Page 19 of A Lyon for Luck
“He wouldn’t!” Daphne cried. “Surely, he would not be so selfish as to drag us all through the mud and muck for financial gain!”
“Daphne, he was willing to force you to marry Pozenby,” Fletcher replied easily. “I think it safe to say, he’d do anything.”
The letter fell to her lap. “Of course. You are entirely correct… he’s shown me time and again how heartless and unfeeling he can be. My mother—well, she simply can’t be bothered, can she?”
“We will do what you want in this situation. If you wish to give your father enough of the money that he goes away and leaves us be, then we will. We will find some way to make everything work, otherwise.”
“No. I don’t want him to have anything… the point of fact is that the inheritance is from my maternal grandfather. The woman I call mother is in fact my stepmother. My father married her when I was but an infant after my own mother died. And he never allowed anyone to speak of her, as if she were somehow a dirty secret to be kept. I was twenty before I even knew her name, and then it only occurred because my grandfather, her father, passed away and left me with this ridiculous sum of money. Then my father had to own the truth of it or I’d have never known,” she said, the words coming out in a rush. “I wonder how different things might have been had she lived. Would she have bowed to his wishes as my stepmother did in all things? Or would she have defended me? Would she have refused to let him barter me off to Cecil Pozenby like some sort of prize cattle?”
Fletcher wondered what it would feel like. He’d known love as a child. Not for nearly long enough, certainly. He’d lost his own parents so early that sometimes he wondered if he remembered them accurately or if he only had some idealized version of them that he’d created in his own mind. That aside, he knew, without question, they had loved him. And Daphne had never known that. Not once in her life had anyone expressed real love for her. It created a strange ache in his chest to think of it, to think of how lonely she must have been as a child. For himself, he’d had his uncle and his often very distant aunt, but they’d cared for him. Certainly they had never been cruel to him.
“I am sorry. I am sorry that you’ve never had the family you deserve,” he told her.
“Will we do better? I assume, of course, that at some point you and I will have children of our own. Will we do better for them than others have done by us?”
The very idea of it was staggering. In part because he’d never considered himself being a father, and in part because he suddenly realized that he wanted that. He wanted that with her. “We will endeavor to do so every day… but for now, we must return to London. We will seek the aid of Bessie Dove-Lyon and even Viscount Lynley, if need be, to put as quiet an end to all of this as possible. Then, whether we see or speak to any member of your family ever again, is entirely at your discretion… You’re the one who has suffered the most from their cruelty and coldness, after all. It ought to be your decision.”
“I think that will depend very much on how my father behaves once we return to town. To that end, I’ll dress and we can be off. We can take the barge back to Nottingham and, much as it pains me to say so, if we take the mail coach we can be back in London by tomorrow and put an end to this.”
And that is what they did. Braving the cold and the rough road and the brutally jarring ride of the mail coach, they made for London and an end to the unpleasantness that was her father’s machinations.
Chapter Fifteen
Two days later…
Bessie surveyed theman seated across from her with a cold and discerning eye. He was soft in all ways. Soft of character, soft of morality, soft of sense apparently, if he thought he could intimidate her with his blustering.
“Now see here, Mrs. Dove-Lyon, I will not be ordered about by some high-flying widow who runs a gaming hell! I am a respectable gentleman—”
“Respectable gentlemen, Mr. Acres, do not sell their daughters like chattel to a man who hasn’t washed in this century,” she snapped firmly. “Now, you are in my domain, and you will curb your tongue. I will not be scolded like one of your servants nor will I be bullied like a young girl who is too afraid to stand up to a man who ought to care for her. Unlike your poor daughter whom you have used and abused and exploited like the worst of criminals. If it were up to me, I’d see you dragged from my study and thrown directly into the Fleet. But it isn’t up to me. It’s up to her.”
“To whom?” he said, clearly still feeling as if he were somehow in a position to demand anything.
“To me, Father.”
From a connecting doorway, Daphne entered, looking regal in a gown of emerald silk that likely cost more than his entire wardrobe. “What the devil are you doing in this den of iniquity? Isn’t it bad enough that you’ve run off and eloped with some sort of adventurer who was only after your fortune?”
“The only person in this room who was ever after my fortune was you,” she said. “Or should I say the only person who is after it? Because even now you haven’t stopped. Even now, you’re still scheming to try and take something you haven’t any right to… and, what’s worse is that I would have aided you. For a kind word, for a bit of affection, for even a hint of true paternal feeling from you, I would have done anything to aid you. But you can’t do that even now, can you? It’s all bullying and blustering and pretending that everyone else is somehow beneath you,” she observed.
Bessie felt a frisson of pride as she watched the girl—no, the woman—stand up to the man who had done her so very poorly. Time and again, it would seem. In the next room, Lord Aldwyn waited along with Viscount Lynley and the very cooperative Lord Beaumont Ramsden, Marquess of Hexhaven. The man had, with very little urging on her part as he was desperately attempting to curry favor with her, taken it upon himself to purchase up all of Reginald Acres’s many markers. In short, while Acres did not yet know it, the people in that room and its vicinity owned him body and soul.
“How dare you! Ungrateful chit!” he said. “Did I not feed and clothe you? House you and turn you out into society?”
“You mean the marriage mart where you hoped to recoup your expenses?” Daphne said coolly. “Yes, you did all those things. The bare minimum required by blood for legitimate offspring. That is what you have always done… It stops today. The suit will be dropped. Any efforts to extort funds from myself or my husband will cease immediately.”
Reginald smirked then. “Or what? Your penniless husband will call me out?”
“No. He won’t have to… Because you’ll be in the Fleet,” Bessie replied. Then she rapped sharply on top of her desk and the same connecting door where Daphne had entered from opened once more. Three gentlemen walked in, each one entirely different from one another and yet each one quite powerful and fearsome in their own right.
“Acres,” Hexhaven said. “Just the man I’ve been looking for. Seems you had a run of bad luck at the club. Wagering is not your forte, sir. I was kind enough to secure your markers for you, of course, so you won’t be hounded by creditors… unless I elect to take over the hounding. Will I need to do that, Mr. Acres? Or have you reached an understanding with my good friend Bessie?”
It was at that point that Acres began to sweat profusely. “Now, see here—”
“I see, Mr. Acres,” Lynley said coolly. “We all see. Very clearly. And we all have the ears of every other member of the House of Lords. Your suit will languish there forever, never to be heard, never to be settled, and to always be an embarrassment to you—a man so inept at fatherhood that his own daughter fled his ham-fisted efforts to barter her off and managed to get herself a husband who is young, titled, honorable, and all the things you and your cronies are not. Do not test us. I know the debt I owe to Lady Aldwyn. I know the debt I owe to Mrs. Dove-Lyon. And we all know precisely where you stand in her estimation.”
Reginald Acres rose, gave one final glower in their general direction, and then marched out. It was patently obvious that he had lost, that he hadn’t the friends nor the power in his own right to pursue the action he’d undertaken any further.
Bessie smiled at Hexhaven. “That favor you’ve asked for? Consider it granted, Beaumont. You have endeared yourself to me greatly.”
