by Sophia James
‘You’d better hope Mr Connor and Lord Howsham are both willing to keep their mouths shut about this. If not, what little I’ve been able to achieve on your behalf will be gone,’ her father threatened.
Susanna almost wished it was gone. For all the effort he thought he was extending on her behalf, she’d seen very little love or true concern about her and her future. All he and his wife, Augusta, seemed to care about was getting rid of the taint hanging about their house in the form of her.
‘I can’t believe you’re going to entertain a common man like him.’ Edgar rubbed at the dark bruise forming on his cheek. ‘If I were you, I’d have him thrown in jail for what he did to me.’
‘If I were you, I wouldn’t want such an embarrassing beating made public for all of London to read about in the papers,’ their father answered. ‘As it is, I believe Mr Connor can be of some use to us.’
‘What could he possibly do for us?’
‘He might be the solution to the new problem Susanna has presented us with.’
Susanna’s stomach tightened as it had the morning after her mother’s funeral when Lord Rockland had stepped through the door of their simple wine shop and looked down his aquiline nose at her. She’d known by the way he’d studied her, as he did now, her life was about to change. The little love she’d enjoyed with her mother, who’d done all she could to protect her daughter from the taint of being a bastard among their friends, relatives and neighbours, had ended. Instead of leaving her with all the people she’d ever known, although they weren’t any more loving than the Rocklands, Lord Rockland had taken her into his household to have her moulded into heaven knew what. She’d never been like Edwina, her half-sister and his legitimate daughter, coddled and dressed and paraded through court and the ballrooms. Instead she’d been a barely tolerated companion and chaperon who was now being thrust into society in the hope her family might foist her off on someone else. Lord Rockland should have left her in the wine shop.
‘Whatever you have in mind, I want no part of it,’ Susanna said and was scolded with a cold glare.
‘You’ll go along with my wishes or you’ll find yourself cast out of my house, with the promise of the dowry rescinded and you left, like any little whoring bastard, to fend for yourself. Do I make myself clear?’
‘You do,’ she answered with feigned meekness. Tonight was a setback, but it wasn’t the end of her plans. Her father wouldn’t decide her future as he had when she was thirteen, nor would he get his way. She’d make a life for herself somewhere, somehow, get her thousand pounds of dowry and be free of the Rocklands for ever.
Copyright © 2016 by Georgie Reinstein
ISBN-13: 9781488003912
Marriage Made in Rebellion
Copyright © 2016 by Sophia James
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