“You can see him if you will come along.”
“Or, you may send him to me,” Clarissa said.
The reverend frowned, but then went off to do her bidding.
From the seat across from her, Mrs. Warbler said, “You don’t need to do this—”
“I do.” She could not marry Mars under anyfalse pretenses. “And I wish for us to be alone when I explain it to him.”
Mrs. Warbler was not pleased. “Clarissa—”
“I know my own mind.”
There was a beat of disgruntled silence and then Mrs. Warbler said, “Very well.” She climbed out of the coach, just as Mars arrived. After a word of greeting to the older woman, he took her place, filling the coach with his presence, and for a second, Clarissa couldn’t breathe let alone think.
He cut an elegant figure in black breeches, polished boots, and black jacket over a snowy white shirt and figured silk waist vest—and in that moment, Clarissa so wanted to be his.
These past few days of working together had let her see another side to him, a side she respected and admired. And with respect and admiration, could she not love him?
For his part, his eyes had lit up at the sight of her. “You do the dress more than justice, Clarissa. I doubt if Maidenshop has ever seen a lovelier bride.”
His words, a compliment every woman longed to hear, made her heart even heavier. She hated doing something that might ruin her chance to live a life that was beyond her imagination, even if their marriage was in name only.
“I learned something today that you should know,” she started.
He immediately grew concerned. “Is Dora all right?”
“Yes, of course. Why would you think otherwise?”
“You appear so serious.”
His response brought her overwrought sense of responsibility in line. He was actually marrying her for Dora. She must not forget her place. She pressed on.
“Everything is fine. I received some news and I believed you should be informed.”
“What is it?”
“Mrs. Warbler told me about my mother.”
His interest picked up. “She knew something?”
“She and the dowager found my mother ill and wandering Smythson. She was carrying a baby in her arms.”
“You?”
Clarissa nodded.
He did not recoil in horror. Instead his brow furrowed. He leaned toward her. She sensed he would have taken her hands if she wasn’t tightly clasping them in her lap. “What happened?”
“My mother had come to Maidenshop to find her lover. She had a brother who had turned her out when he learned she was pregnant. She didn’t say much before she died but that my father was to come for her. He never showed.”
“So she came looking for him? Do we know who he is?”
“No, she wouldn’t even tell the matrons what her name was, let alone his.” Clarissa paused and then added, “Mrs. Warbler believes that, although my mother had a fever, what she really suffered from was a broken heart. Shelearned when she arrived in Maidenshop that my father was already married.”
Mars sat up straighter. Clarissa braced herself for some condemning statement, but that isn’t what he did. “The poor woman. To be abandoned by everyone who should have taken care of her.”
Clarissa appreciated his understanding. “She named me. She wouldn’t give her name or my father’s, but she told Mrs. Warbler and the dowager the name she had given me. The name you don’t like.” She said this proudly, almost daring him to make a comment.
