Page 45 of Miss Harvey's Horribly Lovable Fiancé
“I advise my father on uses and improvements to his lands. One piece he owns along the River Ouse in Kent is favored by the Earl of Dalworthy and by Baron Bridges. They wish to improve it. They need either acceptance by my father, who owns the land outright, or they wish him to sell it to them. I have persuaded him of a third path.”
She appeared intrigued. “Go on.”
“They wish to shore up the banks against flooding and build a dam. I told them I would persuade my father to throw in with them to do a survey and improve the farmland, then build the dam.”
“Your father has never spent for the benefit of others.”
“So true.” He drew her closer. The rise of her breasts as she breathed in the man’s linen shirt was a gentle heave that had him longing to remove the thin cloth. “But he did this time.”
Her brown eyes flashed, wary. “Why? How?”
“I told him he must either sell the land to them and let them do what they will alone or keep the land, contribute his share to the financing of the improvements, and earn a percentage of the profits from the crop production each year.”
“And he agreed?”
“He did.” He removed her pins from her glorious golden mien and fanned her curls around her shoulders. Her pins weren’t doing a very good job of containing her hair anyway. She’d been too busy today running from him. Plus she’d left her valise with her toiletries at the Crab, too.
“Why?”
“Because I told him he must agree to one of those plans or face public disgrace.”
“Oh, but you hate gossip. You would never disparage his name to others.”
“No. But I told him I was finished giving him any monies at all. Never again will he receive anything from me. He had to sign our agreements or I would ensure that the Ouse River project would go on without him. I would contribute to it myself and give him no share of it.”
“It was his only recourse?”
“Exactly. It’s what I should have done long ago, but I was too bound up in hatred of public scandal that I failed to see the possibility.”
“So that means he has an income—”
“Whatever it amounts to—”
“From this project, thanks to you.” She stared at him with pride and pleasure dawning on her face.
“Thanks to Dalworthy and Bridges, more like.”
She cupped his cheeks and ran her fingers though his hair. “Oh, Giles!”
This smiling woman was the one he adored, the one he had to have as his wife.
“I am so proud of you,” she said. “Grateful too.”
Gratitude was not what he wanted from her. And the frustration of it had him growling. He rose up in the chair, his arms full of her, and he strode to the bed to plunk her on it. In a heart beat, he rose over her. “I don’t want your thanks.”
“No, no. But you have it in any case.” She grinned at him.
He settled beside her. “There is the matter of trust.”
She blinked. “What?”
“You don’t trust me.”
She had said that.
“Why not?”
“It is true. Where have you been? Where do you go when you disappear? Weeks after we met at Lady Wimple’s. Then after you asked for my hand. What do you do? Because if you have a mistress, I won’t st—”
