‘She’s here! I’ve instructed Slugger to bring her up.’
Randolph was bouncing with joy at this news, while Owen’s heart was beating nineteen to the dozen at the prospect. Of all the stupid things he had ever done in his life, surely this was the most idiotic? He still couldn’t quite believe what he had started and wasn’t entirely sure why he’d been compelled to do it beyond a nagging sense it was right despite the plentiful and dangerous evidence to the contrary.
He wanted to blame Randolph for planting the seed in his head, but knew that wasn’t fair. The wretch had been correct—he was a rescuer at heart and he had been hell-bent on rescuing her. In fact, he’d been a man possessed since last night, on a mission he didn’t fully understand beyond the need to get it done and to hell with the consequences. Only now that she was here, those consequences were lining up like hungry paupers at a soup kitchen demanding to be fed.
He had offered to marry Lydia.
And if she accepted it was going to cost him most of the profits he had earned from Libertas since it opened.
Two things he knew already which were going to give him nightmares. The first because of all the bad blood and baggage which no amount of lust or noble intentions were going to bridge. They were little better than strangers now, if one ignored the animosity, which of course they wouldn’t. And the second because it threatened every belief he held dear. Money equalled power and power equalled control. His fortune was his armour. The bigger it got the more impenetrable it was. It didn’t matter that he would probably earn it all back in about six months. For six months he would be without the means to fully protect himself if the need arose and that made him feel vulnerable and exposed. Thank goodness there was no chance of her saying yes.
She hated him.
For the first time in a decade he was ridiculously grateful for that fact.
‘Shall I fetch some tea for us all? Me and Gertie are dying to finally meet her.’
‘No tea. And no to us all. This is between me and her and I will do it without your interference.’ Randolph would try to talk her into it. Just as he had talked to him. The only difference was a big part of Owen had wanted to be manipulated. The mad, glutton-for-punishment, stupid part of him.
‘Well, that’s hardly a warm welcome, now, is it? This is going to be her home—don’t you want her to feel welcome in it?’
‘This is business, Randolph. I couldn’t care less if she feels welcome or not.’ Owen grabbed his friend by the shoulders and turned him around, then began to march him to the far door in the back of the office which led to the private set of rooms beyond. ‘This meeting is to discuss terms.’ He might intend to be blasé about her refusal, but still he had no intention of doing it in front of an audience. ‘If she is agreeable to mine, you can meet her later. If not, I see no point in making the acquaintance.’
‘Even though it was my idea?’
‘Especially because it was your idea.’ Once this awkward and pointless meeting was over, he really was going to strangle Randolph. He’d been the one to put the flea in his ear and make him behave more irrationally than he had been already.
Marry her! The idea has merit! She’s always been the itch you couldn’t scratch!
Clearly just the seasoning his seething, bubbling cauldron of emotions had needed to make it boil over! For twelve hours he had been an irrational mess, possessed by an evil demon who had controlled his mind and suffocated all logic. Already, thanks to the furious stupor he had been in the grip of, Owen was three thousand pounds poorer and he knew without a doubt he would never see that hard-earned money again.
Three thousand pounds gone.
Pouf!
He was still reeling from the stupidity of the most ridiculous investment he had ever made.
He might as well have piled the banknotes on his desk and set the damn things alight!
‘Can’t I at least fix your cravat? That limp rag around your neck is hardly impressive...’ Owen pushed him through the doorway and made sure he turned the key in the lock, imprisoning his meddling partner securely in the residential wing of the house, before he straightened his cuffs and glanced at his watery reflection in the windowpane.
His cravat was a disaster and he wouldn’t care. He had no reason to impress Lydia when he was nobly offering to save her bacon and she would rather marry Kelvedon than let him save it.
Slipping on the mask of indifference he had last worn when the Earl of Fulbrook had begrudgingly granted him an audience at the crack of dawn this morning, Owen walked to the other door, the public-facing door, and tugged it open and almost jumped out of his skin because she stood inches from his face on the threshold.
‘Is this your perverted idea of revenge?’ As was usual nowadays, she was frowning at him as though he was something unpleasant trailed in from the street and stuck to the carpet.
‘And a cheery good day to you, too.’
‘The answer is no.’
‘To what exactly?’
‘To everything!’ Her gloved hands exploded in the air. ‘To all of it!’
‘So you know everything and all of it already, then, do you?’ Because he would lay good money she did not know the half of it.
‘I know you are a thief and a liar! A scoundrel who stole my mother’s jewellery while she lay dying in her bed! One who used me to shamelessly do it!’
‘How many times do I need to tell you I never stole a single thing from your family?’
Twenty? Thirty? But since his first day back in London when he had expressly sought her out and tried to explain he was innocent, she had refused to hear any of it. ‘Show me some proof,’ she had said with a look that could curdle milk. ‘Some irrefutable and tangible proof, then I’ll hear you out.’
‘I saw it with my own eyes, Owen!’
Something he was still no nearer to being able to explain despite trying his damnedest. He had left his tiny four-foot-by-six-foot room above the stables at dawn to do his job exactly as he always did and when they dragged him back there a few hours later, the damning evidence was concealed in his mattress and small cupboard. A battered silver locket, six paste brooches and three ugly silver candlesticks. None of it worth taking.
‘You were caught red-handed.’
‘To have been caught red-handed, Lydia, I would have had the damn jewels in my grubby fist at your mother’s jewellery box in her bedchamber.’ He had argued the same at the trial, too—not that it had got him anywhere. ‘I was convicted with circumstantial evidence. Somebody planted those things in my room. I don’t know who and I don’t know why...’
It had tormented him. For almost a decade, the mystery had eaten him from the inside. He had racked his brains for years as to the culprit and their motive, needing to understand why he had been singled out when he was certain he’d had no enemies at eighteen, driving himself mad trying to work out what he could have possibly done to make somebody hate him so much.
All the days, weeks, months and years when he had been falsely imprisoned, he had plotted how he would uncover the truth upon his return and exact his revenge by seeing proper justice done. It was one of the things which had kept him from giving up, curling into a ball and allowing the punishing climate and dreadful conditions of Port Jackson to claim him as they had so many others. Near daily he’d even fantasised about how he would march up to the Earl of Fulbrook’s front door, demanding a public apology, imagining how sweet a moment that would be and envisioning Lydia’s reaction. Her sorrow for her mistake. Her relief... Her tears of joy as she begged him for forgiveness for ever doubting him. His benevolence as he proved he truly was the bigger man by instantly forgiving her so they could live happily ever after...
That part of his fantasy always irritated him. The blasted woman still had a hold on him and probably always would.
But despite his best efforts to unmask the perpetrator and after spending a great deal of hard-earned money on the quest, he was frustratingly still completely in the dark aside from the nagging suspicion it had something to do with her.
He had always felt it was something to do with her.
‘And where is your proof?’
‘I don’t have it...’ Nor was he searching any longer. After six months of fruitless investigation and despite the wily Randolph on the case, too, Owen had been either forced to give up or go insane with the constant frustration and the impenetrable dead ends.
Mostly he tried to bury it nowadays and move forward—except just the thought of Lydia always sent it jumping back to the fore. Undoubtedly because when he had first returned to England and sought her out to apprise her of the true facts, she had shaken her head pityingly at his version of events and said she had hoped he had come to apologise after explaining what had pushed him to do such a terrible thing because she wanted to understand and she wanted to forgive him.
Forgive him!
That monstrous insult still stuck in his throat.
‘Oh, for goodness sake! Don’t you ever tire of trotting out that lie?’ His insistence on sticking to the truth always had the power to enrage her and by default him, too.
‘It’s not a lie.’ It always took all his self-control not to spontaneously combust on the spot, although today he barely managed it. His teeth ached with the effort it took to appear calm. ‘Whoever did it robbed me of seven years.’
‘You stole her pearls, Owen! Her great-grandmother’s pearls! While she slept! Have you no shame? No morals? She loved them so much. They were the only things she ever wore!’ And here they went again, going round and round in unrelenting and never-ending circles, both furious at each other and with no end to that in sight. ‘I’d rather marry Kelvedon than suffer a lifetime with you!’
An emotion dangerously resembling jealousy cut through the hurt and the anger of the injustice he had suffered and instantly clawed at his gut. ‘Then marry him.’ It took every ounce of his strength not to shout, ‘See if I care.’
‘I shall!’ She spun in her heel.
‘Even though his very presence disgusts you.’ His tone might sound reasonable, but he couldn’t stop himself pacing. Couldn’t fully mask his exasperation. Here he was, determined to rescue her, and Lord only knew why when she wasn’t worthy of the effort, and she was too blasted stubborn to let him!
‘I know you, Lydia. I know that is how he makes you feel. I saw it with my own eyes only yesterday. I watched you baulk as he touched you.’ An image he couldn’t shake from his mind. ‘His touch makes you sick to your stomach.’
‘The thought of your touch makes me sick to my stomach, too!’
That hurt.
Exactly as it was supposed to. It took all his stubborn pride not to react and when he didn’t, she couldn’t resist throwing another poison dart.
‘I wish I could erase every single one of them from my skin! I came here to tell you I’d rather be dead than marry you.’
She did haughty so well.
‘And it is my lady to you! Not Lydia. Never call me by my first name again!’
The relief he expected to hear at her vociferous refusal did not come. Instead came a sort of calm panic which took control of his tongue. ‘You are not even curious to know what I know or hear why I proposed such a ludicrous offer in the first place?’
He watched her dark eyes narrow slightly as doubt set in. ‘We are agreed on something at least. It is ludicrous.’ She marched passed him, then turned and stood ramrod straight in the centre of his office, the imperious icy glare down her nose doing little to conceal her obvious curiosity. ‘You have five minutes.’ As he was about to close the door on her ultimatum, she had the gall to tap her foot. ‘And not a second more.’
‘Then you might as well leave now, my lady.’ Owen crossed his arms and leaned back against the frame, determined to call her bluff and enjoy doing it. He was sick and tired of her putting him in his place and damned if he would pretend to brush it off in his own blasted office. ‘Visitors to Libertas dance to my tune, not the other way around.’
‘Then this is revenge. Exactly as I suspected. Tell me, Mr Wolfe...is it as sweet as we are all so often told it is?’ The question came out in a hiss. ‘Does it make you feel inordinately smug to witness my family’s downfall? Or are you merely inordinately smug as a matter of course nowadays?’
The tenuous grasp on his emotions almost snapped then and he very nearly slammed the heavy door shut in a fit of outraged pique. Instead, he settled for one deep, calming breath which did little to ease his barely suppressed and roiling temper. ‘This isn’t revenge, Lydia. Revenge suggests I had a hand in their downfall, when this mess is entirely your feckless brother’s and pompous father’s fault.’
‘Do not insult my family!’
Owen held up his palm to stay her. Neither man was worth his respect, let alone her sacrifice, but she would blindly stand by them till the bitter end regardless—but she hadn’t cared enough to stand by him. Even after the initial shock had worn off, he’d hoped she would come to her senses. Remember she loved him as he had loved her and realise he was incapable of the callous crimes he had been accused of.
‘Much as it would delight me to lay claim to the lofty Barton family’s mighty fall from grace, because heaven knows I suspect both your father and brother thoroughly deserve it, I never sent them spiralling into debt, nor did I have any part in their scurrying to court the richest peer willing to bail them out at short notice. All I am guilty of in this whole sorry debacle is of knowing who your dreadful betrothed was before you did and stupidly offering you a chance to escape him.’
‘This is a noble sacrifice, then?’ She clasped her hands in front of her face and sarcastically batted her eyelashes. ‘Borne out of your selfless desire to rescue a damsel in distress.’ Those expressive brown eyes narrowed again and she stalked towards him, waving her finger. ‘Exactly how gullible do you think I am? I know you, too, Owen!’ That finger prodded him in the chest. ‘You are up to something!’
‘Well, of course I am up to something! You didn’t seriously think I would offer something as monumental as marriage unless there was something in it for me, did you?’
She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again, blinking back at him, confused. Owen decided to take that as a good sign—although good for who at this stage he wasn’t entirely certain. Things weren’t exactly going according to plan. He was supposed to have waved her off happy when she refused his proposal, not try to discuss her decision or sway it. Or inhale her perfume. Why the blazes was he always seduced by that perfume?
But by her temporary silence, at least he had regained control of the argument.
‘Why don’t we sit?’ He needed the barrier of his desk between them. A solid oak barricade separating him from the intoxicating scent of the sultry jasmine she had always favoured. He could never smell that damn flower without thinking of her. Neither could he escape it. A version had grown rampantly wild in Port Jackson, he was convinced simply to torture him. ‘Then we can discuss business.’
‘Business?’ She stared at him as if he had gone mad as he led her to a chair and continued to glare as he sat himself opposite and found himself staring back.
Where to start? He was blowed if he knew where this was going. Fortunately, she threw him a haughty bone.
‘What could you possibly know that I do not?’
‘I know that Kelvedon’s money wouldn’t make much of a dent in the debt.’ Owen opened the drawer in his desk and took out the sheet of foolscap containing all of Randolph’s diligently acquired findings and slid it across the table. ‘These are the most pressing debts we know about.’
He watched her scan the list, her eyes widening here and there at the sheer scale of them. Alongside long-outstanding amounts owed to a vast array of shops, merchants and tailors from Bond Street to Cheapside, who were sick and tired of waiting for payment, there were several loans still owing to four separate banks. All other debts aside, those loans totalled an eye-watering six thousand pounds in their own right. Owen and Randolph had purchased and luxuriously renovated Libertas with significantly less.
When she finally looked back up at him, clearly dumbstruck, he felt bad that he was yet to tell her the worst.
‘There’s more, I’m afraid.’ He handed over the parchment which had gained him the audience with her father. ‘Three years ago your father mortgaged the house in Berkeley Square. For over a year, he has failed to pay even the interest, let alone any of the principle sum, and has refused point blank to engage in any conversation with the gentleman who lent him the money as to when he will repay the debt.’
Doubtless Fulbrook thought the Cheapside merchant far beneath him and content to wait ad infinitum because he was a peer of the realm. ‘In desperation, the gentleman concerned began legal proceedings to take possession of the property as he has every right to do under the law. The case was due to be heard in a fortnight...’ Although the merchant would have no need of the law now that Owen had doubtless made his year by purchasing the rotten debt from him.
Pouf!
Three thousand pounds...gone just like that.
‘Papa intimated we were about to lose the house...’ He watched her gaze fix on the underlined mortgage total with resignation. ‘But I had no idea things were this dire.’
‘There are also your brother’s debts.’ Her head snapped up.
‘What?’ He could tell by her expression this came as a complete surprise. ‘Justin owes money, too?’
‘I am afraid so. He owes six months to the Albany for his bachelor lodgings...’ a ludicrous situation to have got himself into when his father had an enormous house on Berkeley Square he could have lived in for free ‘...and has separate tailors’ bills and other incidentals outstanding.’ Justin Barton also allegedly owed money to some very unsavoury characters. Men who preyed on the desperate. He couldn’t categorically prove that yet, not with irrefutable and tangible proof, so kept it to himself. ‘They add at least another thousand. Maybe more.’
Definitely more.
The trouble with borrowing money from unsavoury characters was they tended to play their cards very close to their chest unless they were all done waiting for payment. A few were shouting very loud and would undoubtedly insist their debts be paid first and foremost or would seek reimbursement via other methods. Owen suspected there were many more who could throw their hats into the ring if they too became impatient. Until they did, those dubious gentlemen’s agreements would be hard to trace.
‘I did not realise my brother had debts, too.’ This news seemed to bother her. ‘Mind you, I wasn’t aware of my father’s until recently either.’
‘I don’t suppose it is something which is discussed around the dinner table.’
‘Or with daughters.’
He saw her dark eyes cloud and felt for her. Clearly her father’s uninterest in her had not improved in the years since he’d left the Barton residence. Lydia had always been largely ignored, which had been the single biggest reason he had been able to befriend her in the first place. They had both been alone in the world, both deemed insignificant by everyone else and at best a means to an end. Something Owen would no longer stand for now he was master of his own destiny, but clearly Lydia’s situation and her own self-worth had not improved else she wouldn’t be considering Kelvedon.
The whole sorry situation and her family’s solution left a bad taste in his mouth. What had those near-sighted supposed gentlemen expected? Her brother’s ratcheting debts on top of years of her father’s slapdash mismanagement and flagrant overspending were bound to come back to haunt them all sooner rather than later. Any fool could have seen that a mile off. Belts should have been tightened years ago; pennies should have been diligently looked after to save the pounds. Instead, the Barton men had preferred to bury their heads in the sand for the sake of appearances rather than facing their financial problems head-on. Private opera boxes and copious pairs of Hoby boots were a ridiculous extravagance when the family was strapped for cash.
Selling off Lydia to bail them out of trouble was not only grossly unfair—it was, in Owen’s humble opinion, ultimately pointless.
The Earl was too old and pompous to change his ways and his heir was too weak-willed to do what was really necessary either. The money they got from Lydia was merely a stay of execution if neither man fundamentally changed their ways. Where Owen came from, credit in any form was never an option, so it had never occurred to either him or Randolph to spend beyond their means or attempt to purchase anything without first saving up the funds. Yet another stark difference between her world and his he would never truly understand.
‘Obviously these are just the London debts. There are probably more in Cheshire...’ He hadn’t meant to say that. In thinking out loud he was in danger of rubbing salt into the wound and, more worryingly, inadvertently giving her more solid reasons to say yes to his ill-thought-out proposal which he had made in the irrational heat of the moment.
‘Exactly how much are we talking about? In total.’ The defiant ice queen was gone, replaced by a pale and defeated version of Lydia he didn’t want to witness when he had always adored her spirit.
‘I estimate it to be at least fifteen thousand—assuming I have uncovered everything.’ Which in less than a week, and even with the tenacious Randolph on the case, he likely hadn’t.
‘I see.’ She stared down at her hands. ‘The Marquess of Kelvedon’s money really isn’t enough, is it?’
‘No.’
Only her eyes lifted. All the usual heat in them missing. ‘And what have you offered?’
‘Ten... Alongside the immediate settlement of all the outstanding mortgage debt.’ A necessary lie now that the deeds were his lock, stock and barrel. He had shamelessly used it as leverage with her father to get what he wanted, but which he wouldn’t use on the daughter. Owen wouldn’t blackmail her into marriage. Irrespective of his wasted three thousand, she either did it willingly or not at all.
‘Why?’
A fair question and one he really did not know the true answer to beyond the overwhelming compulsion to save her.
‘I see a business opportunity.’
Owen had to fight the urge to stand up and pace again or even run a frustrated hand through his hair at the lie because he would never admit to the jealousy, confusion and sense of responsibility which was eating him from the inside.
‘You are an earl’s daughter. A well-connected earl’s daughter with a great many society friends and acquaintances. You would give me the veneer of respectability I would never be able to achieve on my own. That opens doors... Brings in new clients... More money.’
‘You expect me to believe this is about money now and not revenge?’ She shook her head and laughed without any trace of humour.
‘Everything is about money.’
He almost added money equalled power and power equalled control—but stopped himself just in time. It gave her too much of an insight into the insecurities he would likely never be able to shake and did not want anyone to be able to exploit ever again. ‘But perhaps there is a little bit of revenge in the mix, too. Hardly a surprise all things considered—and I am only human.’
Except he hadn’t particularly enjoyed wielding that mortgage deed this morning and informing the pompous Earl of Fulbrook that he could evict him from the house whenever he saw fit if he didn’t give Lydia the opportunity to consider his proposal. He had been too concerned with her welfare to savour the irony of the moment.
‘Your father is keen to keep on the right side of your current fiancé, especially as the settlements have been signed, therefore we will have to elope before your engagement to Kelvedon makes the newspapers. If you are agreeable, tonight makes the most sense, I suppose.’ Events were rapidly spiralling out of his control and he hoped at least managing that detail would make him feel less...adrift. ‘It will cause a bit of a scandal, I’m afraid, but in many ways that works in my favour.’
‘It also works in my father’s.’ The disappointment at her sire was unmistakable in her tone. ‘He can entirely blame me for causing it and publicly lament my usual wilfulness while appearing completely blameless in front of his precious Marquess. Before he shamelessly pockets your money, of course, and slaps himself on the back for making such a favourable deal. I assume he gets that money as soon as the unpleasant deed is done—not before.’
Owen nodded. ‘Call me sentimental—but I really do not trust your father as far as I can throw him.’
‘And we are supposed to forget the past and simply spend eternity together? Blithely build a home and family on non-existent foundations?’
The pang of something dangerously resembling longing caught him off guard before he ruthlessly dismissed it. She still hated him. The thought of his touch still made her sick to her stomach.
‘If you think I am offering you a proper marriage, in every sense of the word, Lydia, think again. I want neither of those things.’ Not any more at any rate.
‘Then what are you proposing?’
If only he knew! He barely recognised himself right now and had no clue where this was going. ‘A business transaction. Nothing more, nothing less. Your connections in society, your expertise in navigating it and your public support and endorsement in exchange for my thirteen thousand pounds.’
‘My public support?’
‘Balls, entertainments, invitations. Beyond these four walls we behave as though we are a doting couple.’
‘And within them?’
The sticky bit. The bit he was least convinced by and most at odds with. ‘I propose we stay well away from one another.’
At this, she seemed to relax, which shouldn’t hurt but did. Much more than Owen bargained for.
‘Beyond that, will I be granted any freedoms or are these four walls all I can expect?’
What a ridiculous question! Unless she really did think him a monster? Really did hate him to her core?
‘You are not a prisoner, Lydia. As long as you stick to the terms of our arrangement, I have no interest in where you go, what you do, or who you do it with.’
Owen regretted the last assertion as soon as it left his mouth. Certain things would bother him. A few would send him insane. He knew that with the same certainty as he knew he was currently, and apparently wilfully, walking blindly into perhaps the biggest catastrophe of his life.
Out of his control.
Likely uncontrollable, too.
Both things scared the hell out of him. Thanks to blasted Randolph and his own nagging conscience, he was in the middle of the Pacific again, only this time, in a rickety, leaking old rowboat in the midst of a roaring tempest. Madness. Total, utter, preventable madness. In fact, he should abandon the idea immediately.
‘That is my offer. Take it or leave it.’
And because his stupid heart was racing at his own inability to stop himself from walking headlong into disaster and all the potentially disastrous ramifications if she miraculously agreed, it was his turn to tap his foot. ‘You have five minutes. Not a second...’
‘Yes.’
The floor shifted beneath his feet.
‘Are you sure?’ Owen felt sick as fear warred with incredulity. Relief with panic. ‘You do not need proper time to think about it?’
Because he did. He suddenly needed to think of a damn good way to untangle himself from this mess before the relentless quicksand sucked him under.
The far door suddenly flew open accompanied by the ominous rattle of cups and an innocently grinning Randolph. It didn’t take a genius to work out the menace had been listening at the keyhole at the same time as he’d been picking the blasted lock.
‘Who fancies some tea?’