The Rakehell of Roth (Everleigh Sisters #2) - Amalie Howard Page 0,7

where Isobel stood at the edge of the rise overlooking the lake. “I never should have taught you to ride.”

Her sweaty best friend dismounted, her dark mess of curls sticking out in every direction, and her green eyes knowing, full of sympathetic anger. Isobel’s own eyes were dry as she greeted her. She’d shed enough tears for that pigeon-livered rogue of a husband. He did not deserve another drop from her, not a single one.

“I take it you read the newssheets,” Isobel said. No need to beat around the bush. There was only one reason that her friend would follow her mad dash from the house.

Clarissa nodded and remained silent. After three years of shared confidences, particularly about the subject of the Maggot of Roth, she well knew when to let Isobel vent. She had enough opinions of her own about Isobel’s scoundrel of a husband, but at times like this, she was the more level-headed of the two of them.

“They exaggerate everything,” Clarissa said in a soothing voice. “You know this. Those abominable liars write what they want to write.”

“Then why wouldn’t Roth dispute them, if that were the case?”

“Perhaps he thinks them amusing? Men don’t worry about those sorts of things.”

“Those sorts of things,” Isobel repeated. “He fought a duel, Clarissa. Over Contessa James of all people.”

Clarissa pulled a face. “Maybe he’s acting out,” she suggested mildly.

“He’s a grown man. How much acting out does he need to do?”

“Men mature differently than women,” her friend replied with the patience deserving of a saint instead of her usual speak-first-think-later temperament. “And he’s never recovered from his sister’s and mother’s deaths—you also know that as well as I do. Everyone knows that it left him in a terrible state. It’s the reason he and the duke don’t get along.”

“Grief shouldn’t make a man an absolute steaming arse-rag.”

Clarissa’s eyes sparked with reluctant approval, her mouth twitching at the inventive slur. “Shouldn’t have taught you to swear, either.”

“You shouldn’t have taught me a lot of things.”

Clarissa was the daughter of the Duke of Kendrick’s private solicitor, Mr. Bell, and the youngest of six, the other five all boys. From the moment she and Isobel had been introduced nearly three and a half years ago, they’d been inseparable, and everything Clarissa learned from her rambunctious brothers, she’d taught to Isobel.

And that meant everything.

Isobel had been so sheltered that when the incorrigible, boisterous, and entirely too bold girl had asked her with a saucy grin if she was up the pole yet, her eyes had gone wide and her mouth had gaped. “It only takes one time, you know,” her new friend had said knowingly. “To get with child.”

“No,” a scandalized Isobel had stammered. “I don’t think so.”

“What were his kisses like?” A curious stare had followed. “Did you stick your tongue in his mouth?”

“No!”

“Then you’re doing it wrong.”

Isobel had stopped blushing after the first life lesson—one involving how babies were made. That had been eye-opening, to say the least. Not that she hadn’t had a thoroughly erotic introduction to marital relations with her own clodpole of a husband, a union which had not borne any fruit of the newborn variety. By design, she’d learned since, as the marquess had withdrawn and spilled in the sheets. Perhaps, that, too, had been a blessing in disguise.

Though deep down, Isobel did not deny wishing for children of her own and a family to care for one day, blessing in disguise or not.

Thank God for Clarissa, the only light in what had promised to be a lonely and dismal existence. From then on, her self-ordained best friend had encouraged her to ask her anything, as in anything. And since it was much too shameful to voice certain inquiries out loud, Isobel chose to pen secret letters to which Clarissa provided answers in lewd, graphic, and gleeful detail.

After the first letter asking about what it was like to truly kiss a man, the impish Clarissa had replied with a scandalous masterpiece dedicated solely to the vagaries of kissing, including tongues, spit, and fish-faced puckers that had made the two girls dissolve into irreverent giggles.

Eventually, what had started out as naughty but instructive letters between friends had turned into a surprising windfall. Isobel’s sister Astrid, an authoress herself, had taken one look at the stack of scandalously frank correspondence, burst into laughter, and sent them off to her publishing man of affairs. While Astrid mostly published essays about women’s rights with the steadfast support of her own husband, her