Chapter 33 #2
“It will not be much of a business,” she said around the lump in her throat. “I do not charge much. Many women only have pin money, and they cannot risk spending large sums and having their husbands discover what they are spending it on.”
“That makes sense.” His voice was dark with understanding, and she realized he was probably thinking of his mother, who had died when her own expenditure gave away her secret.
“I do not think you understand how successful my business has been. You, Lady Brackley, will be wealthy enough to support any endeavor or cause you so wish.”
She had never had a chance against this man.
Not because he had a fortune, or because he made her body feel extraordinary, but because he respected her enough to want to support her dreams rather than control or crush them.
Because he was generous with those he cared for.
Because, even when he had done his best to outrun his past, when his father had died, he had still come home to take care of his sisters.
Owen Brackley was more than she could have ever wished for.
All heads turned in their direction when they were announced and descended the grand staircase, Barnes close behind. “Every man here is jealous of me.”
“And every woman is wondering how I tricked the most handsome viscount of the ton into kissing me on the street.”
“’Twas not hard. I have been wanting to taste you since the moment I caught you leaving the modiste’s that first night.”
Ivy whipped her chin up. “You have not!”
“I may have wanted to taste you in other places as well.”
“You rake!”
He threw his head back and laughed. He was unfairly attractive, with his short, curly brown hair, broad shoulders, and muscled thighs, but when he laughed and the skin crinkled around his eyes, he became devastatingly handsome.
They made their rounds, and despite having been absent for a decade, Owen seemed to know every man in the stuffy ballroom.
He was chatting with a gentleman with thinning hair and a monocle, who had introduced himself as Mr. Wright Davies, deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, when Barnes appeared at her side.
“Do not react,” he said quietly at her ear, “but Father is on his way over here.”
Although Ivy’s composure did not slip, her insides coiled into something tight and bitter.
She had not seen her father since the day Barnes had thrown him out of the house, but she would never forget the way he had ostracized her.
How he had hurt her mother, terrified her brothers, and how even now, from afar, he continued to control her life.
Ivy was not inclined to murderous impulses, but in that moment, she thought she could kill a man.
Barnes’s heavy hand came down on her shoulder. “We will get through this.”
Owen was still talking to the commissioner, even as his eyes bounced from Ivy to their father making his way through the crowd toward her.
Ivy studied the man who had seemed larger than life when she was a child.
He had ruled with an iron fist, and she had thought him so large, so nasty, so capable of violence.
Now, more than a decade later, she was surprised to discover that he resembled nothing of the man in her memories.
This man was frailer and slimmer, with thin lips and even thinner hair.
He had the same honey-colored eyes as hers, and they were the only thing that were as mean now as they had been during her childhood.
Her glance fell to his hands—hands that had caused so much pain—and she thought she was going to burst into flame.
Owen appeared at her back just as her father reached them.
Her father nodded to Barnes, his calculating gaze dismissing his eldest as quickly as he acknowledged him.
Barnes’s responding smirk was lazy and knowing.
Their father hated Barnes. Barnes had sent him away from his own home, wife, and family, and he would never forgive him for it.
“Ivy,” her father said, his eyes crawling over her gorgeous deep-red gown and the expensive ruby at her throat.
She had remembered his voice as seeming to have a cold echo.
When she had heard it as a child, she had tried to slip away before he noticed her and found a way to insult her. But now it was frailer, like his body.
I despise you. “Father,” she said curtly.
“Lord Brackley, meet Mr. Bennett,” Barnes said, his tone bored.
“The man who has stolen my daughter’s heart,” her father purred.
Ivy wanted to stomp on his foot. How dare he speak as if he knew anything about her?
How dare he mention her heart? “I heard that you exchanged letters with my daughter for many years before courting her. In my time, a gentleman asked a father for permission before proposing marriage to his daughter. Yet I hear there is to be a wedding.”
Owen slid his palm into hers, surprising her, and squeezed.
His expression when he stared at her father, however, was one that would have given her chills if it had been turned on her.
There was nothing friendly or warm on his face.
It pleased her to see that he towered over her father.
Both he and Barnes did. Oh, how the tide had turned in a few short years.
Where her father had once been intimidating, now two of his children would gladly knock his teeth out while the viscount held him in place for the beating.
The atmosphere between the four of them was thick with tension, and Ivy understood why the rest of the guests were giving them a wide berth.
When Owen purposely did not reply, her father’s brow furrowed, but he forged ahead. “We have not yet discussed Ivy’s dowry.”
“I will not be accepting one.”
Her father seemed momentarily stunned, and she had no doubt he had planned to use the dowry negotiations as an excuse to hold a private audience with the viscount and worm other favors out of him. “Surely you want what is owed to you, my lord?”
“I am not cattle,” Ivy interrupted hotly.
Her father’s lip curled, and his eyes flickered toward her only long enough to dismiss her as if she were nothing but an annoying gnat.
The disrespect did not go unnoticed by Owen. A muscle flexed in his jaw, and Barnes looked positively delighted by the scene unfolding before him.
“A man of your social standing must want a dowry—”
Owen snarled. “Do not presume to know what a man of my social standing desires.”
“Excuse me, Father, but I spoke to you, and you have yet to acknowledge what I said,” Ivy interrupted.
A bubble of elation lifted in her chest as soon as the words were out.
She had not dared to speak back to him in her youth, but now she was a grown woman who had promised herself she would never cower before this rotten man again.
Her father turned up his nose as if a steaming pile of horse manure had spoken to him. “How dare you address me with such disrespect, you worthless woman.”
Owen surged forward, but Ivy rested a hand on his sleeve and said calmly, “I dare to address you because I am more than your equal. I am smarter than you, kinder than you, and when I am married, I will hold a higher title than you.”
Her father’s eyes flashed with disdain. “I did a poor job raising you if you think it is appropriate to speak to your betters in such a manner. I should not have spared the rod so often.”
Ivy scoffed. “You never spared the rod, you sadistic fool. Do not fret, this will be our last interaction.” Now that she was finally confronting the monster from her childhood, it felt as if the oppressive years of worry and fear were peeling away from her, freeing her from the last vestiges of her childhood prison.
“After tonight, you will never contact me again. You will not contact Lord Brackley. You will not use his name to advance your own agenda, or to ask others to extend you courtesies. You will cease to exist in my life from herein out.” She stepped forward, her face even with his, and said fiercely, “I am not a scared little girl anymore, Father. I will not spare the rod should you cross me.”
The outrage on his face was priceless, and Ivy would prize it until the day she died.
“You may keep the dowry for yourself, Mr. Bennett,” Owen added, an expression of absolute adoration on his face when he looked down at her. “Consider it a gift from us, in exchange for your permanent absence from our lives.”
It took her father several moments to rally, and when he did, he straightened to his fullest height, his anger so close to the surface that his nostrils flared. “I see now why your father never approved of you, Brackley. Blood cannot make a gentleman.”
“Thank you,” Owen said sincerely. “It is a high compliment to know I did not become the sort of man of whom my father would have approved. But I must warn you, I can be monstrous when I choose. I have been so uncivil, so cutthroat, so vicious to some men, that they have never recovered.” He rubbed his thumb over the back of Ivy’s hand and said casually, “I do not care for word games and innuendos, so I will make myself plain: You heard my betrothed, and you will respect her wishes. It is not only her you must fear. She need only give me the word, and I will happily destroy every last shred of your dignity. I will ruin you so thoroughly that your only respite will be found six feet under the soil.”
Ivy’s grin was so savage that her father took a startled step backward.
“Now leave,” Owen ordered.
“You are going to let your sister marry this disrespectful ingrate?” her father hissed at Barnes.
Barnes lifted his glass in salute and gave their father such a devilishly satisfied smile that his spine snapped straight.
“You will regret this,” he warned Ivy, his cruel lips twisting.
“No, see that right there? That is exactly what I told you not to do,” Owen chided, as if her father were a stupid child.
“You owe a rather large sum to Rockford and Turner’s, if I am not mistaken.
You will now be removed from the club and blacklisted, and before tomorrow night the entire ton will know you are a gluttonous spendthrift. ”
Her father’s mouth gaped open like a fish. “You cannot—”
“I can, and I will. Consider it your final warning. Next time, I will destroy even the scraps of you that Ivy leaves behind.”
With that, Owen squeezed her hand and smiled warmly. “I feel like celebrating, Sunshine. Would you like to dance?”