Miss Darling's Indecent Offer

by Cerise DeLand

  “Good afternoon, my lord.” Todd Gibbons, a baron whom Jack knew from the card tables at White’s, stepped forward to shake hands with his father. “Ralph Roe told me you have business with us. And you have brought your son with you!” The man’s bushy white brows shot high.

  “Surprise to see you here, Durham.” He leaned close to confide, “And with him, no less.”

  Jack smiled at the wealthy baron who had always used Jack’s honorific, instead of his given name. “My father invited me, Gibby.”

  “Did he now? Smashing. Well, do come in. We have sherry on the sideboard, there. I think you know all the others, by sight if not formally. Let me know and I shall do my host’s duty by you, Durham. We have a few more interested parties soon to arrive.” He glanced at one of his colleagues. “We did say noon, did we not, Harry?”

  “You did,” John Stanhope proclaimed and took a seat at the long mahogany table.

  Outside a chapel bell began to toll the hour.

  Gibby waved them to the table. “Do let us start. Latecomers will have to catch up.”

  The twenty or so in attendance took their seats. Jack sat beside his father.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” began Ralph Roe, a roly-poly man Jack had met years ago when he made his first investment in clipper ships out of Boston. “Each of you has before you a copy of the proposal for this shipping line. We have listed the costs of purchasing two older clipper ships and refurbishing them. On the next page, the estimated outlays of capital to construct four new ships, one each year, out of Plymouth. The third page details the projected routes, the commodities traded, current prices and the profits for the first five years, based on today’s prices.”

  “I have a question.” Winston Dutton was a man whom Jack knew to be a wealthy landowner from Kent. “You are assuming that the shipping lines remain open for the next five years and that Bonaparte will be contained.”

  “Actually, Winston,” Gibby piped up, “we are assuming that Boney is clobbered by our Wellesley on land and by our navy and that we have clear sailing in the sea and on land.”

  “Wellesley comes along,” Winston replied, “and the Royal Navy performs well without Nelson. Yet this impressing of sailors is a frightful problem with other countries, especially the American Colonies. The reason I balk at this is the precarious nature of the whole enterprise. I do not wish to spend thousands to build new ships only to see them sink to the bottom of the ocean.”

  “I agree,” Jack said, then ran his index finger down the list of goods traded. “A large part of your profit is projected from the rum trade.”

  “That we do, Durham,” Gibby answered.

  “That triangular trade,” Jack’s father put in, “is a nasty business.”

  “You object?” asked Hampton, one of the factors here.

  His father’s brows arched in disdain. “Not to sugar or rum, but to the sale of human beings. I do.”

  Jack scanned the faces of the others. “I do as well.”

  Hampton scratched his bald head. “Any others here join the Stanhopes in that?”

  Four others added their objections.

  Gibby looked at Hampton and Roe. “Well, then. May I ask, are your objections to the commodities enough to totally dissuade you from investing?”

  The four plus Jack and his father agreed and this had Hampton and Roe putting their heads together.

  The door opened.

  “Mister Pinrose,” Hampton and Roe shot up from their chairs to greet the hawkish looking grey haired man. “Do come sit down. We have begun but we can summarize for you.”

  Pinrose stared at Jack, then glanced at John Stanhope. “Thank you. I apologize for my tardiness. I had an urgent matter requiring my attention.”

  Because he had not removed his gaze from the two Stanhopes and perhaps too because all others knew Pinrose accused Jack of abducting his stepdaughter, every other man in the room seemed to turn to stone.

  Jack would have laughed, but found the prospect of confronting his nemesis too thrilling to court frivolity. Besides, where was Trayne? Had not both blackguards agreed to attend this meeting? And why would Trayne suddenly not appear?

  “Then do sit, Mr. Pinrose,” Hampton said with no warmth. “We shall continue.”

  Jack bit back a smile. More than an hour later, the business venture had been debated to its finest point.

  Hampton folded his fingers before him and glanced down the table. “We come then to the final issue. Are you willing to invest in this, and if so, please state your initial sum and when you will deposit it to our bank. We urge promptness in this matter as these prices from the shipwrights in Plymouth may increase without notice. We will begin with Lord Gibbons.”

  Within thirty minutes, all had spoken save Pinrose who, since he arrived last, was invited to speak last.

  “I wish to invest twenty thousand July first.”

  Jack fought the urge to sneer. As he surmised, Pinrose would put up his share in three months’ time. Not good enough, you thief.

  Hampton thanked him. “Mr. Trayne was to have come with you. I wonder if I may inquire as to his sentiments in this matter?”

  Pinrose stared into Jack’s eyes. “He wishes to invest ten thousand.”

  Does he now?

  “On July first, Mr. Pinrose?”

  The hawk-nosed man opened his thin lips. “That is so, Mr. Hampton.”

  Jack’s father rapped his fingers on the tabletop. “We cannot wait that long for such a meager sum.”

  “It is not meager,” Pinrose retorted.

  The earl said, “I’ll give you another twenty right now, Hampton.”

  “To add to your forty?” Hampton asked, astonished.

  “Quite so.”

  Jack grinned and knew the look was evil as he turned to Pinrose and said, “And I give you another twenty to add to my thirty, if we exclude Mr. Pinrose and Mr. Trayne from the corporation completely.”

  “My word,” Hampton breathed.

  “See here!” Pinrose jumped to his feet. “You cannot do that, Stanhope.”

  Jack glared back at him. “Of course I can. And did.”

  “You abduct my stepdaughter—”

  “She came to me.”

  “She is not of her right mind.”

  “She is sane as my banker.”

  “If she married you, she is not in her senses.”

  Jack stood and even from ten paces away, he loomed, more than ten inches taller than the little man. “We married each other, Pinrose. I have the license in my pocket and the vicar’s statement with it.”

  “They are frauds.”

  Jack’s nostrils flared. “You are the fraud. The liar. The cheat. The thief. The tormenter of men. The brutalizer of women. To even think to lock a young woman in her rooms and demand she marry Benjamin Trayne so that the two of you can abscond with her inheritance.”

  The men in the room inhaled collectively, a mutual sign of outrage.

  Pinrose turned to them, hands out, palms up. “I wish to join this venture.”

  Jack’s father coughed. “Pray tell, man, if these gentlemen decide to take your offer, what will you use for collateral until the first of July?”

  “Property.”

  “Which,” John Stanhope asked, “property?”

  “My offices in Lombard Street. A house in Park Lane.”

  “How interesting,” John said with dispassion, then removed from his inner frock coat pocket long papers tied with blue deed ribbons round the packages. He flattened them and pushed them toward Hampton and Roe. “The deeds to your office in Lombard Street and the home of your charge, Emma Darling,” he said slowly articulating his barbs, “now my daughter–in–

  law, Emma Stanhope?”

  “How do you have them?” Pinrose croaked.

  “I bought them, man.”

  “From—”

  “Your creditors. Who else?”

  Pinrose gazed at the others round the table. “I have other means.”

>   “Do you?” asked Jack, and removed from his coat pocket other papers. “Gentlemen, please see here I have bought the loans Mr. Pinrose has made in the last six months. Intending to come into a bit of money to pay them all off, Pinrose?”

  The little man reached down the table. “Let me see those!”

  “Ah, ah, ah!” Jack pushed them toward Hampton and Roe.

  “This is outrageous!” Pinrose picked up his top hat and gloves. “I will speak to my lawyers.

  I shall see you in hell. Both of you.” And with that, he stormed out.

  The door bounced off its hinges as the investors muttered about the dastardly behavior of the man who had just left. No one regretted his departure.

  Over an hour later, their investment agreement signed, Jack and his father climbed into Jack’s brougham once more.

  “A glorious afternoon, I would say. What think there, my boy?”

  Jack scowled. “Where was Trayne?”

  John waved a hand. “Matters not. He gave Pinrose his proxy and their scheme failed.”

  “But why wouldn’t Trayne show?” The joy of their victory over Pinrose sharpened Jack’s alarm.

  When the two men stepped inside Jack’s foyer and doffed their coats, his butler handed Jack a note. “For you, milord.”

  “From whom?” Jack turned it over and over. Cheap parchment. No crest.

  “A boy from the streets brought it, milord. Looked like someone might’ve hired him on the spur of the moment.”

  Those words alone seared Jack’s mind. “What the hell?” he raged as he read the note once, then again.

  The words were scribbled, the penmanship ugly. The words uglier.

  “You have my debts, but you do not have Emma. We do.”

  Chapter Nine

  Two evenings later, Jack stumbled into his foyer in Durham, exhausted and half out of his mind with worry.

  As Simmons pushed a whiskey into his hand and the groom took his weary horse away, Cook bustled to the kitchen to warm soup and bread for him. Jack fell into the hall chair and asked about Emma. “When did she disappear? Have you found anything of hers, here or—?”

  “Milord, you know she’s gone?”

  Jack rubbed his forehead, the pain in his head as big as the one in his heart. “I do. She’s been abducted.”

  “Abducted! I told Cook she would not run away. I told her she was happy here.”

  Jack drank a hefty draught of the strong whiskey. “When did she go missing?”

  “Not certain, sir! I am beside myself with where she could have gone! Out she went to the village, each day after you and his lordship went to London. She would take a basket of breads and jellies from the kitchen, herbs, too, and out she would light, sir.”

  “Why in hell would she…?” Jack began, then realized he knew her thinking. She was going down to the cottages of the tenants and taking them food and seeing to their needs. Just as she wished to help orphans, her hope to aid other disadvantaged had led her to this end.

  “She’d go for hours. Come home at suppertime, sir. But then the third day, she didn’t come home. Do you know where she is?”

  “I have a few possibilities.” Two places Trayne owned, one not far from here seemed more probable. “Tell one of the footmen to go fetch the sheriff in Durham. I need his help. Tell him to bring a few men with him, too. I’ll pay for their services.”

  “That I will, milord. Come now, eat and we’ll get a bath sent up to your chamber.”

  But whiskey and food did not take the hunger from Jack’s heart. And hot water only brought back memories of sharing a bath with his wife.

  By the time the sheriff and three villagers appeared in the front hall, Jack was ready to lead them on the thirty mile journey to Trayne’s grandmother’s cottage near the village of Stanley.

  Now, eight o’clock at night, the trip would take at least two hours, maybe more.

  The sheriff, a kindly man whom Jack had known since a boy, was aghast at the tale of abduction of his wife. “I say, milord,” Howard Rufus exclaimed, arms akimbo in Jack’s drawing room, “we’ll catch this bastard. Cut off his balls for you, sir.”

  Jack winced. “I may beat you to the honor, Rufus.” And if he has hurt my Emma, if he has done more than that, I will murder him outright. “More whiskey, men, before we go?”

  “No, milord,” the three replied in turn.

  The biggest of them, the Durham smithy, grinned with evil purpose. “Have more of that, good sir, and we’ll not be riding straight.”

  “I tell you, Mark,” Jack told the giant whose hands measured two of Jack’s, “when we return with my wife, I’m giving all three of you the wealth of my cellars for the next year.”

  “Ah, milord, what your new wife was doing for us was bold enough to tell us who she is and what she be about,” Mark Smith replied. “She’s a lady, all right. Me wife told me so. We’ll get this bastard who put his hands on her, and make him wish he never set foot in Durham.”

  “Here, here,” Jack clinked glasses with each man and within minutes, they were out the door and on the road, the late March winds cutting through their coats like chilling knives.

  * * * *

  Emma sat in a corner of the rough stone cottage, her supper, an unsavory mutton stew rumbling in her stomach, her hands tied to a most uncomfortable reed chair. Benjamin Trayne had had the decency to allow her her privacy for delicate matters, removing the bands to her ankles with which he hobbled her. But for the past three days, Emma sat with her arms bound only loosely enough to eat and slept in her ropes as well. Greater still was her growing pain and agony over what her husband would do when he knew her gone. Over that, she argued with herself mightily.

  Would he think I have left him?

  How could he, Emma? Not after what you shared.

  But he is not a man to trust women.

  Why would he not trust you?

  Why, indeed. What had she done for him, except offer him money he would not take?

  Promise him she would not bother him, but leave him once their vows were said?

  Trayne offered no insight into his plans, either. He was under the illusion that she and Jack were not married. The fact that she had no wedding ring confirmed his conclusion.

  “And you’d not have a license, either,” he said, leaning over her that first evening he’d abducted her from the Durham forest road. “That old vicar in Durham is a surly cuss. He’d not move his carcass for anyone, especially a reprobate like Jack Stanhope.” Trayne had laughed in her face, his foul breath forcing her to wince and turn away. She did not disabuse him of the fact that the Durham vicar was a young man now and whatever had happened to the older one he referenced, well, she was not about to lead him down that path of discovery, was she?

  In fact, he thought Jack had not yet wed her, or worse, had no intention to ever do so. For indeed, her wedding ring sat atop the dressing table in Jack’s bedroom.

  She recoiled at the image of what Jack would do when he returned home to find her gone, the ring upon the table, she gone without explanation.

  Oh, Jack. How well do you know me?

  “What do you intend to do with me, Benjamin? I cannot continue to live like this. Trussed like a chicken, I grow weary and weak.”

  “Be quiet. You’ll know soon enough what we plan. Daniel will come soon.”

  “Daniel conspired with you to do this to me?” She cursed.

  “Fine thing for a lady to be taking the Lord’s name in vain. Tut-tut.” He wagged a finger at her.

  “Go to hell.”

  He sneered and flexed his fingers in a menacing gesture. “I should shut you up.”

  “Touch me and you never will again.”

  “You’ll not be so high and mighty if I take you here and now.” His blue eyes narrowed as they danced over her body. He leaned over her once more, his weasel face and rodent’s breath making her go still with hatred. “Did Stanhope have you?”

  If she said yes, Trayne might recoil. Or not. S
he dared not chance it. Rather, an opportunity will come to escape him. It must. Realizing now she should not test his mettle, she bit her tongue and glared at him.

  He came closer, his nose against her own. “You don’t smell too grand any longer, pet.

  Quite a comeuppance, is it not, to be at a man’s mercy?” He licked her earlobe.

  She shivered and bit back a retort.

  He grabbed her hair, pulled back her head and smashed his mouth on hers.

  She bit his lips.

  “You bitch!” He reared back, his lower lip bleeding. He staunched it, staring at his fingers.

  Outside, an owl hooted. A dog barked.

  Trayne stepped backward and picked up his musket against the far wall. “Don’t worry. I will return to teach you manners.”

  The door slammed and she cried out in fear and frustration. What to do? What to do?

  She had long ago noted where he kept the kitchen knife and she rose now in a half crouch to jump with the damn chair behind her toward the table where the big butcher knife lay. She got to the table and stared at it. How to get it in her hand? It was too far into the middle of the table for her hand to reach.

  She stood, her legs aching with the effort, and stretched toward the center. She whimpered in agony. She stretched again, this time hooking her chin over the knife and pushing it toward her, splinters from the rough wood digging into her skin.

  At the edge of the table, she grasped the handle. Success had her staring at the weapon in her hand.

  Outside, the dog that had barked was now yapping wildly.

  Oh God. Let that dog attack Trayne. Please.

  She got the knife in her fingers and twirled it toward her. If she could just get the blade to the right angle, she might be able to saw the rope off her other wrist and…

  The door flung open and banged against the hinges.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Trayne screamed at her, but slammed the door behind him, working at hoisting a beam that would lock into the bar. But a force worked against him and Emma could not believe her eyes that it popped open.

  Trayne backed up toward her, yelling, “Get away from me! Get out!” He lifted the gun and took aim.