Strictly Forbidden (47 page)

Debtor’s prison?

Maddie gasped, going cold all over again. “You would send me to the Fleet?”

He shrugged, his face mildly apologetic. “It is a common fate, is it not?”

She grappled for a retort, unable to believe the ruthless cad’s ultimatum. Fleet Prison
would mean squalor, hunger, and indefinite internment. Marriage to Brock would mean
loss of independence and a legally binding pain she knew too well.

“Y-you cannot mean to throw me in prison.”

Brock, looking every inch a wealthy man from the rich burgundy cravat of silk about
his neck to the supple leather boots with their shiny toecaps, simply smiled. “I never
say anything I do not mean.”

Liar! Five years ago, he’d uttered many untruths, including his “love” for her. He
had also promised to marry her. Instead, he had abandoned her an hour after taking
her virginity. She had never heard from him again...until tonight.

Purposely, Maddie raised her chin, glared at him as if he were an insect. “Marry
you?
It’s inconceivable.”

“Since I conceived the idea, I must disagree.”

His smooth voice chafed over her like the coarsest wool. God, how she would love to
set him down.

“You are enjoying my distress, aren’t you?”

Brock only shot her an enigmatic half-smile in response. “Is it the idea of marrying
your former stable hand you object to?”

“I object to the entire idea of marriage, but particularly to you. Why would you desire
such a ridiculous end?”

“I doubt you’ll find your other option more appealing.”

He paced over the threadbare carpet, closer. She inhaled his spicy, musky scent with
her next breath. It brought forth a surge of long-buried memories of shared kisses
in the hay and racing hearts. The reminiscence mixed with anger in a potent rush.
She could not deny that she had loved him desperately once...and she hated him all
the more for it now.

“Of course, I could be wrong,” he continued.

His tone mocked his words. Brock would never believe himself wrong. The man was more
confident than most, for he had always been smarter. And more dangerous.

A mental picture of all she imagined Fleet Prison would be rose in her mind, almost
too horrible to contemplate. Darkness. Dankness. Nothing to eat. No way out.

Blackness floated at the edge of her vision.

Stifling her fear, Maddie shot him a frosty glare. “Perhaps you
are
wrong.”

Brock moved closer still. His nearness called forth an image of their stolen intimacies
in the stable years ago. Breathless kisses mixed with urgent sighs, nurtured by the
love and dreams in her heart, all of which he had trampled to pursue his burning ambitions
for fortune.

“The choice is completely yours.”

Without family or the means to pay her debts, her incarceration would be long, stretching
into years, possibly a decade—if she lived that long. But marriage to Brock would
last until she went to her grave.

Clearly, he had honed his ruthless edge to razor sharpness in the last five years.
Resisting the urge to rail at him, she thrust her chin forward with icy calm. “You
planned this.”

“How? It is your misfortune your late husband liked drinking and gaming beyond his
means. I had no hand in that.”

“Except to buy up his debt. It’s very much like you to take advantage of my misfortune.”

His expression never changed. “A smart man takes advantage of every opportunity.”

And Maddie knew well he saw opportunity everywhere, even under the skirts of an untried
girl. The blackguard had nearly ruined her life when he had taken her innocence, along
with her father's money, and left. She would not become his opportunity again.

“Stop these games. What do you truly want? I doubt you paid my creditors a staggering
eight thousand pounds for my hand because you harbor any feeling for me.”

He shrugged evasively. “Believe what you like.”

She never knew what to believe where Brock was concerned. Not five years ago, not
now. She had believed in him once, in his brilliant mind, in his determination, to
her detriment. The fact the passionately driven boy who had labored in her father’s
stables had beaten the odds and became a shrewd man of means only made him more frightening
now.

“Blast you, what is it you truly seek from me?”

A thin smile turned up the corners of his mouth as he approached her again with measured
steps. Rooted in place by anxiety, she watched him pace a circle around her, his fingers
brushing an aging side table next to her. She shivered.

Brock had a scheme in mind, and he only tortured her by withholding it now for his
perverse pleasure, no doubt.

Suddenly, he stopped before her and met her stare. In his eyes, she saw scalding desire
and a frightening determination to possess her. Maddie couldn’t breathe.

“We were compatible lovers, sweet girl.”

She couldn’t hold her gasp in. “Do
not
call me that!”

Her memory bombarded her with images of their spring together, the first time he’d
nibbled her tingling neck and whispered that endearment. An ache she’d thought long
dead flickered inside her.

“You liked that name. And I liked saying it.” His eyes burned. “Years ago, your skin
tasted sweet as a pastry. Does it still?”

Maddie gave Brock her back and drew in a trembling breath. He was toying with her,
as a cat does a mouse. He wanted her off balance. She must not give him the satisfaction
of recalling anything about that night, particularly not the feel of his callused
palms sliding across her skin, between her thighs, making her writhe with the sort
of pleasure she had never before imagined and never again experienced. Focusing on
his betrayal and abandonment would better serve her.

She whirled to face him. “Certainly you do not expect me to believe that you bought
up all of my debt and created some elaborate scheme of marriage simply so you could
take me to your bed again.”

He raised a dark brow. “Why not?”

“That is hardly logical.”

“I am a wealthy man now. I can afford to be illogical, if I choose.”

Maddie saw his hand coming, knew he intended to touch her. She couldn’t move. Brock
caressed her face with his fingers. Fire screamed across her skin. She flinched at
the contact, but he did not let her go, damn him. Instead, he cupped his fingers around
her neck and brushed his thumb across her cheek.

Her heart beat like an anvil, kicking the wall of her chest as he traced a torturously
slow line down her jaw. Sensation burst through her. They played a dangerous game.
She could not afford to be his toy.

Jerking away, Maddie sneered, “If it’s a companion you seek, crawl back to the gutter
and buy yourself a two-pence whore.”

He looked unruffled by her insult. “Tsk, tsk, Maddie. That no longer suits me. I accept
only the finest; I accept it on my terms. Now—” he brushed her collarbone with his
fingertips— “I choose you.”

She willed her racing heart to slow. But it was impossible with Brock’s commanding
gaze squarely on her, sliding down her body. Her stomach clenched. After all the hurt
he had heaped upon her, she should never respond to him as a woman again.

But Brock gripped her wrist in his hot palm, then slid his thumb over the pulse point,
a slow journey that wound to the center of her tingling palm and back. Maddie gasped
as she felt the hot, needy clenching of her womb. With her heart beat quickening beneath
his touch, he smiled.

Maddie pulled on her wrist, only to find herself locked in his steely grip. “Release
me.”

Brock held her a long moment—to prove that he could—before he let go. “Once we’re
wed, Maddie, I will never release you.”

“I do not believe you’re willing to bind yourself to me for the rest of your life
to—well, simply for...”

“Sex?” His low voice rang with mischief. “It will be interesting to see if you still
blush when I undress you.”

“Stop dallying and tell me what the hell you want.”

“My, my, my. What shocking language, Lady Wolcott. What would the ladies of the
ton
think?”

Maddie pursed her lips, refusing to reply.

Turning away, he paced past an armchair and gazed into the empty hearth, his expression
contemplative. “Money has afforded me almost everything I’ve ever wanted, except entry
into society. I count some of the wealthiest lords in England as my clients. I’ve
helped them regain their fortunes with well-placed financial advice. They come to
my office willing to pay staggering fees for my guidance and connections to lucrative
investments. Some have even begged. Those same men ignore me when they see me on the
street. I rival their fortunes, sometimes exceed them, yet they will not recognize
me.”

That hardly surprised Maddie. Brock, a self-educated man born to the serving class,
had little hope of that. The
ton
fraternized only with those who possessed the proper bloodlines.

“They never will.”

“Wrong. They will invite me into their homes, to their balls. I’ll make certain of
it.”

“You cannot force people to like you,” she pointed out.

“I hardly care if they do.” A wicked grin curved his mouth. He relished the challenge.

Did he see her as a challenge, as well?

“Let them loathe me, in fact. But if they want my help, they must accept me in their
midst. The right social connections will enhance my business. But to gain entrée,
I need you. After all, with a well-born wife, like an earl’s daughter, the
ton
could not ignore me quite so easily. The doors of my clients—and their friends—would
open for me.”

The realization that Brock’s plan might indeed work zapped Maddie’s last hope that
he had been trifling with her for the mere sport.

No!
She would not sacrifice herself for his ambition. Nor could she conceive of placing
her body legally in his possession. Instinct told her he was not the same boy who
had taken her in a sweet but hurried loving once upon a time. Gossip painted him as
feral, ruthless to his enemies. He would treat her no differently. Though she had
endured much during her marriage to Colin, Brock frightened her more. He was more
calculating—and dangerous for it.

Maddie could not let him use her again or coerce her back into matrimonial hell.

“So you seek to buy a well-born wife,” she said with contempt, refusing to show fear.
“Tongues will wag about our reasons for wedding.”

He scoffed. “Let them. That will not change the fact that we’re married.”

“I will not marry you.”

In a handful of strides, he was across the room, his hot green stare drilling into
her. “Are you certain? Think very carefully.”

She swallowed. Fleet was a terrible place, infested with vermin and lice. She would
be made to exist on one tiny bowl of flour-based slop each day. She would never see
the sun.

Maddie pushed aside her fear, praying he merely sought to scare her. “No.”

“You have more than yourself to consider.” He sent her a thoughtful stare. “What of
your daughter?”

Maddie felt her face drain of blood. A buzzing roared in her head as blackness crowded
her vision. Dear God, when had he learned of Aimee? How? And what exactly did he know?

“And though your late husband was stupid, I doubt he ever intended a debtor’s fate
for his only child.”

Oh, God. Aimee would go to prison with her or be transported to a workhouse where
children were forced to labor under cruel conditions—sometimes to death. But wedding
Brock would hardly ensure Aimee’s welfare either. Certainly a man merciless enough
to seduce an innocent young woman for financial gain would think nothing of destroying
a little girl’s life.

Hate pounded fiercely inside her. “Of course not. I love my daughter.”

A fleeting smile softened his features. “I never doubted you would be a wonderful
mother. I will require your answer within a week.”

#

The clock hanging in the hall chimed midnight when Brock returned home. Dismissing
the butler, he jerked off his gloves before slapping them down on a convenient hall
table.

He stalked into his study to find his father waiting there. Jack had never been one
to keep his opinions to himself. Brock supposed it was too much to hope the man would
leave him in peace after tonight’s debacle with Maddie.

“Well?” his father prompted. “What happened?”

Sighing, Brock sank into his chair, wondering when this day would end. “I think it’s
safe to say that she hates me.”

Jack’s disapproval of the plan had never been more apparent than in the scowl he now
wore. “What did you expect?”

Good question. Deep down, Brock supposed he’d hoped she would be pleased to see him,
perhaps beg his forgiveness for marrying another so soon after pledging her love to
him. Something other than staring at him like a pile of refuse she wished to God she’d
never shared her innocence with.