Beatrice could notquell her anxiety.
And the carriage appeared to be moving in a deucedly slow fashion.
There was no way, she wagered, that the carriagetoLondon had moved as slowly as this one was moving out of it.
“Do you think we might quicken our pace?”she asked—she was aware—not for the first time.
“Once we clear London, Preston will give the horses their head.He is an excellent coachman.He knows what he is doing,” Leith said.
She watched his hand flex on his knee.For a moment, she had the feeling that he wanted to reach across the seat and take her hand.But that must be a hallucination, she thought, because if he wanted to, he would.
Only Sally sat with them in the coach, with Charles and Preston riding outside.Surely, he would take her hand in front of Sally, if he really desired it.
No, she must only be thinking of such things because of how much she desiredhistouch.He had been so comforting when she had received that alarming missive from her mother, which had plunged her into such a state of worry and trepidation.
But this morning he had been all formality.
“Do not overset yourself, Beatrice,” Sally said, quietly, from next to her on the squabs.“Mrs.Salisbury will not be in immediate danger with Mr.Gordstone.”
“We cannot know that,” Beatrice retorted, trying to keep any acid from her voice.“Perhaps you did not catch how he eyed my mother when he visited us last.She even admitted that the man has always had unscrupulous intentions towards her.Even when our father was alive.”
“How did you come to know Mr.Gordstone?”Leith asked.
“He is an old friend of my father’s,” Beatrice explained, “but it has been a long while since anyone in our family has regarded him in such an amiable light.My father quarreled with him before his death, apparently over his inability to pay this debt.”
“Why was your father in debt to him?Was he a gamester?A spendthrift?”
Beatrice shook her head.She did not know how to explain her father to Leith.“He was not usually irresponsible in money matters.If anything, he was the opposite.He was a cold man—grim and stingy.Nevertheless, he did not run Parkhorne well.He was too parsimonious, too small-minded.Unwilling to wager anything for a potential reward.The estate was struggling when he died.He must have turned to Mr.Gordstone in desperation.”
“How much is the debt for?”
Could Beatrice really tell him such information?It felt, somehow, unspeakably personal.
Although, she supposed, she had been more intimate with him than anyone else…certainly any man.Surely, exposing the debt accrued by another, even if he was her father, was a small thing in comparison to what they had already shared.
Still, when she spoke, she whispered.“Ten thousand pounds.”
Leith did not curse or exclaim.He merely met her eye and nodded.“I presume he is threatening to take Parkhorne as payment.”
“Yes,” she said.“We were only able to stave him off initially because we gave him five hundred pounds.Which was all the ready coin I had at the time.He was supposed to stay away for a year.But it seems he has come back early.”
“Your mother will feel she cannot send him away when he holds the debt.”
“Exactly.He could call in the bailiffs at any time, if he so wished.My mother could not withstand debtor’s prison, I assure you.”
Leith’s expression went stony.“No one is going to prison.”
He said the words with such an air of authoritative dismissal that it irked her.He, of course, couldn’t be put in debtor’s prison, not as a peer.But she and her family very well could.She pursed her lips to keep herself from giving him the tongue-lashing she wanted to.He was, she told herself, only trying to help.
“I do wonder why he has come back.This Mr.Gordstone.If you agreed to have him stay away for a year.”
“That is what worries me,” Beatrice said.“I think, of course, that he wants back the money he lent my father.But I think, more than that, he wants my mother as payment.”
“Has he proposed marriage?”
Beatrice shook her head.“He knows she would refuse.Or, at least, she will as long as she thinks I am in London raising the money to pay him.She would do anything for us—even marry Mr.Gordstone—if she thought it would free us from this debt.That I cannot have.”
Beatrice imagined seeing her gentle, sweet mother married to Mr.Gordstone and her stomach turned.She would rather marry the man herself, if it came to it, than see her mother, who had already suffered so much at her father’s hands, his unwilling bride.
