Chapter Four

Emily frowned as her father paced another circuit around the drawing room. “Papa, please. Come and sit with me. It’s only been three days since the ball. Do not let Nicholas irritate you so.”

He halted and glared. “I beg your pardon?”

His cigar trembled between his fingers, and his breath rasped from lungs thick with the black stuff that was slowly killing him.

Her heart ached. “Every time I see you with a cigar, it makes me so scared for you. Please. Grind it out.”

He shook the cigar in her direction. “This is the only pleasure I have left. Don’t you dare try to take it away from me.”

“Will you please calm yourself?”

“How can I? We have no idea when the man you are supposed to be marrying will see fit to honor us with a visit. Why does Nicholas feel the need to keep acting in such a juvenile manner?”

“He likes to feel in control.” She waved her hand. “Pay him no mind.”

“I don’t care how he likes to feel. My patience to overlook his dramatics is stretched to breaking. This cannot go on.”

Emily rose from the settee and grasped his hand. “I want you to enjoy your remaining time, Papa, not waste it worrying over Nicholas and his uppity moods.”

He took two rapid puffs of his cigar, exhaling the toxic smoke in a thick plume between them. Dropping his hand, Emily whirled away in frustration. Damn Nicholas for putting her father through this.

“You know the reason for his absence, do you not?” Her father’s tone was accusatory.

Emily squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh, Papa. Not again.”

“I was wrong to encourage you to dance with Mr. Samson. God only knows where Nicholas will go from here.”

“I am not afraid of him. He needs me to keep up the reputation he so badly wants as a successful man of business and family. Do you not see that? This is nothing more than a power play. Nicholas and I…we had an altercation before the ball. He doesn’t like the idea I want our marriage on a more even keel.”

“Oh, Emily. Are you still fixated on this belief that Nicholas will return to the relationship you had before the engagement?”

“Well, yes. If—”

“A man must be a man in his home. I completely concur with him on that level. He is the owner of a successful business, a man who people want to know, a man of influence. How on earth do you think he will feel to have his wife contradict him in public?”

Emily’s cheeks burned with frustration. “I am not suggesting I would contradict him in public. I am saying between us, behind closed doors, I would like him to talk with me rather than bark at me, demanding I obey.”

“But obey you must. It is the law of marriage. It is a vow. It’s no wonder Nicholas keeps disappearing for days on end. You clearly exasperate the man.”

Humiliation quivered deep inside her, and Emily walked to the window, lest her anger show in her eyes. “It’s time for a change.”

Her father huffed a laugh. “Change will come soon enough, but I would rather go to my grave knowing you will be a good wife.”

“As Mama was before me?” she snapped.

Silence.

Emily closed her eyes, shame flowing through her. “I’m sorry.”

“Your mother had your fire.” Her father’s voice was quiet. “It got her killed.”

She turned and opened her eyes. “I shouldn’t…I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “Come here.”

Emily walked into his open arms, and her father’s breath brushed across her hair. “I know what you think you must do to be heard, but antagonizing Nicholas is not the way. Your mother was the epitome of compliance in the home. A true lady in every sense of the word. Gracious and loving, attentive and obedient. What she fought for outside of the home had nothing to do with our relationship.”

Emily nodded. “I know. Nicholas is doing what he thinks is right.” She pulled back from his arms. “I’ll try.”

He smiled. “Good girl.”

“I just want more for my children than hopes of inheritance and arranged marriages. Society will not change while I am young enough to forge the life I crave.” She slipped her hands from his and pulled back her shoulders. “But for my children, who knows? I might hate the fact money paves the way, makes acceleration easier, but it does. I will not forsake money that is rightly mine at a cost to my children, your grandchildren.”

“If I haven’t shown you prosperity comes from the fire residing here…” He pushed his fist into his stomach. “I hope one day you will meet someone who does.”

Mr. Samson’s face flashed in her mind’s eye, and Emily stubbornly pushed it away.

“Papa, please understand what it is I want. More to the point, what I don’t want.”

“Which is?”

“To…to end up like Aunt Edith, for example.”

“Aunt Edith? What does she have to do with this?”

“Well, for one thing, she is bitter and twisted by a life not unlike the life you suggest for me.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“She was compliant, was she not? She did not challenge Uncle David or curb his weaknesses for drink and infidelity. She kept quiet, remained a good wife. If that is where behaving as such leads, I refuse to follow in her footsteps.”

“I am not asking you—”

“Her husband died and left her with nothing, Papa. She now lives alone, her children scattered around the country either dead or alive. I don’t want that, Papa.” She swallowed. “Neither should you.”

His shoulders slumped. “Of course, I don’t.”

“Sometimes when Nicholas looks at me, I know his reasons for this marriage run deeper than the inheritance. There is something that pulls at him to make this marriage work. His ego was certainly damaged by my single dance with Mr. Samson, but I hope when he looks at me, he sees a good wife. Maybe sees that together we can make the business into something bigger than it already is.” Hope dared to spark inside her. “I owe it to you and Nicholas’s father to try, Papa, I know that. I will do my best, but without forsaking who I truly am.”

He nodded and walked to the settee, collapsing his weight onto the cushions with an exhausted sigh. Emily swallowed the lump lodged in her throat. From now on, she would ease his every worry and concern until the day of his passing. She could not allow her father’s final days to be tainted with contemplation and tension.

“There is nothing for you to fear. I promise,” she said, firmly. “Nicholas will write or send a message soon, and I will deal with his reprimands then. I didn’t hide my association with Mr. Samson. It was one very public dance, after all. He will come to see I have done nothing wrong.”

“My dear, we both did wrong. I encouraged the dance, thinking Mr. Samson a handsome chap who could bring a smile to your evening. Little did I know what was to unfold.”

Emily frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You, my dear.”

“Me?”

He smiled. “It warmed me from the inside out to see you look so happy. For one beautiful moment, you were alive. Even if you were in another man’s arms.”

Emily’s heart stopped. Was her enjoyment really that transparent? She laughed and waved her hand dismissively. “Mr. Samson and I spent most of the dance arguing. He is quite insolent.”

Her father’s smile widened. “Maybe he is, but you still liked him very much.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but the words died on her lips. What was the use of denial when her body still tingled at the mere thought of him?

Her father sighed. “But the matter is no longer of consequence. Mr. Samson has gone, and now we can concentrate on your upcoming marriage.”

His breath left his lungs on a rasp of exhaustion. Emily swallowed. Her father had witnessed the sensations Mr. Samson provoked in her, but he could not possibly have suspected the way he made her want to scream and shout, throw caution to the wind, and live with risk and chance. It was madness. Two short meetings and the man had yet to leave her thoughts for a single second.

It was little more than a heated attraction borne from the reality that she’d never be free to explore the way he made her feel. Heavens above, when Mr. Samson looked at her, she felt naked. Like he had the unseen power to make her clothes slip soundlessly from her body and pool in a heap at her feet. Arousal tingled through her, and Emily moved to the window. She would forever hold those beautiful feelings and wish them for her daughters, who she would ensure were free to marry men they loved, not men who held the power of their future in the palms of their hands—or worse, on signed pieces of parchment.

She gazed at the sunset as pink blended with the color of fresh peaches. She wanted to go out, breathe in the evening air. Claustrophobia threatened on such a beautiful evening.

Her thoughts returned to Mr. Samson and his dark blue eyes and so-often insolent smile. She shivered. His voice was deep and powerful, yet when they danced and he stood not four inches from her, the same voice softened to something infinitely more seductive. How she longed to hear it again. The man was a mystery. An intrigue.

Emily closed her eyes. Why did her life have to revolve around money and marriage when all she wanted was to find true love? Was she selling her soul for a piece of silver? A tear dropped to her cheek, and she swiped at it.

“Emily?”

She opened her eyes and turned. “Yes?”

Her father’s brow furrowed. “Are you feeling unwell?”

Forcing a wide smile, she stepped from the window. She needed to get out of these four walls. “Not at all. Quite the opposite. Would you like to accompany me on a stroll around the park?”

He threw a perplexed look toward the window. “Now?”

“Why not? It’s a beautiful evening, and we live in one of the most admired places in the whole of England. Why shouldn’t we enjoy it at every hour? Dusk is falling, and the sky is the most enchanting color. Please say yes.”

He waved her toward the door. “Take Annie with you and spare your poor ailing father the exercise. I am quite happy here with my paper.”

She walked to him and pressed a kiss to his sunken cheek. “I’ll not be long.”

“Go on. Go on.”

Emily left the room and rushed into the hallway. “Annie? Annie, where are you?”

****

Will stared at the damp-stained ceiling of his rented room and inhaled a long breath. He’d been busy in the three days since the ball but had not achieved enough to dampen the fire in his gut. He now knew Milne’s father had died this last year leaving Milne partial heir to the Darson-Milne tobacco empire: three thriving factories situated in and around Bath that the two founders had built with a minimal amount of money and a hell of a lot of sweat and tears.

Having infiltrated the workers’ lunchtime eating area outside the biggest of the three factories, Will learned over a sandwich and mug of tea how the staff had taken to Milne, their new boss, being at the helm. It seemed Milne couldn’t put a foot wrong, shinier and more valuable to the staff than a damn piece of newly minted silver. He’d gone there expecting stories of tyranny or at least disregard for the men who worked for him, but no, Milne seemed to be keeping up his end of the bargain as far as his father’s legacy was concerned. So, Will had looked into the second half of the whole. Emily’s father. He was dying, leaving his daughter heir to the other half of the business. The rumor was that a marriage contract was drawn up to ensure the money remained in both founders’ families. Further investigation led Will to discover just how trapped Emily was. If either party refused to marry, the willing party received everything. Milne and Emily each had solid motivation to marry the other.

Will curled his hands into fists. If they divorced, she’d be entitled to her half, but then what? How would they work together in harmony? Would she sell to him? To another? Or would Emily, a daughter who clearly loved her father, be forced to surrender her inheritance to a man she despised in order to survive with a modicum of happiness as a single woman? Will’s vision turned red. Milne, in one way or another, would come out the winner.

He closed his eyes. His plan to seduce Emily meant she would lose everything she was entitled to if she broke off her engagement. He needed to leave her out of it. Find another way to hurt the bastard. But that also meant he would leave a woman who no longer served a purpose in his vengeance to a man who didn’t deserve her—worse, would undoubtedly hurt her.

Emily Darson had haunted his dreams for the last three nights. He woke in the early hours with his arm slung across the bed as though he reached for her in the night. How could she be engaged to Milne? The thought of the scum touching her, talking to her—God, even looking at her—made Will want to vomit. He tightened his jaw and grappled to get his temper under control. The man was vermin. Shit on his damn shoe.

He’d stormed blindly ahead on his mission and by doing so hit a brick wall. His plan was messed up, no matter which way he looked at it and going after Emily would cost him dearly. Will rubbed his hand over his face. It was lust at first sight. It had to be lust. Anything else was inconceivable, but the truth was, her strength and humor, intelligence and wit, had somehow hooked him to her on an invisible chain. She challenged him with every syllable that tripped from her tongue, and she fit within the circle of his arms as though made for him. He would endeavor to find a way to make Milne pay, as well as save her from the fate of becoming his wife. But how could her entitled fortune remain hers too?

If he could release her from what bound her to Milne, it would go a long way toward soothing his guilt for deceiving her. To tell himself he was her savior was the only way Will could keep focused, keep planning Milne’s demise. If the wheels he’d set in motion crushed him along the way, he would ensure Milne felt their fatal tread first.

He wandered across the few feet of space in his rented room and rested his hands on the peeling windowsill. The sky held the rosy hue of twilight. Beyond the roofs of the town houses, the magnificent treetops that graced the grounds of Victoria Park—which lay so close to Royal Crescent—called to him. He smiled.

“A perfect evening for a walk. Do you not agree, Miss Darson?”

He pushed away from the window and whipped his coat from the bed, putting on his hat, Will headed out the door.