“Of course, Your Grace.” She folded her hands in her lap, her face giving nothing away. “I’m listening.”
CHAPTER7
“Hammond Court has been in my mother’s family for nearly a century, Miss St. Claire. My maternal great-great-grandfather built it, and it was my mother’s childhood home. I spent the early part of my boyhood here, and I have a strong, er . . . emotional attachment to it.”
Miss St. Claire said nothing. She simply waited, those clear green eyes fixed on his face, eyebrows aloft.
She might twitch those judgmental eyebrows at him all she liked, but he’d told her the truth. Hedidhave a powerful emotional attachment to Hammond Court. There was no need for her to know that emotion was hatred. “I wish to have it back.Allof it. I’m prepared to pay you handsomely for your share of it.”
For a long, fraught moment she gazed at him, but then she shook her head. “I’m afraid my share of Hammond Court is not for sale, Your Grace.”
“Nonsense, Miss St. Claire. Everything is for sale.”
“Not this house.”
“Of course, this house. It’s merely a matter of agreeing on the price.”
“How unsurprising you are, Your Grace. Ambrose warned me you’d try and make this all about money, and here we are.”
Money? How absurd. He didn’t give a damn about the money. No, this was about something far more important than money.
It was aboutrevenge.
“There are some things that can’t be bought,” she added.
Bollocks. Everything could be bought, including revenge. He’d bought it himself, dozens of times over. All those boys at Eton who used to sneer at him? Their bloated fathers, who’d ridiculed his father, and spat upon the Grantham name? He owned them now, both the fathers and the sons. If he ordered them to crawl across England on their knees, they’d do it. “So provincial, Miss St. Claire. I’m not sure whether to find your naïveté charming, or pitiful.”
Once again, she didn’t reply, and after a moment of silence, he went on. “Did Ambrose also tell you he stole this house out from under my father when he wasn’t in his right mind?”
“No. He told me he saved it.”
“Savedit?” He jerked back, stung. That was . . . well, damned if there wasn’t an uncomfortable grain of truth to that interpretation. The better part of his father’s mind had completely given way to the ravages of the bottle at the time of the wager. There was no telling what might have become of Hammond Court if Ambrose hadn’t taken it.
But there’d been nothing noble about it. Ambrose had simply seen a golden opportunity to snatch up a valuable piece of property for himself, and he’d seized it. “You can’t mean to say you believed such nonsense?”
“Why shouldn’t I have believed it? He saved me and my mother, after all.” She gave him a look that was almost pitying. “That’s what Ambrosedid, Your Grace. He saved the people and things he loved.”
“So, Ambrose was the great hero, saving my father from himself? You’re aware Ambrose was a gamester, are you not, Miss St. Claire? A professional wagerer.”
She inclined her head. “Of course, I’m aware. He didn’t keep secrets from me, Your Grace.”
“I see. Then you must also be aware that several years ago, the Earl of Renard accused Ambrose of cheating him out of a substantial sum of money?” There. Perhaps that would shatter her damnable calm.
But Miss St. Claire didn’t so much as twitch. “Those accusations were the rantings of a gentleman unhappy over losing his fortune. Nothing ever came of it.”
He leaned forward, bitterness flooding his mouth like venom, choking him. “I hate to disillusion you, Miss St. Claire, but Ambrose was no knight in shining armor. He was no hero. He was athief. ”
“He was nothing of the sort, but I suppose it’s easier for you to imagine it thus.” She cocked her head, her gaze never leaving his face. “Let’s be frank with each other, shall we, Your Grace?”
At last, they were getting somewhere. “By all means, Miss St. Claire.”
“Your father agreed to wager for Hammond Court. It seems quite a foolish thing to me, to wager on something so substantial as a house and several hundred acres of property, but they wagered, and your father lost. Is that your understanding as well, Your Grace, or have I missed something?”
Ambrose had taught her well, hadn’t he? It was a perfectly accurate summary of the circumstances, but as with most things, the facts alone didn’t paint the full picture. “My father was incapacitated at the time, half out of his mind with grief over my mother’s death.”
“Out of his mind with drink, too, I believe, and Hammond Court wasn’t the first property he’d lost.”
He stiffened. It was true, devil take her. “If you mean he wasn’t in a fit state to wager a bloody thing, then yes.”
