophia said languidly.
    Oh, Lord.
    But he had earned that slap. Why did she want him, anyway?
    To make him suffer? That was a good answer, and at least it had the benefit of being founded in pride. Better pride than wretched longing for a man who couldn’t say a civil word to her if ten thousand pounds depended on it.
    “I don’t think it very wise of me to want him,” Caro gritted out as she paced the room.
    “Wanting is seldom wise, but that doesn’t mean it has to be wrong,” Sophia said.
    “That doesn’t make any sense, Mother.”
    “Doesn’t it?” Sophia said with a gentle smile. “You slapped him, insulted him, and rejected him. Is he coming back?”
    Caro stopped pacing and stared at her mother. “He said he would.”
    “And is he bringing gifts? Something rare and costly?” Sophia asked, still smiling.
    Caro found that she was smiling as well. “A pair of pearl earrings. I don’t see how he can get them.”
    “But he will try, won’t he? You’re certain of that.”
    That was the strange part; she was certain. She was almost certain that Lord Ashdon would stop just short of murder to present her with a pair of pearl earrings.
    “I am,” Caro said in wonder. “I am certain of that.”
    “As am I.”
    “But why, Mother? I mostly hate him and he just might have cause to hate me in return. Why would he beggar himself to bring me a gift?”
    Sophia stretched her arms over her head in a sinuous stretch. “Because he wants you, Caro, even if it is not very wise of him to do so. Now, will you do as I say, no arguments?”
    “Why? ”
    “So that you may have what you want, darling; Lord Ashdon for a husband.”
     
 
ANNE awoke at ten and knew whom she would marry. She had taken Lord Dutton’s measure, put him up against what she knew of Lord Staverton, and made her decision. It was obvious, really. She was appalled that she’d been blind to it for so long.
    Lord Dutton was a rogue.
    There, she’d admitted it. She felt immeasurably better.
    She was no schoolgirl, far from it. She did not have Caroline’s excuse of innocent trust coupled with a strong habit of invulnerability. No, she had seen the world, too much of the world, at an uncomfortably close proximity. She understood men and she understood what they usually wanted; more, she understood their methods for achieving what they wanted.
    Lord Dutton had treated her like very pretty