She looked past her father to the open window, but hardly saw the mass of roses filling the garden with a riot of colour in the late afternoon sun.
‘Surely, Papa,’ she pleaded, ‘the situation cannot be that desperate.’
Lord Silverdale was silent. His face, though still handsome, appeared haggard and drawn. He carefully brushed the snuff from a velvet sleeve and spoke quietly but insistently.
‘The family is virtually ruined. Over the past few months I have had to sell my entire stable of horses and rent out Nethercott Place to a wealthy cit. Generations of Silverdales dishonoured by the taint of city money! And now Robert’s addiction to gambling is likely to lose us our last piece of security—our house here in Grosvenor Square.’
‘In that case,’ she responded sharply, ‘why doesn’t Robert find a way of repaying what he owes?’ Her brother’s decadent lifestyle was something she could not forgive. ‘Why doesn’t he marry for money?’
Lord Silverdale looked at his daughter, breathtakingly lovely even in simple sprig muslin, and said gently, ‘Amelie, you know that it isn’t possible. What does he have to offer except debt and unsteadiness? Certainly nothing the matchmaking mamas at Almack’s want. You, on the other hand, have youth, beauty and a steadfast character. Rufus Glyde admires you and wants to make you his wife.’
‘But he is nearly twice my age.’
‘He is no more than fourteen years older than you. That is no great age. It is well for a husband to be more experienced than his wife. Then he may teach her how to go on in society.’
An image of Rufus Glyde’s dissolute eyes and thin, sneering lips swam into her vision and made her shudder. She would not wish to be taught anything by such a man. In her revulsion she twisted the cambric handkerchief she held into a vicious knot.
‘I can never care for him,’ she declared hotly.
‘But do you care for anyone else? You have had an entire Season to find someone to your taste, a Season I could ill afford. And look what has happened. You have been distant and unapproachable to the young men you’ve met. Only one was willing to brave your coldness and actually offer for you, and you dismissed his proposal out of hand. So what do you want?’
‘I want to remain single, Papa. I’m grateful for my introduction to society, but the men I’ve met have been either shallow or profligate. I shall never marry unless I find a man I truly love and respect—and that seems unlikely.’
‘You will be lucky to find any man in the future. There will be no more Seasons—and no home, either, if Sir Rufus forecloses on our mortgage,’ her father added bitterly.
She caught her breath. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I had not meant to tell you, but you should know the truth of the situation. Your brother has lost this house to Rufus Glyde. In a fit of madness he used it as a stake for his gambling. Either you marry Sir Rufus or we are homeless.’
‘How can you allow him to threaten us like this?’
‘Come, come, child, the man is willing to make a generous settlement on you, apart from returning the mortgage. He will, I am sure, always treat you with respect and you will have ample money and time to pursue your own interests. Such marriages of convenience are common among our class. You know that.’ Lord Silverdale paused, thinking of his own love marriage, its first intoxicating passion barely surviving a year. ‘They can often work far better than marrying for love.’
Amelie turned away, unwilling to show the disgust she felt.
‘I have no choice,’ her father said heavily. ‘This is a debt of honour and must be paid, one way or another.’
‘And I am to pay the debt,’ she cried, her anger bursting forth. ‘I am to be the family sacrifice, am I?’ She strode furiously up and down the room between the dusty book-filled shelves, chestnut curls tumbling free and framing her lovely face.
With an exasperated mutter, Lord Silverdale walked swiftly towards her and grasped her hands. ‘Enough. You forget yourself. You are beautiful and clever, my dear, but you are far too independent. It puts men off and those it doesn’t, you will not have. Think yourself lucky that Sir Rufus values high spirits as well as being a connoisseur of beauty. He has very properly asked me for permission to pay his addresses to you, and I have agreed.’
‘No, no, I cannot do it,’ she uttered a strangled cry.‘Anything but that! I’ll go out and earn my own bread rather.’
‘Earn your own bread? What is this? Your taste for the dramatic is regrettable and too reminiscent of your French relations,’ he said disdainfully, walking away from her towards the tall windows.
When he turned again, his face wore an implacable expression and he spoke in a voice that brooked no further disagreement.
‘You have been made a highly advantageous offer, Amelie, which will secure this family’s future and your own. You will go to your room immediately and stay there. In the morning you will make yourself presentable. Sir Rufus will be with us at noon and you will accept his offer. Do I make myself clear?’
The interview was at an end. Lord Silverdale sank wearily down at his desk, and began listlessly to leaf through his scattered papers. His daughter, overcome with angry tears, turned on her heel and noisily banged the oak-panelled door behind her.
Once in her room, she cast herself down on to the damask bedspread and wept. Her grief was intense and though her tears soon subsided, her fury remained. To be forced into a repugnant marriage because of her brother’s stupidity! And by her own father! She knew him to be autocratic, but never so unfeeling that he would contemplate selling her to the highest bidder. He might try to wrap it up in clean linen, but that’s what it came down to. When she was a child he’d been an indulgent parent, reading with her, schooling her on her first pony, bringing surprises each birthday. Yet, if crossed, he could be unrelenting.
Until now she’d been spared this side of his character, but she knew the suffering it had caused his wife. Her heart ached for her dead mother. Louise St Clair’s life had not been a happy one: an émigrée from France, an unhappy marriage to an English aristocrat and then an early death.
Lord Miles Silverdale must have seemed like a white knight when Louise first met him, just months after her dangerous journey from the outskirts of Paris to exile in England. The Bastille would not be stormed for another year, but revolution was already in the air. Signs of dissent and rebellion were everywhere and when the St Clair family home was ransacked without any attempt by the servants to prevent it, Brielle St Clair had decided it was no longer safe for the family to stay. She and her eighteen-year-old daughter, disguised as servants themselves, were forced to steal away under cover of darkness and embark on a slow and tortuous journey to the Channel coast. They had travelled by night, resting beneath hedges in the daytime, and ever fearful of discovery.
To a refugee in a foreign land, Lord Silverdale’s offer of marriage must have seemed like a miracle. He promised happiness and security, a new future for the young, homeless girl. Happiness, though, had lasted only a year until the birth of Robert. Louise was sickly for months afterwards, needing constant nursing, and unable to share in the social flurry of her husband’s life. Miles Silverdale, having fallen violently in love with a youthful form and a beautiful face, found himself without either as a companion.
The constant miscarriages that followed year after year pushed them yet further apart. Amelie’s birth and her unexpected survival had brought a brief reconciliation only. Even as a child she’d understood the pain written on her mother’s face, as her husband left for yet another lengthy stay at a friend’s country house, knowing that most of his time would be spent enjoying the company of other women.
But that was not going to happen to her! She had her mother’s beauty, certainly, but also her grandmother’s spirit. Louise might have been scared half out of her wits by that flight across France,