“Vanessa, think about it! Do you really think the results would have been any different if I’d taken the matter to William? There would still have been a duel, but one based on supposition that Henry would have certainly denied, so it could have been much worse.”
“You don’t know that! You never gave Father a chance to fix it!Youshould have fixed it. I would have shot the bastard the moment he got near my bed—where he didn’t belong.”
Kathleen was taken aback. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not. If he really did promise to ruin you and your daughters if you didn’t let him have his way with you, he would have deserved it. At the very least you could have given him a minor wound to prove you would kill him if he went through with his plan.”
Kathleen was amazed. Why couldn’t she have had this sort of courage in the face of Henry’s threats? It had never occurred to her to resort to physical violence. She thought she’d been courageous in going to Albert Rathban to appeal for mercy, but truly, she’d only been desperate. And it had all been for naught.
She began to pace, frustrated by Vanessa’s lack of understanding—so like her father’s. Even after she’d made a full confession, Vanessa was still blaming her for everything. Would this nightmare never end? Dare she tell Vanessa about her meeting with Albert Rathban? It had been so humiliating, how could she repeat any of it to her daughter? Yet her memory of that horrible meeting was still so vivid in her mind. She’d gone to Albert with such hope in her heart. She’d wanted her family back!
She’d been able to tell him that his brother had promised to create a false scandal to ruin her family if she didn’t crawl willingly into his bed. Not in those exact words, she’d been more circumspect, but she’d pleaded with him to let her husband come home safely without their family being ruined.
She’d managed to get that much out before his nasty response, “If you’re here to offer yourself to me, I’m not interested. I have no brothers left, thanks to you. John fell off his bloody horse and died the year after Henry did.”
“You can’t blame me for that,” she said.
“No, but I’d still have one brother left if you weren’t so damn pretty Henry lost his head over you.”
“I never encouraged him! He blackmailed—”
“Enough!” Albert cut in furiously. “Henry told a different story, that he was the innocent in that sordid affair, you the seducer. You led him to expect a certain outcome. You can’t dangle a carrot in front of a man and never hand it over. If you knew him at all, and I assume you did, you knew he wasn’t a man with a great deal of patience. You taxed him to the limit and he lost his life because of it.”
“It was a harmless flirtation with an old friend!”
“One who didn’t consider it harmless at all. You made him fall in love with you again. You can’t play the sophisticated game you do and not reap unpleasant results occasionally. You courted scandal.”
“You don’t blackmail someone you love. You can’t defend that.”
“I condemn you for bringing it to that point—because you stupidly let your husband find out.”
“That isn’t what happened,” she said stiffly.
“No? I’m to believe you instead of my brother? But even if what you claim was true, it would have been no more than a bluff on Henry’s part, because he wouldn’t intentionally create a scandal that would have touched his own family. Which makes you a bloody fool, madam, not to have realized that.”
“I have three daughters! I don’t gamble with what a man might or might not do whentheirfutures are at stake.”
She started to leave, too insulted to try to reason with him further or point out that a scandal of that sort didn’t hurt a man nearly as much as it did a woman. But he snapped, “Sit down, I’m not done with you. I need a moment to think.”
He took more than a moment before he gave her a calculated look. “To satisfy both sides of the argument, and to pay for my loss, which is greater than yours, give me one of your daughters for my son, he’ll never get a wife otherwise. Your heir will do, since other than your holding the honorary title of Countess in the interim, your father’s title, the Marquis of Dawton, will pass to your firstborn’s son—my grandson. I find that an acceptable trade for all the pain you’ve caused the Rathban family.”
“And that will be the end of it? There will be no more talk of ruining my family?”
“Would I ruin the family my son has married into? But I want the girl and the marriage first, and I warn you it will be difficult. Daniel is determined to never marry. I’ve brought him five young ladies, any one of whom he could have taken to the altar, and he refused to marry any of them! The marriage will need to be his idea, so your gel will have to seduce him. If she takes after you and dangles the carrot, perhaps she can succeed where others have failed.”
She’d left the Rathbans’ London mansion that day with a firm agreement. It wasn’t an ideal solution, but it was a solution. And she kept telling herself that one bad apple like Henry didn’t rot the whole basket. But then Vanessa didn’t come home last year when she should have to seal the bargain. But how could she offer the RathbansthisVanessa even if the bargain was still available? The Rathbans wouldn’t want a girl this intractable—even if she could manage to get such an angry, aggressive hoyden to the altar.
Kathleen stopped pacing, shook her head in frustration, and inadvertently said aloud, “Not that any of that matters now, when Rathban hasn’t answered my—”
“What?”
Kathleen turned with a gasp, then blanched. “You weren’t supposed to hear that.”
Vanessa’s eyes narrowed. “I could have sworn you were about to make a clean breast of it, Mother. What exactly have you left out?”
“I struck a deal with the eldest Rathban a few years back, but it expired last year because your father foolishly didn’t open my letters to learn about it. So it’s not worth discussing at this point.”
“I disagree. I’m interested in anything to do with the Rathbans, particularly if you had an agreement with them. What sort of deal did you make?”
