Contracted As His Countess. Louise Allen

somehow she did not think he was. ‘The Tudors saw to that, because the aristocracy was too closely tied by blood to the Plantagenets and so many had as good a claim to the throne as theirs. But Father traced your lineage to Sieur Edmund fitzRanulf, who fought at Hastings, and the intermarriages since then were very satisfactory to him.’

      ‘They were very satisfactory to me, considering that I am the result of them,’ Ransome said drily. ‘Virtually all aristocrats have an ancestry that can be traced in this way, not to say hundreds, if not thousands, of gentry. The College of Heralds spends its time doing just that.’ He was humouring her, she could tell.

      Earning his fee. We will see about that, she thought, stiffening her spine. She had begun now, how much worse could it get?

      ‘My father wished for an aristocratic connection. There are very few noblemen of ancient lineage who might be prevailed upon to wed me who are unmarried, of marriageable age, of good character and who are interested in women.’ He looked a question and she managed not to blush. ‘I do understand about that. There are, in fact, just seven of you at present who meet the criteria and who hold titles or are the heirs.’

      ‘Thank you for the most flattering offer, Miss Aylmer, but I am not available for stud purposes.’ Jack Ransome reached for his gloves.

      He had kept his voice level, but the crude words were used as a weapon, the first betraying sign of an emotion besides surprise. He might well talk about pride—she had apparently pricked his painfully. The lines between his nose and the corners of his mouth were suddenly apparent, as though his whole face had stiffened.

      Somehow Madelyn fought the urge to flee the room and shut herself in a turret for ten years, or however long it would take for them both to forget this conversation. But he was not the only one with verbal weapons at his disposal. ‘No? Not even if my marriage portion includes the entirety of your family’s lost lands and properties?’

      Jack Ransome stared at her, his eyes unblinking, and she knew she had his full attention now as his pupils widened until the blue eyes darkened. ‘My father, grandfather and elder brother between them broke the entail ten years ago. Over the course of eight years—the time it took all three of them to die one way or another—my father and brother managed to sell or gamble away virtually everything. I sold the last few remaining acres to pay the debts. How do you propose to restore all of that to me?’

      ‘When my mother and brother died my father sought out the men who best fitted his criteria for me. He then made it his business to discover what was most likely to make the match acceptable to them. In most cases there was nothing that he could—’ she almost said use as a lever, but managed to bite her tongue in time ‘—identify.’

      The other candidates came from families that seemed, as far as Peregrine Aylmer could discover, quite secure and likely to be wary of an alliance with Castle-Mad Aylmer’s daughter.

      But Jack Ransome had inherited an empty title and so her father had become relentless in his pursuit of the scattered lands and properties. Relentless and ruthless, she feared, not above exerting pressure on whatever weaknesses he could find to secure a purchase. Antiquarian research had given him the skills to dig deep into family cupboards to discover the skeletons they held.

      Madelyn pushed away the unsettling memories and made herself meet the dark gaze that seemed fixed on her face. ‘Father searched out every scrap of land, every building, of the lost Dersington estates and acquired them. He identified your brother first, but did not add him to the list because of his way of life. But then Lord Roderick died almost as soon as he had inherited the title and you inherited.’

      She could remember her father returning home, crowing with delight, ordering all the banners to be flown from turrets and battlements in celebration. He had found the ideal candidate and one he could exert a hold over.

      Under her left hand the stack of deeds felt as substantial as a pile of bricks. Under her right, the unfolded parchment crackled betrayingly and she forced her fingers to stillness. ‘Be grateful,’ he had told her. ‘I have found you a man free from his family’s vices and I have the shackles to bind him to you.’ She had known better than to protest that she did not want a husband who had to be coerced and shackled.

      ‘Your mother and brother died six years ago,’ Jack Ransome said blankly. ‘Six—I was twenty-one when he started looking, twenty-three when Roderick died. How did he know I would not marry someone else?’

      ‘Then your lost lands would remain in here.’ She gestured towards the chest. ‘They would be an incentive for whomever I did eventually marry. Collected together the Dersington properties make an impressive dower.’

      It was an effort to keep her voice level and dispassionate, but Madelyn thought she was managing well enough. It was what she was required to do as a dutiful daughter, she reminded herself, yet again. As Jack Ransome was keeping his temper, she found her courage rising a little. ‘Look.’ She opened out the stiff folds and slid forward the large parchment under her right hand, her fingers spread, pinning it down at the centre. ‘The deeds to Dersington Mote and its estates.’

      The document was more than five hundred years old, made from the skin of an entire young sheep. Battered seals hung from faded ribbons at the bottom, thick black writing covered it with legal Latin. The Ransomes had held the manor of Dersington since the time of the Conqueror, but their right to castellate—to build a defensible castle—had been granted by Edward II with this document. It gave them no title, not then, but it set out the boundaries and the extent of the land they held, their rights and obligations as lords of the seven manors that it comprised. It was the heart of Jack Ransome’s lost estates.

      He stared down at it, his face unreadable. Then he put out his own right hand, laid it palm down on the parchment and drew it towards him.

      Madelyn flattened her hand as she resisted the pull and his fingers slid between hers until they meshed. ‘It is quite genuine,’ she said.

      ‘I know. I can see the seals.’

      She had studied them, translated the motto embossed on them. Quid enim meus fidelis. Faithful to what is mine.

      There was a long pause. She had time to register that his hands were warm, to feel the very faintest tremor and the tension as he tried to control it, to hear the deep even breaths he took and guessed at the control he was having to exert not to tear it from her grasp.

      ‘Sell it to me.’

      ‘No. You could not afford it.’ Madelyn’s voice was almost steady. ‘Besides, I would sell all the lands and properties together, not just this one estate.’

      His hands were shaking, try as he might to control it, and he suspected she could feel that also. Jack lifted his fingers from the parchment, away from contact with her cold touch, even though it felt as though the document would rip as he moved them. Just an illusion, of course. This was shock, he realised. A total, complete, unexpected shock, as though the massive stones beneath his feet had shifted.

      ‘So, you want to buy a husband, Miss Aylmer?’ he said, wanting to shake her poise, wanting to hit back in response to the thunderbolt she had just thrown at him.

      ‘Are not all marriages between people of breeding a matter of exchange?’ Madelyn Aylmer asked, so coolly that it was an effort to keep the masking smile on his lips. ‘They always have been, right down the ages. Titles for wealth, alliances for land, property for position. If this was the fourteenth century I would have been married off as a child for just those reasons. I cannot believe that the motives for aristocratic marriages are so different today. Or are you so resigned to your lost lands and status that you are hoping to make a love match?’

      She was not used to fighting, Jack realised, pulling himself together with what felt like a physical effort. Under all that careful control, those pricking questions, Madelyn Aylmer was nervous and that was probably the only thing stopping him from losing his temper. Perhaps she was not even used