Page 3 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
Had her face grown a trifle paler, or was it only the flicker of lamplight which created that wan complexion? “Do you?” he asked. “For what purpose?”
Her cheeks hollowed. “For the school,” she said in a flat, stilted monotone, clearly annoyed to have been required to convey information she was certain he already knew. “For Nellie. Did you do it? Did you—”
“Fleece her of her money?” he interjected.
“Yes.”
“No.” But he hadn’t stopped it, either. He had, of course, seen the slow-moving disaster unfolding long before it had occurred. And he had donenothing to avert it. Perhaps he had had no hand in the ill which had befallen her, but if he had had the inclination, hecouldhave chosen to intercede. But the fact that he had not done so had been what had brought her to his door at last.
Exactly where he wanted her.Ashe wanted her. Anxious, fraught, and desperate enough to bargain. She did not appear as if she much believed his claim to innocence, but then, it didn’t really matter whether or not she did. It wouldn’t change her situation. Or his. “There’s a saying,” he said. “Something about a fool and his money.”
“Don’t call Nellie a fool. It isn’t her fault.” Belatedly she seemed to have recalled that she had come here to beg his assistance, and that she ought to mind the sharpness of her tongue. Softening her tone, she continued, “She made a mistake. She doesn’t deserve to lose the school for it. She doesn’t deserve to—to—”
“Go to debtor’s prison.”
“Yes.” She licked her dry lips, her gaze shying away from his. “I can’t let that happen.”
“How much do you need?”
“Twelve hundred.”
Ian leaned back in his chair and gave a shrill, mocking whistle, startlingly loud in the silence of the room. “That’s hardly a pittance,” he said. “Twelve hundred.”
The slash of those sharp, winged brows once again, and her cheeks flushed a mottled red, stark against the pallor of the rest of her face. Probably she knew, every bit as much as anyone else, that there was little that went on in Brighton of which he was unaware. That he had known, down to the last pence, exactly what was owed, and to whom. But that he had wanted to hear hersayit.
Toask. To askhimto save her, to save her witless friend, to save the school that she loved so much.
“You understand, of course, that charity of such magnitude ill befits a businessman,” he said. “Twelve hundred pounds is well beyond what anyone could expect as a favor or a gift. Twelve hundred pounds is an investment.”
“The school will be profitable—”
“I don’t care about the damned school. I am not in the habit of giving something for nothing.” He could feel it there, that power that she had surrendered to him only by coming this evening. It nestled into the palm of his hand like a ball of twine, the loose end tied about her ankle like a shackle.One tug—
“What do you want?” she asked, and her hands flexed at her sides impotently.
“You know what I want,” he said. What he had always wanted. “I want to hear you say it.”
“Why?”
Because she had put him through ten years of hell. Of catching rare glimpses of her when their paths happened, by some chance, to cross. Because he had spent these last weeks anticipating this turn, and she had kept him waiting until the last possible moment.
Because he wanted to hear her say it aloud. To acknowledge it at last.
“Call it a condition,” he said. “You’ve come here to my house, at this hour of the night, to beg the sum of twelve hundredpounds from me. You can say the words. So tell me, Felicity. What do I want?”
For a moment she was still, silent. Praying, he thought, for some avenue of escape, some divine burst of inspiration that would solve her problems in one fell swoop—some other alternative to this. Any other.
There was nothing but him. He had known it weeks ago. Had been only awaiting this moment.
At long last she lifted her chin—that firm, stubborn chin which could hold a grudge within its elfin point for years upon years—squared her shoulders, narrowed her eyes into a glare of such icy frigidity that it could have frozen a lesser man in his tracks at twenty paces, and said, “Me.”
Chapter Two
Felicity’s palm itched to slap the smirk straight off of Ian’s face. He didn’t even bother to conceal his satisfaction. But then, he had not even pretended he had been surprised that she had come.
Probably he had known, all this time, precisely what Nellie owed. Precisely when her life as she had known it would end. If he had not, exactly, hung that Sword of Damocles over her head himself, then at the very least he had not warned her of it. Cunning and ruthless to the last, he had simply…let it fall. It balanced now upon the tip of his finger, mere inches above her neck.
It seemed impossible now, in the face of that flagrantly victorious expression, to consider that she had once loved him. So little remained of the boy she had adored within the man that sat behind that massive mahogany desk. He hadn’t even bothered to rise from his chair when she had entered the room, as any gentleman would for a lady. Determined to send a silent message that every bit of power was firmly within his grasp.
