To have and to hold…

After her first disastrous marriage, wealthy heiress Amethyst Cameron swore she’d never take a husband again. Yet her beloved father’s deepest wish is for her to wed an aristocrat to protect her life and reputation.

Until the debts are paid!

Lord Montcliffe must marry into money to save his debt-ridden estate, but he doesn’t have to like it—or his bewitching future bride. So he’s stunned by the feelings stirred up by one scorching kiss! But when Daniel uncovers the truth, can he accept the real Amethyst and help to banish the ghost of her past forever?

THE PENNILESS LORDS

In want of a wealthy wife

Meet Daniel, Gabriel, Lucien and Francis Four lords: each down on his fortune and each in need of a wife of means.

From such beginnings, can these marriages of convenience turn into something more treasured than money?

Don’t miss this enthralling new quartet by Sophia James

Read Daniel’s story in

MARRIAGE MADE IN MONEY

January 2015

AUTHOR NOTE

MARRIAGE MADE IN MONEY is the first book in my new The Penniless Lords mini-series.

Daniel, Gabriel, Lucien and Francis are lords, down on both luck and money. With commitments to family, and great estates to support, each is forced into finding a wife of means. But the sacrificing of personal hopes and dreams does not always lead where they might imagine … and even dark clouds can sometimes have silver linings.

The first book in this series belongs to Lord Daniel Wylde, the sixth Earl of Montcliffe, newly returned from the Peninsular Wars. Is a loveless marriage of convenience to the wealthy daughter of an East London timber merchant the only way out of his substantial and mounting financial problems?

Miss Amethyst Cameron has her own conditions for their union, and she makes it known that she is as unhappy as he is with their unexpected betrothal. As a woman of trade she clearly understands that in any other circumstance the Earl of Montcliffe would never have chosen her.

Marriage Made in Money

Sophia James

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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This book is dedicated to my writing friend, Lizzie Tremayne, who helped me to understand the anatomy of horses and the joy of working with them.

SOPHIA JAMES lives in Chelsea Bay, on Auckland, New Zealand’s North Shore, with her husband who is an artist. She has a degree in English and History from Auckland University and believes her love of writing was formed by reading Georgette Heyer in the holidays at her grandmother’s house.

Sophia enjoys getting feedback at sophiajames.co

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Author Note

Title Page

Dedication

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

Copyright

Chapter One

London—June 1810

Amethyst Amelia Cameron’s father loved all horses, but he especially loved his matching pair of greys.

‘I doubt you will ever see others as fine, Papa, if you do indeed intend to sell them.’ Amethyst tried to keep the worry from her voice as the carriage drew to a halt in the narrow lane outside number ten, Grosvenor Place. Things were changing without reason and she didn’t like it.

‘Well, there’s the problem, my dear,’ Robert Cameron replied. ‘I had the best and now I want for nothing more. Take your mother, for instance. Never found another like her. Would not even have tried to.’

Amethyst smiled. Her parents’ marriage had been a love match until the day her mother had died of some undefined and quick illness, seven hours short of her thirty-second birthday. Amethyst had been all of eight and she remembered the day distinctly, the low whispers and the tears; storm clouds sweeping across the Thames.

‘I do not think you should part with the pair, Papa. You can easily afford to keep them. You could afford ten times as many; every stallion and mare here in the Tattersall’s sales for the next month, should you want.’ Looking across the road at the generous roofs of the auction house, she wished her father might order the carriage homewards, where they could talk the matter over at their leisure.

It was not like him to decide on a course of action so quickly and she hoped he might have second thoughts and withdraw his favoured greys before the Monday sales the following week.

Yet as her father hoisted himself from the carriage his breathlessness was obvious, even such a small movement causing him difficulty. The unease Amethyst had felt over the past weeks heightened, though the sight of a man alighting from a conveyance ahead caught her attention.

After the dreadful débâcle of her marriage Amethyst had seldom noticed the opposite sex, shame and guilt having the effect of greying out passion. But this man was tall and big with it, the muscles beneath his superfine coat pointing to something other than the more normal indolence the ton seemed to excel at. He looked dangerous and untamed.

His dress marked him as an aristocrat, but his wild black hair was longer than most other men wore theirs, falling almost to his collar, the darkness highlighted by white linen. An alarming and savage beauty. She saw others turn as he walked past and wondered what it must be like to be so very visible, so awfully obvious.

‘Have Elliott send the carriage back for me around two, my dear, for I am certain that will give me enough time.’ Her father’s words pulled her from her musing and, dragging her eyes from the stranger, she hoped Robert had not noticed her interest. ‘But make sure that you have a restful time of it, too, for you have been looking tired of late.’

Shutting the door, he encouraged the conveyance on before placing his hat on his head. His new coat was not quite fitting across his shoulders where a month ago it had been snug.

Amethyst caught her reflection in the glass as the carriage began to move. She looked older than her twenty-six years and beaten somehow. By life and by concern. Her father’s actions had made her tense; after visiting his physician in London a week ago he had taken his horses straight to Tattersall’s, claiming that he did not have the time for livestock he once had enjoyed.

A shock of alarm crawled up her arms and into her chest as she saw her father in conversation with the same man she had been watching. Did her father know him? What could they be speaking of? Craning her neck to see more of their engagement, she was about to turn away when the stranger looked up, his glance locking with hers across the distance.

Green. His eyes were pale green and tinged with arrogance. In shock she broke the contact, wondering about the fact that her heart was beating at twice its normal rate.

‘Ridiculous,’ she muttered and made certain not to look his way again. Tapping her hand hard against the roof, she was also glad when the carriage slowed to its usual speed of just above walking pace.

* * *

Lord Daniel Wylde, the sixth Earl of Montcliffe, came to Tattersall’s quite regularly just to see what was on offer. Today with the sales about to begin the place was crowded.

‘Ye’d be a man who knows his horseflesh, no doubt?’ An older man spoke to him as they mounted the steps, no mind for introduction or proper discourse. ‘My greys are up and I’d want them to go to someone who would care for their well-being.’

His accent marked him as an East-Ender, the music of the river in his words. A man made rich by the trade of goods and services, perhaps, for his coat was of fine cloth and his boots well fashioned. The well-appointed carriage he had alighted from was beginning to move away, a young woman staring back at them with concern upon her face, but Daniel’s interest was snared by the mention of the greys. The superb pair he had seen yesterday belonged to this unlikely fellow? They were the entire reason he was here this morning after all, just to see who might be lucky enough to procure them.

The Repository courtyard at Tattersall’s loomed, substantial pillars holding up wide verandas and housing a great number of animals and carriages.

‘Your horses aren’t on the block today?’ Daniel could see no sign of the greys and it was more usual for those lots about to go under the hammer to be on display, especially ones so fine.

‘I asked Mr Tattersall for a few days’ grace just to think about things,’ the other man returned, his cheeks yellowed, but his eyes sharp. ‘To give me time, you understand, in case I should change my direction. The prerogative of the elderly,’ he added, a wide smile showing off a set of crooked teeth.

Daniel knew he should turn and leave the man, with his roughness of speech and the impossible manners of the trading classes, but something made him stay. The sort of desperation that one perceives in the eyes of a person battling the odds, he was to think later, when all the cards had been stacked up into one long, straight and improbable line. But back then he did not have the facts of the stranger’s most singular purpose.

‘My name is Mr Robert Cameron. Timber merchant.’ No shame or hesitation in the introduction.

‘Daniel Wylde.’ He could do nothing less than offer his own name, though he did not add the title.

The other man did it for him. ‘You are the Earl of Montcliffe? I saw the insignia upon your carriage outside and Mr Tattersall himself pointed your personage out to me here last week as a man who knows his way around a horse.’

‘Indeed.’ Even with the frosty tone of the reply Cameron seemed unfazed.

‘My greys are this way, my lord. Would you do me the honour of looking them over?’

‘I am not in the market for a purchase.’ Hell and damnation, there was no untruth in that, he thought, his hands fisting in his pockets with the sort of rage he had almost become accustomed to. Noticing others looking his way, Daniel tried to soften his face.

‘But you are renowned for your knowledge of a fine buy in horseflesh and it is that I seek to be assured of. I was only hoping for the chance of an expert’s opinion.’

They had passed beneath the roof delineating the courtyard now and had wandered down into the stables proper. It was darker here and a lot less busy. When the ground unexpectedly fell away the old man tripped, Daniel’s arm steadying him before he lost balance completely.

‘Thank you, my lord.’ Cameron’s voice was quieter and the flesh beneath the finely made coat felt alarmingly thin. Life had honed his instincts and Daniel’s were on high alert. This man was not quite as he seemed and he wondered at what was hidden.

‘Here they are. Maisey and Mick. After my parents, you understand, though they will not be billed as such here. Names of high distinction fetch more in the way of coinage, I am told, and so Mr Tattersall thinks to call them after ancient Grecian gods.’

The greys were of Arabian descent, their distinctive head shapes and high-tailed carriage unmistakable. The horses were small and refined, and Daniel could have picked their lineage out easily from a thousand others.

‘Richard Tattersall is a shrewd operator so perhaps you should listen to what he says if you wish to part with them. I know my brother always paid through the nose here,’ Daniel remarked.

Gnarled fingers were held against the jibbah bulge on the horse’s forehead, and it was easy to see that there was no lack of love between the animal and its master as the horse nuzzled closer.

‘Maisie finds any change difficult.’ The catch in his voice suggested he did too.

‘Why are you selling them, then? If you bred them, you could turn a tidy profit without too much work in it. A few years and the money could be double what a sale now would garner.’

‘Time is a commodity I am a little short on, my lord.’ The reply was grave. ‘But you sound like my daughter.’

‘The woman in the carriage?’ Why the hell had he said that? He wished he might take such a question back.

‘My beautiful jewel.’

Again Daniel was shocked. In his circle it was not done to talk of progeny in such glowing terms.

‘Are you married, my lord?’ Another impertinence. Did Mr Robert Cameron always speak without thought?

‘No. Too busy saving England.’ He knew he should adopt a sterner demeanour, but the man was beguiling in his lack of protocol. The memory of a soldier he had once known came to mind. A man who had served with him and saved his life before losing his own on the high hills of Penasquedo. He shook away ennui. Of late the emotion seemed to have hitched a ride upon his shoulders, crouching over everything he said and did; a result of the problems at Montcliffe Manor probably and the cursed debts that had piled up in the years between his father’s indifference and his brother’s high-stakes gambling.

The other looked relieved at his answer.

‘A parent would do almost anything to keep a child happy, you understand?’

‘Indeed, I should imagine such a thing to be so.’

‘I would give my horses without a moment’s hesitation to a husband who had the wherewithal to make my girl smile.’

‘A generous gift.’ Where was this conversation leading? Daniel wondered, as a small seed of worry began to grow.

‘I was married myself for twelve long and happy years before my wife passed on. Well before her time too, I should say, and for a while...’ He stopped and brought out a large white kerchief to dab his face with. ‘For a while I thought to follow. The world is a lonely place to be without the love of a good woman and it was the nights that were the worst.’ Shrewdness lurked above sorrow in Robert Cameron’s eyes.

The stallion had now come over for its share of attention and Daniel had seldom seen another of its ilk; leanly muscled and compact, he was built for endurance, head turned towards him and darkly intelligent eyes watchful. If he had had the money he would have placed it down right then and there because he knew without a doubt that offspring from these two would soon be worth a small fortune on any market in the world.

‘Where did you get them?’

‘In Spain. Near Bilbao. I had heard of them and went over to look. Fell in love at first glance and brought them back three years ago.’

‘Don’t sell them cheap, then. If you hold out for your price, their worth will be increased,’ Daniel advised.

‘You wouldn’t be interested in purchasing them yourself?’

This was not said with any intention at rudeness. It was just a passing comment, a friendly gesture to a stranger. Of course Cameron would think the Montcliffe coffers full. Everybody still did.

He shook his head. If he could have raised the money, he would have bid for the pair in a trice, but that sort of life was finished and had been for a while now. He noticed a few other patrons drifting down to take a look at the greys. And then more came. However, Robert Cameron did not seem the slightest bit interested in singing the praises of his horseflesh any longer which was surprising, given the hard line he had taken just a moment before.

As the crowds thickened Daniel tipped his hat at the timber merchant and made his way out of the crush.

* * *

Three-quarters of an hour later, he was glad to sit down on the comfortable seat of his carriage. His right leg ached today more than it had in months and he knew that the bullet would have to be removed before too much longer. The Montcliffe physician had told him that time and time again, but the worry of being left a cripple was even worse than the pain that racked through him each time he stepped on it.

Throwing his hat on the seat, Daniel leant back into the leather and ran his fingers through his hair. It was too damn long and he would cut it tonight after a bath. His valet had once done the job, but Daniel had let him go, as he had had to do with other staff both at the town house and at Montcliffe.

He cursed Nigel again as he did almost every day now, his brother’s lack of care of the family inheritance beyond all comprehension. One should not think ill of the dead, he knew, but it was hard to find generous thought when any new debt now joined the pile of all the others.

A sudden movement caught his attention and he focused on a group in a narrow alleyway off Hyde Park Corner. Four or five men circled around another and it was with a shock that he realised the one in the middle was the timber merchant, Mr Robert Cameron.

Banging on the roof of the conveyance, he threw open the door and alighted quickly as it stopped. Twenty paces had him amidst the ruckus and he saw the old man’s nose streamed with blood.

‘Let him go.’ Raising his cane, he brought it down hard on the hand of the man closest to him as the scoundrel reached inside his coat for something. A howl of pain echoed and a knife dropped harmlessly to the cobbles, spinning on its own axis with the movement.

‘Anyone else want a try?’ He knew he had the upper hand as the thugs backed off, yelling obscenities at him, but nothing else. They were gone before he counted to ten and there was only silence in the street.

Cameron was leaning over as though in pain, his right arm held to his chest.

‘What hurts?’

‘My...pride.’ As he straightened Daniel saw the grimace on his face.

‘Did you know them?’

The older man nodded. ‘They have been demanding money from me.’

‘Why?’

‘My business is lucrative and they want a slice. One of their number also used to work for me in the warehouse until I fired him for stealing and I suspect he holds a grudge.’ He dabbed at his nose with his dislodged shirt tails. ‘If you had not come...’

‘I will take you home if you give me your direction.’

As Cameron was about to argue Daniel called his driver down from the high seat to give a hand and ten minutes later they were pulling up in front of a large town house in Grosvenor Square.

No little fortune here then, Daniel thought, as he helped Cameron out. He noticed blood had left a stain on the leather seat at about the same time as the other did.

‘If you wait, I will find coinage to cover the cost of the cleaning.’

‘It is of no significance.’

Cameron was now leaning on him heavily and he could feel the shaking of fright beginning to settle. As they came to the front door the sound of running feet was heard.

‘Are you hurt?’ Worry coated the voice of the woman who came into view, the same woman he had seen in the carriage, anger on her face creasing it badly. Cameron’s daughter by his own admission, though she looked nothing at all like him.

‘What on earth happened?’ She reached his side and all but pulled her father out of Daniel’s grasp, the sharp edge of a fingernail carving skin away from his wrist. If she noticed, she did not show it, merely helping her father backwards to a sofa that was perched to one side of the wide lobby.

‘Sit down. You look blue around the mouth.’ Her own mouth was a tight line of consternation, her dark eyes flashing up at Daniel in question. ‘Who did this?’

‘A group of blackguards waylaid him not far from Tattersall’s.’

‘You did not wait for the carriage, Papa. You said to send it at two, did you not?’ As if on cue the big clock in another corner struck the half hour of one-thirty.

‘I h-had done all I needed to at the auction house.’

‘You sold the horses?’ A new tone entered her voice, one of censure and irritation. Lord, the girl was a harpy and with no introduction Daniel was hard pressed to say anything.

Robert Cameron was shaking his head and looking worse by the moment. ‘The Earl of Montcliffe here helped me and brought me home. Lord Montcliffe, may I present my daughter, Amethyst Amelia Cameron, to you.’

Amethyst? His jewel? She did not suit such a name at all with her dark eyes and angry mouth. Her hair was a strange lustreless brown pulled back into a bun that was fashioned in the most unflattering of styles.

As if she could read his mind her expression tightened and she barely acknowledged the introduction. The clothes she wore were serviceable homespun without embellishment. The sort of dress one might wear to a dowdy funeral, the cloth of black showing up her skin as sallow and underlining the smudged circles beneath her eyes as dark bruises.

She was not a beauty, but she was not plain either. Beneath the downcast glance he caught a flash of anger, abrupt and sudden.

Tipping his head at her, he was surprised when she flushed a bright beet red, though she looked away, ringing for the butler to fetch a physician immediately.

Efficient and calm now, save for the remaining stain of red on her cheeks which made her look vulnerable. He wanted to lay his hand upon her arm and tell her...what? He shook the thought away and concentrated on her father, whose eyes were glued to his daughter, a speculative glance within them.

‘I hope you will recover without any ill effects, sir,’ Daniel said. ‘If you wish to take such an assault further with the law and need verification of exactly what I saw, you may call on me.’

Extracting his card from a thin leather holder in his pocket, he handed it over.

‘Thank you for your help, Lord Montcliffe, I have appreciated it greatly.’

Acknowledging the gratitude, Daniel turned to leave, though the daughter, after fumbling in a drawer to one side of the room, came forth with a wad of bank notes.

‘I hope this might help in the way of thanks.’ Her voice was no longer shrill, but the insult of payment was all Daniel could think of.

Without another word he turned and walked from the room, the butler hurrying to show him the way out.

* * *

‘Perhaps I insulted him, Papa, by offering him reimbursement for his trouble?’ Amethyst looked down at the substantial sum in her hands. Every other member of her acquaintance would have taken it and with the thankfulness that was intended, but not the Earl of Montcliffe.

She was irritated with herself for allowing such an awkward meeting, but she had been more than surprised to see the man outside the Tattersall’s auction rooms right here in their town house. She knew Lord Montcliffe had noticed her embarrassment and she chastised herself for even thinking of giving him reimbursement for a deed of honour.

Such a reward belittled the act, she supposed, by reducing it to terms of cold hard cash. She had heard that the ton rarely even carried money, the tarnish of trade and commerce resting instead with their accompanying helpers and sycophants.

Traders and merchants. Even with a princely sum made from hard work, good luck and risky ventures, the Camerons would not be accepted into any of the higher echelons of society.

Well, she could not care. No doubt Lord Montcliffe would be mulling over his encounter with them on the carriage ride home before sharing the story of her clumsy attempt at recompense with his peers at some exclusive ‘members only’ club in the nicer areas of the city. She was so very glad he was gone.

‘You need to inform the constabulary of this assault, Papa. You cannot keep pretending that this matter will simply disappear.’

‘You think I should pay them?’ For the first time ever Amethyst heard a tone in her father’s voice that suggested complete uncertainty and she did not like it at all.

‘No, of course not. Pay once and they will haunt us indefinitely. These people need to be cut off at the roots.’

Her father laughed. ‘Sometimes, Amethyst, you are so like your mother that it brings tears to my eyes.’ He took in a breath. ‘But if Susannah were here I think she would be scolding me for involving you so much in the business that you have forgotten about living.’ The handkerchief pressed to his nose still showed blood appearing through the thickness of the layers of cotton and Amethyst hoped that the physician might hurry. ‘A man like Montcliffe would make you smile again.’

‘I am quite happy as I am, Papa, and as Montcliffe must have every single woman’s heart in London a-racing he would hardly be interested in mine.’

The strange glint in his eyes was worrying for Amethyst knew her father well enough to know just what that meant.

* * *

She wandered across to the mews behind the house after her father had retired. Robert had bought in this particular area in London because of the proximity of the stables that held enough room to house livestock.

The stablemaster, Ralph Moore, was just finishing brushing down Midnight, a large black stallion her father had acquired in the past year.

‘It is a sad day when the cream of our livestock is left to languish in the Tattersall’s stable on view for sale, Miss Cameron. I know it is not my place to criticise anything your father does and he has been a kind and mindful master, but with a bit of patience and some good luck the greys could be the start of a line of horses England has not seen the likes of before. I have spoken of it with him, but he does not want to even consider such a proposition any longer.’

Such words made Amethyst wary. Why would her father suddenly not want the pleasure of breeding his Arabian pair, something he had always spoken of with much anticipation and delight?

Tonight she felt restless and uncertain and the dangerous beauty of Lord Montcliffe came to mind. She wished she had not blushed so ridiculously when he had looked across at her or seen the returning humour in his eyes. The heat of shame made her scalp itch and, reaching up, she snatched the offending wig from her head and shook out the short curls beneath it, enjoying the freedom.

It was finally getting longer. Almost six inches now. Curlier than it had ever been and a much lighter colour. Soon she would be able to dispense with the hairpiece altogether.

If she had been at Dunstan, she would have saddled up one of the horses and raced towards the far hills behind the house. Here in London the moon was high and full, tugging at her patience, stretching the limit of her city manners, making her feel housebound and edgy.

A noise had her turning.

‘When I could not find you I knew you would be here.’

Her father joined her at the side of Midnight’s stall, Ralph Moore’s departure a few moments prior to his room upstairs allowing them privacy. Her father’s left eye was darkened and his nose swollen.

‘I imagined you would have gone up to bed early after such a dreadful day,’ she said.

‘Slumber is harder to find as the years march on.’ His glance rose to her hair. ‘It is nice to see you without the ugly wig, my love, for your skin appears a much better colour without it.’

Shaking her head, Amethyst looked down at the limp brown hairpiece in her hands. ‘I should have a new one ordered, I suppose, but it seems so frivolous for the small amount of time I still have need of it.’

‘Well, it is good to see you happier, my dear. Perhaps the exchange with Lord Montcliffe has given you some vitality? He is a good man and strong. Mr Tattersall spoke of him highly as a lord who can be relied upon.’

‘Relied on to do what?’

‘To look after you. I shall not be around for ever and...’

His sentiments petered away as she began to laugh out loud. ‘I hardly think that was what Mr Tattersall was referring to. Besides, an exalted lord of the realm would have no mind to mingle with a woman from trade.’

‘But if he did, my love, would you have the inclination to consider him as a husband?’

‘Husband?’ Now all humour fled. ‘My God, Papa, you cannot be serious for he would never marry me. Not for all the gold in England. Men like Lord Montcliffe marry women exactly like them. Rich. Beautiful. Young. Well connected. Debutantes who have a world of possibilities at their feet.’

Her father shook his head. ‘I disagree with you. Your mother taught me that those things are not the most important qualities to ensure the success of a union. She said that a partner with an alert and interested mind is worth much more than one of little thought or originality. Besides, we have accrued enough money to lure even the loftiest of the lords of the ton.’

His words seeped into her astonishment. ‘Why are you saying these things, Papa? Why would you be even thinking of them? I am a widow and I am almost twenty-seven years old. My chances of such marital bliss are long since passed and I have accepted that they are.’

In the moonlight her father’s face looked older and infinitely sadder. As he leant forward to take her hand Amethyst felt her heart lurch in worry, the certainty of what he was about to tell her etched into fright.

Midnight’s breath in the moonlight, the call of an owl far off in the greenness of the park, a carriage wending its way home along Upper Brook Street at the end of another busy night. The sounds of a normal and ordinary late evening, everything in place, settling in and waiting for the dawn, allowing all that had happened through the day to be assimilated by a gentle darkness.

The far edge of happiness is here, Amethyst thought. Here, before the crack of change opens up to swallow it. She knew what he would say for she could see it in his eyes.

‘I am seriously unwell, my dear. The doctor does not expect my heart to last out the year in the shape it is in. He advised me to settle my affairs and make certain everything is in order.’

Worse than a crack. An abyss unending and deep. Her hands closed about his, the chill in his thin fingers underlying everything. She could not even negate all he said and the reply she was about to give him was driven into silence by fear.

‘My one and only prayer is that the Lord Above in His Infinite Wisdom might grant me the promise of knowing you are safe, Amethyst. Safe and married to a man who would not forsake you. Lord Montcliffe is the first man I have seen you look at since Gerald Whitely. He is well regarded by everyone who knows him and it is rumoured that his financial position is somewhat shaky. We could help him.’

Stop, she should have said. Stop all this nonsense now. But in the shafts of light she registered something in her father’s eyes that she had not seen in a long, long time. Hope, if she could name it; hope of a future for her, even if he was not in it.

The gift of a place and a family, that was what he was trying to give her. There was no thought of greed or power or station. No inkling of a crazed want to surge up the social ladder, either. It was only his love that fostered such thoughts.

‘Would you listen with your intellect to what I have to ask you, my love, and perhaps your heart as well?’ he asked.

As much as she wanted to shake her head and tell him to stop, she found herself acquiescing.

‘There is only us now, the last of the Camerons, and the world is not an easy place to be left alone. I want you to be guarded and cared for by an honourable man, a man who would ward away danger. I want this more than I have ever wanted anything in my life before, Amethyst. If I knew you were safe, it would mean I could enjoy what is left of my life in peace. If I could go to your mother in Heaven and know that I had done my very best to keep you protected, then I would be a happy man. Susannah instructed me to see you lived well in her last breath of life and if it is the final thing that I can do for her then, by God, I am willing to try.’

Crack. Crack crack. Like ice on a winter lake, Amethyst’s heart was breaking piece by piece as he spoke.

Chapter Two

‘There is someone to see you, Lord Montcliffe. A tradesman by the name of Mr Robert Cameron and he is most insistent that he be allowed to come inside.’

‘Send him in.’

‘Through the front door, my lord?’ His butler’s tone was censorious.

‘Indeed.’

‘Very well, my lord.’

It had been a couple of weeks since the contretemps at Hyde Park Corner and Daniel wondered what on earth Cameron might want from him. The Arabian greys had been pulled from auction the day after they had last spoken and the small bit of investigation he had commissioned on the character of the man had been most informative.

Mr Robert Cameron was a London merchant who was well heeled and wily. He owned most of the shares in a shipping line trading timber between England and the Americas, his move into importing taking place across the past eight or so years, and he was doing more than well.

However, when the door opened again and Cameron came through, Daniel was shocked.

The man of a little over a fortnight ago was thinner and more pallid, the bruising around his eyes darker.

‘Thank you for seeing me, Lord Montcliffe.’ Cameron waited as the servant departed the room, peering about to see no others lingered in the background of the substantial library. ‘Might I speak very frankly to you and in complete confidence, my lord?’

Interest flickered. ‘You may, but please take a seat.’ He gestured to the leather wingchair nearby for Cameron looked more than unsteady on his feet.

‘No. I would rather stand, my lord. There are words I need to say that require fortitude, if you will, and a sitting position may lessen my resolve.’

Daniel nodded and waited as the other collected himself. He could think of no reason whatsoever for the furtive secrecy or the tense manner of the man.

‘What I am about to offer, Lord Montcliffe, must not leave the confines of this room, no matter what you might think of it. Will you give me your word as a gentleman on that whether you accept my proposal or not?’

‘It isn’t outside of the law?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘Then you have my word.’

‘Might I ask for a drink before I begin?’

‘Certainly. Brandy?’

‘Thank you.’

Pouring two generous glasses, Daniel passed one over, waiting as the older man readied himself to speak.

‘My health is not as it was, my lord. In fact, I think it fair to say that I am not long for this world.’ He held up his hand as Daniel went to interrupt. ‘It is not condolences I am after, my lord. I only tell you this because the lack of months left to me owe a good part to what I propose to relate to you next.’

Taking a deep swallow of his brandy, Cameron wiped his mouth with his hands. Labourers hands with wide calluses and small healed injuries. The hands of someone used to many long hours of manual work.

‘I want to bequeath the pair of greys to you, my lord. I know you will love them in the same manner as I do and that they will not be sold on, so to speak, for a quick financial profit. Mick and Maisie need a home that will nurture them and I have no doubts you shall do just that. I would also prefer their names to stay just as they are as the Grecian ones suggested by Mr Tattersall didn’t appeal to me at all.’

‘I could not accept such an offer, Mr Cameron, and have not the means to buy them from you at this moment. Besides, it is unheard of to give a complete stranger such a valuable thing,’ Daniel replied, taken aback.

For the first time Cameron smiled. ‘But you see, my lord, I can do just as I will. Great wealth produces a sense of egocentricity and allows a freedom that is undeniable. I can bequeath anything I like to anybody I want and I wish for you to have my greys.’

Daniel tried to ignore the flare of excitement that started building inside him. With such horses he could begin to slowly recoup a little of the family fortune by running a breeding programme at Montcliffe Manor that would be the envy of society. But he stopped himself. There had to be a catch here somewhere, for by all accounts Cameron was a shrewd businessman and a successful one at that.

‘And in return?’

‘Your estate is heavily mortgaged and I have it on good authority that a hefty loan your brother took out with the Honourable Mr Reginald Goldsmith will be called in before the end of this month. He had other outstanding loans as well and I have acquired each and every one to do just as I will with them.’

‘What is your meaning?’ Daniel bit out, forcing himself to stand still.

‘Coutts is also worried by your lack of collateral and, given the Regent’s flagrant dearth of care with his finances, they are now beating a more conservative pathway in the management of their long-term lending. With only a small investigation I think you might find yourself in trouble.’

‘You would ruin me?’

‘No, my lord, exactly the opposite. I wish to gift you three sums of twenty-five thousand pounds each year for the next three years and then the lump sum of one-hundred-and-fifty thousand pounds.’

A fortune. Daniel could barely believe the proportions of the offer, such riches unimaginable.

‘I would immediately sign over the town house in Grosvenor Square as an incentive for you to honour the terms. Then, whenever Amethyst instructs me to do so, a property I own to the north called Dunstan House, with a good deal of acreage about it, shall be endorsed into your care, as well.’

Stopping, the merchant faced him directly. Sweat had built on his brow and his cheeks were marked with a ruddy glow of much emotion. ‘There is one thing, however, that you must do for me in return, my lord. My only daughter Amethyst is now twenty-six, soon to be twenty-seven. She is a clever girl and a sensible one. She has worked alongside me for the last eight years and it is her surefootedness in business that has propelled my profits skywards.’

He waited as Daniel nodded before continuing.

‘Amethyst Amelia was educated under the capable tutelage of the Gaskell Street Presbyterian Church School and I paid the teachers handsomely to make sure that she acquired all the skills a woman of the classes above her might need to know. In short, she could fit into any social situation without disgracing herself.’

Daniel suddenly knew just where this conversation was leading to. A dowry. A bribe. The answer to his prayers for the selling of his soul.

‘You are single and available, my lord. You have two sisters who are in need of being launched into society, a mother who has fine taste in living and a grandfather who requires much in the way of medical attention. All continuing and long-term expenses. If you marry my daughter by the end of July, none of this will ever be a problem again and you will have the means to right the crumbling estate of Montcliffe once and for all.’

‘Get out, you bastard.’ Daniel’s anger made the words tremble. That a man he was beginning to respect and like should think of coming into his life to blackmail him into marrying his daughter. For that was what this was. Blackmail, even given the enormous amounts mooted.

But Cameron looked to be going nowhere. ‘I can understand your wrath and indeed, were I in your boots, I might have had exactly the same reaction. But I would ask you to think about it for at least a week. You have promised me your confidence and I expect that, for if a word of this gets out anywhere my daughter’s reputation will be ruined. Hence, as a show of my own gratitude for your discretion, I shall leave you the greys regardless of your final decision.’

‘I cannot accept them.’

‘Here is a document I have written up for your perusal and I earnestly hope to hear from you presently.’

With that he was gone, his glass emptied on the desk and a fat envelope left beside it. Daniel was in two minds as to what to do: send it back unopened with a curt message containing his lack of interest or open it up and see what was inside.

Curiosity won out.

The sheet before him was witnessed by a city lawyer whose qualifications seemed more than satisfactory. It was also signed by his daughter.

‘Damn. Damn. Damn.’ He whispered the words beneath his breath. The girl had been told of all this and still wanted the travesty? Finishing his brandy, he poured himself another as he read on, barely believing what was written.

He was to marry Amethyst Amelia Cameron before the month was finished on the condition that he have no relations with any other woman for two years afterwards.

Shocked to the core, he took a good swallow of the brandy. Amethyst Amelia Cameron would allow her father to sell her for the promise of what? Under the law any daughter could inherit money, chattels and unentailed property from a dying father and he obviously loved her. Besides, she had experience in the business and had turned profits for many a year. Cameron had told him that himself. So what was it that she would gain from such an arrangement? They barely knew each other and, even given she was from the trading classes, an heiress of her calibre could garner any number of titled aristocrats who were down on their purse.

As he was?

‘Hell!’ Daniel threw the parchment into a drawer and slammed it shut, but the promises festered even unseen, malevolent and beguiling.

How on earth had Cameron known so much about his financial difficulties? Would Goldsmith truly call in his brother’s loans against Montcliffe before he was ready for them? If he did that, Daniel would be forced to sell the town house, the manor, the surrounding farms and any chattels that would fetch something. Then the Wyldes would be homeless, moneylenders baying for their blood and all the claws unsheathed.

If it was just him, he might have been able to manage, but Cameron was perfectly correct; his sisters were young, his grandfather was old and his mother had always found her gratification in the position the earldom afforded them in society and had freely spent accordingly.

Standing, he walked to the window and looked out over the gardens, swearing as he saw the two greys tied to a post by the roadside and his butler near them, looking more than bewildered.

He had left them just as he’d said. It was begun already. Daniel turned to the doorway and hurried through it.

* * *

‘I think he took my proposal very well.’ Robert Cameron sipped at the sweet tea Amethyst had brought him and smiled.

‘You do?’

‘He is a good man with sound moral judgement and a love for his family.’

Amethyst bit into a ginger biscuit, wiping the crumbs away from her lips.

‘So he signed his name to the deed?’

‘Not quite.’

‘He didn’t sign it?’

Her father looked up. ‘He told me that I was a bastard for even suggesting such a thing and said that I should get out.’

‘But you left the greys?’

‘I did.’

‘And he has as yet not sent them back?’

‘He has not.’

‘Then it is a good omen.’

Robert frowned. ‘I hope so, Amethyst, I really do.’

Amethyst tried her hardest to smile. Papa had become thinner and thinner no matter what she might get their French chef to feed him and he had taken to striding about the house at night...watching. He was scared and those that might harm them for their money were becoming braver. The daylight attack near Tattersall’s had made her father paranoiac about any movement in their street, any unknown face around the warehouse. Nay, he was eating himself up with worry and she could allow it no longer.

Papa wanted her to be protected and he desperately wanted her to trust in a man again. With time running out for her father Amethyst had allowed him the choice of her groom. Said like that it sounded abhorrent, but nothing was ever as black and white as one might imagine and right now she wanted her father to smile.

‘We shall wait a week. If Lord Montcliffe has not come back to us by then with an answer, we will visit him together.’ She injected a jaunty positive note into her words but everything in her felt flat.

Gerald Whitely’s face shimmered in her memory. The feel of his anger was still there sometimes, just beyond touch, his angry words and then his endless seething silence. A relationship that had blinded sense and buried reason, one bad decision following another until there was nothing left of any of it.

Cold fingers closed over the cross at her throat. Her father was the one person who had stayed constant in her life and she would do whatever it took to see that he was happy. Anything at all.

‘Your mother made me promise to see you flourish, Amy. They were the last words she spoke to me as she slipped away and I had hoped that you would, but after Whitely...’ He stopped, his voice wavering and frighteningly thin. ‘Lord Montcliffe will make you remember to laugh again. He loves horses and they love him back. Any man who can win the trust of an animal is a good man, an honest man, and I can see that in him when I look him in the eyes.’

She hoped her smile did not appear false as he held her hand, the dearness of the gesture so familiar.

‘Promise me you will try to give him all your heart, body and soul, Amethyst. No reservations. It is how your mama loved me and there is no defence for a man against a woman like that. Such strength only allows growth and wonder between a married couple and I know you have been saddened by love...’

She shook his words away, the reminder of bitterness unwanted. Her choice, cankered before it had even begun.

‘When death claimed Gerald Whitely, my love, I was not sorry. Sense tells me that you were not either.’

So he knew of that? Another shame. A further deceit that had not remained hidden.

‘It was the Cameron fortune Gerald was after, Papa. Perhaps Lord Montcliffe and he are not so unalike after all?’

But her father shook his head. ‘Whitely fashioned his own demise. Daniel Wylde is only trying to clean up after the mistakes of his brother and father and is doing so to protect the family he has left.’

‘A saint, then?’ She wished that the caustic undertone in her words was not quite so unmistakable.

‘Hardly. But he is the first man you have given a second glance to. The first man who has made you blush. Such attraction must account for something because it was the same with Susannah and me.’

Despite everything she smiled. ‘I imagine that Lord Montcliffe has that effect upon everybody whoever meets him, Papa. I was not claiming him for myself.’

‘Because you do not trust your judgements pertaining to the acquisition of a husband, given the last poor specimen?’

Her father had never before, in the year since his death, spoken of Gerald Whitely in this way. That thought alone lent mortification to her sinking raft of other emotions.

Failure. It ate at certainty like a large rat at a wedding feast. Once she had chosen so unwisely she felt at a loss to ever allow herself such a mandate again. Perhaps that was a part of the reason she did not rally against her father’s arguments. That and the yellowing shades of sickness that hung in the whites of his eyes.

Death held a myriad of hues. Gerald’s had been a pale and unholy grey when she had seen him laid out in the undertaker’s rooms. Her mother’s had been red-tinged, a rash of consequence marked into the very fabric of her skin and only fading hours after she had taken her final and hard-fought breath.

Amethyst’s nails dug deep into her thighs as she willed such thoughts aside. A long time ago she had been a happier person and a more optimistic one. Now all she could manage was the pretence of it.

It was easier to allow Papa the hope of joy in his final months, the illusion of better times, of children, of the ‘heart and body and soul’ love her father had felt for her mother and which he imagined was some sort of a God-given rite of passage. Once she had believed in such a thing as well, but no longer.

All she could muster now was a horror for anything that held the hint of intimacy.

Blemished. Damaged. Hurt.

Daniel Wylde would understand sooner or later the payment required for the Cameron fortune and she was sure he would feel every bit as cheated as she did. But at least Papa would go to his grave believing that his only daughter was safe and happy, the soldier earl he had chosen for her strong enough to ward off any threats of menace.

She leaned down and picked up a small coin from a collection on a plate, balancing it in her palm before flipping it over. If it shows heads this marriage will work and if it does not... When the coin fell to tails she chastised herself for playing such silly games.

* * *

When Daniel returned from an outing later in the day his mother was ensconced in the drawing room at the Montcliffe town house, a glass of his finest brandy in her hand and a thoughtful look upon her face.

‘Have you been procuring new horseflesh, Daniel? There is a pair of magnificent greys in your stable and I just wondered...’

‘They were a gift, Mother. I did not purchase them.’

‘A gift? From whom?’ The silk in the gown Janet, Lady Montcliffe, wore matched her eyes exactly, a deep sapphire blue. A new possession, he supposed, thinking of the demand for payment that would come across his desk before much longer.

He could have been truthful, could have simply stated that there was a possibility he would be married and that the greys had been a pre-wedding present, but something made him stop. Anger, he supposed, and shame and the fact that to voice such a thing might make it feel more real and true.

With the Camerons he felt removed from society. In their company the preposterous proposed union made a sort of skewed sense that it didn’t here in front of his mother.

When he didn’t answer, his mother remarked, ‘Charlotte Hughes is back from Scotland. I saw her today at the Bracewells and she asked after you. She is looking a picture of health and wealth and was sporting a necklace with an emerald attached to it the size of a walnut.’

‘I am no longer interested in Lady Mackay, Mama.’ He stressed her married name.

‘Well, she seemed more than interested in your whereabouts. She had heard of the fracas at La Corunna, of course, and was most concerned about the injury to your leg. There were tears in her eyes when I told her of it and such compassion is heartwarming.’

Daniel interrupted her. ‘Is that my French brandy you are drinking?’ Crossing to the cabinet, he found the bottle and frowned as he saw there was barely any left. His whole family had been falling apart for years. His mother with her drink, his brother with his gambling and his sisters with their brittle sense of entitlement and whining. Only his grandfather had seemed to hold it together, though his body was letting him down more and more often.

‘If you are going to lecture me about the evils of strong drink...’

Daniel shook his head. ‘This evening I cannot find the energy to do so. If you wish to kill yourself by small degrees with your misplaced grief for my brother’s stupidity...’

‘Nigel was a good boy...’

‘Who mortgaged the Montcliffe property to the hilt as a payment for his escalating gambling habit.’

‘He was trying to save the estate. He was trying to make everything right again,’ she insisted.

‘If you believe that, Mama, then you are as deluded as he was.’

His mother finished the glass of brandy and stood. ‘The military campaign in Spain and Portugal has made you different, Daniel. Harder. A man of distance and callousness and I do not like what you have become.’

The sound of screams on a march from Hell with winter eating up any hope for warmth. Dead soldiers stripped of clothes and boots by others needing cover in the middle of a relentless freeze, and hundreds of miles left to reach the coast and to safety. Aye, distance came easily with such memories.

‘In less than six months the Montcliffe properties will be bankrupt.’

He had not meant to say it like this, so baldly, and as his mother paled a compassion he had long since let go of spiked within.

‘I have tried to tell you before, Mother. I have tried to make you understand that Nigel finished what our father started, but I can no longer afford to say it kindly. The estate lies precariously on the edge of insolvency.’

‘You lie.’

‘The bank won’t lend the Montcliffe estate another penny and I have been warned that Goldsmith could call in one of Nigel’s outstanding loans before the end of this month.’

‘But Gwendolyn is to be presented in court and all the invitations to a soirée are written out. Besides, I have also just ordered several ball dresses from Madame Soulier. I cannot possibly curtail. If I do, others shall know of our plight and we shall suffer a very public shaming. Why, I could not even bear such a thing.’

Turning, Daniel held his breath, the guilt of Nigel’s death eating at his equanimity. Years ago they had been close and he wondered if his time away from England in the army had left his brother exposed somehow. Lord knew his mother and sisters were unremitting in their demands. If he had been here, would he have been able to bolster Nigel’s will and made him stronger, allowing him a sounding board for good sense and bolder decisions in the economic welfare of Montcliffe?

Taking a deep breath, he faced his mother directly. ‘There is only one way that I can see of navigating the Montcliffe inheritances out of this conundrum.’

His mother wiped the tears from her eyes and looked up at him. He had never seen her appear quite as old and lined.

‘How?’

‘I can marry into money.’

‘Old money?’ Even under duress his mother remained a snob.

‘Or money earned from the toil of hard labour and lucky breaks.’

‘Trade?’ The word was whispered with all the undercurrents of a shout.

‘The alternative is bankruptcy,’ he reminded her grimly.

‘You have someone in mind?’

He could not say it, could not toss Amethyst Amelia Cameron’s name into the ring of fire his mother had so effortlessly conjured up, a sneer on her lips and distaste in her blue eyes.

‘Your father would be turning in his grave at such a suggestion. Marry one of the Stapleton girls, they would have you in a second, or the oldest Beaumont chit. She has made no secret of setting her cap at you.’

‘Enough, Mother.’

‘Charlotte Hughes, then, despite her foolish marriage. She has always loved you and you had strong feelings for her once. Besides, she is a lot more flush these days...’

‘Enough.’ This time he said it louder and she stopped.

‘You have no true understanding of the difficulties that face me, Daniel...’

Her words were slightly slurred and he interrupted her. ‘Your line in the sand is in danger of being washed away by strong drink, Mother, and it would help if you listened rather than argued. If you made some sacrifice in the family spending and pared down on the number of dresses and bonnets and boots you required, we may have some ready cash to tide us over whilst I try to extricate us from this Godforsaken mess.’

Already she was shaking her head. Sometimes he wondered why he had not just left and taken ship to the Americas, leaving the lot of them to wallow in the cesspool of their own making.

But blood and duty were thicker than both fury and defeat and so he had stayed, juggling what was left of the few assets against what had been lost into the wider world of debt.

If Goldsmith was to foreclose as Cameron had intimated he would? He shook away the dread.

So far he had not needed to sell any of the furniture or paintings in the London town house and so the effect of great wealth remained the illusion it always had been.

The avenues of escape were closing in, however, and he knew without a doubt that it was weeks rather than months for any monies left in the coffers to be gone. Nay, Cameron’s option of a marriage of convenience was the only way to avoid complete ruin.

Upending her glass, his mother called her maid, heavily relying on the guiding arm of her servant as she stood.

‘I shall speak with you again when you are less unreasonable.’ The anger in her voice resonated sharply.

Brandy, arrogance and hopelessness. A familiar cocktail of Wylde living that had taken his father and brother into the afterlife too early.

He wondered if he even had the strength to try to save Montcliffe.

* * *

He met Lady Charlotte Mackay four days later as he exited the bank where he had spent an hour with the manager, trying to piece together some sort of rescue plan allowing the family estate a few more months of grace. And failing. His right leg hurt like hell and he had barely slept the night before with the pain of it.

Charlotte looked just as he remembered her, silky blonde curls falling down from an intricate hat placed high on her head. Her eyes widened as she saw it was he. Shock, he thought, or pity. These days he tried not to interpret the reaction of others when they perceived his uneven gait.

‘Daniel.’ Her voice was musical and laced with an overtone of gladness. ‘It has been an age since I have seen you and I was hoping you might come to call upon me. I have been back from Edinburgh for almost a sennight and had the pleasure of meeting your mother a few days ago.’

‘She mentioned she had seen you.’

‘Oh.’

The conversation stopped for a second, the thousand things unsaid filling in the spaces of awkwardness.

‘I wrote to you, of course, but you did not answer.’ Her confession made him wary, and as her left hand came up to wipe away an errant curl from her face he saw her fingers were ringless.

He could have said he had not received any missives and, given the vagaries of the postal system, she would have believed him. But he didn’t lie.

‘Marriage requires a certain sense of loyalty, I have always thought, so perhaps any communication between us was not such a good idea.’

Small shadows dulled the blue of her irises. ‘Until a union fails to live up to expectation and the trap of a dreary routine makes one’s mind wander.’

Dangerous ground this. He tried to turn the subject. ‘I heard your husband was well mourned at his funeral.’

‘Death fashions martyrs of us all.’ Her glance was measured. ‘Widowhood has people behaving with a sort of poignant carefulness that is...unending and a whole year of dark clothes and joylessness has left me numb. I want to be normal again. I am young, after all, and most men find me attractive.’

Was this a proposition? The bright gown she wore was low-cut, generous breasts nestling in their beds of silk with only a minimal constraint. As she leaned forward he could not help but look.

The maleness in him rose like a sail in the wind, full of promise and direction, but he had been down this pathway once before and the wreck of memory was potent. He made himself stand still.

‘I have learnt much through the brutal consequences of mistakes, but I am home alone tonight, Daniel. If you came to see me, we might rekindle all that we once had.’

Around them others hurried past, an ordinary morning in London, a slight chill on the air and the calling voices of street vendors.

He felt unbalanced by meeting her, given their last encounter. Betrayal was an emotion that held numerous interpretations and he hadn’t cared enough to hear hers then.

But Charlotte Mackay’s eyes now held a harder edge of knowledge, something war had also stamped on him. No longer simple. Two people ruined by the circumstances of their lives and struggling to hold on to anything at all. The disenchantment made him tired and wary and he was glad to see her mother hurrying towards them from the shop behind, giving no further chance of confidence.

Lady Wesley had changed almost as much as her daughter, the quick nervous laughter alluding to a nature that was teetering on some sort of a breakdown.

‘My lord. I hope your family is all well?’

‘Indeed they are, ma’am.’

‘As you can see, our Charlotte is back and all in one piece from the wilds of Scotland.’

When he failed to speak she placed her arm across her daughter’s. The suspicion that she was trying to transmit some hidden signal was underlined by the whitened skin over her knuckles. Charlotte looked suddenly beaten, the fight and challenge drained away into a vacuous smile of compliance.

Perhaps the Wesley family was as complex and convoluted as his own. Jarring his right foot, he swore to himself as they gave their goodbyes. His balance was worsening with the constant pain and the headache he was often cursed with was a direct result of that.

If the Camerons were to know the extent of his infirmity, would they withdraw their offer? Robert Cameron had told him that his daughter needed a strong husband. A protector. The beat of blood coursing around the bullet in his thigh was more distinct now just as the specialist he had seen last month had predicted it would become. If he left it too much longer, he would be dead.

The choice of the devil.

He had seen men in Spain and Portugal with their limbs severed and their lives shattered. Even now in London the remnants of the ragtag of survivors from the battlements of La Corunna still littered the streets, begging for mercy and succour from those around them.

He couldn’t lose his leg. He wouldn’t. Pride was one thing but so was the fate of his family. Dysfunctional the Montcliffes might be, but as the possessor of the title he had an obligation to honour.

For just a moment he wished he was back in Spain amongst his regiment as they rode east in the late autumn sunshine along the banks of the Tagus. The rhythm of the tapping drums and a valley filled with wildflowers came to mind, the ground soft underfoot and the cheers of the waving Spanish nationals ringing in his ears. A simple and uncomplicated time. A time before the chaos that was to be La Corunna. Even now when he smelt thyme, sage or lavender, such sights and sounds returned to haunt him.

The London damp encroached into his thoughts: the sound of a carriage, the calls of children in the park opposite. His life seemed to have taken a direction he was not certain of any more; too wounded to re-enlist, too encumbered by his family and its problems to simply disappear. And now a further twist—a marriage proposal that held nothing but compromise within it.

He tried to remember Amethyst Cameron’s face exactly and failed in his quest. The dull brown of her hair, the wary anger in her eyes, a voice that was often shrill or scolding. The prospect of marriage to her was not what he had expected from his life, but in the circumstances what else could he do?

His eyes caught the movement of a little girl falling and scuffing her knees. An adult lifted her up and small arms entwined around the woman’s neck, trusting, needing. Daniel imagined fatherhood would be something to be enjoyed, though in truth he had seldom been around any children. He turned away when he saw the woman watching him, uncertain perhaps of his intentions.

He was like a shadow, filled in by flesh and blood, but hurt by the empty spaces in his life. He wanted a wholeness again, a certainty, a resolve. He wanted to laugh as though he meant it and be part of something that was more than the shallow sum of his title.

If he did not marry Amethyst Amelia Cameron, the heritage of the Montcliffe name would be all but gone, a footnote in history, only a bleak reminder of avarice and greed. Centuries of lineage lost in the time it took for the bailiffs to eject the Wyldes from their birthright. The very thought of such a travesty made him hail a cabriolet. He needed to go home and read the small print and conditions of the Cameron proposal. He could not dally any longer.

A sort of calmness descended over the panic. His life and happiness would be forfeited, but there might be some redress in the production of a family. Children had no blame in the affairs of their parents and at thirty-three it was well past time that he produce an heir. An heir who would inherit an estate that was viable and in good health. An estate that would not be lost to the excesses of his brother or the indifference of his father.

Such a personal sacrifice must eventually come to mean something and he was damn well going to make certain that it did.

Chapter Three

The note came the seventh day after they had last seen him, a tense and formal missive informing them that Lord Daniel Wylde, the sixth Earl of Montcliffe, would be calling upon them at two in the afternoon.

Amethyst had been watching for him by the large bay window in the downstairs salon and she stiffened as she heard his carriage draw to a stop on the roadway in front of the house. Lord Montcliffe was here. She looked across at her father, his fingers knocking against his side in the particular way he had of showing concern. It did not help at all.

There were tea and biscuits already set out on the table and the finest of brandy in an unopened bottle. Every glass had been meticulously cleaned and snowy-white napkins stood at attention beside the plate of food, well ironed and folded.

‘Lord Daniel Wylde, the Earl of Montcliffe, sir.’ The butler used his sternest voice and made an effort not to look at anyone. Amethyst had instructed him on the exact art of manners before their guest had arrived.

And then the Earl was there, dressed in dark blue, the white cravat tied at his throat in the style of a man who hadn’t put too much care into it. Not a fop or a dandy. She was pleased, at least, for that.

‘Sir.’ He looked at her father. ‘Miss Cameron.’ He did not even deign to glance her way, the anger on his brow eminently visible. The folder that Papa had made ready with the documents outlining the terms of their betrothal was in his hands. Each knuckle was stretched white. ‘I accept.’

He threw the deeds on the table where they sat between the fine brandy and the fresh biscuits.

I accept.

Two words and she was lost into both method and madness; the Cameron fortune would remain intact and her own fate was sealed. For good or for bad. She felt her heart beating loud and heavy and, placing her hand on her breast, she pressed down, wanting this moment to stop and start again as something else.

But of course it did not.

‘You accept?’ Her father’s voice was businesslike and brisk—a trader whose whole life had consisted of brokering arrangements.

The Earl nodded, but the expression on his face was stony. An agreement dragged from the very depths of his despair and nothing to be done about any of it. He knew as little of her as she did of him; two pawns in a game that was played for stakes higher than just their happiness alone. She had always known that, since the pounds had begun to roll into the Cameron coffers from the lucrative timber trade to and from the Americas. Great fortunes always came with a price.

‘You have signed every condition, then?’ Her father again. She thought he sounded just as he did when he was clinching a deal for the sale of a thousand yards of expensive American mahogany and she wondered at his calm and composure. She was his only daughter and again and again in her lifetime her father had insisted that she must marry for love.

Love? Unexpectedly she caught the eyes of the Earl. Today the green was darker and distrusting. Still, even with the stark fury of coercion on his face, Daniel Wylde was the most beautiful man she had ever had the pleasure of looking upon.

Such looks would crucify her, for nobody would believe that he might have freely chosen her as his bride. She swallowed and met his glance. No use going to pieces this late in the game when the joy on her father’s face was tangible. Papa had not appeared as happy for months.

‘This is your choice too, Miss Cameron?’

‘It is, my lord.’ The floor beneath her began to waver, all the lies eliciting a sort of unreality that made her dizzy.

‘You understand the meaning of the documents then?’ he pressed.

‘I do.’ A blush crept up her throat as she thought of the clause stipulating the two years of monogamy. Her father’s addition, that proviso, and though she had argued long and hard with him to remove it, Robert was not to be shifted.

Montcliffe turned away. The stillness she had noticed outside Tattersall’s was magnified here, a man who knew exactly his place in the world and was seldom surprised by anything.

Save for this marriage of convenience.

‘I hope then that the person you placed to look into my financial affairs can be trusted, Mr Cameron. If word were to leak out about my straitened circumstances and this unusual betrothal, I doubt I could protect your daughter from the repercussions.’

‘Mr Alfred Middlemarch, my lawyer, is a model of silence, my lord. Nary a stray word shall be uttered.’

Their parlourmaid knocked timidly at the door, asking if she could come in to pour the tea. The Earl crossed the room to stand by the fireplace and chose brandy for his sustenance. When Hilda filled his glass to a quarter inch from the top Amethyst winced. On reflection, she thought, perhaps such a task was supposed to belong to the lady of the house and she wished she had not instructed the maid to return to do it. It was seldom that they had such lofty visitors and every small detail of service took on an importance that it previously never had.

Was this how she would live her life from now on? she wondered. On the edge of eggshells in case she were to inadvertently place a clumsy foot wrong? The tutors at Gaskell Street had tried their best with the vagaries of manners, but she imagined they had had about as much practice with the higher echelons of London society as she had.

To give Montcliffe some credit he sipped his tipple carefully from the top before placing the glass down on a green baize circle especially designed for such a purpose. She doubted her father had ever used them before, her eyes catching circles of darkness in the white oak where errant drinks had seeped into the patina of the wood.

Blemished, like them, the outward appearance of Papa and herself reflecting a life that had been lived in trade and service, with little time left for the niceties of cultured living. Amethyst wished she had at least gone out and bought a sumptuous dress for this occasion, something that might lift the colour of her skin into lustre.

She smiled at such a nonsense, catching the Earl’s eyes again as she did so. When he looked away she saw that the muscle under his jaw quivered. In distaste? In sympathy? Usually she found people easy to read, but this man was not.

‘I will announce our betrothal in The Times next week, if that is to your liking, Miss Cameron.’

So few days left?

‘Thank you.’ She wished her voice sounded stronger.

‘I should not want a complicated ceremony given our circumstances.’ A slight shame highlighted Daniel Wylde’s cheeks after he said this and it heartened her immensely. He was not a man in the habit of being rude to women, then? She clutched at the cross at her throat and felt relieved.

Her father pressed on with his own ideas. ‘I was thinking we might hold the ceremony here, my lord, with a minister from our Presbyterian church, of course, and any of your family and friends you care to invite. I would have the first of the money promised transferred into your bank account within the week.’

The give and the take of an agreement. Again Daniel Wylde looked at her as if waiting for her to speak. Did he imagine she might stand up and negate all that her father had so carefully planned? Montcliffe had seen just exactly what those who might hurt her father were capable of. Lord, she brought her hand up and felt the scar just beneath the heavy wig at her nape. It still throbbed sometimes in the cold and the headaches had never quite abated.

‘After the nuptials we will repair to my family seat north of Barnet.’

‘No!’ It was the first real alarm Amethyst had felt. ‘I need to be close to Papa and as he is retiring to Dunstan House then this is where I should like us to live...’

‘I am certain we can work something out, my dear.’ Her father now, placating such an outburst.

Again she shook her head, the pulse of her blood beating fast. ‘I want to add a condition that I may live at Dunstan House, though if the Earl wishes to reside at Montcliffe Manor, then he may.’

‘Difficult to fulfil the clause of mutual cohabitation for a full two years if that is the case, Miss Cameron.’ His voice held a timbre of irony.

The clause her father had insisted upon. She glared at Robert, but kept her silence and was unexpectedly rescued by the very one she thought she would not be.

‘It does not signify. We will reside wherever you wish to.’ The Earl’s tone was slightly bored. An unwanted wife. An unwelcomed cohabitation. Easier just to take the money and acquiesce.

‘Then that is settled.’ Her father, on the contrary, looked pleased with himself. The thought that perhaps he had over-exaggerated his own illness came to Amethyst’s mind, but she dismissed this in the face of his extreme thinness. ‘We shall ask if the children from Gaskell Street can be a part of the choir...’

‘A small and simple wedding would be better, Papa.’

‘I agree.’ Lord Montcliffe spoke again. ‘My family, however, are proponents of the High Anglican faith.’

‘Then you bring your man of God and the service can be shared.’ Papa had hit his stride now and the Earl looked to have no answer to such an unconventional solution. In fact, he looked plainly sick.

‘A good solution, I think,’ Robert went on to say. ‘Then we can all be assured that you will be most properly married.’ Standing after such a pronouncement, he walked to the door. ‘But now I shall leave you alone for a few moments. I am sure there are things you might wish to say to one another without my presence to inhibit you.’

Amethyst glanced away, her father’s words embarrassing and inappropriate. What could the Earl and she possibly have to talk about when there was a palpable distrust in the air? Usually Papa was more astute at reading the feelings of others and seldom acted in a manner that she found disconcerting.

When the door closed behind him, softly pulled shut inch by inch, Lord Montcliffe looked straight at her.

‘Why would you agree to this charade, Miss Cameron?’

She asked him another question quickly back. ‘Did you love your father, my lord?’

He looked perplexed as he answered, ‘No.’

That threw her momentarily, but she made herself continue on. ‘Well then, I think you must understand that I truly do love mine. Father, I mean.’ Her voice shook. She was making a hash of this. ‘Papa is ill and his one and only wish is to see me well protected and cared for. He is so ill that I fear—’ She stopped, the words too shocking to say.

‘Then why choose me in particular?’ The tone of his fury was recognisable.

‘You liked horses and you made it your business to save Papa from the attack in the alley when you could have so easily just gone on. I do not wish for a mean husband or an inconsiderate one, you understand. Also the army has made you strong. Another advantage, if you like.’

‘A trade-off, then? Like the timber your father imports?’

‘Exactly.’ This was turning out to be a lot easier than she had hoped.

‘Damn.’ He swore and reached forward to tip her face up to his own.

‘Are you truly as cold-blooded as that, Miss Cameron?’ His green eyes narrowed as if he was listening for an answer and Amethyst was simply caught in the unexpected warmth of them. Paralysed. The darker green rim was threaded with gold.

‘So there is no more to this agreement than the plain and blunt terms of commerce?’ He let her go as she twisted away, uncertain of the words that he was saying and even more uncertain of her own reaction to them.

‘If my father had not been ailing, I should not even be thinking of a betrothal, my lord, but he is fearful and fidgety and the doctor had made it clear that unless he relaxes and stops worrying...’ She swallowed, her bottom lip wobbling. ‘Your estate is falling into pieces about your feet and my father is dying. Our alliance should stave off the consequences of them both, yours for ever, and mine even for just a while. A business proposition, my lord, to suit us both.’

* * *

He turned away and walked to the window. No woman had ever spoken to him so plainly before. Usually the opposite sex fawned about him, the wiles of femininity well practised and honed and saying all that they thought he wished to hear.

Miss Amethyst Amelia Cameron seemed to possess none of these qualities and he was at a loss to know how to proceed.

‘So I could have been anyone?’

When she did not answer, he added, ‘Anyone with a dubious fiscal base and a strong military background?’

She looked over at him then with the directness that was so much part of her, a frown marring her forehead. ‘You needed to be unmarried, of course, and not too old.’ He was about to speak when she took a breath and carried on further. ‘I also sincerely hope that I have not taken you from the arms of someone you love, for if that is the case I should absolve you from all the agreements between us. As a measure of good faith we would throw in the greys as a means to buy your silence on such a sensitive matter.’

He swore again and she flinched. The worth of the greys would not begin to cover the debts of Montcliffe.

‘Why did you not choose a man you have some tendre for or one you had at least some notion of?’ While she was being so brutally frank he thought he might at least discover something of the woman he would be tied to.

Her hand went to brush away the hair from around her face in a feminine and uncertain gesture. Against the window and in the light of a harsh afternoon sun she looked almost beautiful, a strong loveliness that was not much lauded in society these days, but one which caught at him in an unexpected twist of want. Not a woman of the same ilk as his sisters and mother with their constant neediness and fragility.

‘There is no one else.’ She did not even attempt platitudes.

Daniel had no experience of speaking with a woman who would not be cowed by his title or by him personally and for one unlikely moment he thought he might tell her just that. With an effort he gathered himself together.

‘Truth be told, Miss Cameron, I am caught in this ruse as certainly as you are.’

‘Then perhaps it would be wise for us both to make the best of it. I would not hound you for much time or for sweet words, my lord, but what I would ask is that around my father you pretend a tendre, allowing him the contentment he deserves in what little is left of his life.’

‘Would your mother have approved of you being such a martyr?’

A flash of anger came into her eyes, lighting the brown to a clear and brittle velvet. He was surprised by such a quick change. Not quite the demure woman he had imagined, after all. ‘I think you forget, my lord, that I am as much a martyr to my family as you are to yours.’

‘Touché.’ Indeed she was right, the long line of Montcliffe ancestors all looking at him to save the Earldom for posterity. ‘And if your father dies sooner rather than later, are the conditions within our marriage null and void?’

Her face crumbled into sheer distress. ‘I sincerely pray that Papa should not succumb to his malady so readily, My lord. I should also impress upon you that putting aside a marriage so quickly would need to be most carefully handled.’

He almost laughed, thinking that she had no idea at all as to the whims of the ton in their dealings with the protection of large inheritances. Indeed, a hundred marriages that he knew of were conveniently forgotten about in the face of shapely courtesans and willing mistresses. Another thought also worried him. Perhaps in her circle of acquaintances such a truism was not as absolute.

He had never been a flagrant womaniser, but neither was he a man who would want to be bound for years in a union without love or respect.

When Robert Cameron came back into the room Daniel lost his chance to ask exactly what she thought to get from this alliance personally. Her father looked absurdly pleased with himself, a smile from one side of his face to the other.

‘I hope you have been able to find out a little about each other. My Amethyst was the cleverest of all the young ladies at her school, my lord, and won the first prize for academic endeavour for her year.’

‘I am certain he cannot be interested in such things, Papa, and—’

But Daniel did not allow her to finish. ‘Rest assured, Mr Cameron, I am.’

Her father frowned and helped himself to a drink. His bride-to-be stood perfectly still, a statue before the windows, her lustreless hair caught in the shafts of sunlight as she warned her father off saying more. Another darker thought suddenly occurred to him.

‘Have you had trouble with those who waylaid you before?’

Cameron looked at his daughter. God, Daniel thought, had Amethyst Cameron been hurt by the thugs, too?

‘The wheel of a carriage we were in sheared off just under a year ago because it had been cut almost right through,’ she answered, the fright in her eyes visible. ‘Our conveyance overturned a number of times and Papa and I were caught inside. We were out on business, you see, and those responsible knew we would be travelling on that road on that day.’ Daniel did not speak, but waited as she went on. ‘Papa was hurt a little and I was hurt a lot.’

‘Who are these people?’

‘Criminals who prey on those who might afford to pay them. Men who see an opportunity in the threatening of others and who with a great amount of force can intimidate without fear of redress.’ Robert gave him this answer.

‘So you refused their demands?’

‘You pay once and you never get free,’ Amethyst answered, her eyes daring him to criticise things that he knew nothing about. ‘People have been brought in to protect us since, and this was working well until...’ She faltered.

‘Until I found your father in the alley a few moments away from having the life being beaten out of him?’

Unexpectedly she smiled. ‘They were more afraid of you than any man Papa had employed before. It is one of the reasons we offered you the marriage agreement.’

‘I see.’ Did these people always have to be so wearingly honest in their truths? Daniel’s own jaded understanding of principle had long ago been leached from him and there was a sort of brave virtue in such directness. The ton would tear such rectitude to pieces, he thought, and wondered how life could mould people so differently.

‘Have those demanding money ever contacted you in the form of a letter?’

Robert took over the discourse now. ‘Once they did. More normally they just turn up unannounced at the warehouse door.’

‘Do you still have the correspondence?’

‘Yes.’

‘And yet you have not sought anyone to help you in this matter?’

‘Help me?’ Robert’s voice was puzzled.

‘Threaten them back. Make them realise they were playing a game they had no hope of ever winning.’

* * *

The Earl’s tone was weary, Amethyst thought. The utter nuisance of having to deal with people of the trade who had a raft of bullies chasing after them was more than he wanted to consider. Why, he probably thought such inconvenience was par for the course, just another way to show how base and shabby those below him in rank really were.

She wondered if he would simply turn tail and let himself out of this room full of problems, his beautifully cut tailcoat showing off fine shoulders and the breeches long and tapered legs.

A man of reduced means but of great presence, a man whom women would watch with hope in their hearts. Even she had watched him as he had ascended the stairs with her father outside of Tattersall’s and dreamed that she was a different girl with softer hair falling to her hips in luxurious waves as he admired her.

Such nonsense made her smile. She was her father’s daughter with trade flowing through her less-than-exalted blood line, the hunt of a good deal or an unexpected profit making her life...whole. Women like her did not marry for love and men like Lord Daniel Wylde invariably chose the beautiful butterflies who were the toast of a society Season.

It was only lack of money that stopped him doing exactly that and thinking otherwise would lead to disappointment. The marriage agreement held as much fear for her as it did for him, but she needed her father protected and she wanted to see him face the last months of his life with hope.

She had visited his doctor alone on her own accord after her father had told her of his ailment. The specialist had reiterated that there was little more the medical fraternity could do, but had been most insistent on the medicinal value of hope. Miracles had arisen from a happy demeanour or a looked-forward-to occasion that the sick one had no intentions of missing. Aye, he had said in tones that bridged no argument, there were miracles in the benefits of laughter that even the greatest brains of the time had not yet figured out. ‘Keep him happy, Miss Cameron, and he may live longer. That is the only sage advice I can give you at this point.’

Well, Amethyst decided, she would do everything in her power to advance this theory and her papa would have each second of his life tempered with good humour and possibilities. She swore to the heavens above that this would be so.

A few moments later after a general conversation with her father on the merits of a horse that had won a recent race at Newmarket, Lord Montcliffe reached for his hat and made for the door, giving only the briefest of goodbyes to her as he left. A man who was being forced into something he plainly did not want and yet, given his circumstances, could not refuse.

They were so much the same, Amethyst thought, as the door shut behind him and the hollow silence that was left only underlined the awful truth of her musing.

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