Page 11 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
“Your husband!” Nellie gasped. “I wasn’t aware that you had had a suitor.”
That was hardly surprising; Nellie hadn’t been aware of her association with Ian even years ago when first they had become involved. It was why Felicity had kept such a careful eye upon the girls in her care. She had learned from experience all the best ways to sneak from the safety of the house. To meet with a lover in secret. “It’s a very long story,” she reiterated wearily.
And not one she could tell until she could figure out how to do so without hurting Nellie’s tender feelings. Without casting blame upon her. Nellie might have gotten them into the frying pan—butshehad cast them straight into the fire.
∞∞∞
Ian supposed he ought not to have been able to hear the front door slam from his office, but somehow he did not find himself particularly surprised that Felicity had managed such a glorious display of temper. She must have wrestled the door away from Butler to do it.
The stamp of her shoes upon the stairs. The tall ceilings collected the sound, rolled it around like a crash of thunder, and sent it echoing through the house until it sounded as if there were a dozen of her marching in military fashion.
He reached for his pocket watch, reading the time just as his office door burst open. “You’re late,” he said as he set the watch upon the surface of the desk, positioned to face her instead. Eight twelve. His hour had begun.
“You stole Nellie’s home!” Felicity accused, a flush of fury gilding her cheeks.
“In fact, I bought it. For an exceptionally fair price, given its present state of disrepair. Sit,” he said, gesturing to the chair before his desk. “Have you eaten?”
“I had dinner at the school.” The devious little point of her chin notched higher. She made no move to take the seat he had offered. “You knew,” she said in that same snidely reproachful voice. “You knew I had made a bad bargain with you.”
From the moment she had stated her sum, which he had known would not have satisfied the outstanding balance on Mrs. Lewis’ mortgage. “It wasn’t my obligation to inform you otherwise,” he said. “You knew the terms of our agreement. You negotiated for better yourself, if you recall.”
“But not enoughbetter. And you knew it,” she said, and despite the flush of ire glowing in her face, despite the acid tone of her voice, there was the tiniest tremble of her chin and the slightest pinch of her lips. There was no doubt she was angry—she had every right to be, and he’d expected as much—but behind that fury was a battered pride, a sort of self-flagellation forhaving underestimated the lows to which he would stoop. She blamed herself for the loss of the building. Perhaps even more than she blamed himfor seizing the opportunity to take it.
Hell. “Sit,” he said again. “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. I have got fifty-eight minutes left. That’s quite a long while to be standing.”
“I’m accustomed to standing. I’m a teacher.”
“Not anymore.”
Her high color deepened. At her sides, her fingers twitched as if in want of something to grab to cast at his head. Perhaps even to throttle him.
“If it makes you feel any better,” he said, “you couldn’t have saved the building. I would have got it from Mrs. Lewis however I had to do it. If I had not, I doubt it would be much more than a few months before she’d lost the building entirely.”
Those sharply-winged brows lifted, just briefly. “What the hell do you mean by that?”
“I mean she would have lost it to someone else. She’s been fleeced of money for years to one degree or another; the fellow who made off with her investment was just the most brazen of the lot to date.” From the drawer of his desk, he removed a small stack of papers and slid them across to her. “While I don’t doubt that Mrs. Lewis’ financial acumen was once sufficient enough, she’s let quite a few things slip in the last year or two. I’m not the only one to have noticed. She’s been both short-changed andovercharged for various services from less than scrupulous tradespeople. Have you never noticed?”
Felicity sank into the chair at last as she collected the papers he’d offered to her, her brows pinching together as she began to read the various bills and statements of accrued debts he’d collected. “Nellie handles the accounting herself. How did you get these?” she asked.
“It wasn’t difficult. People are generally willing to provide such information when it comes with a promise of outstanding debts paid. I suppose they must have been laboring beneath the misapprehension that I have too much money to care whether or not a debt is legitimate.” After all, a few hundred pounds was a trifling sum to him. But they had made the mistake of swindling Felicity’semployer, and Felicity by extension. “They’ve all been paid,” he said. “But those ones presently in your hand—those are the merchants with whom the school will not do business again.” The ones who had taken advantage of an old woman who ought to have been enjoying her twilight years, happily managing the school to which she had dedicated herselffor so long.
Felicity breathed sharply through her nose, the tense lines of her face suggesting it was a struggle just at the moment to direct her ire only to him. “How the school is run and which merchants we patronize is not your business,” she said.
“It is when it is my money which finances it,” he said. “I don’t make a habit of allowing myself to be fleeced. Most will know better than to try, but there are always enterprising thieves willing to take advantage—”
“Such as yourself?”
“I did not steal from your friend.” It was an effort to keep his tone bland, to school his features to a careful neutrality.
“You took advantage of her. You took advantage of—”
“You?” he suggested. “I suppose I did.”
“And you’ve not even the faintest flickers of a conscience over it, have you?” With a nasty little sound of distaste, she cast the papers he’d given her aside, let them scatter across the corner of his desk.
“None whatsoever. It’s not as though your opinion of me could possibly fall any lower. So long as there is no hope of finding myself in your good graces, I fail to see why I ought to be afflicted with pangs of conscience.” A scratch at the door caught his attention. “That will be dinner, I expect.”
“I told you I didn’t want it,” she said as a pair of maids came into the room, carrying dinner trays.
