The box opened easily, and inside she found several large stacks of ten-pound bank notes.
Well…bloody, bloody, hell.
Perhaps they were real. Perhaps her uncle was simply a miser. Perhaps—
“Mirabelle.”
She turned to find Whit standing next to her, holding a small brown package, and with his face set in grim lines.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“Proof,” was his answer.
Or more proof, she thought miserably, and pointed at the drawer.
He looked in, frowned, and took a stack of notes to put in his pocket. Then he had her by the arm and was leading her out and down the hall. He didn’t speak again until they reached her room.
“You found something else? What is it?” she asked again as he shut and locked the door behind them.
He handed her the package by way of answer.
She pulled out the contents, and swallowed hard. She didn’t have to ask what it was that she held. Its purpose was obvious enough. It was a metal plate, one side etched with ridges like a stamp. And those ridges formed the shape of a familiar looking ten-pound bank note.
So it was true. Her uncle was a counterfeiter. She wouldn’t have believed it for a moment if she hadn’t been holding the proof right there in her hands. She continued to stare at it, astonished, until Whit spoke.
“Mirabelle?”
She blinked, the spell broken, and handed the plate back to him. “What will you do with it?”
“I’ll deliver it to William, along with the notes and the receipt of delivery you found in the attic. What happens after that is up to him. I’m sorry, imp.”
She nodded. She had no respect for her uncle to lose, no trust that could be betrayed, and no pride that could turn to shame. But she was now in the exceedingly uncomfortable
position of being related to not only a pathetic drunkard, but a criminal as well.
She’d never be anything more at Haldon now than a guest taken in out of charity, she realized, and had to fight back the sob she felt building in her throat.
Whit was too honorable to break his word, but giving shelter to the desolate niece of a felon was a far cry from…from what, exactly?
Taking her as a wife?
Her heart raced with longing, even as it broke.
The Earl of Thurston would not make an outcast his countess.
“Mirabelle?”
She swallowed back the tears and disappointment. He’d never given her any indication that he’d planned to offer for her, she reminded herself sternly. He’d made no promises. He’d said nothing of love. If she’d ever harbored a secret desire to become mistress of Haldon, that was her mistake.
Determined to salvage some pride, she put on a brave face and gestured at the plate. “Will this become public knowledge, do you think?”
“I very much doubt it.” Whit answered, carefully enough that she recognized his intent was to reassure. “William wouldn’t care to see you hurt by this, no one does. He might threaten exposure as a means to acquiring the names of any possible accomplices, but a messy trial wouldn’t be to anyone’s benefit.”
“There has to be someone else,” she insisted tiredly. “There has to be. He simply isn’t capable of doing this sort of thing on his own.”
“After a few days in his presence, I’m inclined to agree. William might have some ideas on that.”
“Will you wait to tell him, Whit? Just until to night? I’d like…I’d like to think through…I’d like to make some plans.”
She’d like to be alone before the well of tears she’d pushed back broke free.
He hesitated before answering. “As long as the men are still out. But you’re to stay in your room. And while you’re thinking, pack a bag. I want you back at Haldon before dinner.”
S
he spent the first hour alone in her room sobbing hopelessly into her pillow. When the tears ran dry, she dragged herself up, washed her face and, as Whit had suggested, began to pack.
She wouldn’t be coming back. She would never come back. She would likely live the remainder of her life at Hal-don as a guest.
Her uncle had destroyed what ever chance she may have had with Whit, and that was a painful wound she couldn’t imagine ever healing. But like pouring salt on the cut, her uncle’s behavior would also rob her of an inheritance.
To permanently leave her uncle’s house without his written consent—and he would never consent to give up his three hundred pounds a year—before she turned seven-and-twenty, meant forfeiting her inheritance. And every last pound would go to…she couldn’t quite remember. To “The Ladies’ Society for The Cultivation of Virtue,” or some such nonsense.
Staying, of course, was no longer an option, not with the very real possibility of scandal looming over her head.
Exhausted and frustrated, she crammed a bonnet into her valise. Which was rather stupid, she chided herself—destroying her own things in a fit of temper. She took a solid kick at her desk instead.
It was all so unfair.
Oh, but the five thousand pounds her parents had intended for her, gone—and her chance at in dependence with it. She’d never be a member of the Cole family now, but her inheritance at least could have insured she not be a charity.
Nothing she could do or say would convince her uncle to willingly forfeit his yearly allowance. Likely, not even a charge of counterfeiting would keep him from pursuing his money.
Blast and damn. If only she had six hundred pounds available to simply pay him off. She latched her valise, picked it up…set it down again.
She
could
pay him off. Why ever hadn’t she thought of it before? She ran to her desk, pulled out pen and paper, and drafted a very simple contract.
She’d need to hurry. She’d heard her uncle’s carriage return not minutes ago. Whit was likely having their own transportation back to Haldon readied at that very moment.
Not ten minutes later, she made the brief and always unpleasant walk to the study to find the door open and the baron, returned from the hunt, behind his desk nursing a glass of port.
She cleared her throat as she entered the room. “Excuse me, uncle.”
“You scare the boy off?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Thurston, you twit. He’s hitching his team up even now. He and Hartsinger both. Thought I told you to stay in your room.”
“I have. You did. I didn’t frighten him off.” If he was angry with her already, she didn’t stand a chance.
He shrugged. “Boy needs aging. Why are you here?”
She straightened her shoulders and stepped deeper into the room. “I’ve come with a proposition of a financial nature.”
“Proposition of a financial nature,” he mimicked badly and guffawed into his glass. “Gel ain’t got so much as a
pound to her name and she wants to make a proposition of financial nature. Stupid cow.”
She waited until he was occupied with slurping at his drink before continuing in measured tones. “According to the terms of my parents’ will, the three hundred pounds you receive for my care, such as it is, will cease in less than two years. At that time, the monies set aside for my dowry will become mine to spend as I please. If you should see fit to release me early from your house, I will agree, in writing, to recompense you for your cooperation as soon as I receive my inheritance. Nine hundred pounds, I believe, would be fair.”
“Nine hundred pounds?” he repeated, suddenly looking a bit more interested.
“Interest on your investment, as it were. It’s a tidy profit to be made in so short a time.”
He downed the drink in his glass and poured another with shaking hands. “You’ll give me nine hundred pounds to let you go?”
“In essence, yes.”
His thick tongue came up to wet his lips as he studied her in silence. He was considering it, she thought, she ought to be thrilled. So why did the way he was looking cause her stomach to tighten in dread?
“And you’ll agree to it in writing,” he repeated slowly. Slowly and suspiciously enough to have her hesitating before answering.
“I…I will.”
“How do I know you’ll make good on it?”
“I just said I’d put it in writing,” she reminded him, confused. “I don’t know what else—”
“Not good enough.” His thick fingers began a steady thrumming on the desk. “Not nearly good enough. I wouldn’t have the means to take it to court if you changed your mind.”
“I’m not going to—”
“I want collateral.”
“Wha…?” She spluttered at the sheer absurdity of the demand. “Collateral?”
“Something wrong with your ears, girl? That’s what I said.”
“But you know very well I haven’t anything—”
“You’ve friends,” he hinted slyly. “Wealthy ones.”
The dread turned to anger. The man, she thought, was an abomination. “If I were comfortable asking the Coles for a loan,” she informed him coldly. “I wouldn’t be having this exchange with you.”
“Your comfort is immaterial.”
“It’s becoming clear that this entire conversation is immaterial,” she returned. “If you’ll excuse me.”
“I’ll not. Sit down, girl.” When she hesitated he slammed his drink to the table, splashing the liquid. “I said sit!”
She sat down, a lifetime of fear easily brushing aside pride.
“I need a minute to think this through,” he muttered. “Can’t be rash.”
To her great surprise and dismay, he levered himself out of his chair and began a lumbering pace behind the desk. She watched, disgusted, and just a little bit awed, as he heaved his mass slowly from one side of the room to the other in a display of physical exertion she hadn’t thought him capable of in years. The floor creaked and moaned beneath him, rivulets of sweat tracked down his face to pool in his cravat, and in between his heavy puffs of breath, he muttered to himself in fits and starts.
“Didn’t see it before…Legal contract…Specific dates…In de pen dent of the will.” He paused momentarily to pour himself another drink before resuming his walk. “Chit’ll be trouble…This way’s better…He’ll handle her.”
As he continued his one-sided rant, Mirabelle began to wonder if he’d forgotten she was there, or just didn’t care.
He hadn’t forgotten. He ended his pacing with another
finger jab in her direction. “I’ll take your offer, but you’ll have Thurston’s coffers to back your word.”
“He won’t agree to it.” And she’d be damned if she would ask him.
“You’ll see that he does. And I want four thousand.”
“Four thousand what?” she asked, baffled. Perhaps the man had lost his mind at some point, and she simply hadn’t noticed.
“Pounds, you stupid chit. What else?”
“Pounds! You want four thousand pounds?” She gaped at him. “You can’t possibly be serious.”
“Does it look to you as if I’m playing, girl?”
It looked, she thought with a small bubble of hysterical laughter caught in her throat, as if he were on the verge of exploding. But knowing she could never be so lucky, she forced herself to speak in calm and reasonable tones. “Four thousand pounds is too large a sum. If—”
“You’ll pay it all the same.”
She shook her head. She’d rather all five thousand go to the ridiculous charity. “It would make more sense for me to wait out the will.”
“Then you can wait it out in St. Brigit’s.”
“I beg your pardon?” She couldn’t possibly have heard him threaten to send her to the asylum.
“I see I have your attention now,” he jeered.
“You can’t do that,” she forced out in a horrified whisper. “You won’t do that.”
“Can and will. Have that contract to me in a fortnight or you’ll spend the remainder of your years in a cage.”
“You would’ve put me there before this if you’d thought it worth your while. The expense alone—”
“Will take a pretty penny of the funds the will allows me, it’s true, but I’ll part with it you may be sure. Don’t believe me? Here.” He rooted through the desk. “Here. Deal’s all but done. I’ll not be gainsaid, girl.”
He held out a letter she didn’t recognize from the night
she and Whit had been in the study. The letterhead read
St. Brigit’s Asylum for the Infirm.
And the contents—what little she could make out around her blurring vision—detailed the acceptance of one Miss Mirabelle Browning as a future occupant.
“But…I only just came to you. I…”
“Doesn’t follow I couldn’t have thought of it first, does it?”
She shook her head slowly. “No…No, this is wrong.”
Her mind whirled with a disorienting mixture of fear and anger and panic, but beneath it all was the notion that it was all somehow wrong. It didn’t make sense. Why was he so determined to have Whit’s cooperation? Why spend the money for sending her away when it cost him nothing to risk taking her word? Why would he already have the paper from St. Brigit’s?
Because he’d been planning to send her there long before today, she realized, and remembered what Mr. Hartsinger had said.
We’ll see each other again.
But why? An asylum cost a good deal of money. Why would he want to part with that money now when the terms of the will were…?
The terms of the will. He’d broken the terms of the will. Fear and panic were instantly drowned in a wave of blinding fury.
“There is no money, is there?” she breathed. Slowly, seeing red, she rose from the chair. “The dowry is gone. You’ve already spent it.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea of what you mean.”
“You thought to send me away before I could alert the authorities.”
“You’re ranting, girl.”
“But I offered you a better way, didn’t I? Have me sign a contract and then ship me off. That’s why you needed Whit’s agreement, isn’t it? You knew I wouldn’t be able to
fulfill my end of the bargain and thought to cheat him out of a fortune.”
“Careful what accusations you throw at me.”
“You stole my dowry.” Her future. And the one hope she’d had in all the years she’d been forced to live under his roof. Gone. Gone for who knew how long. “You stole my inheritance. You’re nothing but a thief.”
“Watch your tongue.” He shook the paper at her. “I hold your future here.”
“You stole my future! You revolting, overblown, useless waste of—!”
The tumbler caught her on the cheekbone. A whopping crack seemed to echo in her head and she had the sudden and pointless thought that he could move a great deal faster than she had given him credit for. She hadn’t even noticed he’d pulled his arm back.