What a Lady Demands (25 page)

And so he’d hauled himself into his brother’s carriage for a cold and stomach-churning jaunt across Mayfair to a very familiar address. One he’d never expected to visit again. One whose memory required an entire bottle to obliterate.

Yes, and hadn’t he made an arse of himself? Greeting the ladies, indeed. He’d long ago had his bellyful of simpering
ton
ladies. One in particular, and in this very house, to boot.

He lurched toward the study, well aware of its location. At one time, Viscount Lindenhurst kept his study well stocked with the finest brandy, but that was ages ago. Back before Lind had sold this place to retire to his country estates. Back when they were still friends.

“Played a fool by the same lady,” Rowan mused.

Ironic that the fashionable London townhouse had been picked up by a wine merchant. A very wealthy wine merchant, true, but a man in trade nonetheless. Rowan would be buggered if he could work out why his brother had business with the man. Not any business, but something that required his presence, as well.

“Get on with it,” he muttered to himself.

The sooner he got this matter settled, whatever it was, the sooner he could go back to doing what he did best—burning his way through ridiculous sums of blunt. Only he had none left, but nobody knew that yet, not even his brother.

The sound of the butler’s throat clearing interrupted Rowan’s musings. Damned brandy. The excess of drink had been meant to relieve him of his memories. Instead, he stood like an idiot, dwelling on a past best forgotten.

“Sir?” The man was an expert at his profession, at least. Not the slightest note of amusement—or censure for that matter—marred his tone. He extended a hand, as if drunken callers neglected to pass him their hats on a daily basis.

Rowan gave him his beaver, now sporting a dent, and allowed the servant to admit him to the study at last. An expanse of polished walnut desk separated his brother from their host. Sadly, no refreshments seemed to be in the offing if the lack of glassware or decanters was any indication.

A pity. The thick atmosphere in the room was fast smothering the effects of the brandy.

“At last,” Sparks said affably. His older brother took everything in stride, if at the plodding gait of a plow horse. “I was beginning to think you’d lost your way.”

“Now that you’re here, perhaps we can begin.” Jennings spoke in the clipped tones of one who refused to put up with any nonsense.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this invitation?” Rowan couldn’t come up with a single reason for Jennings to require his presence along with his brother’s. In Sparks’s absence, Rowan could conjure about a thousand sterling motivations behind Jennings’s summons.

“A small matter of a sum you owe me.”

Damn it, he wasn’t about to allow Sparks to pay off his debts. The man had an estate to oversee. “Something we might have resolved between ourselves without involving my brother.”

“Your brother, it so happens, came up with a scheme whereby you can pay what you owe. Not only that, you’ll be solvent within, well, a week at the most. If you’re fortunate, you might even remain in that state for the rest of your life.”

Rowan took a step back. Impossible on all counts. He didn’t possess the sort of luck that would allow him to lose a fortune and gain another in the space of an hour. “You’re asking me to believe my brother came up with such a brilliant plan?”

Sparks merely blinked, a slow shuttering of his eyes before he opened them again. It was the most emotion he ever showed unless electricity was involved. Sparks. Good Lord. The man took an entire morning deciding what to wear and then the rest of the afternoon selecting the evening’s entertainments. And God help the person who offered him a choice of dinner items. He might waste the entire evening wavering between Dover sole and roast beef. Thank God he employed an astute estate manager for the really important decisions. For Sparks to come up with anything intricate enough to be termed a scheme was unheard of.

“Indeed.”

“I will not allow him to pay my way out of my difficulties.” Whatever Rowan had done, he’d done it to himself. No reason to get his brother involved. “He wasn’t even supposed to know about them,” Rowan added pointedly. For Sparks to come up with a plan, he would have had to learn of Rowan’s financial difficulties. Good Lord, it must have been weeks ago.

“I am not going to pay for you,” Sparks said. “Your wife is.”

A bolt of lightning crashing through the ceiling to strike him dead would have been less shocking. “My wife?”

Heaven knew he’d been turning over the possibility of courting a likely heiress during the upcoming season if any likely candidate caught his eye, but the idea had never gone beyond a vague notion. He’d long since resigned himself to never marrying. Not only had he proven an idiot when it came to money such that he couldn’t afford a wife, his track record where ladies were concerned hardly predicted success on the marriage mart.

And now his brother was suggesting
he
’d gone out and found a suitable match for Rowan? When Sparks himself was still a bachelor? Preposterous.

“Lord Sparkmore has suggested you marry my daughter.” Jennings pronounced that sentence mildly enough for a man consigning his own offspring to a potential life of misery.

“Your daughter?” Surely the girl in question had been in the sitting room just now when Rowan had made a drunken arse of himself. But there’d been two young ladies present—one bespectacled and whey-faced, and the other impossibly stiff and pinch-lipped. He was damned if he knew which one was the daughter. He hadn’t the luck to hope she was neither. “And what does the young lady in question have to say about this arrangement?”

“She doesn’t know about it yet, but never fear. She will go along with the plan if I ask it of her.”

Worse and worse. Although on the surface, a biddable wife might make matters easier, he couldn’t imagine life with some quiet little mouse dropping curtseys like a servant at every turn. “In that case, there must be something in it for her. Might I inquire what?”

“Eventually, she will have the honor of being addressed as ‘my lady.’ ”

A title? The Jenningses were so desperate to climb the social ladder that they’d shackle themselves to the likes of him? “In that case, oughtn’t she marry my brother?”

Sparks blinked once again. “As I’ve told Mr. Jennings, I’ve mused on the matter quite a long time, and I’ve come to a conclusion. This whole marriage business is far too much bother. I’ve decided to let the title pass on to you and your heirs.”

Rowan suppressed an urge to shake his head and clear it. This matter of thinking through a brandy-induced haze had to be how his brother felt on a regular basis. “Wouldn’t it be easier to simply forgive the debts? It seems like an awful amount to pay to ensure your daughter has a title.”

“I am not only ensuring her a title but her entire future. And at the same time doing a favor for other tradesmen whom you no doubt owe. You gentlemen always make a point of paying your so-called debts of honor first but leave honest merchants in the lurch. To be quite frank, many of them cannot live without the blunt. Once you’ve paid me, I can hope you’ll be honorable enough to pay the others.”

“You have a great deal of confidence in someone who has proven to be unable to deal with his own finances. What makes you think I won’t squander your daughter’s dowry?”

“You will have to work very hard indeed to squander ten thousand pounds.”

At that unhoped-for number, Rowan’s heart began to pound. Ten thousand! “Give me a year and see if I don’t manage it. I’ve got a bit of a history as far as poor financial decisions go.”

“Ah, yes, but my daughter also has a history when it comes to finances. Only she usually makes the most sound of decisions. And one of my stipulations for the marriage settlement is you will have to allow her to handle your money.”

“Miss, your father has called for you.”

At the butler’s summons, Emma looked up from her spot in the corner. She’d long since completed her first letter and moved on to the next. If she’d had to write the first in a clandestine manner, this one was outright forbidden. She wasn’t even completely certain who her correspondent was, but duty pushed her to respond to his missives. “Heavens. Has he said why?”

If his callers had left, they’d managed to sneak past her aunt and cousin. Those two could give the king’s personal guards a run for their money when it came to remaining on alert. Only instead of potential threats to the monarch, her relatives were on constant watch for the slightest gossip-worthy tidbit.

Aunt Augusta raised a speculative brow. “Your papa’s callers have been in there a very long time. I cannot possibly imagine what they’ve been discussing.” And that was her most disingenuous tone. The implication was clear. Her mind had honed in on the only possibility, one that involved settlement and contracts and banns. “It is long past the acceptable time span for a social visit.”

Uriana, on the other hand, looked ready to bounce politely out of her seat. “Oh, you’re going to be a countess, I just know it. Won’t that awful Emily Marshall seethe when she finds out?”

“The Marshalls are a powerful family,” Aunt Augusta admonished. “You ought to cultivate an acquaintance with the chit.”

Uriana wrinkled her nose.

Emma ignored them. Dashed speculation. On any other occasion, she would have shut them down, but her throat went suddenly dry, and the words refused to come. This time, she feared they were all too right in their conclusions. Papa was about to present her with an offer from the Earl of Sparkmore, one she would accept, naturally. For all her family desired a title, no one had ever expected her to rise quite this high.

Fending off a growing sensation of numbness, she set her correspondence aside, carefully covering her most recent missive with a blank sheet of paper. “But what do they need his brother for?” she asked almost idly.

Uriana’s face flushed until it resembled a ripe cherry. “You don’t think…but no…he couldn’t. Could he?”

So much fluster entangled in that spluttered reply, but then all the young ladies swooned when Rowan Battencliffe graced a ballroom. Apparently his looks possessed the power to make Uriana forget all about Mr. Crawley.

“If an offer comes from that drunken lout, you shall refuse him, Uriana,” Aunt Augusta pronounced. “You can do far, far better than the likes of him.”

“Yes, Mama.” Uriana ducked her head, but her lower lip trembled.

Her mind in a fog, Emma trailed behind Grundy to the study. She told herself she ought to feel elation or excitement or, well,
something
. But all she noticed was the weight of her shoes, how the air about her thickened to the consistency of mud, and the sudden hollow in the pit of her stomach.

A title,
she reminded herself.
This is what Papa wants for you. It’s what
you
want.
If she repeated those words to herself enough times, she might yet come to believe it by the time she reached the study.

As she crossed the threshold, three gentlemen rose—her papa behind his desk and his two callers. She attempted a smile as she nodded toward the Earl of Sparkmore, but his brother stepped into her field of vision. The width of his shoulders blocked everything else in the room. Goodness, and his presence. Even in his cups, as he doubtless still was, the man seemed to fill the entire space. She wracked her brains for a memory, anything pertinent, but the fog in her head refused to dissipate.

Somehow his bearing occupied the whole of her mind, leaving room for nothing else. If he’d ever been in the military, she could not recall hearing of it, but the way he carried himself commanded like a general.

Look at me.

That was the order of the day, and so she obeyed.

Unsmiling, but with an odd glint in his blue eyes, he extended a hand. Without thinking, she reached out and took it. In any other social situation, gloves would have shielded her against the impact of his skin sliding against her palm. But she’d come into this room without armor, and thus experienced the entirety of his body heat. The contact sent a jolt through her.

“I must offer my apologies for earlier.” He bowed over her hand, fingers tightening, voice steady as if he hadn’t touched a drop of spirits. “My behavior was unworthy of this household and a young lady I devoutly hope will accept my offer.” But whatever he’d consumed had clearly loosened his tongue to glibness if not utter flippancy.

“What?” The mud beneath her feet began to suck her down. She had no choice but to grasp at his hand for dear life. “You cannot be serious.”

“Indeed, I am in complete earnest.”

At last, she released his hand while replaying his flowery phrasing in her mind but could not pick up even a hint of irony. “Papa?”

“It is as Mr. Battencliffe says,” Papa replied. “He is here to offer you marriage, and I, for one, would encourage you to accept.”

So here it was. Her entrée into society, but not the one she was expecting. “There…there…” She cut herself off before she made an even bigger cake of herself by voicing the word
mistake
. By letting them see this was not the offer she’d been hoping for. “Why, naturally, I’d be delighted after a suitable period in which we might get to know each other somewhat better.”

She’d never been formally introduced to her intended before today. Heavens, beyond the odd social occasion, had she ever been in the same room with him?

“No, I didn’t expect we’d wait. We can get a special license and have the matter settled in a trice.”

Was Battencliffe so eager to get his hands on her fortune? Yes, he must be. Why else would he wish to hurry into an alliance with a young lady he’d never met until today, one of no social position to speak of. The only thing she had going for her was blunt.

Behind her spectacles, she narrowed her eyes. “I only thought we might take advantage of the time while the settlement was negotiated to see if we suit. And then the banns must be called.”

“The settlement is negotiated. As for the rest…” His gaze raked her from the top of her head to the tips of her slippers poking out from beneath the hem of her morning gown. It wandered back up to linger several inches south of her chin. “I imagine we’ll suit well enough.”

Emma waited until their callers had taken their leave and Grundy had them to the front door before rounding on her father. “Papa? What in heaven’s name is going on?”

He leaned back in his chair and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. “I’ve brokered your marriage.”

Brokered. As if she were yet another of his business transactions. She was, and she knew it, though. She’d even agreed, at least in theory.

The reality had turned out quite different.

“When I came in here, I wasn’t expecting the younger son.” The very handsome younger son, one, who, despite his drunkenness, smelled of sandalwood and not brandy. Until today, when she’d considered her future husband, looks had never entered the equation. She’d gone into the project with a clear head, prepared to do her marital duty like any other young lady her age. This disturbance in the pit of her stomach along with the tingling heat lingering in her palm was never meant to enter the picture.

“If it is the title you’re concerned about, Lord Sparkmore has declared he will not wed. The title will pass to his brother, or at the very least, his brother’s heir.”

She raised her brows. Papa took risks at times, as much as any successful businessman, but the risk was usually calculated. “What guarantee do you have Lord Sparkmore won’t develop an infatuation at the next ball he attends and make some young lady an offer?”

Papa folded his hands over his stomach. “I’ve none at all, beyond his word. I can only rely on his past behavior. At his age, he ought to have done his duty and married by now. If he were likely to change his mind, he wouldn’t take so dashed long to reach a decision.”

“But his brother…”

“What is the matter with the brother? I thought you’d be pleased. I may be a man, but I can see well enough which one the ladies prefer.”

And so would she if she had to base her future on appearance alone. Thankfully, she’d learned at her father’s knee not to base her life on anything so flimsy and fleeting. Any important decision must be weighed, the results foreseen as far as possible, the risks known and accounted for. “He was foxed, and he stared—”

No, she couldn’t admit to her father the man had just ogled her bosom.

“As a matter of fact, your marriage to the younger brother settles more than one problem.”

“It does?”

“He owes me a great deal of money.”

“That…” She had to swallow. “That is impossible. I’ve seen your books. I’ve been through them and balanced them. I know who owes you and whom you owe. Rowan Battencliffe appears nowhere in your ledgers.”

His ruddy complexion darkened. “I have kept this matter private and funded out of a personal account you’ve never seen. I never reckoned you’d need to know, but there it is.”

She shook her head, even as the floor seemed to tremble beneath her. This must be what it felt like to have someone yank a rug out from under one’s feet. What had she just been thinking about calculated risks? Papa had gone and shot that entire notion into the blue with this revelation.

“It…but it makes no sense,” she said faintly. The day Edward Jennings made no fiscal sense might as well signal the end of the world. “You’re still taking the loss. You’ll be paying yourself out of funds you put up as my dowry. Why not simply forgive the debt and leave me out of this?”

He stared at the ceiling for a moment or two. “I don’t believe I ever told you how it was when I was getting started in trade. It was before you were born, naturally. I didn’t marry until I had the means to support a wife, and there were some lean years at first. You know how these titled folk are—always paying their suppliers as an afterthought.”

“Forgive, me, but I do not see what this has to do with me.”

“I am past the point where the loss will harm me.”

Despite her protests, she knew it. A shrewd investment might make up the shortfall within a year.

“Other merchants are not,” Papa went on. “You can reform him. Not so much for my sake, but for the others he owes. Those as may be living hand to mouth. If you can teach him responsibility, we can only hope he’ll pass the ideas along to your children.”

One title down, how many hundreds to go? “You want me to teach him?”

“I want you to handle his finances. Turn him around. Make him solvent.”

Despite his assured tone, Emma felt nowhere near as confident. “And if I cannot?”

“You’ll have tried, but I have faith in you. I’ve taught you all I’ve learned.”

“You’ve taught me all you know in order to wrap me up in a pretty dress like a gift.” Good Lord, that sounded resentful, but she couldn’t help herself. Papa had perhaps indulged her thirst for knowledge and admitted her to a man’s world, but suddenly all that faded before her. “You’ll turn me into a sacrifice.”

“It doesn’t have to be a sacrifice if you don’t make it one.” Papa reached out a hand, but his desk was too broad for him to make contact. His fingers contracted as if he’d liked to have squeezed her arm. “You can have it all if you like. It’s mainly a matter of choosing. And there’s still the title. If you do not become a countess within your lifetime, you can be assured your son will be styled
my lord
and go to the proper schools, and command all the respect he could want.”

Yes, respect. And there lay the crux of the matter. Despite Papa’s riches, society still viewed the Jennings family as interlopers. No amount of blunt could buy their way into the higher echelons.

Emma knew, she accepted, and yet her mind honed in on the idea of an heir. As Rowan Battencliffe’s wife, she’d be expected to share his bed until she’d produced the next in line to the earldom.

Papa cleared his throat. “As I said, I thought you’d be pleased. You knew this was the plan all along, and I think it’s all come together rather neatly.”

“Yes, I suppose.” Could she sound any less enthusiastic?

“If it’s any consolation, I haven’t promised him your entire dowry. He’ll get five thousand on your marriage and another five when his heir is born.”

“And the remaining ten?” she asked thickly.

“That will be held in trust, and he won’t be able to touch it, ever. As soon as you bear his son, it will be turned over directly to you.”