Page 63 of Snowy and the Seven Doves
He paused, remembering the moment when he set out to make that dream into reality.
“There was a woman. A wealthy widow. We had met her at an assembly, and she had—cast out lures, I suppose you could say. I had flirted back, but not with any intent. To me, at eighteen, she seemed old. I suppose she was nearing forty, though she was still an attractive woman.”
Margaret’s eyes were wide. “My goodness,” she said.
“Goodness had nothing to do with it,” Snowy assured her. “And yes, you have guessed it. I told her I needed the money and what I needed it for and offered my—um—bedroom skills for fifty guineas.”
The widow had laughed and told him he valued himself rather high. He gave her a demonstration of some of what he had learned as a randy youth surrounded by highly skilled girls keen to be his tutors.
She gave him the fifty guineas in return for a private contract, drawn up between the two of them. His services in a place and at a time of her choosing four times a week. He bargained her down from six months to three, and had made it clear that the times and places must not interfere with his commitments to lectures and tutorials.
The contract was unenforceable, Gary pointed out. If their arrangement came to light, Snowy would be hurled from the university, probably with some force. But Mrs. Below would face an even bigger scandal.
Snowy hadn’t cared. He had the fifty guineas, and he intended to keep his word, so the contract was nothing more than a record of the agreement. He bought one share, in his name and Gary’s. “You shall be my attorney,” he said, “and you can pay me twenty-five guineas back out of the money we earn.” Which Gary did. They partnered on that investment and those that followed, until Gary was as rich a man as Snowy.
“It was an easy way to make money,” he told Margaret. “When the three months were up, she offered me another fifty guineas, but she had told some of her closest friends I knew the ways of pleasure, and they entered into a bidding war.”
He grimaced. “I prefer to gloss over the next two years. It was lucrative, but I soon realized I was merely an object to be awarded to whichever one of them won the games they were always playing. Mrs. Bedlow won a week of my time at cards. Mrs. Furness beat the others at croquet and had me for two nights. Mrs. Chalmers picked the winning team in a boat race and carried me off to her husband’s hunting lodge. The whole thing gave me a disgust of well-bred women and their morals, which I’ve come to realize., in the past few weeks, was quite unbalanced and unfair.”
Margaret appeared as revolted as he had expected her to be. With him?
“So, in a sense, the flesh trade is the foundation of my wealth, Margaret. Lily and the other Blossoms paid for my education with their earnings. I paid for my first investments with mine. I vowed never to be used in that way again, and never to use another human being.”
Especially after his last Oxford affair, forced on him by the neglected mistress of the Warden of his college. She threatened to expose his activities to her lover if he did not give her what she wanted. Her aberrant tastes had nearly broken him. And Margaret did not need to hear about that.
She still said nothing, sitting quietly within reach, thinking over his story.
He couldn’t bear to wait for her judgement. “I hope… I have no right to expect… Can you overlook my past, Margaret?”
With hesitation, he reached for her hands, expecting her to turn him away; instead, she launched herself into his lap. “Dear Hal, how awful they all were, taking advantage of a boy in that way.”
Her comment startled a laugh out of him. Not because she was wrong, but because no one else who knew had ever seen it that way. “Gary thought I was the luckiest creature on earth, to have so many women fighting to get me into bed,” he told her. To be fair, Gary changed his mind over the two years of Snowy’s venture into commercial copulation and had even put his lawyerly mind to a scheme to extract Snowy from the clutches of the warden’s mistress.
“They did not fight over you. You were just the medal they passed around between them,” she replied, firmly, kissing the corner of his lips. “Horrid. No one deserves to be treated as less than a person.”
“You are an amazing woman, Margaret Lady Charmain,” Snowy told her. “I am finding it hard to believe you have promised to be mine.” He captured her lips with his, and she returned his kiss with such enthusiasm that his head spun. Or perhaps it was just all his blood leaving his brain for parts south.
“We have to stop,” he gasped, although his dazed brain could not quite articulate why.
“I suppose we must,” Margaret mourned, sounding so reluctant that he had to kiss her again. This time, it was she who stopped, drawing away just enough to say, “We ought to read the papers before Pauline comes home.”
Yes. That was the reason.“You are right,” he acknowledged. “In that case, dearest Margaret, will you please sit in your own chair? Having you in my arms is too tempting by far, and I can think of nothing except touching you.” He kissed her again, a quick peck on the corner of her lips, but released her as she took him at his word and moved away.
He took comfort at the way her hand lingered in his before she picked up the packages of documents and carried them to the desk.
“Pull up a chair, dearest. Let us finish this, and then kiss again,” she proposed.
*
The solicitors hadfollowed Margaret’s and Snowy’s instructions meticulously. Margaret couldn’t find anything in either the settlements or the wills that she needed to question.
The settlements were thorough and generous. Some of the provisions were dictated by the earldom, of course. The entailed lands and their incomes would remain in Margaret’s control if Snowy died before her and pass to their eldest son upon her death. In addition, Hal had insisted that her generous dowry should be set aside to provide her with income not connected to the title if she was widowed. If she died before Snowy, he would be trustee and guardian of the Charmain estates during their son’s minority, and the dowry would be split amongst their children.
Further dowry amounts were set aside for their daughters, and Snowy proposed that their second son should inherit the lands associated with his viscountcy if his claim was successful.
“Our eldest son will inherit my title as well as yours, of course,” Snowy had told her. “The Snowden solicitor says that Snowden and Ned renewed the entail on Ned’s birthday last year, but if Snowden is not the viscount, then the renewal is invalid. We can leave the lands where we wish, and I propose to entail them on our second son when he is old enough to make the agreement.”
They both had minor estates that could be given to younger sons, and these had been listed in the settlements, though the precise distribution would be established in their wills, as amended over the years. Meanwhile, they had each written a will to apply from the date of their wedding, providing for each possible scenario: all the possible combinations of dying together or one dying and the other surviving, and dying childless or leaving a daughter or a son.
