Unwed and Unrepentant by Marguerite Kaye

Author:Marguerite Kaye [Marguerite Kaye]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9780263239843
Google: LjMVAwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0263239845
Barnesnoble: 0263239845
Goodreads: 18812512
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

‘I shall return to Killellan tomorrow. It is a pity you cannot come with me, Isabella seemed quite taken with her new sister.’

‘And I with her,’ Cordelia said to Bella with a smile, accepting a cup of tea. They had spent the best part of the day together with all of the children. Isabella was a most taking little thing, not at all in awe of her, and eager for stories of her other sisters, quite unlike her brothers who were, sadly, already exhibiting that combination of extreme exuberance and shyness in the company of females which their school seemed to encourage. They were, in fact, all four of the boys, rather too much like her father for comfort. She had no doubt that she loved them, but as to liking, she was much more ambivalent—and that, she thought rather guiltily, was unlikely to improve with age. ‘Isabella is very different from her brothers,’ she said.

‘I believe she takes after me,’ Bella said with what seemed to Cordelia a very secretive smile. She was still struggling to come to terms with the changes in her stepmother. It was not simply the alteration in her form, but her manner, which verged on the warm and the confidential, neither of which traits had ever been in evidence before.

‘You find me changed,’ Bella said, as if she had been reading Cordelia’s thoughts.

‘I confess—yes, I do.’

‘Having a daughter is part of it. I had so wanted a daughter, and had quite given up hope, for your father—frankly, he was never actually interested in that sort of thing, save for the procreative purpose, and he considered four boys more than sufficient. My needs—of any sort—were never a consideration for him.’

Cordelia, who considered herself a woman of the world, was both embarrassed and intrigued by this confidence, which put her father in a very different light. She couldn’t help wondering what Iain would make of it, or of Isabella, whose colouring, of dark-brown eyes and black hair, was either a throwback to some distant generation, or, as seemed increasingly likely, testimony to another parentage all together. Though Iain was not likely to make anything of either thing, because she most likely wouldn’t hear from him again, and in fact, there was no reason for her not to visit Killellan as Bella suggested, except she could not face the explanation that entailed and...

‘Is there something wrong, Cordelia?’

‘I’m sorry. I—I have the headache.’

‘You were not used to have headaches. Cressie it was, who claimed to have a headache when she wanted to be left alone. You now, you were always rather more inventive with your lies.’ Lady Armstrong surveyed her complacently. ‘I always did see more than you realised. I remember saying so to Cressie—oh, it must have been around about the time you were in London and she was having an affaire with that Italian she eventually married.’

‘You knew she was having an affaire?’ Cordelia positively goggled. ‘And you did nothing to stop her?’

Bella shrugged.

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