The Earl's Marriage Bargain (Liberated Ladies)

‘I look as I do because my luggage is in London and I have, indeed, been in an alehouse brawl. I am later than you requested because I had an obligation to a friend of mine who asked me on his deathbed to try and detach his sister from an unwise alliance. I was too late. She is married and took exception to my interference to the extent of setting her grooms on me.’ Ivo took the seat on the other side of the vast oak desk, noting that the Marquess still had no time for this modern fashion for furniture that did not look as though it had been hewn from a warship. He had not been invited to sit, but he was not going to stand there like a naughty schoolboy summoned for a caning.

His grandfather, eyes narrowed in thought, appeared not to notice this disrespect. Ivo wondered if that was tactical and the old man suspected he would not win every round against his grandson nowadays.

‘That will be the Parris chit, I imagine. I recall you were friendly with her brother when you were growing up. They had a family place near Longfield, had they not?’ he said, mentioning the estate Ivo’s father had used most. ‘Her aunts are raising a merry storm in London, so my correspondents tell me. Foolish creatures. Nothing to be done about it now. Clement Meredith seduced her, bedded her and wedded her, they say. Probably got a child in her belly by now if he’s got any sense. Is she of age?’ He pulled a wry expression when Ivo shook his head. ‘They’d do better to put a good face on it and spend their energies on making sure he cannot get his hands on her money.’

He focused su

ddenly on Ivo’s face. ‘I recall you and she had some boy-and-girl fancy for one another at one time.’

Ivo shrugged, apparently not nonchalantly enough to fool his grandfather.

‘Ah, so it was more than that. April and May foolishness. You are well out of it if she is capable of such behaviour. Are you telling me that she ordered her men to do you that much damage? Don’t pretend your ribs aren’t cracked—and what’s wrong with your shoulder?’

‘We had an understanding, but that’s all in the past,’ Ivo said, slouching back as casually as he could in the chair and ignoring the twinges in his ribs and shoulder. ‘But she was unhappy with me interfering and there were four of them. Nothing’s cracked, just bruised, and I got a knife in the shoulder. It has been stitched.’ He shrugged to demonstrate it was not too bad.

‘Pshaw.’ The older man made a disgusted face. ‘And Meredith let her do it? That is not the action of a gentleman. He should have called you out, not set his bullies on you.’

‘He was not there. This was all Daphne’s idea, it seems. Do you think I should now challenge him so I could kill him and fulfil my promise to Charles?’ he suggested wryly. ‘I do not think that he would expect me to go to the lengths of becoming an exile on his behalf.’

‘No, I do not suggest you fight him. The man’s a bounder, not a gentleman. And don’t you waste any more effort on the foolish chit, you’ve done all her brother could have expected of you.’

‘I promised I would do what I could,’ Ivo said. ‘I would have tried anyway. Even if she no longer feels anything for me, there is an obligation. Once I realised that they were wed I suspected that nothing was possible, but I hoped one of your squadron of high-flown lawyers might be able to advise her aunts on possibilities.’

‘Fulfil your promise at the expense of my purse, eh?’ His grandfather did not look displeased.

‘I will pay, but I need your advice on the best men to consult.’

The Marquess waved that away. ‘I almost married the silly girl’s grandmother. Fond of her—she had more brains than her granddaughter, it would seem! I’ll pay the lawyers for her sake. But do you have any money?’ he asked abruptly.

‘I have savings, my arrears of pay and whatever my father left me.’

‘That will not keep you as my heir should be kept. Here.’ The Marquess tossed a thin folder across the desk. ‘I have made these estates over to you. You’ll have the income from them—and the management, too. There’s too much for me to be worrying about these days. Your father had no head for business, not a lot in his cockloft, if we’re to be frank. Took after his mother.’ There was a faraway look in his eye for a moment. ‘Pretty thing, your grandmother, but I should have married Amelia Thistleton.’

Ivo didn’t feel there was much he could usefully add to that remark, but he had the feeling that something was still to come. He picked up the folder and leafed through, suppressing a whistle of surprise as he did so. His grandfather had handed over control of a good third of his substantial estates to him. Not the most valuable, of course—he knew enough about the family holdings to judge that, despite having spent his adult life in the army.

‘Which brings me to the crux of the matter,’ the Marquess said abruptly.

Ivo put down the folder and had no trouble looking attentive. What matter?

‘Not entangled with anyone else other than that foolish Parris chit, are you? You young officers seem to attract silly girls like a candle does moths. No harm in it, unless you don’t keep your wits about you and have to marry one of them, eh?’

‘I am not married, sir. I would, naturally, have informed you should I have taken such a step. My understanding with Daphne Parris was, I admit, not known to anyone but her brother, but I regarded it as binding.’

‘So you are not promised? No understanding with anyone?’

Ivo had experienced the sensation of being in the sights of a French sniper often enough to be familiar with the prickling sensation down his spine, the lifting of the hair on his nape. It was not amusing, being the hunted and not the hunter.

The old man appeared to think that Daphne had been a youthful fancy, that the engagement had been a mere boy-and-girl infatuation that would not have lasted. He was certainly not going to tell his grandfather about that moonlit evening when he and Daphne had kissed on the terrace and he had asked her to wait for him and she had said that she would, for ever, because she loved him.

‘What exactly is the point of these questions, sir?’

Find cover...

‘The point? Are you as dense as your father? Heirs, that’s the point. Why Matthew didn’t marry again when your mother passed away, I will never know. We would have had some spares if he had. I pushed enough chits with plenty of brothers and good wide hips in front of him, but, no. Too lazy or preferred his mistress. Found her less trouble than a wife, I imagine. But now there’s just you and the next in line is your cousin Alfred and he is... Well, let’s just say he’s not the marrying kind, damn it. And then it’s your Uncle Horace and I’ll not rest easy if I’m to be succeeded by that mealy-mouthed bishop of a son of mine.’

‘Uncle Horace does have six sons,’ Ivo pointed out. His youngest, and only surviving, uncle was, indeed, a prosy old bore. His sons, in reaction, it seemed, were a pack of hellions. ‘I am only twenty-seven, Grandfather. Plenty of time.’

‘Not when you’re throwing yourself at French siege works or getting beaten up by packs of hired bully boys, there isn’t,’ the Marquess growled. ‘Or your horse puts its foot in a rabbit hole or you have some other damn fool accident or another and then where are we?’ His son Matthew, Ivo’s father, had died in just such a random riding disaster.