An hour later her father knocked on the door. He had changed his clothes, she saw, his shirt removed for a clean fresh one and his jacket and cravat in place.
Very formal for a country evening and no guests expected. Her mind began to turn.
‘Lucas Clairmont would like to speak to you.’
‘I do not think-’
‘He is in the blue drawing room and I have told him you will be down immediately.’
Her glance went to his, but she could learn nothing there. ‘I can see no point in prolonging what we both know will be the outcome of any meeting, Father.’
‘You need to hear him out, Daughter. I have told him that after you have seen him he must leave and he has given me his word that he will.’
Still another barb to her heart! One last meeting. One final goodbye. Her fingers threaded through the hair that had fallen from its place beneath the shell comb at her nape and she tucked the strands back.
‘Very well. I will be down in five minutes.’ Her father’s relief at her decision was faintly irritating, but she would not change or tidy herself up further. She would not stand there to be dismissed with her heart on her sleeve, and the weight of a ruined reputation between them. This was his fault every bit as much as hers and she would be the first to let him know it.
He looked worse than he had done an hour ago, new wounds upon his left cheek and fresh blood encrusted around the nails of the hand that she could see.
‘Lillian.’
A sign, for he had seldom before called her that. There was flat anger in his glance.
‘Your father has told me of the circumstances that have brought you and your family here and I would like to say that I am sorry-’
She could not let him finish. ‘There is absolutely nothing to be sorry about, sir. We erred and we will pay. Society’s rules are most explicit in that regard and any apology you might now wish to ply me with is by far and away too late.’ The brisk distance in her voice pleased her, made her stronger.
‘The price perhaps for you personally is rather steep and in that regard I would like to offer-’
‘Oh, please-if it is something more permanent that you now feel compelled to tender, know that I should never accept it.’
He frowned, but remained silent, his hands now firmly jammed in a jacket borrowed from her father. She recognised the cut of cloth and colour. Too small on him, the seams straining at the stitching on his side. His lack of argument fortified her.
‘We barely know each other and what little we are cognisant of has resulted in disaster. My reputation is as ruined as your face! A truce of sorts! Surely now we should own up to what was never meant to be.’
‘You would give up that easily?’ His voice broke any polite restraint that she thought to hold on to.
‘Give up what, sir? You are a mystery to me. A man who flirts with the affairs of the heart with no true understanding of what it all means. I trusted you, Mr Clairmont. I thought that you may have cherished what I had so senselessly offered, but you did not and then I understood. You are a gambler, a stranger, a liar and a cheat. It could never have worked between us, never, for I, unlike you, feel a certain responsibility to the titles I have inherited and to the rules and regulations that govern this land.’
‘So in effect what you are saying is that I am not rich enough for you, Miss Davenport, not as well born as you have come to expect, and that that does matter?’ The swollen flesh around his lips made the words slurred, a small vulnerability that she did not wish to notice.
‘I am saying that you should go. That we should place this…madness into the slot to which it belongs.’
‘Untenable?’
‘Exactly.’ Lillian’s fervour broke as he looked up at her and the word wobbled into a silence caught between then and now.
Then there was a chance and now there was not.
‘And you would have no wish to know why I was away from London for these past weeks?’
‘I would not. It is beyond the time for excuses and explanations and nothing you could say would make me believe that you did not realise that I was so badly compromised when you left the Billinghurst ball.’
‘Nothing?’ The word was phrased in a way she could not quite understand. ‘I see.’
‘I am glad that you do.’ She shook her head, and tried to push back a rising grief. This was it. He would leave, hating her. Biting her top lip, she whirled around and made for the door, ignoring his plea to stop as she flew up the stairs and away.
Ernest Davenport read the documents laid out on his desk, the lawyer David Kennedy watching him from across the library with interest.
‘So you are telling me that the man, far from being a pauper, has a series of large estates in Virginia and enough money to buy me out five times over?’
‘Even that may be a conservative estimate.’
‘You are also saying that this proposal of marriage comes with the distinct proviso of allowing none of this information to be leaked to my daughter should I choose to accept it.’
‘Well, not you personally, you understand. This is not the dark ages where a recalcitrant daughter is dragged screaming to the altar, after all. But I put it to you that your daughter’s reputation had been…sullied and that this is the quickest and most beneficial way of making certain she is once again accepted back into society. I would also say that my client is most anxious that the lady not marry him just for his money, which accounts for the secrecy.’
‘Why would he do this? Why would Lucas Clairmont want a betrothal to a woman who has much reason to hate him?’
‘The motives of clients are something in my fifteen years at the bar I have never yet truly understood, sir. I am but the messenger, the simple emissary of news and deeds.’
‘You are also held by a retainer, I should imagine?’
‘That is correct, but I never accept a client without express knowledge of the honour of his character.’
‘So you are saying he is not a charlatan?’
‘I am, sir. I would also say that, as a father myself, I should be very cautious about turning down such a fortune.’
‘Indeed.’
‘My client also has a desire to have this union quickly completed.’
‘How quickly?’
‘It is my client’s hope that Miss Davenport would be his bride by the beginning of next week. To that effect he has procured a special licence enabling the marriage to take place anywhere and at any time.’
Ernest lifted his pen, the nib carefully inked as he bent to it.
‘Tell him that she agrees. Tell him that the wedding shall take place in the chapel here at Fairley Manor and tell him that if he hurts her again I will seek him out and kill him.’
‘I shall relate each word to him, sir.’ A small sense of the absurd was just audible.
‘You do just that, Mr Kennedy.’
‘You did wha-aa-at?’
‘I accepted Mr Clairmont’s proposal of marriage on your behalf, Lillian, because I think as a parent it is the only wise and proper thing to do.’
‘Proper? Wise? He is a pauper and a liar, let alone a gambler. Are you telling me that you are happy to place the very future of Fairley into the hands of a man who will in all likelihood bleed it to death?’
‘I am.’
‘You are mad, Father. You cannot mean to do this, to tie our fortune to one who has proven to be so very untrustworthy.’
‘I think, Lillian, that you besmirch his character too harshly. I think if you could find it in yourself to look upon this match as something that might indeed be of benefit to you both-’
‘No!’
‘The licence has been procured and the wedding is set for Monday.’
Monday for wealth
Tuesday for health
