LITMIR.BIZ

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next three years and then the lump sum of one-hundred-and-fifty thousand pounds.’

      A fortune. Daniel could barely believe the proportions of the offer, such riches unimaginable.

      ‘I would immediately sign over the town house in Grosvenor Square as an incentive for you to honour the terms. Then, whenever Amethyst instructs me to do so, a property I own to the north called Dunstan House, with a good deal of acreage about it, shall be endorsed into your care, as well.’

      Stopping, the merchant faced him directly. Sweat had built on his brow and his cheeks were marked with a ruddy glow of much emotion. ‘There is one thing, however, that you must do for me in return, my lord. My only daughter Amethyst is now twenty-six, soon to be twenty-seven. She is a clever girl and a sensible one. She has worked alongside me for the last eight years and it is her surefootedness in business that has propelled my profits skywards.’

      He waited as Daniel nodded before continuing.

      ‘Amethyst Amelia was educated under the capable tutelage of the Gaskell Street Presbyterian Church School and I paid the teachers handsomely to make sure that she acquired all the skills a woman of the classes above her might need to know. In short, she could fit into any social situation without disgracing herself.’

      Daniel suddenly knew just where this conversation was leading to. A dowry. A bribe. The answer to his prayers for the selling of his soul.

      ‘You are single and available, my lord. You have two sisters who are in need of being launched into society, a mother who has fine taste in living and a grandfather who requires much in the way of medical attention. All continuing and long-term expenses. If you marry my daughter by the end of July, none of this will ever be a problem again and you will have the means to right the crumbling estate of Montcliffe once and for all.’

      ‘Get out, you bastard.’ Daniel’s anger made the words tremble. That a man he was beginning to respect and like should think of coming into his life to blackmail him into marrying his daughter. For that was what this was. Blackmail, even given the enormous amounts mooted.

      But Cameron looked to be going nowhere. ‘I can understand your wrath and indeed, were I in your boots, I might have had exactly the same reaction. But I would ask you to think about it for at least a week. You have promised me your confidence and I expect that, for if a word of this gets out anywhere my daughter’s reputation will be ruined. Hence, as a show of my own gratitude for your discretion, I shall leave you the greys regardless of your final decision.’

      ‘I cannot accept them.’

      ‘Here is a document I have written up for your perusal and I earnestly hope to hear from you presently.’

      With that he was gone, his glass emptied on the desk and a fat envelope left beside it. Daniel was in two minds as to what to do: send it back unopened with a curt message containing his lack of interest or open it up and see what was inside.

      Curiosity won out.

      The sheet before him was witnessed by a city lawyer whose qualifications seemed more than satisfactory. It was also signed by his daughter.

      ‘Damn. Damn. Damn.’ He whispered the words beneath his breath. The girl had been told of all this and still wanted the travesty? Finishing his brandy, he poured himself another as he read on, barely believing what was written.

      He was to marry Amethyst Amelia Cameron before the month was finished on the condition that he have no relations with any other woman for two years afterwards.

      Shocked to the core, he took a good swallow of the brandy. Amethyst Amelia Cameron would allow her father to sell her for the promise of what? Under the law any daughter could inherit money, chattels and unentailed property from a dying father and he obviously loved her. Besides, she had experience in the business and had turned profits for many a year. Cameron had told him that himself. So what was it that she would gain from such an arrangement? They barely knew each other and, even given she was from the trading classes, an heiress of her calibre could garner any number of titled aristocrats who were down on their purse.

      As he was?

      ‘Hell!’ Daniel threw the parchment into a drawer and slammed it shut, but the promises festered even unseen, malevolent and beguiling.

      How on earth had Cameron known so much about his financial difficulties? Would Goldsmith truly call in his brother’s loans against Montcliffe before he was ready for them? If he did that, Daniel would be forced to sell the town house, the manor, the surrounding farms and any chattels that would fetch something. Then the Wyldes would be homeless, moneylenders baying for their blood and all the claws unsheathed.

      If it was just him, he might have been able to manage, but Cameron was perfectly correct; his sisters were young, his grandfather was old and his mother had always found her gratification in the position the earldom afforded them in society and had freely spent accordingly.

      Standing, he walked to the window and looked out over the gardens, swearing as he saw the two greys tied to a post by the roadside and his butler near them, looking more than bewildered.

      He had left them just as he’d said. It was begun already. Daniel turned to the doorway and hurried through it.

      * * *

      ‘I think he took my proposal very well.’ Robert Cameron sipped at the sweet tea Amethyst had brought him and smiled.

      ‘You do?’

      ‘He is a good man with sound moral judgement and a love for his family.’

      Amethyst bit into a ginger biscuit, wiping the crumbs away from her lips.

      ‘So he signed his name to the deed?’

      ‘Not quite.’

      ‘He didn’t sign it?’

      Her father looked up. ‘He told me that I was a bastard for even suggesting such a thing and said that I should get out.’

      ‘But you left the greys?’

      ‘I did.’

      ‘And he has as yet not sent them back?’

      ‘He has not.’

      ‘Then it is a good omen.’

      Robert frowned. ‘I hope so, Amethyst, I really do.’

      Amethyst tried her hardest to smile. Papa had become thinner and thinner no matter what she might get their French chef to feed him and he had taken to striding about the house at night...watching. He was scared and those that might harm them for their money were becoming braver. The daylight attack near Tattersall’s had made her father paranoiac about any movement in their street, any unknown face around the warehouse. Nay, he was eating himself up with worry and she could allow it no longer.

      Papa wanted her to be protected and he desperately wanted her to trust in a man again. With time running out for her father Amethyst had allowed him the choice of her groom. Said like that it sounded abhorrent, but nothing was ever as black and white as one might imagine and right now she wanted her father to smile.

      ‘We shall wait a week. If Lord Montcliffe has not come back to us by then with an answer, we will visit him together.’ She injected a jaunty positive note into her words but everything in her felt flat.

      Gerald Whitely’s face shimmered in her memory. The feel of his anger was still there sometimes, just beyond touch, his angry words and then his endless seething silence. A relationship that had blinded sense and buried reason, one bad decision following another until there was nothing left of any of it.

      Cold fingers closed over the cross at her throat. Her father was the one person who had stayed constant in her life and she would do whatever it took to see that he was happy. Anything at all.

      ‘Your mother made me promise to see you flourish, Amy. They were the last words she spoke to me as she slipped away and I had hoped that you would, but after Whitely...’ He stopped, his voice wavering and frighteningly thin. ‘Lord Montcliffe will make you remember

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