Page 44 of Til Death Duke Us Part
He stomped back toward them. “I’m not in the mood for business negotiations.” A very foolish mood indeed, then. But that was the point. He was a fool. Like Persephone. Like himself? He must be mad.
“Not quite business… remember?” Mrs. Smith’s voice held an edge of worry now, but also one of wheedling.
Victor pinched the bridge of his nose. “State your business. Succinctly. I’ve no time for?—”
“Marriage,” Mr. Smith said. “To our daughter, Persephone.”
Victor opened his eyes, and his arm fell like dead weight to his side. “Marry Persephone? Why would I do that?” A million reasons why. A million reasons he couldn’t as well.
Mr. Smith stepped forward. “She would come with a generous settlement.”
“What would she get out of it?”
Mrs. Smith stepped forward. “She would get to be a duchess.”
Victor herded them back into the private parlor one long step at a time. “And you? What would you get out of it?”
“A duke as a son-in-law, of course. Social circles that are difficult for people like us to enter without particular connections. Access to investors of the transcendent class.”
The back of their legs hit a low sofa, and they fell together, breath rushing out of their lungs, surprise lighting their eyes. They composed themselves quickly as Victor towered over them, crossing his arms over his chest, legs spread wide.
“Well?” Mrs. Smith ventured.
“Do you accept our proposition?” Mr. Smith asked.
“Persephone,” Victor said, barely able to squeeze the name through his lips, past his rising rage, “is not a coin for you to barter with, you black-hearted imbeciles.”
They gasped. Their mouths hung open.
“How dare you?” Mr. Smith sputtered, rising.
Victor shoved him back down with a single finger to the man’s chest. “How dare you?”
“We’ve done nothing.” Mrs. Smith tried to rise, but Victor sat her once more with a single glance. “Nothing.” But she wouldn’t look at him anymore.
“Nothing but throw off your daughter and leave her destitute, in the poorest circumstances you can imagine.”
Mrs. Smith raised a hand. “Her husband?—”
“You knew he had died! Even if you disapproved of the man, you should have cared for her when she needed it most! I’m perfect by no stretch of the imagination, but even I would not have left her in such a situation, no matter how I’d disapproved of her choices before.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Mr. Smith mumbled.
“You exaggerate her situation,” Mrs. Smith insisted.
Victor threw a hand up, arching it across the room, and everything shifted, changed from bright and clean to shabby and dirty.
The Smiths gasped, embraced one another, as if by clinging to what they knew they could deny what Victor was showing them.
“Look at it,” Victor growled. “This is her room in London, across the corridor from a prostitute who seems to have more kindness in her exhausted fingertips than the two of you have in your whole bodies.” As if he could speak of kindness. Hypocrite. She’d called him that. She’d been right.
“I don’t believe you,” Mrs. Smith said, eyes glittering.
“Look at every damn detail. It’s true. Every inch of it. Sagging, breaking bed, leaking ceiling, spotted floor, thin walls, dusty cupboards. Her gowns threadbare and almost useless.”
“Yesterday—”
“I had glamoured her gown so no one knows. And she likes it, likes to look pretty, and she should get that little joy. But you denied her all pleasure, all safety and security, and left her at the mercy of a potion-addled addict.”
