Father’s eyes glittered. He rubbed his narrow hands together, his crafty smile resembling that of a scarecrow.
“Tell me you’ve accomplished it.”
Ah. He had not been preparing to strike. He had been preparing for victory. It had never occurred to the marquess that his wishes would not be obeyed.
“No,” Eli said.
The word echoed in the stone chamber, simple and clear.
Father’s hands slashed through the air. “Why are you dragging your feet? This is a simple mission, Elijah. If you’re not persuasive enough to win the hand of a long-in-the-tooth spinster, just humiliate her some other way, so we can go home and celebrate.”
“No,” Eli said again. Louder. Clearer.
“Don’t tell me.” The marquess shook clawed hands at the heavens. “You’ve fallen in love with the impudent chit whose heart you’re supposed to break.”
“I won’t do it,” Eli said.
“You will,” said his father, “if you care about your pretty flowers.”
“It’s not about beauty,” Eli burst out. “It’s about the cures chemists can create using the properties of certain plants. It’s about saving lives. It’s about—”
“It’s about time you realize none of that is going to happen.” Father’s smile was rapacious. Wolfish and sharp. “If you disobey me, you will become as poisonous as hemlock. There will be no more physic gardens. No more precious research. Not a single soul will work with you, for fear of losing their own livelihoods. There will be no cure.”
Eli clenched his teeth. “Before I left, you promised you wouldn’t do that.”
“Did I?” The marquess lifted a shoulder. “I give, and I take away. The choice is yours.”
“I gave you my answer.” Eli repeated it louder this time, drawing the word out for emphasis. “No.”
Servants fled the room as if fearing an apocalypse.
“I see.” The marquess steepled his long fingers, tapping them together rhythmically. “If you embarrass that hoyden and her father as instructed, I will dissolve your responsibilities to my farm and to me, and fund botany research for the rest of your life, if that is how you wish to spend the family money. I’ll sign a legal contract to that effect.”
Eli opened his mouth.
The marquess cut him off. “However. If you deny me in this matter, you will be disinherited completely. As of this moment, you will have no home to return to, no allowance to spend, and no friends or colleagues left in London. It will be as though you were never born. As though you had died along with your mother rather than lived to disappoint me.”
Eli kept his fists stiff at his sides. “You disgust me.”
“Then we have something in common after all.” The marquess smirked. “Do you think I won’t do it? Of course I can. As you are so fond of pointing out, I’ve only a courtesy title. I’m not obliged to hand anything down to an ‘heir.’ If you side with the Harpers over your own father, I’d sooner entail my holdings to a dog than give a farthing of it to you.”
Splendid. Absolutely the outcome Eli had been hoping for when he’d knocked on the door. He was homeless, penniless, and prospect-less, in addition to being a deceitful two-faced blackguard.
Had he thought Olive’s reaction upon learning the truth was the worst he had to fear? Now he had nothing to offer her at all. Although Eli would play no further role in his father’s machinations, the marquess’s thirst for vengeance would double in strength.
Eli was an enemy now, too.
“Side with the Harpers over my own father?” he repeated hollowly. “When have you ever been a father to me?”
But there was no point attempting to mend the cracks in a bond that had never been whole to begin with. Every time Eli attempted to keep pieces together, his father was there to kick them apart. Theirs was not a relationship worth protecting.
Eli would fight for the ones that were.
“I gave you every opportunity—” his father began.
Eli turned toward the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the marquess roared, his voice ricocheting off the stone walls.
