Chapter 6
As soon as the double doors closed behind her great-aunt and the Colonel, Amelia hissed, “How could you deceive me so?”
Adam spread his hands in supplication. “I had no intention of doing so …”
“How can I believe you?”
“Until I discovered that you held me in such disgust because of my age and injury, I planned to tell you.”
“But you didn’t!”
“What would you have done if I’d told you that the man you were disparaging was the one who sat before you?”
Heat burned her cheeks. “How could I have guessed the man I had heard of was you?”
“From whom did you hear such things?”
“My parents told me that you were too old to have joined the army and no longer engaged in sporting activities because of your terrible injury.”
“And from that you construed that I was an aged invalid?”
To my shame!“I now find it hard to believe that you are that person described to me, but yes, that was what I thought.”
He raised his hands in exasperation.
“Didyoutell my parents I was at the inn?”
“I did not! I had no time to do so and neither would I do such a thing. Just before I left the inn I scrawled a note to my father at Wellworth Park, telling him that I was unexpectedly required to escort you to your great-aunt in Bath, but your parents already knew you were missing.” He dragged a hand through his hair, spiking its cropped ends.
“They watched me closely.”
“It appears they were more desperate to snare me than I was to be ensnared.”
“I had very little power to resist them, except by escape to my great-aunt.”
“I understand that and do not condemn your actions at all.”
“Tell me, why would you wish to become the son-in-law of a pair of members of the aristocracy who look down their rather long noses at your origins and that of your wealth, while being only too eager to obtain a considerable portion of that money?”
“Miss Fortescue, you cannot know what it is to be despised by women in Society for my bourgeois background, yet be courted for my wealth. It seems that money will make any man marriageable, although the thought of my shop-soiled touch on their person fills them with revulsion.”
Bile rose in her throat, and she swallowed it down. “On the contrary, I know full well what it is to be sought only for my material worth—not money, in my case, but my family pedigree.” Bitterness tinged her words as she recalled all the newly moneyed men paraded before her by her parents, in the hope of netting one who would take on their enormous debts in return for connection with a titled family, albeit of minor rank.
“I expect there are many ambitious men desperate for a path to social acceptance,” he said.
“I’m that conduit. My father has no male heirs. His title is one of the very few that can pass to a daughter because our ancestor received his peerage when he was called to Parliament by a writ of summons to the House. I have no siblings and should there never be a son the title will pass to me.” She paced the floor from the fireplace to the window overlooking the darkened crescent. “Think what that means to an ambitious, wealthy man whose family has dragged itself up from obscurity through endless hard work. The last step is to gain a title, if not for themselves, then for their descendants. That’s the stuff of a self-made man’s dreams!” She stopped and turned, fixing him with a piercing stare. “Isn’t that your dream?”
He shook his head. “I knew nothing of this. It’s fantastical.”
“But true.” Her mouth formed a line of grim resignation to this fact of her life.
“If we married,yourson would become Baron Fortescue.”
“Never has your father mentioned this to me. It surprises me that he didn’t!” He took a step towards her, his hand outstretched in supplication. “Trust that I’m telling the truth,” he pleaded.
“No.”Amelia took a step back, waving him away. “It’s too much. This deception. I … I need time to think everything through.” She rushed past him to escape the room, his seductive words, and his still attractive person.
She would be a fool to forgive him.Wouldn’t she?
