“Time for what, you ungrateful child?”
There was no anger in her voice yet Brant was sure that she was viciously furious and that false calm made him uneasy. “For you to pack to go to your country house.”
“You told me I had time to put my affairs in order.”
“That was before you sold Agatha to Minden. You knew you had no right to do that, knew it went against all the legal papers I had said were right, yet you handed her over anyway.”
“She is of an age to be wed and start bearing children.”
“She is sixteen. Just. Minden was also diseased, riddled with the pox, and you knew that as well. You were selling her to a man who would begin to kill her with the first bedding.”
“Is that not a woman’s lot in life?” She turned to face Brant and could see her husband in him, something that made the fury she was fighting to control churn inside of her, demanding release. “I was not much older when my father sold me to yours. Even as your father bedded me and made me bear his children he was bedding everything else in skirts he could get his hands on. When he grew too old and too poor to play amongst the courtesans he came home and did it again. Bedded me, bedded the maids, bedded the village girls, and made us all bear his children. Then he put those children bred on other women right in front of me, making them our servants so that I had to see them every day.”
“A wretched situation but you cannot blame it for the things you have done.”
She shrugged. “I needed money.”
“Money made off the backs of innocent children. You knew what Dobbin House was. You had been inside. You knew what fate those children would suffer yet you sold them and bought expensive gowns.”
“You did not give me very much to live on, did you? I had a position to maintain.”
He shook his head as if he could shake her words out of his memory. It would be comforting in a way to think that she had completely lost her mind but, although he would freely admit that there was something amiss with her, he did not think she was insane. She was a cold, mercenary woman who did not care what she had to do and who she had to hurt to keep what she considered was her proper place in the world. That, and all the expensive things she felt were truly important in life.
“And now you try to blame me,” he said. “You did what you did for yourself. I begin to think everything you have ever done has been for yourself.”
“I did not go through the hell of childbirth for myself.”
“In a way, I think you may have. It was not only Father who wished to be certain he had an heir. You needed one, needed a son you could mold as you pleased so that you would forever be the true power. Agatha, Emery, and Justin were just security. Two more sons in case I did not turn out as you wished, and another daughter. After all, look how much profit you gained from selling off the others.”
“Your father sold Mary and Alice.”
“No, I begin to think you had a firm rein on Father and knew how to lead him to what you wished him to do. The unfaithfulness? I do not believe that troubled you at all for it left you free to do as you liked, to take control of everything. Father was so busy rutting, drinking, and gambling, he was more than happy to hand you all the work. I should have seen it before but it was easy to just think that Father was a fool.
“And so was I for I never truly looked at how you had your dainty little hand in everything. I realized but recently that you have been stealing from all of us for years. I mean to gather all the papers from all the properties and pay a visit to your solicitor, for instinct tells me that there may have been something left for all of my half-siblings. It would be like you to see that they got nothing, even the pittance Father probably left for them.”
“I did all the work. I built everything that made Fieldgate profitable. I was more the earl of those lands than he ever was and yet he felt he could give the profits of my hard work to his bastards? Fool. I have ruled his solicitor since shortly after you were born.”
There was the ghost of a bubbling fury in her voice and Brant wondered just how far he could push her. For the first time he was getting some information that he needed. Now he knew that his feckless father had indeed left something for all the children he had bred. There could even be an accounting of where each of those children, or men, were.
“Do Agatha and the boys have anything left? So easy for you to steal from them since by the time they were born you truly were in full control of all the accounts.”
“I needed nothing to sell Agatha to Minden, did I? He was willing to pay for a well-bred virgin in the vain hope that she would be his cure.”
“No, you did not need anything.” He sighed. “So that answers my question. You have bled their inheritances dry.”
“I did not bleed them dry. I made sure they never had one to begin with.”