Dev couldn’t let that pass unchallenged. “Youdidneed the money. Now, you have?—”
The word that wanted to follow felt wrong to speak.
Me.
It felt like a promise—and he and Lady Beatrix St. Vincent had no promises between them.
They had an arrangement and a payment schedule.
That was all.
Her mind seemed to have heard the samemeand performed the same calculation—with the same intention to leave it unacknowledged and unspoken. Her gaze shifted and settled on the line of horses. She pulled the small journal and pencil from her reticule and wet the pencil tip with her tongue.
Pencil poised above paper, she was ready for the race to begin.
“Well, well, well,” came a voice behind them.
It was an aristocratic voice—and one soaked in whiskey, at that.
Yet the voice held an edge.
Beside Dev, Beatrix froze, and her eyes squeezed shut as if denying the reality of that voice at her back.
But it proved to be composed of quite solid substance when it boomed, “If it ain’t the happy couple.”
She released the breath she’d been holding and turned, her shoulders square with tension. Dev pivoted alongside her to find a ruddy-faced, barrel-bellied aristocrat shambling toward them.
In an instant, Dev knew the man.
The Marquess of Lydon…
Beatrix’s father.
The two shared the same gray eyes and the same fine, straight nose—but that was where similarity ended.
“Lydon,” she said once he’d come closer than shouting distance.
A laugh rumbled from the depths of the marquess’s belly. “Hear what the chit calls her own father?”
Before Dev could come up with a diplomatic response—how did one answer such a question, anyway?—Beatrix cut in. “By your name?”
“And the mouth on her?” Lydon continued addressing Dev. “You’re certain you don’t want a sweeter bride?”
In that instant, Dev understood something. In his haste to have what he wanted, he hadn’t gone through the proper channels. He hadn’t asked Lydon for his daughter’s hand.
“Your lordship,” he said, very properly, ignoring the unladylike snort that sounded at his side. “Will you grant me the honor of taking your daughter’s hand in marriage?”
He didn’t need to glance at Beatrix’s face to know it had gone pale with horror.
“The chit doesn’t have a dowry.” Lydon barked what passed for a laugh. “I rather misplaced it a while back.”
Clearly, he got a grand old kick from what passed for wit with him.
Beatrix flinched.
Dev opened his mouth to spout some romantic rot about living for love, not a triviality like money. But it was the canny glint in Lydon’s eye that had the words dying in his mouth.
“What’s she worth to you?” asked the old scoundrel.
