Surrender To Ruin

by Carolyn Jewel

  Bracebridge let go of the others and took the paper Gopal held. A chill slid down his spine as he scanned it. Damn, damn, damn. Gopal had been right to come here with this. “I’ll repay you, of course.” Gopal would not have used business funds for this, not unless he’d had no choice, and with this amount, he may have had to. “Do you need a bank draft, or can it wait until I’m back in Town?”

  “It can wait.”

  The document Bracebridge held was on Two Fives letterhead, dated four days ago. It bore the signature of Thomas Sinclair and signed over the Cooperage to the bearer. Concerning enough on its own, but there was more, far more.

  Bracebridge returned to ordering the notes by date. The bulk of the debts had been incurred in the preceding six weeks, but the oldest was eight months ago. In all that time, Sinclair, with a daughter still at home and dependent upon him, had been to London at least once a month, if not more often, losing money he had not repaid.

  Bracebridge stared at the stack of notes. Emily lived with her father, yet, to his knowledge, she’d said nothing about this. Not a word to anyone, and it was a certainty that if she had, he would have heard about it. Apparently, however far gone Sinclair was, it was not far enough gone to affect the most spoiled of his four daughters. “What’s the gossip in Town?”

  “Until now, remarkably dull.”

  Personally, he didn’t give a fig if Sinclair was bankrupt. In fact, he’d take satisfaction from the man’s personal ruin. But he’d do anything to spare Anne unhappiness and the loss of the Cooperage. She would be devastated. Not to mention that, like Gopal, Bracebridge saw malign intent in what amounted to a staggering set of losses at a gaming hell everyone understood was connected to him.

  The authorities generally looked the other way, but certain sanctimonious members of society publicly decried the fortunes lost at such places as Two Fives. They filled the papers and magazines with screeds calling for the end of businesses whose sole purpose, according to them, was the ruin of the country’s youth. Mrs. Glynn was among the most vocal objectors. It was no secret that she held him in some degree of contempt.

  Gopal’s actions had solved only one dilemma. The question they faced now was how quickly the gossip would spread from London to Bartley Green and, specifically, to the ear of Mrs. Glynn and her ilk. Bracebridge easily imagined Mrs. Glynn’s pleasure at hearing rumors that he had deliberately ruined Thomas Sinclair. He had no doubt such rumors would soon be circulating. The question was how damaging that would be to his hopes of marrying Clara Glynn. “Thank you,” he said to Gopal. With the notes in one hand, he stood. “How can I ever repay you for this?”

  “My friend.” Gopal put a hand over his heart. “You would do the same for me.”

  “Without question or a moment’s hesitation.” They clasped hands tightly. “I am indeed fortunate in your friendship.”

  “And I in yours.”

  Bracebridge returned Sinclair’s notes to the case and tucked it into his inside coat pocket. “Now, I shall beard the lion in his den. Whatever happens, I shall have that satisfaction.”

  “Is there any chance the man’s silence can be bought?”

  “Vanishingly small, I fear. His hatred for me matches mine for him.” He took a step toward the door. “In the meantime, enjoy your visit.”

  If he was right and Sinclair had acted out of spite, then it was likely too late. He’d have sown seeds of rumor in fertile soil. It might already be too late to prevent gossip, but either way, Bracebridge was going to take a great deal of satisfaction from telling Sinclair who held his notes.

  “I should be back before luncheon. I hope you stay. Lord and Lady Aldreth will be disappointed if you do not, as shall I.”

  On this way out, he met Harry Glynn coming up the stairs behind Aldreth’s butler. Glynn held his hat and riding whip in one hand. He was not smiling. “My lord,” Glynn said with a bow. “We must speak.”

  Chapter Three

  Emily took a deep breath. Her father needed only moments to upend her life, but as usual these days, he was oblivious to her distress and dismay. She wanted to leave. To run away, to shut herself in a room, lock the door, and never come out.

  Papa headed for the bell pull. “I’ll have Mrs. Elliot show him in.”

  “I need a moment, if you don’t mind.” She forced herself to smile when he came back to kiss her cheek. She was shaking, quite literally shaking. Had he done this to Lucy, too? To Mary and Anne? Had they felt as helpless as she did when he had attempted to engineer marriages they did not want?

  “You must not keep him waiting, my girl.” The him in question was Mr. Walter Davener. She’d seen him arrive three quarters of an hour ago and hadn’t thought much of it until Papa had summoned her here.

  “No, Papa.” Her thoughts kept slipping around what Papa expected of her and slamming up against what she wanted. To escape, yes. But with Walter Davener?

  Anger surged back, overwhelming all else. Papa had arranged all this without once speaking to her about whether she wanted to marry anyone at all. As if she meant nothing to him except as a means to pay his debts.

  He moved past her while she wondered whether her next breath would come. She stared into the chimney glass without seeing her face. Her hands went through the motions of adjusting her hair. No one would think anything of her delay.

  “There’s nothing amiss with you, my dear,” Papa said.

  She pretended to be absorbed by her reflection, turning her head side to side. She did not care what she looked like. “I’m not perfect,” she said with more calm than she felt. Papa was as proud of her beauty as if her looks belonged to him. She was expected to be vain. “I can’t possibly be seen like this. Please, Papa. You can’t send him in here with me looking like this.”

  In the mirror, she could see her father scowling. If she did not make eye contact, she could pretend nothing had changed. She set the tip of her slipper against the fender and pushed until it hurt. The pain distracted her from her father and focused her thoughts. Was she really going to do this? Could she really spend a lifetime with that man? “He would not like to see me in such disorder.”

  Her father shoved his hands into his coat pockets with a mulish expression she knew too well. She gazed at his reflection, heart-hurt and angry at the same time.

  With every year older she became, she understood more clearly what Anne had known for years and had tried so desperately to prevent. Time and again, Papa’s actions had caused serious, lasting harm to her sisters—to Mary, to Lucy, and up to and including the disaster that had led to Anne’s own marriage. Mama would never have let this happen. She would never have allowed her beloved daughters to be treated with such disregard for their happiness.

  He adjusted the collar of his coat, a familiar gesture that no longer tugged at her heart the way it once had. Before her, there had been Anne, Mary, and Lucy. He could not be unaware of the harm he’d caused them. He couldn’t be. He’d meddled with their lives, and it was only the most fantastic of luck that had given her sisters’ marriages to men they’d come to love. “You would have married Cynssyr in a heartbeat,” he said. “Do not tell me you object to a man whose wealth may well exceed even the duke’s.”

  True. She would have. But not because she wanted to be a duchess. She’d only ever wanted to marry Bracebridge, but she would have married Cynssyr because it would have meant some measure of safety for Anne and Lucy. What a foolish girl she’d been. She still was. Bracebridge was going to marry Clara, and Emily didn’t even have the cold comfort of such a union being a poor one.

  At least if she married Mr. Davener, she’d never have to see Bracebridge again. Almost never.

  “My dear. I mean to call at Rosefeld to announce our delightful news.” He grinned.

  “What? Today?” Her heart clenched.

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “He is impatient, and I agreed there was no reason for delay. He has a special license, my dear! Think of that!”

  “I wonder why he
wants to speak to me at all.” But the dryness of her tone was lost on her father.

  “Naturally, he wishes to secure your positive response and pay his respects to his future bride. Everything is arranged. We have an appointment with my banker, and all the rest is settled. There is no reason not to have everything done before dinner.”

  “Is that what you told Lucy?” The accusation bubbled up from deep inside her, raw and aching. When had he ever worried about any of his daughters? “Or Mary?” She covered her face with her hands until she’d regained control of her temper. She reached into that dark closet and grasped the truth hard. To her father, she was but the means to an end. Nothing else.

  “I don’t expect you to understand, my dear.” She recognized that tone. It came from the bottom of a bottle where Papa lived these days. “But this you can and must know, you ungrateful wretch. A man with four daughters to marry off had best cultivate men of rank and fortune. Men like Walter Davener.”

  She clenched her hands and lifted her face to his. “Other fathers do not ask their daughters to marry men they scarcely know and have reason to dislike, and I dislike him. Exceedingly.”

  “What use are you if you won’t do your duty? It’s high time someone else took on the expense of keeping you in fripperies and frocks. Not to mention that damned monster of a dog. You’re nothing but a burden to me. There’s a constant hole in my pocket from keeping you here.”

  Never mind that Cynssyr and Aldreth had paid for her clothes or that anything she spent on herself came from funds she’d been hoarding for years. “True, you have the expense of my room and board, but who runs your household, Papa? Who sees the bills are paid from what little I can keep back? Who begs and pleads with every merchant in Bartley Green to extend us a little more credit? It isn’t you.”

  “I’ll have no disrespect from you.” His lip curled. “You’ve never cared for the history of the Sinclairs.”

  “That’s not so!”

  “—or for the memory of your mother.”

  “No. No! That’s not so.”

  “You cannot possibly know what we lost when she died.” His voice broke. “You’ve never cared what happened to me or the Sinclair name.”

  “Papa, no.” She’d been so young when Mama died that she remembered her grief more than anything else, yet the soothing calm of her mother’s voice remained part of her. The loving kisses, the scent of her perfume, how safe and adored Emily had felt. She remembered that, too, and every day of her life, she’d wondered what her mother would have thought of her, her sisters, and their father.

  “If you did, you would have been born a boy.”

  “That’s absurd.” But he was too drunk to understand anything but his building rage.

  “You cannot understand what it means for a man to have a son to carry on his name. You’re a useless female. What good is your beauty if it doesn’t buy me anything?”

  Her stomach clamped down hard on itself. She was almost angry enough to marry Walter Davener just so she’d never have to see her father again.

  “How dare you consider for even a moment rejecting a union that keeps the house your mother so loved in the hands of a Sinclair—your dear mama’s own grandchild!”

  No argument she could summon would change his mind or the facts that had brought her to this moment. No argument existed that made her matter more than a son to inherit the past and bring it into the future. There was nothing more she could say to him. She was beloved only while or if she was of use to him. She turned back to the mirror and adjusted her hair with hands that shook.

  “If he leaves because he’s grown tired of waiting for you, you’ll have no place in this house,” Papa said. “I’ll turn you out and have the doors locked and barred against you. You’re no daughter of mine if you don’t.”

  Her sisters were safe, she told herself. They were married, and Papa could no longer harm them. “Five minutes,” she said. “Tell him I’ll see him in five minutes.”

  “There’s a good girl.”

  She gripped the mantel until he was gone. While she counted to a hundred, she stared at her reflection. She hated the face she saw there. Despised it. “I am strong,” she whispered. “I am. They all say Anne is the strong one, but I am strong, too. Stronger than they guess.”

  The door opened, and Mr. Walter Davener entered. She forced herself to turn and smile at the man.

  “My dear Miss Sinclair.” He bowed and began talking and talking and talking, and then silence fell. He cleared his throat. “You are overcome.”

  “Yes.” He was exactly as awful as he’d ever been. He bored her. Not one original thought came from his head. He was dismissive of her, interrupting her constantly to explain the simplest of concepts as if she hadn’t a brain in her head. If she married him, she’d want to murder him before the year was out.

  Mr. Davener headed toward her and she moved behind a chair and gripped the top edges. “Your beauty moves me to poetry. ‘From the heavens she has been made, a maid Divine.’” He whirled a finger in the air. “‘Made’ as in fabricated or born of man and ‘maid,’ m-a-i-d, as in you. I’ve been searching for the proper rhyme for ‘divine.’”

  She clutched the chair harder. “Repine. Recline. Line, sign, its homonym, syne, vine, kine, mine, nine, pine, dine, fine, tine—though that would be difficult to make fit—wine.”

  “O’er hill, dale and—” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “Vale.”

  “That does not rhyme with divine.”

  “Verses, my dear girl. Verses have meter and rhyme—”

  “Yes, Mr. Davener. I am aware. You were saying?”

  “I trust your father, good man that he is, has explained everything to you. The reason I am here, that is.”

  Her throat closed up.

  “I am absolutely delighted. What children we shall have, you and I. You remain overcome, I well understand. Take a moment to reflect upon your good fortune.” He sat at the desk and took out a sheet of paper, pen, and ink. “I shall write to my esteemed uncle informing him of my happy news.” He signaled a flourish in the air over the paper. “When I’m done, I shall dictate to you your greeting of delight to him. Please do use your very best penmanship.”

  She kept smiling, and when it was her turn to write, she scrawled the letters to near unreadability.

  “Now, my dearest love, I have some business with your father, but when I return, it shall be with the vicar.” He patted his coat pocket. “I can only imagine your delight at the prospect of becoming Mrs. Walter Davener.”

  Chapter Four

  Bracebridge removed his hat when Sinclair’s housekeeper opened the door. He nodded at the woman. “Good day, Mrs. Elliot.”

  “My lord.” She curtseyed but did not move aside to admit him.

  “I’ve business with Mr. Sinclair,” he said. He had no quarrel with her. Indeed, she’d always struck him as highly competent.

  She winced. “I’m not to let anyone in, my lord.”

  A reprehensible part of him wished Gopal had been less conscientious about Sinclair and his debts. Bracebridge would have stood by happily while the bailiff evicted the man on behalf of whomever the new owner of the Cooperage would have been. “I’m afraid I must insist.”

  Mrs. Elliot’s eyes widened. She believed Bracebridge would make good on the implied threat, and that was all he needed: her conviction that he would have her employer on the street. In truth, no matter how satisfying the idea, or how darkly he glowered at Mrs. Elliot, he could not. How could he, when the man he so despised was also Anne’s father?

  “My lord.” She curtseyed, one hand clutching the side of the door. “I cannot allow it.”

  “I’ll see him now or fetch the bailiff.” He softened his tone. “Step aside, madam.”

  She backed away with a wary shrug. “Milord.”

  Upstairs, a door slammed. Mrs. Elliot froze when Sinclair’s voice rang out: “What is the meaning of this?”

  Emily’s father appeared at the top of t
he stairs, impeccably dressed as always. He clutched a goblet in one hand and dangled a dark green bottle in the other. He took a long drink from the goblet and emptied it before he sloshed the contents of the bottle into it. “You,” Thomas Sinclair said as he headed down the stairs, his attention on Bracebridge. He lurched to one side and hit the railing hard, though he managed to steady himself. “What are you doing here?”

  Sinclair looked substantially older and more dissipated than the last time Bracebridge had seen him. Now that he was close, though his clothes were as fashionable as ever—the man was wearing a Rachagorla waistcoat, for God’s sake—Bracebridge noted that his neckcloth was askew and his shirt collar was uneven on one side.

  “As if you don’t suspect the reason.”

  “Lord . . .” Sinclair drank half the contents of his goblet. “Bracebridge.” He descended the last few stairs, then bowed slowly and with too much care. “You are not welcome here.”

  Bracebridge had enough experience with angry drunks to know to position himself in front of Mrs. Elliot; drunks like Sinclair always went after the weaker. “Sir.”

  “You.” Sinclair pointed at Mrs. Elliot. “He is not to be admitted. Were those not my clear instructions? That blackguard purveyor of sin and despoiler of Britain’s most honorable sons is not to be admitted to decent homes. This is a decent home.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mrs. Elliot said with a panicked look at Bracebridge. “But—”

  “Not to be admitted to the house.” He emphasized each word and then gestured at the ceiling. “Is this not the house?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mr. Sinclair,” Bracebridge said. “I insisted.”

  “I shall deal with you presently.” Sinclair returned to Mrs. Elliot. “You are discharged. Be gone before the day is done. Tell that pretty scullery maid Nancy or Betty or Daisy or whatever her name is that she’s promoted into your place.” He made a shooing motion. “I’ll not tolerate insubordination and inadequate service. It’s too much for a gentleman to bear.” He said that last bit with a look at Bracebridge intended to imply there was only one gentleman present.