Chapter Nine #2
For a long moment she considered her next move.
It would be of little use to ask for his help now he had assumed the role of father of the soon-to-be countess.
How could she ever persuade him to destroy that vision and bolt for Dover and the Continent?
And then he coughed. Not a little clearing of the throat, but a paroxysm of breathlessness that bent him double and required the application of a handkerchief he whipped out of his waistcoat pocket and held to his mouth until he could breathe again.
The thought that he might have done this deliberately had to be pushed aside. He was not that manipulative. Was he?
He straightened up, his face flushed but not in a healthy way, the handkerchief screwed up in his hand as though to hide its contents.
She had no need to see. He’d been coughing up specks of blood for the last three months.
Again, she thought of the treatments she could procure for him if she married so rich a man as Lord Dunster.
“I know you loved Mama,” she said, keeping her voice as gentle as possible even though it longed to rise in protest. “Would you have been happy to have been married to someone else whom you neither loved nor liked?”
His hand twisted in hers. “That is a ridiculous suggestion that I cannot possibly answer. Your mother and I…we had something that transcended all else. We were soulmates, my child.”
So very true. It had been a bond that had precluded all other love and that had inspired them to abandon their only child as a baby with her grandmother for nine long years.
Only grandmama’s death had brought them back to retrieve that child.
Despite temptation to throw it in his face, Verity forbore from mentioning that. How could she, when he was so ill?
“Try to put yourself in my position,” she said instead.
“Thanks to your having lost so much money at cards, I found myself in the house of a dreadful rake who, I must tell you, had no intention whatsoever of marrying me at first. I am not a fool, and I’ve had enough men try their hand with me in the past to recognise lust when I see it and to be able to resist it. ”
“Sensible girl.” Papa’s expression was one of pride. “You kept him at a distance and bargained for the blessing of the law. Just what I would have done.”
What he would have done? She almost burst out laughing.
Instead, she kept her expression serious and shook her head. “But I would have done what he wanted, if it meant saving you from the debtors’ prison. And that is wrong. You should not have put me in that position, a position I now find it impossible to extricate myself from.”
Her father’s bushy white brows rose. “Why should you wish to extricate yourself from a situation that has been turned to our advantage? If I taught you nothing else, I taught you to seize every opportunity. And this is an opportunity beyond any other we’ve ever encountered.
Thanks to me, you are to become a countess, daughter.
How can you object to such a rise in your social status?
He has a house in London and an estate in Oxfordshire.
A vast estate. I have it from a reliable source that he has no less than fifty thousand a year.
A veritable fortune. You need never want for anything again.
” He coughed again, less dramatically, and she was sure this time it was an artifice.
“Only love,” she muttered, but Papa ignored her.
His eyes blazed with enthusiasm. “If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for me.” As if all that coughing had not been to reinforce this very thing.
She fought down the impulse to rage at him. How unfair to suggest that to her. Had not everything she’d ever done been for him, and yet now, he wanted her to make the ultimate sacrifice.
How could she say no? Her shoulders sagged. “I was going to beg you to flee with me, back to Paris, perhaps, but now I see you mean me to stay here and go through with this.”
“Is he so monstrous you can’t bring yourself to like him, just a little?” He smiled. “He is very handsome.”
Verity frowned, conjuring up the arrogant, self-centered face of her husband to be.
“I suppose I will allow that he could be called so.” She paused.
“In appearance if not in his personality. But looks are not everything, Papa. If he were not such a rake, such a spoiled, arrogant creature, I could bring myself to like him if he were quite ugly. You know me. I am nothing if not adaptable.” She shrugged her slender shoulders.
“But he is, as far as I can ascertain on such a short acquaintance, a man who has been spoiled and pandered to his entire life, with disastrous results.”
Papa pursed his lips, a familiar expression of dogged determination settling on his visage.
“Everyone has at least one redeeming feature, Verity, and for your sake, I hope you can find his.” He cleared his throat and a smile of satisfaction settled on his face.
“I have been invited by your aunt to attend your wedding, which you must understand is a difficult thing for me as my brother will be there.” He frowned.
“As you know, we did not part on good terms, and I am sure he has as little desire to see me again as I do him. But for you, and for your immense good fortune in obtaining such a match, I will put the past behind me for your special day.” The frown became a smug smile.
“And it will be worth it to see his face when it is my daughter and not his who becomes a countess.”
Was that all that mattered to him? It was like talking to an immovable rock.
She’d come here today to see him, expecting to receive sympathy.
A title had never been important before, lest it had been for achieving a better con.
And yet now he seemed to have changed so much he wanted to tie her down to becoming a countess.
Although she had to admit that fifty thousand a year must look more than tempting to him.
“I doubt very much that Lord Dunster is the sort who gives handouts to impecunious relatives,” she snapped, immediately regretting her sharpness of tone.
Papa’s mouth drooped. “I don’t like you referring to me in that way.”
She frowned, the inclination to be belligerent large.
“But it’s true, isn’t it? You want me to marry him because you think it will make you better off.
Don’t think I don’t know it, because I do.
It’s exactly the same as you giving me to him in place of the money you owed him.
Just because I’ll be putting a wedding ring on my finger, it won’t make it any less venal.
I shall be marrying for money and position, not love.
” She wasn’t about to reveal to him how she’d dreamed for years of meeting the man of her dreams and falling in love.
Every young girl’s dream, she supposed, but one few of them could attain.
And it seemed she was destined to be one of that number.
Papa’s face fell further. “Please don’t look at it like that, Verity.
See it the way I see it. That by great good fortune, and some manoeuvring on my part, you have found yourself set in front of a man of means, an earl no less, and you are now to marry him.
Haven’t I always taught you to make the best of things?
Haven’t I? That is what you must do now, and I know that you can be happy.
” He gave her a small, hopeful smile. “I only want you to be happy, child.”
Verity heaved a sigh. There was no support coming a man who equated happiness with money.
She’d been a fool to think there might be.
Everyone was ganging up on her and she was going to have to do as they said.
Even Papa, with whom she’d had some of the most glorious, and sometimes terrifying, adventures.
If he wasn’t on her side, no one was going to be.
She was going to have to do as he said and make the best of things.