by KJ Charles
“You see, all I have is my portion,” Alice explained. “My father left me a huge sum tied up for my marriage, and everything else to Mama outright. I was only a baby and I dare say it was the right thing to do, but it does mean I have nothing of my own until I marry. Don’t think she’s ungenerous! She’s wonderful. But she has given me so much, and there is Georgey to think of—her son by Mr. Blaine, you know, who is at school and must be paid for, which is rather hard because Mr. Blaine left her nothing. In fact, he spent most of what she had, and Uncle Hart has worked immensely hard to restore her fortunes. So I don’t want to ask for more, for something I know she will not like. Whereas if I were to marry, I could have my twenty thousand pounds and spend it as I chose, and not ask Mama for anything or make her worry about Georgey’s future. That would be much better for everyone.”
Robin rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What do you want that she won’t give you?”
“I want to go to the University of Heidelberg and study mathematics.”
Robin’s brain took several seconds to catch up with his ears. “You want to what?” He seemed to be saying ‘what’ a lot. There was really no other word.
Alice clutched her hands together. “Mathematics. My tutor Dr. Trelawney studied in Heidelberg for two years and has been teaching me the language. He wrote to Professor von Lehman, a great friend of his, who has agreed to tutor me personally. Me! I want it more than I can say. But when I told Mama, she said it was out of the question, which is why I’m here having a Season to make me think about dresses and parties, but I don’t want to. I know she wants me to be happy but her idea of that doesn’t appeal to me at all, and I know she thinks that’s because I haven’t learned to enjoy parties yet, but we’ve been here months and I haven’t liked most of it in the slightest, whereas I want to study mathematics so badly it hurts. I read the journals. I could do it, I know I could. What do you think?”
Robin had no idea what to think. “Can you really do that?”
“As a private student. But it will cost money, of course—to go, to live there, the fees and the travel. And if I had my twenty thousand, I could pay for it myself. Dr. Trelawney wants to go back as well, now the wars are over. He could escort me, if I had a companion.”
“Without your mother’s permission?”
Alice sagged. “He said I must have it. He doesn’t want to be accused of running away with me, which is a nonsense because he’s terribly old, and anyway I don’t want her to be upset. But it would be even worse if she reluctantly agreed and offered to pay when there is Georgey and her own comfort to consider. She has given me so much all my life, and it simply isn’t fair to demand more. This seems a far more practical solution. If I were married I’d be mistress of my own money and it would be up to me where I travelled, and she wouldn’t have to fret in the slightest, would she?”
Robin looked at her, wondering if he’d ever been that young. “So what is your proposition for me?”
“Well, if you don’t want to marry me for my, uh, person, and I really would prefer not, I wondered if we could simply marry for money?” Alice said in a rush. “If you took, say, fifteen per cent, and agreed not to—well—because if the marriage wasn’t consummated, it could be annulled, couldn’t it? So we wouldn’t be tied to one another. It might be a little embarrassing, of course, but I’m not at all important so I dare say nobody would care, and you could marry someone else rich in due course because you’re very good at being charming and handsome, and I could do what I want with my money. What do you think?”
“Heidelberg,” Robin said, stalling for time. He didn’t even know where that was. “Marianne and I have often spoken of travel.”
Fifteen per cent. Three thousand pounds. He could probably argue her up to twenty per cent. Take her money and hand it to Hartlebury and be back where he started, while she went off to follow her dreams, being careful not to inconvenience another soul on her way. And all it would cost was the knowledge that he’d used her innocence, her trust, for profit.
He put his face in his hands.
“Mr. Loxleigh?” Alice sounded alarmed.
“It’s a good plan.” His voice was muffled by his hands. He lifted his head. “A plan with some excellent features, and some less favourable ones. You do understand that if we married without you protecting your fortune, it would all be mine to spend?”
“Yes, but—well, I don’t think you’d do that,” Alice said simply. “You have nice eyes, and you’ve always been very kind to me.”
“I really have not.”
“There are other ways men make heiresses marry them.” He looked at her, startled. She shrugged. “I’ve learned a dreadful lot in London. Anyway, I don’t think you would cheat me, but we could draw up an agreement to be sure.”
“I’ve a better idea,” Robin said. “I think that first of all, you should tell your mother that you have given her opinion serious consideration and tried your hand at the Polite World as best you could, but that you are still determined on studying, and want her support. I think you should let her decide how to spend her money, and not put yourself last before anyone has done that for you. If she refuses to consider the idea, you should point out that you can have your money by marrying, and see what that does to her opinion. And if she still doesn’t change her mind, then I will marry you, but I really don’t think she’ll refuse if you talk to her properly. She loves you dearly, and it’s not her fault she doesn’t entirely understand, because she’s a quite ordinary person—I mean that in the best way—whereas you are very special.”
Alice was beetroot. Robin gave her a rueful grin. “And if you have to marry me, I’ll do it for five hundred. I’d say nothing, but to be honest I’m in rather a hole.”
“Oh, that’s not fair!”
“Five hundred,” he said firmly. “Not a penny more, or the deal’s off. But I truly don’t believe you’ll need to. And it would make her dreadfully sad if she couldn’t attend your wedding, wouldn’t it? You don’t want to do that.”
That hit home, he could tell. He pressed on. “Promise me you’ll talk to her properly, and give her a chance, yes? If she says no after that, I’ll be your husband for long enough to get the money and no longer. So you can go into this discussion knowing you have a position to fall back on. All right?”
“All right, I promise. You are nice,” Alice said.
“I’m not, and don’t ever ask another man to do this. The next one might not be so soft. Um. This conversation—”
“Between us,” Alice assured him. “Quite private.”
“That would be best all round.” He gave it a moment’s consideration. “Actually— Do you know, if your mother was under the impression that you were seriously considering my suit and didn’t believe the calumnies heaped upon me, or thought I was redeemable or some such, she might become a little more receptive to the idea of sending you out of the country.”
“Oh!” Alice clapped a hand to her mouth, eyes sparkling. “That’s wicked.”
“Tactical. Suppose you let that idea sink in for a few days until she’s good and worried, and only then speak to her about your Heidelberg plan?”
She paused then narrowed her eyes. “Do you get something out of that?”
God, she was sharp. Robin considered lying, but what on earth was the point? “Your uncle took an exceedingly large sum of money off me at cards last night.”
“Uncle Hart? You didn’t play piquet with him, did you?”
“I see I should have been warned.”
“But—was it money you can pay?”
“No.” There was something rather liberating about telling the truth. “Not even slightly. Which he knew, of course. I don’t think he likes me.”
“No,” she admitted. “He found out that you asked the lawyers about my fortune. He’s very protective.”
“So I have discovered.”
“Do you want me to speak to him?”
“Good God, no! I just need a little leeway to avo
id any consequences to—uh, anyone else.”
“To Marianne. I have thought of that. She is so beautiful, and she quite deserves to be a marchioness.”
“She does, yes.”
“But do you think she’ll be happy with Tachbrook?” Alice said in a rush. “Because he isn’t very nice at all. Really, he is not.”
Robin shut his eyes. Alice made a distressed noise. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I hope she gets whatever she wants. She was always very kind to me.”
“No she wasn’t, and stop calling people kind. People aren’t friendly to you because they’re kind-hearted; it’s because you’re clever and funny and they like you. Marianne likes you.” He was counting on that fact to save his skin when she found out he’d thrown away their best advantage. He decided not to think about that quite yet. “That reminds me. Are you going to develop a foolproof gaming system?”
“One that means you won’t lose money? I have. Don’t play.”
“If you can do any better than that, I want it first. Three months before you publish your discovery, something like that. Then, if you haven’t spent everything on education, you can lend me money and I’ll travel around the spa towns of Europe, breaking banks. We’ll make a fortune.”
That piece of shocking nonsense drove the hint of moisture from Alice’s eyes. She gave a startled yelp of laughter, and they expanded on the idea together, Alice giggling, Robin with a feeling of light-hearted freedom that he enjoyed while it lasted. He doubted it would long survive his next contact with reality.
UNEXPECTEDLY, MARIANNE didn’t throw a chamber pot at his head when he told her what he’d done. She sat still, eyes searching his face, and made him repeat a few times that he had turned down their sole chance to get the money, and then she shook her glossy hair like a horse shrugging off flies and said, “Well.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, Well. What would you like me to say?”
“I couldn’t do it, Marnie. She trusted us, she likes us. She wouldn’t betray us if she had the chance.”
“Are you sure of that?” Marianne flashed back.
“I am. Or, at least, I didn’t want to be the one who’d teach her to do it.”
“Fine. She’s a good soul and you did a good thing. You didn’t take money from a girl who’s never done any harm to a fly and who definitely deserves to have twenty thousand pounds because she was born. You’re positively glowing with human decency. Is it warm and comforting?”
“It felt better when I did it.”
“And now?”
“We’re fucked.”
“I’m glad you’ve noticed.”
Robin sighed. “We were probably fucked anyway, in fairness.”
“We’re still more fucked than we could have been.”
Inarguable. “She wished you well. Alice, I mean. She hopes you get what you want.”
Marianne’s mouth turned down sharply at the corners, almost as if she might cry, though she never cried any more, then settled back into a hard line that made her look older. “How sweet. I want eighteen thousand a year and a title, and I don’t want to lose my chance at them because you’ve made a pig’s ear of this.”
“Alice was the wrong target,” Robin said. “That’s what it comes down to. Hartlebury’s too protective, she’s too young, and to be honest I don’t think I’d have stood a chance anyway because she’s got better things to do. It was never going to come off. Sorry, Marnie. I’ve let you down all the way.”
“Then fix it,” Marianne said savagely. “Stall Hartlebury however you can, for long enough that I can secure Tachbrook’s proposal. A month should do it. If he hasn’t come up to scratch by then, I doubt he ever will. Get me a month, Rob.” There was a martial light in her eyes. “Whatever it takes. Grovel. Tell him he’s won. Beg for time or to pay in instalments. Use the savings and sell some clothes.”
“If we do that and Tachbrook doesn’t come through—”
“I thought you were a gambler. Pay to play.”
Robin wanted to suggest again that they just didn’t. They had three hundred pounds, enough to survive for a good while, plus whatever they could get for selling their accumulated wardrobes. They could flee to the Continent and see the world as Marianne had dreamed, run away from all their mistakes and start afresh. And spend their money and have to find more, and do it all over again...
He looked at his sister’s militant expression, ran through the likely course of that conversation in his head, and said, “All right, I’ll do my best. I dare say I can beg.”
“You do that. Let’s have supper before you go. You can’t squirm on your belly on an empty stomach.”
“You’re all heart.”
“I’m not the idiot who lost four thousand pounds and turned down another three,” she retorted, and Robin had no answer to that.
Chapter Eleven
Hart sat in his study, reading a book, or at least holding one. He hadn’t turned the page in a while, and would have had to check the frontispiece to find out what the title was.
He didn’t feel as triumphant as he should have. It was one thing to celebrate a victory, another to grind a man in the dirt. Loxleigh had faced catastrophe last night and Hart had recognised the fear in his eyes, that terror as your world span out of control under someone else’s direction and you felt the foundations crumbling.
Loxleigh deserved it, and he did not merit pity. He’d needed to be dealt with like any venomous pest, and it was absurd to feel guilty at putting that sick, terrified look on a man’s face when he’d brought it entirely on himself.
Hart glared at his book. It was aesthetic, that was all. Loxleigh was a handsome piece, appealing to the eye, but when he’d realised the scale of his losses he’d looked stark, and older. Hart probably wouldn’t have thought twice if the contrast had been less striking. A man didn’t deserve more consideration for good looks. Hart had struck a blow for ugly men like himself in teaching a pretty one his place.
Edwina had written a note that morning saying Alice had taken the news about her suitor very calmly, like a good sensible girl. This was followed by another note, two hours later and a great deal less placid in tone, to report with frantic punctuation that Alice had gone for a walk with Loxleigh!!! and had afterwards said only that she had much to consider but felt he was maligned!!
He hadn’t heard anything more, which might or might not be good.
Anyway, it was not his concern. Alice was in safe hands; he had done his duty in exposing her fraudulent suitor, and would now put an end to the man’s remaining pretensions before retreating to Aston Clinton and the life he liked.
Perhaps he would forgive the debt. The thought had come to his mind a few times; now he considered it more carefully. After all, he didn’t want the fellow’s money, still less to drive him to desperation. He simply wanted him not to batten on Alice or pose a threat to Hart himself.
Suppose he gave Loxleigh a few bad moments then offered a truce—no, not a truce, but a deal. He wouldn’t enforce the debt if Loxleigh stayed away from him and his family for good. Or would that lead Loxleigh to think he had a bargaining position?
He would judge it on the man’s demeanour, Hart decided. Loxleigh would be here soon. If he seemed humbled, Hart would be magnanimous in victory. If he was defiant, he could take the consequences.
That decision made him feel somewhat better and he managed to read a good three pages before Spenlow knocked on his door and informed him Mr. Loxleigh was here to see him.
Hart stood as he was ushered in. “Thank you, Spenlow, that will be all for the night. Good evening, Loxleigh.”
“Sir John.” Loxleigh was well turned out, but with a little tension in his eyes. Perhaps he was paler than normal; it was hard to tell in the candlelight.
Hart gestured to the armchair opposite his. “Drink?”
“Thank you.”
Hart poured two brandies. It was important to be civilised. Loxleigh didn’t precisel
y sit on the edge of the seat, but his posture was undeniably tense.
“Well,” he said, handing over the glass. “Let us not beat about the bush. I suppose you have my money?”
“I’m sure you know I don’t.”
Hart hadn’t expected it so bluntly. “That’s frank.”
“There isn’t a way of phrasing it that will make the money appear. I don’t have four thousand pounds, or the rest. Would you be willing to give me time?”
“How will you find the money, given that time?”
“I would think that is my affair.”
“It is mine if you propose to pay me from my niece’s dowry.”
Their eyes met. Loxleigh spoke slowly. “I said before that you underestimate Miss Fenwick. I still think that.” His lips curled in a tiny smile that looked, to Hart’s surprise, quite genuine. “She’s a remarkable young lady. I’m privileged to have made her acquaintance.”
“Let us be clear. Do you intend to pursue my niece?”
“I have asked her to marry me, and she is giving my request consideration.”
“And if she says yes, you will promptly hand me four thousand pounds of her money?” He didn’t bother to hide the contempt and anger in his voice. This bloody man, trading on his pretty face, as though he were entitled to exploit Alice and leave her with nothing. It was despicable. “How exactly has she wronged you that you feel this is suitable vengeance? Or do you simply not understand that she is a woman with a heart and soul, not a cow to be milked of her wealth? Good God, how can you resolve to treat another human in such a way, as if she counts for nothing more than what you can take from her?”
Loxleigh’s face twitched, almost like a flinch. He looked at Hart for a long moment, then put down his glass with a click.
“All right, Sir John, no more games. As it happens, I have a great deal more respect for Miss Fenwick than you imagine, but more to the point, I’m in no position to bargain with her money. I’m not fool enough to try, she wouldn’t be fool enough to let me, and I don’t think you’re fool enough for me to persuade you otherwise. Which is tiresome, but here we are.”