Chapter Fifteen
Two days later…
Bessie surveyed the man seated across from her with a cold and discerning eye. He was soft in all ways. Soft of character, soft of morality, soft of sense apparently, if he thought he could intimidate her with his blustering.
“Now see here, Mrs. Dove-Lyon, I will not be ordered about by some high-flying widow who runs a gaming hell! I am a respectable gentleman—”
“Respectable gentlemen, Mr. Acres, do not sell their daughters like chattel to a man who hasn’t washed in this century,” she snapped firmly.
“Now, you are in my domain, and you will curb your tongue. I will not be scolded like one of your servants nor will I be bullied like a young girl who is too afraid to stand up to a man who ought to care for her. Unlike your poor daughter whom you have used and abused and exploited like the worst of criminals. If it were up to me, I’d see you dragged from my study and thrown directly into the Fleet. But it isn’t up to me. It’s up to her.”
“To whom?” he said, clearly still feeling as if he were somehow in a position to demand anything.
“To me, Father.”
From a connecting doorway, Daphne entered, looking regal in a gown of emerald silk that likely cost more than his entire wardrobe. “What the devil are you doing in this den of iniquity? Isn’t it bad enough that you’ve run off and eloped with some sort of adventurer who was only after your fortune?”
“The only person in this room who was ever after my fortune was you,” she said.
“Or should I say the only person who is after it? Because even now you haven’t stopped.
Even now, you’re still scheming to try and take something you haven’t any right to…
and, what’s worse is that I would have aided you.
For a kind word, for a bit of affection, for even a hint of true paternal feeling from you, I would have done anything to aid you.
But you can’t do that even now, can you?
It’s all bullying and blustering and pretending that everyone else is somehow beneath you,” she observed.
Bessie felt a frisson of pride as she watched the girl—no, the woman—stand up to the man who had done her so very poorly.
Time and again, it would seem. In the next room, Lord Aldwyn waited along with Viscount Lynley and the very cooperative Lord Beaumont Ramsden, Marquess of Hexhaven.
The man had, with very little urging on her part as he was desperately attempting to curry favor with her, taken it upon himself to purchase up all of Reginald Acres’s many markers.
In short, while Acres did not yet know it, the people in that room and its vicinity owned him body and soul.
“How dare you! Ungrateful chit!” he said. “Did I not feed and clothe you? House you and turn you out into society?”
“You mean the marriage mart where you hoped to recoup your expenses?” Daphne said coolly.
“Yes, you did all those things. The bare minimum required by blood for legitimate offspring. That is what you have always done… It stops today. The suit will be dropped. Any efforts to extort funds from myself or my husband will cease immediately.”
Reginald smirked then. “Or what? Your penniless husband will call me out?”
“No. He won’t have to… Because you’ll be in the Fleet,” Bessie replied.
Then she rapped sharply on top of her desk and the same connecting door where Daphne had entered from opened once more.
Three gentlemen walked in, each one entirely different from one another and yet each one quite powerful and fearsome in their own right.
“Acres,” Hexhaven said. “Just the man I’ve been looking for.
Seems you had a run of bad luck at the club.
Wagering is not your forte, sir. I was kind enough to secure your markers for you, of course, so you won’t be hounded by creditors…
unless I elect to take over the hounding.
Will I need to do that, Mr. Acres? Or have you reached an understanding with my good friend Bessie? ”
It was at that point that Acres began to sweat profusely. “Now, see here—”
“I see, Mr. Acres,” Lynley said coolly. “We all see. Very clearly. And we all have the ears of every other member of the House of Lords. Your suit will languish there forever, never to be heard, never to be settled, and to always be an embarrassment to you—a man so inept at fatherhood that his own daughter fled his ham-fisted efforts to barter her off and managed to get herself a husband who is young, titled, honorable, and all the things you and your cronies are not. Do not test us. I know the debt I owe to Lady Aldwyn. I know the debt I owe to Mrs. Dove-Lyon. And we all know precisely where you stand in her estimation.”
Reginald Acres rose, gave one final glower in their general direction, and then marched out. It was patently obvious that he had lost, that he hadn’t the friends nor the power in his own right to pursue the action he’d undertaken any further.
Bessie smiled at Hexhaven. “That favor you’ve asked for? Consider it granted, Beaumont. You have endeared yourself to me greatly.”
The Marquess of Hexhaven nodded. “It’s always a pleasure to be part of your schemes, Bessie. Always. I rather liked seeing him squirm. Never could abide the fellow… no offense intended, Lady Aldwyn.”
“None taken, my lord. I can’t abide him either,” Daphne replied smoothly.
“Lynley, I’ll be seeing you around,” the marquess said rather cryptically. Then he nodded to Lord Aldwyn and made his escape.
“Now, the two of you are newly married and should hardly be keeping company with an old harpy like myself,” Bessie told the newly wedded couple. “Do run along and endeavor to be labeled the love match of the Season. It’s very good for my business.”
Alone with Lord Lynley, Bessie met his questioning gaze. “Yes, Lynley?”
“What precisely did Hexhaven mean by all that?”
“Only time well tell, my lord. Only time will tell.”