were you today to offer me, say, two thousand pounds, or a private interview with that intriguing daughter of yours, I would certainly be tempted to partake. As it is, I am heartily tired of trailing here each afternoon to meet with her only to be fobbed off with tea and excuses.’ Leaning back into the chair, he stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankles. ‘Where is your daughter? The longer we are apart, the more desperate I am for some time alone with her. It is said, is it not, that absence makes the heart grow fonder?’
Margaret and Frederick Worthington exchanged nervous glances.
‘She is visiting her aunt…’
‘She is ailing in her room…’
The couple glared, horrified, at each other at these conflicting versions of Emma’s lengthy absence, each sure that they had voiced the correct one for today. Both shifted uneasily back into their chairs and, apeing their sinister guest’s lead, examined their manicures.
Jarrett Dashwood used a fleshy thumb to shine a perfectly trimmed set of fingernails. ‘Well, what’s it to be? Is she visiting? Lying abed with her smelling salts or Miss Austen’s romances? Shall I go above stairs and discover for myself how my poor, ailing fiancée fares?’
‘Please, sir, do not term her so,’ Margaret forced out in a high, wheedling tone. ‘She refuses you; you know that. You have our sincerest apologies.’ Margaret looked at Frederick, hoping for a modicum of assistance in dealing with this frightening man. Her perspiring husband simply gazed glassily into space. ‘There is nothing to be done, Mr Dashwood.’ Margaret emphasised her despair by crushing her handkerchief to her mouth. ‘We cannot force her to wed against her inclination. Everything in our power…my power,’ she gritted through the muffling linen, stabbing a glance at her florid husband, ‘has been done to make the selfish ingrate see sense. But she is a woman grown and so stubborn she will take no heed of her fond parents’ good advice.’
‘Perhaps she will then take heed of me, madam,’ Jarrett Dash-wood smoothly said. ‘Perhaps you both will do likewise. For this whole matter has now the stench of premeditated fraud about it. I have been fleeced, I believe, of my two thousand pounds, not only by you, good sir,’ he mocked Frederick with a bow of his raven head, ‘but also by you, madam, and your daughter. How many fiancés have you accepted for the chit in return for a little aid with pressing debts, only to find that she’s turned coy afore the altar?’
Margaret’s handkerchief dropped to her lap, her chalky complexion adopted a greyish-green tinge and her mouth worked like that of a beached fish. ‘I beg of you, Mr Dashwood, never think it!’ finally exploded from her. ‘My daughter has received no other firm offers at all. She is accomplished at deflecting any gentleman’s attention far sooner than that. It would be heaven indeed should she encourage just the one to come a-courting.’
‘But I’m not convinced,’ Jarrett Dashwood said easily, with a final lingering look at his flexing fingers. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged…’ He laughed lightly. ‘There…you see how the dear girl has affected me. I find I can continually bring to mind passages from her favourite books…Now, where was I? Ah, yes, with odd truths. Indeed, it is strange that the more one is denied something, the further it seems from one’s grasp, the sweeter finally possessing it becomes. I believe I am developing a tendresse for your daughter which makes the money quite irrelevant. Even were you in a position to repay it, I would not accept. I want that spirited hussy as my wife. The documents pertaining to the marriage contract are signed and sealed. The marriage must go ahead.’
Finally bored with this polite charade, he said in a guttural voice, ‘Find out to wherever it is she has absconded and furnish me with the news; I’m sure I can make her see sense. If you do not….’ He smiled grimly at Margaret ‘…I understand that the Fleet is able to accommodate families…’
Chapter Four
‘This is a respectable house, is it not, Mrs Keene?’
‘Indeed it is, Miss Worthington. Oh, yes, indeed it is.’
‘And no gentleman is allowed within it after nine of the clock, you said, did you not? So you will insist this gentleman immediately removes himself,’ Emma prompted in a low, trembling rush.
Mrs Keene asserted nothing, simply gawked at the man to whom her lodger referred as though he were an apparition. Recovering her senses, she rolled her eyes at Emma, mouthing something completely unintelligible, before bobbing her mob cap and herself up and down as though in the throes of some palsy.
Emma watched her landlady’s ridiculously obsequious display for no more than a second. Her furious glare turned on the blond man, lounging by the mantel in Mrs Keene’s small parlour.
He looked right back. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Sir Richard Du Quesne’s jaw clenched…ached as he fought to keep his eyes from slowly stripping that virginal white nightgown from her slender body. Silver eyes returned sharply to her face and his angry attention had her valiantly, proudly tilting her chin. If it hadn’t been for small, pearly teeth sinking steadyingly into her full lower lip he might have been fooled into thinking she was perfectly composed. He read her next move as it occurred to her and artlessly showed in those lucid golden eyes. Shifting away from the fire, he made for the parlour door.
A slow pulse throbbed low in his belly, spreading to tighten his groin, and he cursed at his feet in irritated frustration. He couldn’t recall ever seeing a woman so simply attired—certainly none whose keep he was paying for and whose bed he shared. The women of his acquaintance, whether family or fancy, trailed about in lace with their hair in curls when ready to retire.
With a subtle air of disinterest he glanced at luxuriant, glossy fawn hair spilling over pristine, modestly embroidered cotton, tendrils curving into a gracefully narrow back. If her hair and eyes didn’t resemble fine cognac she might not tempt him so much, he savagely mocked himself, shoving aside any ludicrous idea that she could join those whose bed he shared.
Emma turned warily on her heel as he passed, keeping him at the corner of a watchful tawny eye. His casual entrapment complete, he halted a few paces behind, forcing her to twist about to face him. Her eyes blazed copper beneath his silver stare until she abruptly looked away.
Mrs Keene’s face was diplomatically lowered but her beady eyes were busy batting between the hostile couple. ‘Ah, but that’s no gentleman, you know, miss,’ finally worked out of one corner of her mouth at Emma, while her eyes slid in the opposite direction.
A slender white hand flew to smother a hysterical laugh. Emma agreed through her quivering fingers, ‘Yes, I do know that, Mrs Keene.’ Very graciously she added, ‘Nevertheless, on this occasion I think we shall allow him the sobriquet and insist on his immediate removal from the premises.’
‘I can’t do that, miss!’ Mrs Keene whispered, horrified at the very idea. Her eyes slid to the tall blond man, who in turn had his sardonic mercurial gaze turned on her lodger.
‘And why ever not?’ Emma bit out, wrapping her slender arms about her night-robed body to warm it and conceal its quaking.
‘It’s the silver squire,’ Mrs Keene spluttered out, so low and fast it merely emerged as a sibilant hiss and Emma could decipher none of it.
‘What?’ she queried on a frown.
‘She said I’m the silver squire,’ Sir Richard Du Quesne told her evenly. ‘Lightly translated, that means I own the freehold of this house and the rest of the street together with quite an amount of the city of Bath.’
After a stunned moment, digesting the awful news that she was actually attempting to eject him from one of his own properties, she fumed. ‘And you think that gives you the right to come here and harass me, I suppose?’
‘Your continual deceit earlier today gives me the right to come here and question you. So does a sense of duty to a close friend who cares about your welfare.’ As though just noticing the goggling, hovering landlady,