Bainhurst spoke up. “Buffoons don’t show appreciation.”
“He didn’t have to make a scene,” Camberly countered.
“He’s angry,” the admiral said. “He marries her off, his fortune goes with her.”
Wanting to be close to Cass in case she had a need for his support, Soren had been about take his leave of the room, but that statement stopped him. “What do you mean?”
Cutting into his sausages, a fork in one hand, a knife in the other, the admiral said, “I knew Miss Holwell’s grandfather. We belonged to the same club. A nabob, he was. Made a bloody fortune and he didn’t have much family. Everything went to his only child, although he was not pleased when his daughter married Holwell. He did not like him.”
“Few do,” the dowager said.
The admiral nodded. “I thought it odd Bingham let the marriage happen. Always wondered why, but he wasn’t the sort you would have a conversation with... until one night. It was in my club. We were the only two in the room and I asked him to have a drink with me because he appeared in low spirits. He told me his daughter had died. She’d caught a fever and there had been no saving her. He himself was in ill health and he feared his death was imminent.”
Everyone in the room was listening now.
“He’d settled a substantial dowry on his daughter when she married. It made Holwell a rich man, except he quickly ran through all the money. He was always in need of funds.”
Soren understood that situation all too well.
“Bingham worried that once he died, Holwell would have guardianship over his granddaughter’s inheritance until she married. He told me that is how he’d set up his will. His hope was she would choose a good man. But with death facing him, he feared Holwell could not be trusted with the money.”
“But the Bingham fortune is rumored to be a vast one,” the dowager said. “And Holwell is a MP. He has some money of his own. I’m not defending him but pointing out what I’ve noticed.”
“Did you have a look at the coach he arrived in?” the admiral asked. “Does even the Regent have a coach that fine? Or any of the other MPs? That night, Bingham confided in me that he suspected Holwell would line his own pocket with his granddaughter’s inheritance, and when I laid eyes on that coach, I think he is. He is also slipperier than a dockside eel. Both Bingham and I agreed upon that. Marry your heiress quick, Dewsberry, and claim the money immediately. That is my advice to you. Because if you don’t, Holwell will do everything in his power to keep it. I’m surprised he is letting his daughter marry at all.”
His last statement struck Soren.
There was no reason for a woman as vibrant as Cass to have been languishing on the Marriage Mart—unless Holwell was deliberately manipulating the situation. Would a father be so callous as to let his daughter believe he was acting in her best interests while perhaps furtively doing all he could to undermine her?
He would if he was greedy.
Bainhurst muttered, “You still will be averyrich man, Dewsberry. The pearls she wore last night were worth a fortune.”
But Soren wasn’t thinking of money. His concern was for Cass. “Excuse me.” He set off to find her.
Cassandra found her father in the front hall with a footman and his bags. He was pulling on his gloves. Helen was already out the front door and walking toward the coach that had been brought round.
“Father,” she said.
He looked up, the lines in his face deep with disapproval. “Are you leaving with me? Or are you going to disgrace your family and marry a scoundrel?”
“He has done nothing to earn that name.”
“He is a York. They despise us. And now he’s going to marry you, spend your money the way his father and grandfather went through theirs, and leave you to rot like a ship that has been beached after a storm.”
“I don’t believe that,” Cassandra said, and she didn’t. “I know he needs my inheritance—”
“And it is all right with you that he is only marrying you for your money?” Her father stepped closer. “Because I’ll tell you, birdie, he will treat you worse than one of his servants. He will bury you in the country so that he can gamble and fritter away your money until you have nothing, including the respect of your family.”
“Papa—”
“You will bedeadto us.”
He was so forceful, so certain. Cassandra placed a hand against her abdomen, overwhelmed with the decision she had made. What if her father was right? What if she found herself caught in an unhappy marriage? One where she was not valued as a true helpmate?
And then she remembered years ago when a bold lad had looked at her at the parish picnic where she’d hidden herself in the sanctuary with a book and had asked if she wanted to be his friend.We can’t tell them, he’d said, meaning their parents.They won’t like it, and yet I can see nothing wrong with you.
She’d valued that friendship. Cherished it. Because she hadn’t been like the other children. She’d lost her mother. Her father was not well liked. She’d picked that up even as a child.
