He held up his hand as she went to speak. ‘Montcliffe gave you back something whether you admit it or not, Amethyst. For the first time in a long while you have seemed...happy. You took risks, you lived.’
She began to laugh because anything else was too awful to contemplate. ‘I agreed to the terms because I thought that was what you wanted, Papa. The doctor said you needed to be relaxed and rested if you were to survive your failing health and you have looked more robust since.’
‘I do not think your agreement to marry him was all about me, my dear. You called for Daniel Wylde when you were sick, again and again, and you begged for him to come back.’
‘It was the laudanum.’
‘No, it was the truth.’
‘What are you trying to say, Papa?’
‘That the Earl was the best thing that has happened to you in a long time and if you don’t do anything to make him understand the situation as you know it you will never be accepted into polite society again. That really would kill me.’
A gathering dread made her feel cold.
‘We will introduce better conditions.’ Her father’s voice held no question as he continued on.
‘Conditions?’
‘A year of marriage and fifteen thousand pounds every four weeks and then a lump sum at the end.’
She shook her head. ‘No more, Papa. We’ll simply stay here at Dunstan House. I never need to return to London again.’
‘Hiding, then? Like your hands in the gloves and your hair beneath the wig. You’re twenty-six, Amethyst, soon to be twenty-seven, and there are not too many of the good years to go. Child-bearing years, the chance of a family and of happiness is dwindling with each and every successive month you tarry. Even now—’
She stopped him. ‘I am not an old maid yet.’
‘But you might be if you are not careful. Then what would Susannah have to say? Flourishing, she instructed. Make our daughter flourish, were the last words she ever said to me. If you have your way of things there will be no chance of that.’
‘So you are saying?’
‘That the marriage between you and Daniel Wylde, the Earl of Montcliffe, goes ahead.’
‘No.’
‘The marriage goes ahead and you show Montcliffe exactly who you are. You tell him the truth about Whitely and the way he used you and hurt you.’
‘No, I can’t do that.’
‘Then I will call in each and every debt his estate owes and ruin him. Is that what you want?’
‘I don’t believe you are saying these things, Papa.’ Horror stripped her words back to a whisper.
‘If you tell me you have absolutely no feelings for Lord Daniel Wylde, I will stop. All of this. We will simply leave England and head...anywhere. But you must also remember that there is every good chance according to the best of London’s specialists that you will soon be completely alone and without my support.’
She was silent. She tried to speak, she did, from the well of sense and logic and reason she knew was inside her, but the words just would not come.
Relief passed into the lines of her father’s face. ‘Very well. I shall send Montcliffe a message tomorrow outlining the new conditions, Amethyst. If I have not heard back from him by the end of the week, I will go down to London myself and visit him. I do not think he is a person who would break his word on keeping the silence of our demands and I also know that Goldsmith will be calling in his own debts, too.’
‘My God.’
‘Are we in agreement, then?’
She could imagine Daniel receiving both her father’s and Goldsmith’s demands all in the same month. Pale green eyes rose in memory, the golden shards warm with humour at the ball and then icy with distaste in the carriage.
Once he had admired her, she could tell that he had. Once he had trusted her and lauded her honesty and truth. Once he had kissed her, sensuously, expertly, so that the blood in her temple had pounded in an unending and heavy din. More. More. More.
That was the worst of it. She had pressed her body back against his own as they had danced and known the hard outline of his sex. She had felt his breath mingle with hers, life-giving and wonderful, his lips so close, his smile just for her, the light of the chandeliers falling in quiet patterns across them, magical and bliss filled.
Oh, how he must be laughing now.
Crazy, deceitful Amethyst Cameron, trading her way into a betrothal that he did not wish for and refusing to let him go.
If she had any sense left, she would instruct her father not to take things further, then simply accept what had happened and move on.
To what? To where?
The quandary bewildered her. Without the Camerons’ money Daniel would have to sell Montcliffe Manor and she knew him well enough to understand that would be something he would hate to do. Marriage, then, to another heiress, another woman who might sweeten the pot with gold and property. And a hasty one at that given the timings.
Nay, she might still be the best of all evils if she threw down her cards in the right order and gave him space to play it out. Marriage was like business, after all, and both parties had to feel they had made a good deal or things quickly went sour.
‘I will agree to try again, Papa, but this time I will write my own conditions.’
‘Very well.’ The smile in his eyes was bountiful.
Taking a sheet of paper from an armoire on one side of the room, she proceeded to do just that.
* * *
Daniel could not believe what he was reading. The Camerons’ lawyer, Alfred Middlemarch, on the other side of the table sat very still, no expression on his face, a man used to the strange and fickle ways of the very rich.
‘And they want me to sign this today?’
‘They do, my lord, and most generous Mr Robert Cameron has been, there is no doubt on that. I do not think he wishes to draw out the procedure, so to speak, but wants a quick and expeditious process so that all concerned might move on in the right direction with their lives.’
The right direction?
Goldsmith’s lawyer had been to see him again yesterday with his own amended set of demands. Four weeks now and no longer the stated twelve to repay the debt. A coincidence? Daniel thought not. Other debtors, too, had foreclosed as word had spread of the poor financial status of the Wyldes. He could barely keep up with the sums mooted or the spiralling escalation of debt.
‘There is also a page of further conditions that Miss Cameron herself has penned. She asked me to give them to you under strict confidence and made me promise to reiterate that you were not to let anyone else know of them. Including myself. She has made me promise that I shall burn the paper as soon as you leave unless you wish to take it with you.’
The missive was sealed, the red wax engraved with the letter ‘C’, two yellow ribbons splayed out beneath it.
Pulling on the tabs Daniel brought the sheet into the light. The hand was neat and small, flourishes of fancy every so often at the end of a sentence.
If you are reading this I want you to know how sorry I am for all that has happened. It was not meant to be this way.
Your family’s well-being is as important to you as my father’s happiness is to me, so if this marriage is to go ahead I propose that:
You can build up a stable of