“You shouldn’t be afraid of what people will say about your being in my house and be more afraid of what people will say about your father sticking his spoon in the wall and none of you lot reporting it.”
Eliza drew herself up as tall as her five-foot-nothing frame would go and closed the distance between them, stabbing a sharp, slender finger into his chest. “You have no real idea of how society works. The girls’ reputations would be beyond ruined if they were to spend even one night under your roof. Even if you didn’t so much as sneeze in their direction for the duration, their virtue would be in pieces and then where would we be? I don’t care for what people say about me but they are young and will be ruined.”
“Better dead then?” Darius didn’t know what else to say. He was more than used to stubborn females but he began to wonder if she was the one who was indeed cracked. She had to have a bolt half undone if she was to believe for one moment that they were better off there in the house of holes and horrors than under his roof.
“Dead and ruined in the eyes of society are one and the same in this country. You may not like it but those are the rules we live by. I won’t subject the children to that fate.”
Darius ground his teeth and clenched his fists. He wanted to shake her until she saw he was trying to help. He wanted to shake her until she nodded her head of her own accord and chose the right path.
“I believe it is time for you men to leave,” Nathanial said from the hall behind Eliza. The authority in his voice may have been believable but for the wobble on the last word and the fact that Darius glimpsed the fear in the boy’s stance.
All he could do was nod to his men in a gesture that they’d been dismissed. Darius was the last to leave the room and stopped in front of the duke-to-be. He reached into his holster and the boy stiffened. Darius shook his head and handed him his pistol. He slipped a hand into his pocket and gave the boy a handful of lead as well. “The next time someone comes to your door, you shoot them where they stand. You don’t sleep at night. You watch over the others and sleep by day. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
Eliza marched forward and tried to snatch the gun away. “You’re scaring him.”
Darius pinned her with a glare. “He should be scared. You all should be.” He transferred his attention back to the young Master Penfold. “If I come back here and your sister has that gun in her possession, you and I will exchange more than words.”
Nathanial gulped but nodded. “Yes, sir.”
With one last chilling glare at Eliza Penfold, the most stubborn, hard-headed woman he’d met in an age, he stomped from the room.
“Wait,” the youngest of all of them yelled as he ran towards Darius. “I have something for you.”
Darius crouched down again, forcing a smile to his face as the boy slid to a stop. “So you said.”
“Before my father went away, he gave me this. He said if a man who spoke differently from us was to call, I was to give him this letter and tell him to… Oh I forget now. I think he said to consider it gravy.”
“Gravy?” Darius replied, holding his hand out for the letter.
“Ethan,” Eliza said sharply, trying to snatch the envelope mid-air. “Why did you not say anything about this?”
Ethan regarded his sister for a moment and then shrugged.
Darius thought perhaps he held a bank draft in his hand, the business matter concluded between himself and a dead duke. He should have felt relief as he slipped the crinkled vellum into his coat pocket and gestured for the men to continue out the door but he didn’t. Not even close.
He wondered if this would be the last time he’d see any of the stubborn Penfolds alive.
Chapter Six
Ladies were not supposed to yell or scream or curse so Eliza had to make do with slamming the door once Darius and his men had left the way they’d come. She couldn’t help but wonder who he thought he was, demanding this and that and scaring what little life was left out of her brothers and sisters. Between this meeting and the first, she had begun to wonder if he knew her father’s intentions at all.
“Do you think he was right?” Grace asked.
Eliza answered, “No!” At the same time as Nathanial said, “More than likely.”
It was Ethan who spoke next, his voice loud and far bigger than a child’s. “I think we should have gone with him. Can you imagine roasted hare? I bet they have all the trimmings too. I wonder if they’ll have gravy? A huge fire? Why couldn’t we just go with them?”
Eliza sighed and waited for her stomach to growl over all the food talk but she was far beyond feeling hungry. She had surpassed pains some weeks back and now just felt empty. But at least they were alive. For now. “You did very well with the letter, Ethan.”
Ethan nodded, a very large smile stretching his mouth. “I told you I could do it.”
“Gravy indeed.” She forced a chuckle. “But remember not a word, to anyone. And please do have a care for Gabriella and Grace’s reputations.”
“Why? What will their rep—reptations do for us anyhow?”
“They will be able to marry lovely men and have families of their own when they are older but no man will offer for them if they are living under the roof of a ship’s captain with no chaperone about.”
Grace interjected, “I won’t marry any man who would not trust me enough to know what we do under desperate measures is not always of our own
