He waved one hand. “It doesn’t matter now. I met her, and Clemency... I like her. Very much.”
Her eyes nearly popped from her face. She chewed her lip, then put her hand on his arm. “Richard... Of course I want you to be happy. But... Are you certain? She is...”
“What?” He waited patiently as his sister struggled to find words. “Notorious?” he finally offered.
“Yes! Scandalously so!” She exhaled in relief. “I’ve heardgossip.”
“Indeed. What does the gossip say about her?”
“Well—she’s not respectable.”
“How so?”
Clemency seemed to be racking her brains for an answer to that. “Her husband died in very shocking circumstances.”
“That is about him, not about her. What were the circumstances?”
He knew he was making her uncomfortable, but he had known Clemency all her life. She did not like to be told things and would grow indignant if argued with. But if he simply asked patient questions, she would eventually come to see things in a rational light.
There was also a chance Evangeline had lied to him. Perhaps there was more to the story than she’d told him. There were twosides—if not more—to every tale, and Richard wasn’t so drunk on infatuation that he dismissed any chance of it.
Her face was pink, but she finally whispered, “His mistress’s husbandshothim!”
“His mistress’s husband?” Richard nodded. “So Courtenay was unfaithful to his wife and committed adultery with a married woman?”
She opened her mouth, then nodded.
“And what was Lady Courtenay’s role in this affair?”
“I—Well—She...” Clemency frowned. “She didn’t love her husband.”
“How do you know?” Richard knew, because Evangeline had told him, but he doubted the scandalmongers knew—or cared.
“Their marriage was also scandalous,” Clemency said, not answering the question. “They say she seduced him and trapped him into marrying her!”
“That is a serious charge,” he said gravely, even though it was nothing of the sort. Men routinely schemed to marry heiresses, just as ambitious women plotted to marry men of consequence. “But all it demonstrates is that it was not a love match.”
She gave him a sharp look. She knew what he was doing. “Likely not.”
“I see. You believe it is a woman’s duty to resign herself to pleasing the man she marries, no matter how or why they were wed. Very well, let us consider love. Is it a tight rein on a man? If she had loved him, would he never have strayed? It says nothing of his affection for her, which seems more important in guiding his actions. How would you have felt if Daniel had been caught in a lover’s bed?”
“Oh, I would have killed him,” she cried, then put one hand over her mouth in alarm.
He shrugged. “Clearly Lady Courtenay did not murder her husband, if someone else did. Let us suppose, at worst, she was shrewish to him and drove him away?”
“Yes,” she said at once. “They say she’s very fast.”
“I see,” he said again, thinking of riding breeches and brandy-spiked tea. “How so? It must have been egregious indeed to send an otherwise faithful husband fleeing into the arms of another woman, who was also married.”
“Richard!” She gave up with a cross sigh. “Perhaps she’s not so black as she’s painted. But she is still... Well, she is a great deal older than you.”
He grinned. He hadn’t thought so, and he’d seen the lady without a stitch of clothing. “She is far from her dotage. And I am no boy to be taken advantage of, even were she a cunning seductress.”
“But what if she is? The rumors don’t end with her marriage, you know.”
He rocked back on his heels. “Indeed. What are they?”
She pursed her lips. “It’s indecent.”
