Nicola Cornick – Desired (страница 7)
Corwen smiled, a lupine smile that left his small eyes cold. “You have it precisely, Lady Darent.”
Tess tapped the lawyer’s letter against the palm of her hand. News of the loan had come as a shock to her but she could not afford the scandal of challenging Corwen in the law courts and he knew it. She wanted to take him to court because she knew he was a charlatan who had tricked the elderly Marquis of Darent into signing away half his estate in exchange for the loan. Towards the end of his life Darent had been almost insensible from excess laudanum and would have signed almost anything put in front of him. There were plenty of scandalmongers who said that was precisely how Tess had persuaded Darent to marry her in the first place.
“I’ll pay the loan off myself.” Her heart thumped in her chest and the words stuck in her throat but she forced them out. Forty-eight thousand pounds was no small sum and she hardly wanted to throw it away on Lord Corwen, but three widow’s portions, a successful gambling career and some careful investment had made her a rich woman and she could easily afford it. It was also the least painful option for her stepchildren. She would die before she saw either of them fall into the power of this man.
But Corwen was shaking his head, smiling a dissolute smile that made her skin crawl. “I will not accept your money, Lady Darent. The debt is against the Darent estate. And as I say—” he cleared his throat but it did nothing to disguise the thickness of lechery in his voice “—I wish for marriage to Lady Sybil and
“Lady Sybil is
“I am prepared to wait a year provided that we may come to terms now.” Lord Corwen rocked back on his heels. “Sixteen would be a charming age for Lady Sybil to wed. I saw her on her most recent visit from Bath. She is a delightful young woman. Fresh, biddable, innocent …” His voice caressed the final word.
Tess set her teeth. Not long ago, a mere ten years, she had been a bride herself when not yet out of her teens. Twice. And Corwen, predatory, hiding his dissolution under that unpleasantly avuncular manner, reminded her all too forcibly of Charles Brokeby, her second husband. A tremor shook her deep inside. Sybil must never,
“And you are …” She looked at Corwen, at his fat jowls and the lines of dissipation scored deep around his eyes. “Forty-five, forty-six?”
Corwen frowned. “I will be seven and forty next year. It is a good age to remarry.”
“Not to my stepdaughter,” Tess said. “She is far too young. I cannot permit it and, anyway, I share the responsibility for her upbringing with Lady Sybil’s aunt and uncle. They would agree with me that such a marriage is out of the question.”
Disconcertingly, Corwen did not appear taken aback. Perhaps he thought her protests only token. Since he was threatening to foreclose on a loan of approaching fifty thousand pounds, Tess imagined he thought he could dictate his terms at will.
“Perhaps you are jealous.” Corwen’s tone dropped to intimacy. Shockingly his hand had come out to brush away the curls that had escaped Tess’s blue bandeau. He was running a finger down the curve of her cheek.
“It cannot be pleasant to be eclipsed by a child only fourteen years younger,” he murmured. “And my dear Lady Darent—”
Tess knocked his hand away. “I am
Corwen laughed. “Is that what rankles? A few years younger and I might have suggested you become my mistress in payment instead.”
“And,” Tess said, “I would have been as little flattered then as I am now.” She could feel the panic fluttering in her chest. Corwen was standing far too close to her. He was a big man, fleshy and broad, and his proximity was threatening. She felt the breath flatten in her lungs. For a second she could see Brokeby standing there, reaching for her, smiling that horrible smile. The shudders rippled through her body. Then the vision was gone and she was standing once again in her sister’s drawing room with the autumn sunshine warming the bright yellow walls and creating a spurious sense of cheer.
She moved sharply away from Corwen, although the length of the Thames would be insufficient distance from so repellent a man.
Corwen’s face suffused with colour. “I offer your stepdaughter
“You want to wed a girl who is still in the schoolroom,” Tess said coldly. “Do not dress it up as something respectable when it is not.” She looked at him. “Let us be quite clear, my lord,” she said carefully, her fingers tightening on the lawyer’s letter until her grip threatened to crumple it. “I am in receipt of your request for Lady Sybil’s hand in marriage. I refuse it. I also refuse to sell any part of the Darent estate on behalf of my stepson, in order to meet this debt. I have offered to pay the full amount myself. You have refused. So you will have to take this matter up with my lawyers. I shall tell them to expect to hear from you.”
Corwen did not move. For a moment Tess thought he had not understood her. Then he took a step closer again.
“I believe you have not heard what I am saying, madam,” he said. “I
The blood chilled to ice in Tess’s veins. Corwen stood, legs splayed, chest thrust out as though he commanded the room. Commanded her to give him her stepdaughter in marriage or he would besmirch Sybil’s reputation out of revenge.
And she had given him the means by which he could do it—she, with her tarnished character and her name for scandal. She should have realised how that might be used against her, but then she had never anticipated the cold calculation of a lecher like Lord Corwen.
Despair slid along Tess’s veins. It was her marriage to Brokeby that had done the damage. It had been ten years before but the shadow of it had never lifted. Brokeby had tainted her with his vile reputation for perversion. Then, a year ago, an exhibition of nude paintings of her had dealt her reputation its final blow. Brokeby’s wretched paintings … A tremor shook Tess deep inside. She could never reveal the truth about those. Her throat closed with revulsion and she swallowed hard. It was best not to remember that night. It was best to lock those hideous memories away. Except that she had found over the years that she could not forget them. She carried them everywhere with her. They were imprinted on her mind just as she felt they were indelibly written on her body in all their lurid detail. Hateful images she would scrub away if only she could. But they never faded. She was haunted.
The breath hitched in her throat and she blinked to dispel the sting of tears in her eyes. Brokeby was dead and gone to the hell he deserved. She was free. Only, she never quite felt free. Somehow the shame and the horror were etched too deep on her soul to be forgotten.
And now here was Corwen, a man of a similar stamp, waiting for her to succumb to his blackmail. Very slowly Tess raised her gaze to his face. There was a gleam of amusement in his small eyes, the pleasure of a man who enjoyed enforcing his will and making others squirm. So very like Brokeby … But she was not a frightened girl anymore.
“Lord Corwen,” Tess said, “if you ever go near Lady Sybil or threaten her reputation, I will personally ensure that you are maimed sufficiently never to approach a woman again with your vile proposals.” She gave him a smile that dripped ice. “Now—at last—are we clear?”
Corwen made a sudden involuntary movement full of violence, and Tess’s mind splintered into terrifying images of Brokeby, brutal, vicious, utterly merciless. She closed her eyes for a second to banish the vile, vivid memories and when she opened them, Corwen was gone, slamming out of the room with a force that shook the mantelpiece and sent the invitation cards fluttering down to the floor.
Tess heaved a sigh and sank down rather heavily onto Joanna’s gold brocade sofa. The port decanter beckoned to her but she had had a bad night and her head was already aching, and she knew from bitter experience that trying to lose her memory in drink was a fool’s game. She had tried it after Brokeby’s death, tried to drown the past. These days she could not look a gin bottle in the eye without feeling sick. She had tried everything, including laudanum, from which she had sometimes thought she would never wake. Nothing helped, not sweetmeats, not even spending excessive amounts of money on clothes, shoes and accessories. In the end she had dragged herself out of the despair through sheer force of will, but by then it had been too late. The ton had seen the drinking and the gambling and the spending to excess, and now there were those hideous paintings. It was no wonder that her reputation was so damaged.