Desired.
It had been a word, in fact, that had been much on her mind these last few days, and there it was, staring up at her, brazenly.
Requestedwould have been the more proper word.
Now that impropriety had begun to govern her behavior, it was slipping into her lexicon, too.
Yet, even the fussiest peer would have difficulty turning down this invitation—even with its whiff of the improper.
For Beatrix, however, it held a whiff of something else, too—hope.
The future she’d so craved was almost hers.
At this house party, Deverill would win the countess. And if he couldn’t win her at his beautiful, luxurious estate where his every advantage would not only be displayed, but forced into one’s face, then there never had been any hope for him, anyway.
And Beatrix would have her final payment for pretend-fiancée-services rendered.
Herdowry.
Soon.
So soon she could almost taste her future.
Her gaze reluctantly slid over to the other stack of letters—the debts. On a resigned sigh, she reached for the top one andcracked its seal. She wouldn’t miss receiving these in her good, solid future.
She scanned the contents, knowing what to expect, and blinked.
Somehow, this debt letter wasn’t what she’d expected at all.
Her eyes moved across it again.
And again.
And…again.
If she was putting the sequence of words together correctly—and by now, she should have been—Lydon’s debts were no longerdebtsin the plural sense.
Rather, they were nowa debt.
A debt owned by a sole entity.
Blaze Jagger.
The vision of a rangy, handsome figure filled her mind’s eye. The young, arrogant, cocksure blackleg who had introduced himself to her at the Hampstead races.
Thatman now held all Lydon’s debt and the note on the very Mayfair townhouse she’d occupied all her life.
Her attention caught on a string of numbers, and the bottom fell out of her stomach.
£19,881.
Such a precise number.
Enough to send Lydon into bankruptcy and have everything unentailed seized and sold.
Everything, that was, that Lydon hadn’t already sold himself.
The roof over her head was as good as gone. She should start packing her bags for the crumbling family pile in Bedfordshire.
