Clara flinched. Such an ugly insinuation. Ravenscroft himself had used the same word to describe himself.Even whores must set their price, my love.How low the earl’s self-worth must be. For some reason she didn’t care to examine, the thought disturbed her.
“Were every man or woman to be judged by his past misdeeds, no one would be welcome in any drawing room or ballroom,” she countered.
“Clara.” Her father turned his eyes heavenward for a moment, as though beseeching the Lord himself to intervene and strike some sense into her. “Clara, my darling daughter, I want so much more for you in a marriage than a hasty farce forced upon you by a rattler masquerading as an earl.”
He was aggrieved, his pain palpable. Her conscience prodded her to make one last attempt at winning her freedom. “Perhaps there is another way to salvage my reputation without marriage to the earl. You could send me back to Virginia, Father. My mother’s kinfolk would welcome me there.”
Her father cocked his head at her, studying her in that way of his that saw far more than she would have preferred. “Never tell me that this was all another one of your larks, Clara, that you somehow devised this madcap scheme in the hopes that I would send you back to Virginia rather than marry you off to a scoundrel.”
Well, not precisely. But he was too close to the mark for her liking. She didn’t wish for him to unravel all her careful plans, not when she was so near to achieving her goal. “Of course not. As I said, Lord Ravenscroft is the man I wish to wed. I’m sorry for the manner in which it need occur. I was foolish to go to him as I did, and for any shame or distress I’ve brought upon you and Lady Bella both, I apologize.”
Unfortunately, her mentioning of her indiscretion with Ravenscroft hardly blunted her father’s ire. Rage fairly emanated from him, overtaking him with a force so strong he could no longer remain seated and shot to his feet to pace the length of his study.
“What he did to you…ruining you…your stepmother has spared me the excruciating specifics of the nature of your encounter. But Clara, I need to be certain that he didn’t force you or otherwise ill use you. Tell me the truth.”
“He did not force or hurt me,” she answered, one of the few honest statements she’d made since their interview had begun, much to her shame.
All the fight seemed to drain out of her father then. He stopped, appearing far less omnipotent than he always had to her. Far more human. Far more weary. “Then I will accept his offer for your hand. You’ll wed him as expediently as possible. I’ll grant him the two hundred thousand pounds he’s asked for, but he’s only getting fifty thousand in North Atlantic Electric stock. As for you, I will give you ten thousand a year and the other fifty thousand of North Atlantic Electric stock your husband requested for himself. You’ll be a wealthy woman in your own right, and that is the best I can hope to do for you now. Under the law, you’ll maintain control over anything you bring to the marriage aside from what is directly settled upon your husband.”
Two hundred thousand pounds.
Clara had only offered Ravenscroft one hundred thousand to marry her and then annul the marriage. Dread settled over her. She had to know for certain. “He asked for the two hundred thousand directly?”
“You’re damn right he did,” her father gritted, his voice grim as ever. “Don’t fool yourself into believing this is a love match, Clara. The son-of-a-bitch wants your dowry.”
The same sense of foreboding she’d been feeling ever since returning home crept over her now, stronger than ever. If only asking her father to settle all the funds on her would not arouse his suspicion. No, she couldn’t afford to chance he would change his mind. The web she’d spun about herself grew more tangled by the moment. Perhaps she’d been outmaneuvered in her own game.
Checkmate.
“You needn’t worry over me. I know how to look after myself,” she told her father. She’d been raised in the shadowy aftermath of America’s deadliest war, and her upbringing had hardened her in a way none of her fellow society misses would ever understand. She could hold her own in a battle of wits and wills with an English earl whose only recommendation was his face. If he thought to best her, he’d never met a girl from Virginia.
avenscroft stared at Jesse Whitney with disbelief.The man had gumption, he’d give him that. “You wish for me to court your daughter,” he repeated slowly, doing a poor job of masking his irritation. Now that he’d settled on his course, he wanted his prize: his little dove and her tremendous American dowry. In truth, he wanted her almost as much as he wanted the vast amounts of coin that would accompany her. Certainly more than he cared to examine.
“Those are the terms I’m willing to offer you,” Whitney affirmed. “Either you court her for a fortnight, well-chaperoned and without further ruining her, or you can’t wed her.”
To the devil with it. Now the man wanted him to bow and scrape and come sniffing about his future wife’s skirts like some lovelorn swain when he’d all but secured her hand. To dance at balls. To attend dinner parties and the theater. To seriously pretend to be smitten by her, in public, and most certainly to manage all this while maintaining a façade of respectability and abstaining from drink. Why, he hadn’t been sober long and he already found it deadly dull.
“I ruined her, you daft man,” Ravenscroft grumbled, not feeling even a pinch of guilt at the lie. Well truly, he’d done some damage, put his hands and mouth where they didn’t belong, but he hadn’t bloody well swived her as he’d implied. No, that would come later. If she still truly believed there wouldn’t be a wedding night, he would thoroughly enjoy changing her mind. With his tongue.
“Few are aware of what transpired.” Whitney’s rebuttal was smooth, calculated.
Well played. But no one could do brazen better than he. No one. “There is the matter of possible issue from what transpired,” he reminded his father-in-law-to-be, also without a hint of guilt. “If I refuse to court her and you won’t allow her to wed me, what shall happen when her belly grows? For then, it will be too late for doing the pretty at balls and dinners.”
Whitney went ruddy, presumably from pent-up rage. The poor fellow didn’t appear to enjoy reminders that his precious daughter could perhaps sire a bastard. “Do you want me to kill you after all, Ravenscroft?”
Julian made an elaborate show of scrutinizing his future father-in-law’s person as though looking for the telltale silhouette of a pistol beneath his trappings of finery. “I don’t see a weapon today, Mr. Whitney. Or shall I call you Papa? No? A bit too soon, perhaps.”
His opponent apparently wasn’t given to being blithe. He slammed his hands down on the admittedly battered study desk. “Listen to me, you son-of-a-bitch, this—my daughter’s future—is not a laughing matter.”
No, it wasn’t. Poor girl, about to be shackled to him forever. Little levity in that, unfortunately for her. But Julian couldn’t help himself. He rather enjoyed goading people. It was a trait he’d always possessed. Most damning in the eyes of others, no doubt. “Dear me, old fellow. I don’t recall laughing, but if I did I’m sure I ought to offer you an apology.”
Whitney’s hands snapped closed into tight fists, the knuckles showing white. Those knuckles bore the signs of his past. Mayhap he’d engaged in hand-to-hand combat during the war. Very likely Julian ought to tone down his bombast, but the man irked him.
“The next time you call me ‘old fellow,’ I’ll knock out your teeth. You owe me at least a dozen apologies by now, none of which you seem willing to give.” Whitney pounded the desk for emphasis. “Most importantly, you owe an apology to my daughter. Clara is an impulsive girl but a good girl nonetheless. You aren’t fit to tidy up after her horse, let alone wed her. Give her a proper courting for a fortnight. The wedding will still be rushed, and tongues will still flay us alive, but at least we can build a case for love rather than necessity.”
Julian took exception to all threats against his teeth. As it happened, they were even and straight, quite white, and one of his vanities. “I fail to see how a fortnight of courting will cause any less damage to her in the eyes of society than a simple, immediate marriage will.”
Moreover, it had occurred to him that perhaps Whitney was attempting to use this fortnight to prove that Clara was not, in fact,enceinte, and that their nuptials would no longer be necessary. After all, depending upon where she was in her monthly courses, she could make a liar of him tomorrow. Or this very afternoon. Of course, it wouldn’t be in her interest to do so, but Julian couldn’t be sure just how far the wild-looking former soldier before him would go to protect his daughter. Examination by physician? He doubted it, but then again, if he’d learned anything in his life it was that the actions of most people couldn’t be either trusted or predicted.
