Chapter Five #3
The afterglow from the day’s excitement seeped out of Ginevra like a flower wilting before an inferno. She had left a message the previous night, hoping for answers after Donald’s absurd implications about the financial state of her ancestral home. “Of course,” she said. “Thank you.”
She followed the woman into her private sitting room off the back hall and sank onto a delicate chair with an embroidered cushion, waiting till the door closed behind the housekeeper to pick up the receiver. Gin pressed the hook and gave the operator the number.
“Chiseldon Park,” a lofty voice intoned.
“Abbott, it’s Ginevra. Is Father at home?”
“Yes, miss. One moment.”
Ginevra had always appreciated their butler’s dignified, reassuring monotone. But the next click on the line made her instinctively brace.
“Ginevra?” The viscount’s voice was already rough with drink, though it wasn’t even four. “What the devil was so urgent, but you can’t be there when I return your call?”
“Is there something I ought to know about your business dealings with the Duke of Allingham?” Gin asked sharply.
The line went silent, and for a moment she feared he’d hung up, then there was a muffled, indistinct conversation.
He’d covered the mouthpiece and was talking to someone else inside the room—most likely her stepmother, Sylvia.
She kept a writing desk inside the viscount’s office where she loved to fuss over her social calendar and create menus that made the cook grumble about extravagance.
The viscount cleared his throat, louder now, and Gin deduced that Sylvia had been dispatched. “What of it?” he grumbled.
“I’ve had to suffer yet another of Donald Craddock’s proposals, only fancy my surprise when he implied there was a financial debt between you and his father that I ought to consider weighty.
” The telling silence was dense enough to slice, and Gin winced, pinching her brow.
“Is that your grand scheme? If you marry me off to Donald, the duke will forgive the debt? Honestly, Father, that’s positively medieval—”
“I’ve promised him the house, Ginevra.” Her father’s voice thickened with an emotion she had never heard there before—resignation, she realized with a sharp twist of panic.
“We discussed the matter when I realized how many more improvements were still needed, how much money I still need to borrow—money I cannot feasibly repay.” There was a pregnant pause.
“I will remain in residence as caretaker; but if you marry Donald, then you’ll one day inherit the estate properly. ”
Gin’s blood ran hot—then cold. Her father didn’t care one whit about her keeping the house; it was only his pride at stake. If she married Donald, the public would never realize how low he had fallen.
“Are you mad? This was your plan? To blackmail me into marriage—”
“It’s not blackmail, it’s survival. I’ve done what I had to, and now it’s your turn.”
“I’ll—I’ll hire a solicitor to contest the arrangement.” Adrenaline coursed through Gin’s veins. “That house is my inheritance, and I shouldn’t have to be married off like chattel to keep it. You didn’t even ask me—”
“Because it’s not yours,” her father snapped. “The inheritance tax alone would sink you, girl. This is the best possible outcome for a rotten situation, and when you’re finished playing scholar, you can accept your lot in life.”
There was a sharp click as the call ended, and Gin jammed down the receiver.
She sank back in the chair, cradling her forehead, and willed herself not to scream.
The majority of her mother’s bequest she could not touch, so that money was of no use to her.
She could leave school and see if the duke would accept her tuition toward repayment …
only the number sounded so very large, would that sum even make a ripple?
Gin knew with a sickening feeling what her mother would have said: that abandoning her education for a house was unthinkable foolishness, driven by emotion over reason.
But Chiseldon Park wasn’t a mere house to Gin.
It was the last place her mother’s laughter had filled the air, the last place her smile had brightened winter’s constant gray.
It was her final resting place beneath the large oak overshadowing the abandoned chapel.
The Park might be a financial nightmare, but it was hers to fight for.
To relinquish it into Donald’s spidery fingers was a travesty, and yet Gin could not, would not, marry him.
Anne Aster had married the Viscount Walsingdon for reasons Ginevra would never understand, but she had raised her daughter to marry for love over money.
Only it was money that Gin now needed to hire a solicitor and fight her father, and a new plan took form as her anger cooled into something sharper and more levelheaded.
Gin straightened, exhaling till her emotions were in check, and marched from the room with her chin high.
She wouldn’t take another cent from that odious man.
She would forge her own path.