‘Yet here I am. An official guest. I was even allowed through the front door. Would you care to see my invitation?’
‘I would much prefer to see the back of you. For ever this time.’
As cutting final barbs went, it was a pathetic effort, but under the circumstances all she had. Yet as lacklustre as it was, it seemed to do the trick. He was most definitely not beside her as she stalked to the door. Nor was he behind her. She knew that for certain because she always seemed to sense him. Only Owen Wolfe made her skin prickle with awareness—to the complete disgust of her better judgement. She was almost through the door when he spoke again, just loud enough that she could hear, and ruined her escape.
‘The smart money is on Kelvedon.’
Lydia stopped dead as the walls closed in. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The Marquess of Kelvedon...’ He pushed himself from the pillar he had lounged against and sauntered towards her. ‘Big belly. Bald head. Hideously foul breath. Old enough to be your grandfather...’
‘I know who he is!’ The prospect of her father marrying her off to that decrepit old lecher just to pay off a few debts was preposterous. That couldn’t be what she had been bullied into agreeing to?
Surely?
While she was prepared to concede keeping a spinster daughter properly attired Season after fruitless Season was indeed expensive, as was keeping her ad infinitum while she languished on the shelf gathering dust, clearing her debt to the family by marrying her off to an old lecher seemed a high price to pay. Even for her callous sire.
‘And you are entirely wrong!’ Dear Papa might well expect her to finally do her duty, he had been loudly emphatic in that demand, but not to that extent. Or more likely he wouldn’t have given it a passing thought. Daughters weren’t sons—something he had reminded her about tirelessly for as long as she could remember.
‘He’s certainly rich enough and his blood is certainly blue enough. Those are the main criteria anyone who is anyone in polite society cares about, are they not? Especially your father.’ Those insightful blue eyes were cold now and they both knew why. There was no love lost between their former employee and his employer. Too much water under the bridge. So much that the bridge had long been swept away in the raging torrents of the flood.
‘As usual, you are completely wrong.’ She turned on her heel to leave, suddenly desperate to challenge her unfeeling father and hear him denounce the rumour himself to put her racing mind at ease. And where was her brother? Her eyes nervously scanned the dance floor. He would defend her, too, if she pushed him hard enough. She might well be largely invisible to her sire most of the time but Papa sometimes listened to Justin and she was fairly certain there was no way he would countenance her marrying an old man.
‘Am I?’ She did not need to look at him to picture his smug expression. She knew it too well. ‘I dare say the smelly Marquess has enough money to clear your family’s oh-so-carefully hidden but rapidly mounting debts. Your pompous and pious family will be quietly bailed out—exactly as they want—and old Kelvedon gets to manoeuvre himself a little closer to the King...exactly as he wants. Everybody wins...except you, of course, Lydia. But you will do it regardless because that is exactly what any loyal blue-blooded, spineless daughter would do in the face of complete family ruination. You will do as they say...without question...as usual.’
His assessment sailed perilously too close to the truth for comfort, making her more uneasy about her future than she had been only a few minutes ago. It was all so sudden. All so final. All so hideously unfair. But what else could she do? This year’s failed crops and flat market had put them all in a precarious position. Money did not grow on trees and an estate along with a house in Mayfair was expensive. Justin needed her help to save things and she wasn’t about to abandon her only brother in his hour of need. They might not be as close as they had been when they were younger, but she was a Barton and Bartons did what was expected. If the only choice was Kelvedon...
The oppressive air in the ballroom was suffocating her, the noise pounding in her head in disjointed time to her hammering heart. ‘With an imagination as vivid and as fanciful as yours, you really should write for the scandal sheets, Mr Wolfe.’
‘You used to call me Owen.’
Something she did not need to be reminded of. It had been merely the tip of the iceberg of things she never should have done with the lowliest and duplicitous of stable boys all those years ago. Thank God nobody else knew of her shame. ‘I was practically a child then!’ He had been convicted on the same day as her seventeenth birthday.
‘So was I.’ He gave her the merest hint of a smile, then shrugged his now ridiculously broad shoulders. ‘Eighteen is hardly a man.’
She did not need to think of that intoxicating young fellow, so full of dreams and full of life. The one who saw the sixteen-year-old her when nobody else did and listened when nobody else cared. Or at least gave the appearance of it. ‘I was ridiculously naive then—fresh from the schoolroom! And you always did have a silver tongue!
