Jimenin’s smile grew, his gaze feral. “I’m a man with deep pockets and a compassionate nature.” He ignored Louvaen’s snort. “Give me Cinnia as wife, and all debt will be forgiven.”
She’d seen it coming months earlier, had warned Mercer to have nothing to do with Jimenin, but his extortion still made her gasp. Mercer’s outraged “Absolutely not. I’ll not sell my daughter under any circumstance,” rang in her ears.
Her mind spinning with a hundred ways to outmaneuver Jimenin, she interrupted. “Would you take a widow instead?”
“Louvaen!” Her father gaped at her.
She kept her gaze trained on her adversary. “Don Jimenin?”
He rose from his chair but didn’t venture nearer. He usually only offered Louvaen a brief disinterested nod, his focus solely on Cinnia. Now his gaze raked her from her worn shoes, over her apron-covered gown, to her upswept hair. Louvaen squelched the need to scratch at her crawling skin. His eyes glittered for a moment as he considered her offer. He gave a dry chuckle. “You’re a handsome woman, Mistress Duenda, and still young enough to bear children, but some time in my life I’ll have to sleep. I don’t relish waking up skewered with one of my swords.”
Louvaen didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath. Relief warred with disappointment. She’d never marry the vile goat in a thousand lifetimes, but his acceptance and expected courtship would have bought them a little more time to plan. She’d lost the advantage with his refusal, yet the greater part of her thanked merciful gods he wasn’t interested.
Mercer stood, and for once his outrage overwhelmed Jimenin’s smug superiority. “Neither of my daughters is for sale or trade, Jimenin.”
“Then you give me something of equal value or equal pleasure.” Jimenin poked him in the chest, and Mercer staggered. “You have a fortnight to decide. Afterwards, I call in my markers and strip you of everything you own. You can ponder your precious daughter’s innocence from a gaol cell.”
Louvaen strode to a small cupboard behind her father’s chair and retrieved a carved box. She lifted one of her husband’s pistols from its silk lined compartment, turned and took aim. Jimenin’s eyes rounded. “Get out,” she said in a low voice. “And don’t shadow our doorway again.”
He tried for a taunting grin, ruined by his chin’s nervous quiver. “That’s not loaded.”
The click of the flintlock’s hammer made him blanch. Louvaen’s heartbeat thudded in her ears. “You think not?” Her finger curled around the trigger.
He backed slowly toward the door, his features sharpening with hate the closer he got to safety. “You and me, bitch. We’re not done.”
Her arm hurt with the weight of the pistol, but Louvaen’s grip remained as steady as her voice. “We will be,” she promised.
The door’s slam rattled the pewter plates displayed along one wall, and Jimenin disappeared in an indignant flap of black cloak. Louvaen lowered her arm and carefully lowered the hammer down. Only the crackle of embers in the hearth sounded in the parlor as she returned the gun to its case and put it back in the cupboard.
“Lou, you almost shot him!” Mercer’s eyes swallowed his face and wisps of white hair stood straight up on his head as if he’d caught a bolt of lightning. Were Louvaen not struggling to keep her shaking hands hidden in her skirts and her stomach out of her throat, she might have laughed.
“Thomas is likely rolling in his grave that I didn’t, Papa. First rule: if you aim a pistol, you better shoot. I broke the rule.” The shock of her confrontation with Jimenin rolled over her, and she collapsed in the chair he vacated. Mercer poured her a cup of the now lukewarm tea, and she gripped the fragile piece hard to keep from spilling.
“What possessed you to offer yourself to him? You despise Jimenin.”
She sipped, praying her hands might halt their palsied dance. “I’d never wed such a loathsome tarse. I’d torch the house before I’d ruin my mop cleaning him off the floors.”
Mercer’s forehead knitted into a map of puzzled lines. “Then why?”
“To buy time.” She glanced at the ceiling. Cinnia’s room was directly above them. “If he had any honor, which he doesn’t, he’d court me. And since I have no honor where he’s concerned, I’d break the engagement after finding a way to either pay him off or get you and Cinnia away from him. I’ve no debt to him, and a broken engagement won’t earn me time in the gaol.” She still might see the inside of a cell and the outside of a gallows. Any confrontation after this and someone was definitely going to die. “Too bad he understands I’d sink a knife between his shoulders at the first opportunity.”
Mercer took his seat across from her, once again hunched in a defeated slouch. “We are in his debt. He’s a right to payment.”
“Yes, but no right to demand Cinnia in trade.” Her hands shook in anger now, not fear. “Why in all the gods’ names did you enter another venture with him, Papa? A saffron caravan? Didn’t you realize how risky such an investment was?” Louvaen desperately wished her stepmother were still alive. While Mercer had once been known as a successful businessman and merchant, it was his wife Abigail who possessed sound business sense, who understood profitable investments and hard negotiations. She’d been the family scrivener and could account for every ha’penny that left Mercer’s pockets. Louvaen was not hers by blood, but she’d inherited a similar mind for money, and Abigail had taught her everything she knew. Mercer’s fortunes only declined once Abigail died and Louvaen married. She still reeled over how quickly he’d managed to ruin his business and squander the family’s savings when no one was watching.
Mercer stiffened. “Of course I knew it, but Jimenin promised a huge return in profit once we got it to market.”
“If you got it to market, which you didn’t.”
“How was I to know bandits would attack the caravan?” He gripped the arms of the chair. “Gods, Lou, you’re like a dog with a bone.”
He was lucky he was her father, or she would have bitten through instead of just gnawing on him. “Are you serious?” Her fingers tightened on her cup, threatening to crack it in her grip. “Everyone knows the Ladlelow Hills are bandit country. The only surer bet to be made is the sun will rise each morning.”
“You’ll watch your tongue, miss! I’m still your father and head of this family.”
“Which you’ve managed to beggar with your bad judgment. You and Cinnia aren’t homeless right now because you’re living in my house!”
Mercer’s flushed face bled of all color, and Louvaen recoiled from the humiliation in his eyes. Guilt roiled the tea in her stomach, and she stretched out a supplicating hand to him. “Forgive me, Papa...”
