She was far too disappointed. "I cannot imagine," Arabella said, faintly. "Well I can," Lady Cynthia said, her lovely eyes wide and her expression concerned. "It is rumored—just rumored, you understand—that he is to wed a country squire's daughter, a girl with ten thousand pounds. Perhaps even now he is pressing his suit. What say you to that?" Fifteen What was she going to do? Arabella felt as though the world were on her shoulders, and there was no one in whom she could confide, no one to whom she could turn. She started to write a letter to her cousin. True-love. True embodied the essence of common sense. She would tell her what was right, what would solve her own dilemma without destroying her mother. She poured her feelings out on paper, all the confusion she felt over her duty to her mother, all the pain of Marcus's desertion just when she needed to talk to him most, all of her fear of the future. And then she tore it up.
