Читать книгу The Regency Season: Convenient Marriages - Sophia James - Страница 11

Chapter Two

‘There is someone to see you, Lord Montcliffe. A tradesman by the name of Mr Robert Cameron and he is most insistent that he be allowed to come inside.’

‘Send him in.’

‘Through the front door, my lord?’ His butler’s tone was censorious.

‘Indeed.’

‘Very well, my lord.’

It had been a couple of weeks since the contretemps at Hyde Park Corner and Daniel wondered what on earth Cameron might want from him. The Arabian greys had been pulled from auction the day after they had last spoken and the small bit of investigation he had commissioned on the character of the man had been most informative.

Mr Robert Cameron was a London merchant who was well heeled and wily. He owned most of the shares in a shipping line trading timber between England and the Americas, his move into importing taking place across the past eight or so years, and he was doing more than well.

However, when the door opened again and Cameron came through, Daniel was shocked.

The man of a little over a fortnight ago was thinner and more pallid, the bruising around his eyes darker.

‘Thank you for seeing me, Lord Montcliffe.’ Cameron waited as the servant departed the room, peering about to see no others lingered in the background of the substantial library. ‘Might I speak very frankly to you and in complete confidence, my lord?’

Interest flickered. ‘You may, but please take a seat.’ He gestured to the leather wingchair nearby for Cameron looked more than unsteady on his feet.

‘No. I would rather stand, my lord. There are words I need to say that require fortitude, if you will, and a sitting position may lessen my resolve.’

Daniel nodded and waited as the other collected himself. He could think of no reason whatsoever for the furtive secrecy or the tense manner of the man.

‘What I am about to offer, Lord Montcliffe, must not leave the confines of this room, no matter what you might think of it. Will you give me your word as a gentleman on that whether you accept my proposal or not?’

‘It isn’t outside of the law?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘Then you have my word.’

‘Might I ask for a drink before I begin?’

‘Certainly. Brandy?’

‘Thank you.’

Pouring two generous glasses, Daniel passed one over, waiting as the older man readied himself to speak.

‘My health is not as it was, my lord. In fact, I think it fair to say that I am not long for this world.’ He held up his hand as Daniel went to interrupt. ‘It is not condolences I am after, my lord. I only tell you this because the lack of months left to me owe a good part to what I propose to relate to you next.’

Taking a deep swallow of his brandy, Cameron wiped his mouth with his hands. Labourers hands with wide calluses and small healed injuries. The hands of someone used to many long hours of manual work.

‘I want to bequeath the pair of greys to you, my lord. I know you will love them in the same manner as I do and that they will not be sold on, so to speak, for a quick financial profit. Mick and Maisie need a home that will nurture them and I have no doubts you shall do just that. I would also prefer their names to stay just as they are as the Grecian ones suggested by Mr Tattersall didn’t appeal to me at all.’

‘I could not accept such an offer, Mr Cameron, and have not the means to buy them from you at this moment. Besides, it is unheard of to give a complete stranger such a valuable thing,’ Daniel replied, taken aback.

For the first time Cameron smiled. ‘But you see, my lord, I can do just as I will. Great wealth produces a sense of egocentricity and allows a freedom that is undeniable. I can bequeath anything I like to anybody I want and I wish for you to have my greys.’

Daniel tried to ignore the flare of excitement that started building inside him. With such horses he could begin to slowly recoup a little of the family fortune by running a breeding programme at Montcliffe Manor that would be the envy of society. But he stopped himself. There had to be a catch here somewhere, for by all accounts Cameron was a shrewd businessman and a successful one at that.

‘And in return?’

‘Your estate is heavily mortgaged and I have it on good authority that a hefty loan your brother took out with the Honourable Mr Reginald Goldsmith will be called in before the end of this month. He had other outstanding loans as well and I have acquired each and every one to do just as I will with them.’

‘What is your meaning?’ Daniel bit out, forcing himself to stand still.

‘Coutts is also worried by your lack of collateral and, given the Regent’s flagrant dearth of care with his finances, they are now beating a more conservative pathway in the management of their long-term lending. With only a small investigation I think you might find yourself in trouble.’

‘You would ruin me?’

‘No, my lord, exactly the opposite. I wish to gift you three sums of twenty-five thousand pounds each year for the next three years and then the lump sum of one-hundred-and-fifty thousand pounds.’

A fortune. Daniel could barely believe the proportions of the offer, such riches unimaginable.

‘I would immediately sign over the town house in Grosvenor Square as an incentive for you to honour the terms. Then, whenever Amethyst instructs me to do so, a property I own to the north called Dunstan House, with a good deal of acreage about it, shall be endorsed into your care, as well.’

Stopping, the merchant faced him directly. Sweat had built on his brow and his cheeks were marked with a ruddy glow of much emotion. ‘There is one thing, however, that you must do for me in return, my lord. My only daughter Amethyst is now twenty-six, soon to be twenty-seven. She is a clever girl and a sensible one. She has worked alongside me for the last eight years and it is her surefootedness in business that has propelled my profits skywards.’

He waited as Daniel nodded before continuing.

‘Amethyst Amelia was educated under the capable tutelage of the Gaskell Street Presbyterian Church School and I paid the teachers handsomely to make sure that she acquired all the skills a woman of the classes above her might need to know. In short, she could fit into any social situation without disgracing herself.’

Daniel suddenly knew just where this conversation was leading to. A dowry. A bribe. The answer to his prayers for the selling of his soul.

‘You are single and available, my lord. You have two sisters who are in need of being launched into society, a mother who has fine taste in living and a grandfather who requires much in the way of medical attention. All continuing and long-term expenses. If you marry my daughter by the end of July, none of this will ever be a problem again and you will have the means to right the crumbling estate of Montcliffe once and for all.’

‘Get out, you bastard.’ Daniel’s anger made the words tremble. That a man he was beginning to respect and like should think of coming into his life to blackmail him into marrying his daughter. For that was what this was. Blackmail, even given the enormous amounts mooted.

But Cameron looked to be going nowhere. ‘I can understand your wrath and indeed, were I in your boots, I might have had exactly the same reaction. But I would ask you to think about it for at least a week. You have promised me your confidence and I expect that, for if a word of this gets out anywhere my daughter’s reputation will be ruined. Hence, as a show of my own gratitude for your discretion, I shall leave you the greys regardless of your final decision.’

‘I cannot accept them.’

‘Here is a document I have written up for your perusal and I earnestly hope to hear from you presently.’

With that he was gone, his glass emptied on the desk and a fat envelope left beside it. Daniel was in two minds as to what to do: send it back unopened with a curt message containing his lack of interest or open it up and see what was inside.

Curiosity won out.

The sheet before him was witnessed by a city lawyer whose qualifications seemed more than satisfactory. It was also signed by his daughter.

‘Damn. Damn. Damn.’ He whispered the words beneath his breath. The girl had been told of all this and still wanted the travesty? Finishing his brandy, he poured himself another as he read on, barely believing what was written.

He was to marry Amethyst Amelia Cameron before the month was finished on the condition that he have no relations with any other woman for two years afterwards.

Shocked to the core, he took a good swallow of the brandy. Amethyst Amelia Cameron would allow her father to sell her for the promise of what? Under the law any daughter could inherit money, chattels and unentailed property from a dying father and he obviously loved her. Besides, she had experience in the business and had turned profits for many a year. Cameron had told him that himself. So what was it that she would gain from such an arrangement? They barely knew each other and, even given she was from the trading classes, an heiress of her calibre could garner any number of titled aristocrats who were down on their purse.

As he was?

‘Hell!’ Daniel threw the parchment into a drawer and slammed it shut, but the promises festered even unseen, malevolent and beguiling.

How on earth had Cameron known so much about his financial difficulties? Would Goldsmith truly call in his brother’s loans against Montcliffe before he was ready for them? If he did that, Daniel would be forced to sell the town house, the manor, the surrounding farms and any chattels that would fetch something. Then the Wyldes would be homeless, moneylenders baying for their blood and all the claws unsheathed.

If it was just him, he might have been able to manage, but Cameron was perfectly correct; his sisters were young, his grandfather was old and his mother had always found her gratification in the position the earldom afforded them in society and had freely spent accordingly.

Standing, he walked to the window and looked out over the gardens, swearing as he saw the two greys tied to a post by the roadside and his butler near them, looking more than bewildered.

He had left them just as he’d said. It was begun already. Daniel turned to the doorway and hurried through it.

* * *

‘I think he took my proposal very well.’ Robert Cameron sipped at the sweet tea Amethyst had brought him and smiled.

‘You do?’

‘He is a good man with sound moral judgement and a love for his family.’

Amethyst bit into a ginger biscuit, wiping the crumbs away from her lips.

‘So he signed his name to the deed?’

‘Not quite.’

‘He didn’t sign it?’

Her father looked up. ‘He told me that I was a bastard for even suggesting such a thing and said that I should get out.’

‘But you left the greys?’

‘I did.’

‘And he has as yet not sent them back?’

‘He has not.’

‘Then it is a good omen.’

Robert frowned. ‘I hope so, Amethyst, I really do.’

Amethyst tried her hardest to smile. Papa had become thinner and thinner no matter what she might get their French chef to feed him and he had taken to striding about the house at night...watching. He was scared and those that might harm them for their money were becoming braver. The daylight attack near Tattersall’s had made her father paranoiac about any movement in their street, any unknown face around the warehouse. Nay, he was eating himself up with worry and she could allow it no longer.

Papa wanted her to be protected and he desperately wanted her to trust in a man again. With time running out for her father Amethyst had allowed him the choice of her groom. Said like that it sounded abhorrent, but nothing was ever as black and white as one might imagine and right now she wanted her father to smile.

‘We shall wait a week. If Lord Montcliffe has not come back to us by then with an answer, we will visit him together.’ She injected a jaunty positive note into her words but everything in her felt flat.

Gerald Whitely’s face shimmered in her memory. The feel of his anger was still there sometimes, just beyond touch, his angry words and then his endless seething silence. A relationship that had blinded sense and buried reason, one bad decision following another until there was nothing left of any of it.

Cold fingers closed over the cross at her throat. Her father was the one person who had stayed constant in her life and she would do whatever it took to see that he was happy. Anything at all.

‘Your mother made me promise to see you flourish, Amy. They were the last words she spoke to me as she slipped away and I had hoped that you would, but after Whitely...’ He stopped, his voice wavering and frighteningly thin. ‘Lord Montcliffe will make you remember to laugh again. He loves horses and they love him back. Any man who can win the trust of an animal is a good man, an honest man, and I can see that in him when I look him in the eyes.’

She hoped her smile did not appear false as he held her hand, the dearness of the gesture so familiar.

‘Promise me you will try to give him all your heart, body and soul, Amethyst. No reservations. It is how your mama loved me and there is no defence for a man against a woman like that. Such strength only allows growth and wonder between a married couple and I know you have been saddened by love...’

She shook his words away, the reminder of bitterness unwanted. Her choice, cankered before it had even begun.

‘When death claimed Gerald Whitely, my love, I was not sorry. Sense tells me that you were not either.’

So he knew of that? Another shame. A further deceit that had not remained hidden.

‘It was the Cameron fortune Gerald was after, Papa. Perhaps Lord Montcliffe and he are not so unalike after all?’

But her father shook his head. ‘Whitely fashioned his own demise. Daniel Wylde is only trying to clean up after the mistakes of his brother and father and is doing so to protect the family he has left.’

‘A saint, then?’ She wished that the caustic undertone in her words was not quite so unmistakable.

‘Hardly. But he is the first man you have given a second glance to. The first man who has made you blush. Such attraction must account for something because it was the same with Susannah and me.’

Despite everything she smiled. ‘I imagine that Lord Montcliffe has that effect upon everybody whoever meets him, Papa. I was not claiming him for myself.’

‘Because you do not trust your judgements pertaining to the acquisition of a husband, given the last poor specimen?’

Her father had never before, in the year since his death, spoken of Gerald Whitely in this way. That thought alone lent mortification to her sinking raft of other emotions.

Failure. It ate at certainty like a large rat at a wedding feast. Once she had chosen so unwisely she felt at a loss to ever allow herself such a mandate again. Perhaps that was a part of the reason she did not rally against her father’s arguments. That and the yellowing shades of sickness that hung in the whites of his eyes.

Death held a myriad of hues. Gerald’s had been a pale and unholy grey when she had seen him laid out in the undertaker’s rooms. Her mother’s had been red-tinged, a rash of consequence marked into the very fabric of her skin and only fading hours after she had taken her final and hard-fought breath.

Amethyst’s nails dug deep into her thighs as she willed such thoughts aside. A long time ago she had been a happier person and a more optimistic one. Now all she could manage was the pretence of it.

It was easier to allow Papa the hope of joy in his final months, the illusion of better times, of children, of the ‘heart and body and soul’ love her father had felt for her mother and which he imagined was some sort of a God-given rite of passage. Once she had believed in such a thing as well, but no longer.

All she could muster now was a horror for anything that held the hint of intimacy.

Blemished. Damaged. Hurt.

Daniel Wylde would understand sooner or later the payment required for the Cameron fortune and she was sure he would feel every bit as cheated as she did. But at least Papa would go to his grave believing that his only daughter was safe and happy, the soldier earl he had chosen for her strong enough to ward off any threats of menace.

She leaned down and picked up a small coin from a collection on a plate, balancing it in her palm before flipping it over. If it shows heads this marriage will work and if it does not... When the coin fell to tails she chastised herself for playing such silly games.

* * *

When Daniel returned from an outing later in the day his mother was ensconced in the drawing room at the Montcliffe town house, a glass of his finest brandy in her hand and a thoughtful look upon her face.

‘Have you been procuring new horseflesh, Daniel? There is a pair of magnificent greys in your stable and I just wondered...’

‘They were a gift, Mother. I did not purchase them.’

‘A gift? From whom?’ The silk in the gown Janet, Lady Montcliffe, wore matched her eyes exactly, a deep sapphire blue. A new possession, he supposed, thinking of the demand for payment that would come across his desk before much longer.

He could have been truthful, could have simply stated that there was a possibility he would be married and that the greys had been a pre-wedding present, but something made him stop. Anger, he supposed, and shame and the fact that to voice such a thing might make it feel more real and true.

With the Camerons he felt removed from society. In their company the preposterous proposed union made a sort of skewed sense that it didn’t here in front of his mother.

When he didn’t answer, his mother remarked, ‘Charlotte Hughes is back from Scotland. I saw her today at the Bracewells and she asked after you. She is looking a picture of health and wealth and was sporting a necklace with an emerald attached to it the size of a walnut.’

‘I am no longer interested in Lady Mackay, Mama.’ He stressed her married name.

‘Well, she seemed more than interested in your whereabouts. She had heard of the fracas at La Corunna, of course, and was most concerned about the injury to your leg. There were tears in her eyes when I told her of it and such compassion is heartwarming.’

Daniel interrupted her. ‘Is that my French brandy you are drinking?’ Crossing to the cabinet, he found the bottle and frowned as he saw there was barely any left. His whole family had been falling apart for years. His mother with her drink, his brother with his gambling and his sisters with their brittle sense of entitlement and whining. Only his grandfather had seemed to hold it together, though his body was letting him down more and more often.

‘If you are going to lecture me about the evils of strong drink...’

Daniel shook his head. ‘This evening I cannot find the energy to do so. If you wish to kill yourself by small degrees with your misplaced grief for my brother’s stupidity...’

‘Nigel was a good boy...’

‘Who mortgaged the Montcliffe property to the hilt as a payment for his escalating gambling habit.’

‘He was trying to save the estate. He was trying to make everything right again,’ she insisted.

‘If you believe that, Mama, then you are as deluded as he was.’

His mother finished the glass of brandy and stood. ‘The military campaign in Spain and Portugal has made you different, Daniel. Harder. A man of distance and callousness and I do not like what you have become.’

The sound of screams on a march from Hell with winter eating up any hope for warmth. Dead soldiers stripped of clothes and boots by others needing cover in the middle of a relentless freeze, and hundreds of miles left to reach the coast and to safety. Aye, distance came easily with such memories.

‘In less than six months the Montcliffe properties will be bankrupt.’

He had not meant to say it like this, so baldly, and as his mother paled a compassion he had long since let go of spiked within.

‘I have tried to tell you before, Mother. I have tried to make you understand that Nigel finished what our father started, but I can no longer afford to say it kindly. The estate lies precariously on the edge of insolvency.’

‘You lie.’

‘The bank won’t lend the Montcliffe estate another penny and I have been warned that Goldsmith could call in one of Nigel’s outstanding loans before the end of this month.’

‘But Gwendolyn is to be presented in court and all the invitations to a soirée are written out. Besides, I have also just ordered several ball dresses from Madame Soulier. I cannot possibly curtail. If I do, others shall know of our plight and we shall suffer a very public shaming. Why, I could not even bear such a thing.’

Turning, Daniel held his breath, the guilt of Nigel’s death eating at his equanimity. Years ago they had been close and he wondered if his time away from England in the army had left his brother exposed somehow. Lord knew his mother and sisters were unremitting in their demands. If he had been here, would he have been able to bolster Nigel’s will and made him stronger, allowing him a sounding board for good sense and bolder decisions in the economic welfare of Montcliffe?

Taking a deep breath, he faced his mother directly. ‘There is only one way that I can see of navigating the Montcliffe inheritances out of this conundrum.’

His mother wiped the tears from her eyes and looked up at him. He had never seen her appear quite as old and lined.

‘How?’

‘I can marry into money.’

‘Old money?’ Even under duress his mother remained a snob.

‘Or money earned from the toil of hard labour and lucky breaks.’

‘Trade?’ The word was whispered with all the undercurrents of a shout.

‘The alternative is bankruptcy,’ he reminded her grimly.

‘You have someone in mind?’

He could not say it, could not toss Amethyst Amelia Cameron’s name into the ring of fire his mother had so effortlessly conjured up, a sneer on her lips and distaste in her blue eyes.

‘Your father would be turning in his grave at such a suggestion. Marry one of the Stapleton girls, they would have you in a second, or the oldest Beaumont chit. She has made no secret of setting her cap at you.’

‘Enough, Mother.’

‘Charlotte Hughes, then, despite her foolish marriage. She has always loved you and you had strong feelings for her once. Besides, she is a lot more flush these days...’

‘Enough.’ This time he said it louder and she stopped.

‘You have no true understanding of the difficulties that face me, Daniel...’

Her words were slightly slurred and he interrupted her. ‘Your line in the sand is in danger of being washed away by strong drink, Mother, and it would help if you listened rather than argued. If you made some sacrifice in the family spending and pared down on the number of dresses and bonnets and boots you required, we may have some ready cash to tide us over whilst I try to extricate us from this Godforsaken mess.’

Already she was shaking her head. Sometimes he wondered why he had not just left and taken ship to the Americas, leaving the lot of them to wallow in the cesspool of their own making.

But blood and duty were thicker than both fury and defeat and so he had stayed, juggling what was left of the few assets against what had been lost into the wider world of debt.

If Goldsmith was to foreclose as Cameron had intimated he would? He shook away the dread.

So far he had not needed to sell any of the furniture or paintings in the London town house and so the effect of great wealth remained the illusion it always had been.

The avenues of escape were closing in, however, and he knew without a doubt that it was weeks rather than months for any monies left in the coffers to be gone. Nay, Cameron’s option of a marriage of convenience was the only way to avoid complete ruin.

Upending her glass, his mother called her maid, heavily relying on the guiding arm of her servant as she stood.

‘I shall speak with you again when you are less unreasonable.’ The anger in her voice resonated sharply.

Brandy, arrogance and hopelessness. A familiar cocktail of Wylde living that had taken his father and brother into the afterlife too early.

He wondered if he even had the strength to try to save Montcliffe.

* * *

He met Lady Charlotte Mackay four days later as he exited the bank where he had spent an hour with the manager, trying to piece together some sort of rescue plan allowing the family estate a few more months of grace. And failing. His right leg hurt like hell and he had barely slept the night before with the pain of it.

Charlotte looked just as he remembered her, silky blonde curls falling down from an intricate hat placed high on her head. Her eyes widened as she saw it was he. Shock, he thought, or pity. These days he tried not to interpret the reaction of others when they perceived his uneven gait.

‘Daniel.’ Her voice was musical and laced with an overtone of gladness. ‘It has been an age since I have seen you and I was hoping you might come to call upon me. I have been back from Edinburgh for almost a sennight and had the pleasure of meeting your mother a few days ago.’

‘She mentioned she had seen you.’

‘Oh.’

The conversation stopped for a second, the thousand things unsaid filling in the spaces of awkwardness.

‘I wrote to you, of course, but you did not answer.’ Her confession made him wary, and as her left hand came up to wipe away an errant curl from her face he saw her fingers were ringless.

He could have said he had not received any missives and, given the vagaries of the postal system, she would have believed him. But he didn’t lie.

‘Marriage requires a certain sense of loyalty, I have always thought, so perhaps any communication between us was not such a good idea.’

Small shadows dulled the blue of her irises. ‘Until a union fails to live up to expectation and the trap of a dreary routine makes one’s mind wander.’

Dangerous ground this. He tried to turn the subject. ‘I heard your husband was well mourned at his funeral.’

‘Death fashions martyrs of us all.’ Her glance was measured. ‘Widowhood has people behaving with a sort of poignant carefulness that is...unending and a whole year of dark clothes and joylessness has left me numb. I want to be normal again. I am young, after all, and most men find me attractive.’

Was this a proposition? The bright gown she wore was low-cut, generous breasts nestling in their beds of silk with only a minimal constraint. As she leaned forward he could not help but look.

The maleness in him rose like a sail in the wind, full of promise and direction, but he had been down this pathway once before and the wreck of memory was potent. He made himself stand still.

‘I have learnt much through the brutal consequences of mistakes, but I am home alone tonight, Daniel. If you came to see me, we might rekindle all that we once had.’

Around them others hurried past, an ordinary morning in London, a slight chill on the air and the calling voices of street vendors.

He felt unbalanced by meeting her, given their last encounter. Betrayal was an emotion that held numerous interpretations and he hadn’t cared enough to hear hers then.

But Charlotte Mackay’s eyes now held a harder edge of knowledge, something war had also stamped on him. No longer simple. Two people ruined by the circumstances of their lives and struggling to hold on to anything at all. The disenchantment made him tired and wary and he was glad to see her mother hurrying towards them from the shop behind, giving no further chance of confidence.

Lady Wesley had changed almost as much as her daughter, the quick nervous laughter alluding to a nature that was teetering on some sort of a breakdown.

‘My lord. I hope your family is all well?’

‘Indeed they are, ma’am.’

‘As you can see, our Charlotte is back and all in one piece from the wilds of Scotland.’

When he failed to speak she placed her arm across her daughter’s. The suspicion that she was trying to transmit some hidden signal was underlined by the whitened skin over her knuckles. Charlotte looked suddenly beaten, the fight and challenge drained away into a vacuous smile of compliance.

Perhaps the Wesley family was as complex and convoluted as his own. Jarring his right foot, he swore to himself as they gave their goodbyes. His balance was worsening with the constant pain and the headache he was often cursed with was a direct result of that.

If the Camerons were to know the extent of his infirmity, would they withdraw their offer? Robert Cameron had told him that his daughter needed a strong husband. A protector. The beat of blood coursing around the bullet in his thigh was more distinct now just as the specialist he had seen last month had predicted it would become. If he left it too much longer, he would be dead.

The choice of the devil.

He had seen men in Spain and Portugal with their limbs severed and their lives shattered. Even now in London the remnants of the ragtag of survivors from the battlements of La Corunna still littered the streets, begging for mercy and succour from those around them.

He couldn’t lose his leg. He wouldn’t. Pride was one thing but so was the fate of his family. Dysfunctional the Montcliffes might be, but as the possessor of the title he had an obligation to honour.

For just a moment he wished he was back in Spain amongst his regiment as they rode east in the late autumn sunshine along the banks of the Tagus. The rhythm of the tapping drums and a valley filled with wildflowers came to mind, the ground soft underfoot and the cheers of the waving Spanish nationals ringing in his ears. A simple and uncomplicated time. A time before the chaos that was to be La Corunna. Even now when he smelt thyme, sage or lavender, such sights and sounds returned to haunt him.

The London damp encroached into his thoughts: the sound of a carriage, the calls of children in the park opposite. His life seemed to have taken a direction he was not certain of any more; too wounded to re-enlist, too encumbered by his family and its problems to simply disappear. And now a further twist—a marriage proposal that held nothing but compromise within it.

He tried to remember Amethyst Cameron’s face exactly and failed in his quest. The dull brown of her hair, the wary anger in her eyes, a voice that was often shrill or scolding. The prospect of marriage to her was not what he had expected from his life, but in the circumstances what else could he do?

His eyes caught the movement of a little girl falling and scuffing her knees. An adult lifted her up and small arms entwined around the woman’s neck, trusting, needing. Daniel imagined fatherhood would be something to be enjoyed, though in truth he had seldom been around any children. He turned away when he saw the woman watching him, uncertain perhaps of his intentions.

He was like a shadow, filled in by flesh and blood, but hurt by the empty spaces in his life. He wanted a wholeness again, a certainty, a resolve. He wanted to laugh as though he meant it and be part of something that was more than the shallow sum of his title.

If he did not marry Amethyst Amelia Cameron, the heritage of the Montcliffe name would be all but gone, a footnote in history, only a bleak reminder of avarice and greed. Centuries of lineage lost in the time it took for the bailiffs to eject the Wyldes from their birthright. The very thought of such a travesty made him hail a cabriolet. He needed to go home and read the small print and conditions of the Cameron proposal. He could not dally any longer.

A sort of calmness descended over the panic. His life and happiness would be forfeited, but there might be some redress in the production of a family. Children had no blame in the affairs of their parents and at thirty-three it was well past time that he produce an heir. An heir who would inherit an estate that was viable and in good health. An estate that would not be lost to the excesses of his brother or the indifference of his father.

Such a personal sacrifice must eventually come to mean something and he was damn well going to make certain that it did.