She’d like to be alone before the well of tears she’d pushed back broke free.
He hesitated before answering. “As long as the men are still out. But you’re to stay in your room. And while you’re thinking, pack a bag. I want you back at Haldon before dinner.”
Twenty-three
She spent the first hour alone in her room sobbing hopelessly into her pillow. When the tears ran dry, she dragged herself up, washed her face and, as Whit had suggested, began to pack.
She wouldn’t be coming back. She would never come back. She would likely live the remainder of her life at Hal-don as a guest.
Her uncle had destroyed what ever chance she may have had with Whit, and that was a painful wound she couldn’t imagine ever healing. But like pouring salt on the cut, her uncle’s behavior would also rob her of an inheritance.
To permanently leave her uncle’s house without his written consent—and he would never consent to give up his three hundred pounds a year—before she turned seven-and-twenty, meant forfeiting her inheritance. And every last pound would go to…she couldn’t quite remember. To “The Ladies’ Society for The Cultivation of Virtue,” or some such nonsense.
Staying, of course, was no longer an option, not with the very real possibility of scandal looming over her head.
Exhausted and frustrated, she crammed a bonnet into her valise. Which was rather stupid, she chided herself—destroying her own things in a fit of temper. She took a solid kick at her desk instead.
It was all so unfair.
Oh, but the five thousand pounds her parents had intended for her, gone—and her chance at in dependence with it. She’d never be a member of the Cole family now, but her inheritance at least could have insured she not be a charity.
Nothing she could do or say would convince her uncle to willingly forfeit his yearly allowance. Likely, not even a charge of counterfeiting would keep him from pursuing his money.
Blast and damn. If only she had six hundred pounds available to simply pay him off. She latched her valise, picked it up…set it down again.
She could pay him off. Why ever hadn’t she thought of it before? She ran to her desk, pulled out pen and paper, and drafted a very simple contract.
She’d need to hurry. She’d heard her uncle’s carriage return not minutes ago. Whit was likely having their own transportation back to Haldon readied at that very moment.
Not ten minutes later, she made the brief and always unpleasant walk to the study to find the door open and the baron, returned from the hunt, behind his desk nursing a glass of port.
She cleared her throat as she entered the room. “Excuse me, uncle.”
“You scare the boy off?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Thurston, you twit. He’s hitching his team up even now. He and Hartsinger both. Thought I told you to stay in your room.”
“I have. You did. I didn’t frighten him off.” If he was angry with her already, she didn’t stand a chance.
He shrugged. “Boy needs aging. Why are you here?”
She straightened her shoulders and stepped deeper into the room. “I’ve come with a proposition of a financial nature.”
“Proposition of a financial nature,” he mimicked badly and guffawed into his glass. “Gel ain’t got so much as a pound to her name and she wants to make a proposition of financial nature. Stupid cow.”
She waited until he was occupied with slurping at his drink before continuing in measured tones. “According to the terms of my parents’ will, the three hundred pounds you receive for my care, such as it is, will cease in less than two years. At that time, the monies set aside for my dowry will become mine to spend as I please. If you should see fit to release me early from your house, I will agree, in writing, to recompense you for your cooperation as soon as I receive my inheritance. Nine hundred pounds, I believe, would be fair.”
“Nine hundred pounds?” he repeated, suddenly looking a bit more interested.
“Interest on your investment, as it were. It’s a tidy profit to be made in so short a time.”
He downed the drink in his glass and poured another with shaking hands. “You’ll give me nine hundred pounds to let you go?”
“In essence, yes.”
His thick tongue came up to wet his lips as he studied her in silence. He was considering it, she thought, she ought to be thrilled. So why did the way he was looking cause her stomach to tighten in dread?
“And you’ll agree to it in writing,” he repeated slowly. Slowly and suspiciously enough to have her hesitating before answering.
“I…I will.”
“How do I know you’ll make good on it?”
“I just said I’d put it in writing,” she reminded him, confused. “I don’t know what else—”
“Not good enough.” His thick fingers began a steady thrumming on the desk. “Not nearly good enough. I wouldn’t have the means to take it to court if you changed your mind.”
“I’m not going to—”
“I want collateral.”