‘I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr Dashwood. Unfortunately, there appears to have been a misunderstanding between myself and my parents on the matter of your marriage proposal. I can only apologise to you for the confusion and beg you forgive us for detaining you.’
Emma just caught her mother’s shocked gasp from behind but she kept her sooty-fringed amber eyes on the gentleman balancing the tapered tips of her ivory fingers on the swarthy blunt pads of his. His dark head angled out of his courteous bow a little and assessing olive eyes arrowed sideways at her.
Something in that low-lidded gaze slew her attention to where they held bodily contact. She curbed a shudder as she noted a few wiry hairs sprouting from sturdy knuckles. Jerkily, her hand recoiled to the folds of her skirt.
Jarrett Dashwood gave a low, unamused chuckle as he straightened into stiff-backed stillness. A piercing glance sliced over the top of Emma’s honey-brown head to her mother’s stricken countenance. ‘I appear to be missing something here, Mrs Worthington,’ he began, so smoothly amused, it almost belied the fierce glint in his eyes. ‘On meeting with you and your husband earlier this week, I could have sworn you both gave me to believe your daughter was not only agreeable to my offer but “happy and honoured’ was, I recall, the phrase you used…? Perhaps you have another daughter? One who more resembles your description of a shy spinster of advanced years with an amenable nature…ah, yes, and a fondness for reading frivolous romantic fancies penned by Jane Austen.’ Barely pausing for breath, he drawled, ‘Well, to bastardise that good lady’s wise words: it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man with a good fortune must be in want of a wife: most assuredly so once a little of said fortune has been transferred to his insolvent prospective in-laws.’ With the same oiled ease, yet through lips that seemed motionless, came, ‘Where is your husband? Fetch him, if you please.’
‘My husband is unwell, sir.’ The words were faint and breathy. ‘I beg you will excuse him this afternoon. I beg, too, you will allow me a few moments alone with my daughter. She, too, I believe must be suffering the same malaise: confusion…muddled thoughts…’
‘Your husband’s usual complaint, then, Mrs Worthington? Your daughter, on the other hand, seems remarkably sober.’ Jarrett Dashwood’s silky sarcasm had Margaret squirming and blushing, then his disdainful olive gaze pointedly turned on Emma’s dowdy appearance.
Despite her resolution that she would not, Emma also flinched beneath his distaste. She snapped her face up, unwilling to be intimidated, even by a man whose reputation as a black-hearted roué was unsurpassed. Their eyes clashed before his heavy lids drooped lower and an insolent look slid over her thin frame.
Emma bridled, clenching her hands at her sides. Let him check her over. He was sure to shortly be congratulating himself on a lucky escape!
She had never been praised as a beauty, even in her heyday nine years ago. When launched into society at eighteen she had found the superficial friendships and earnest rivalry between debutantes competing for male attention degrading and boring. She had never preened and primped at her appearance as other young ladies did, curling and rougeing and poring over the latest Paris fashions, even when her mother fair frothed at the mouth insisting that she did.
With her unusual fawn hair and eyes, creamy complexion and sculpted elfin features, she was never going to be a ‘rage’. There was nothing extreme enough in her looks and colouring. She was only fair to middling in every way, as her mother had dispiritedly pointed out on numerous occasions. If only, her mother sighed, she were a petite, pink-cheeked blonde like Rosalie Travis who had had slavish gentlemen trailing in her wake for some twelve months before she’d settled on a Marquis; or she resembled Jane Sweetman, a tall, porcelain-complexioned redhead, who attracted beaus as bees to acacia. For her own part, Emma praised the raven-haired, grey-eyed perfection of her dearest friend, Victoria Hardinge.
Victoria was now Viscountess Courtenay, married to a man of her choosing, a man she loved, a man who adored her in return. And that was what Emma wanted. She was determined to settle for nothing less. And since the only man she had ever wanted to beguile had been totally impoverished, totally unsuitable and totally obsessed with someone else she had become reconciled to her quiet life in Cheapside, socialising on the fringes of polite society with a few sedate friends of similar tastes and circumstances. And she had believed that her parents had reconciled themselves to allowing her that simple, unassuming existence.
For affection and romance, Emma fantasised of fictional heroes: they were so much more reliable in providing her requisite perfectly happy ending.
Aware of Jarrett Dashwood jerking her a wooden bow, she returned a cursory bob, then he strode past and was speaking in a driven undertone to her mother by the door. Emma spun on her heel to watch. Her stomach tumbled as her mother’s heightened colour seeped away, leaving her pasty-faced. The woman gestured in feeble apology, looking close to tears, and Emma’s eyes closed in consternation.
She must not be browbeaten! she exhorted herself. She deserved better! Marriage to a man such as this would destroy her. The very idea was galling when she knew she could have attracted a worthier gentleman had she, in her prime, taken pains to court attention and flirt as other debutantes did. She had rebuffed several adequate suitors because she felt incapable of loving them. With arrogant idealism, she had determined to settle for nothing less than absolute bliss.
A few paying court had been pleasant enough and would have shown her kindness and respect. A sharp stab of guilt and regret…and ultimate understanding…pierced her. She now knew why her mother had ceaselessly nagged about security and status and marriage. It had been to protect her only child from a time such as this, when the only thing of value her irresponsible husband had left was his daughter.
Emma’s tawny gaze raked over the side of the dark profile presented to her. Oh, Jarrett Dashwood was handsome enough in his way, if rather swarthy of countenance. His black hair was glossy and neatly styled. He was of medium height and a little stocky but his shoulder breadth was derived from muscular strength rather than portliness. His nose was a little sharp and hooked and his mouth too sensually fleshy, but overall he held the appearance of a dignified gentleman in his thirties. No stranger would have guessed that his wealth had come from plantation crops produced with barbaric slaving or that nearer to home he had a reputation as an insatiable lecher whom, gossip had it, beat inept mistresses. Even within the small, staid circle in which she socialised, Dashwood’s meanness, his ruthlessness, his wealth were discussed with terrified curiosity and censure.
She had been reared with the consequences of her father’s drunken antics, listening to her mother’s sibilant stricture as yet another pile of merchants’ bills went unpaid. Yet always they had survived. A business deal came good, a wager turned up trumps, a sympathetic friend loaned money at a good rate. Teetering on the brink of disaster, they had always managed to sidestep the abyss and find solid ground again.
To her shame, she realised she, too, had become complacent. When recent arguments between her parents had become exceptionally heated, she had simply retreated to the sanctuary of her room and a book. When meals had become meagre, she’d eaten less. When her maid had been dispensed with last month she had sadly bidden Rosie farewell with a small gift and tended to her own needs. Part of her had known disaster was again threatening but subconsciously she had trusted fate would again make it right.
Two nights ago when her parents had sent for her to join them in the parlour, she’d realised Lady Luck had finally deserted them. Her papa would not meet her eyes. Her mother had fidgeted ceaselessly on the chair-edge, and their unease had chilled her skin. Yet never had she imagined they would sacrifice her so callously in a bid to buy her father’s extravagance another reprieve.
A marriage must be made, her mother had firmly decreed, while her papa had mumbled incoherent assent and blotted at his face
