In Debt To The Earl. Elizabeth Rolls

Anger drove out the fear and common sense flooded back. A man with designs on her wouldn’t have pushed her out on the landing. Ergo, she was safe. Gritting her teeth, she went after him.

      ‘How dare you! I don’t care who you are! Get out!’

      His glance flicked over the room and back to her. ‘How do you propose to make me?’ he asked, as if he really wanted to know.

      She had no idea how, but— ‘This is my home!’ she retorted. ‘I have every right to ask you to leave!’ As homes went it was pathetic, but that didn’t mean she had to accept this...this thug’s presence in it.

      Amusement crinkled the corners of his eyes. ‘Your home, madam? Not much to defend, is it? Or are you defending Hensleigh? Or is it Hammersley this week? Where is he?’

      She had spent the morning dusting and polishing. The floor was clean. Every stick of furniture gleamed. And she had never been so bitterly aware of the rickety table and chairs, the chipped looking glass over the fireplace, the bare floorboards or the threadbare curtain hiding the corner where she slept, as that scornful gaze raked the room.

      ‘I already told you, I don’t know!’ That he knew the last name they had used sent a chill slithering down her spine.

      ‘So you did,’ he said. ‘Are you going to invite me to sit down?’

      ‘No.’

      He shrugged and sat down anyway on the battered chair by the cold, empty grate. There hadn’t been a fire in it for weeks. There was barely enough money for food, let alone luxuries.

      She dragged in breath and let it go again. There was nothing she could do to shift him and she refused to rail at him like a Billingsgate fishwife. She stuffed her fury behind a solid door and slammed it shut.

      ‘You will excuse me if I continue my work,’ she said calmly and swiped her polishing rag back into the open jar of beeswax on the table. She could not afford more, but despite that she started all over again in the corner furthest from the fireplace, taking her time, hoping he would get bored and leave if she ignored him.

      Unfortunately he didn’t ignore her.

      That grey, assessing gaze remained on her as she re-polished the table with painstaking thoroughness.

      ‘I must say I envy Hensleigh,’ murmured her unwelcome guest after a few moments. She stiffened, but continued polishing so that the table wobbled noisily. ‘Lucky fellow,’ he went on, ‘having a wench willing to clean his lodgings twice in one morning and warm his bed.’

      Everything inside her stopped as well as the polishing rag. And the temper her grandparents had tried so hard to curb slipped its leash. Slowly she straightened and faced him, the dusting rag clenched in her fist. ‘Wench?’ She restrained the urge to throw the rag in his face.

      His brows rose. ‘A poor choice of words,’ he said. ‘You’re certainly a cut above wench-dom, even if your taste in men is execrable. You could do better than Hensleigh or whatever his name is this week.’

      ‘Really?’ Rage slammed through her, but she kept her voice dulcet. ‘You, for example?’

      He smiled, reminding her of the wolf down at the Royal Exchange. ‘If you like. If you tell me where he is.’

      ‘They say it’s a wise child who knows its own father,’ she said, her stomach twisting. ‘It would be an interesting set of circumstances that permitted her to choose him.’

      James wondered if he’d been hit on the head with a brick as the implications slammed into him. No one had suggested that the woman in Hensleigh’s lodgings was his daughter! He had assumed...

      ‘But,’ the impossible girl continued, ‘if you are prepared to acknowledge me as your natural daughter I’ll be very happy to have it so. Although...’ she looked him up and down in a way he found oddly unnerving ‘...you must have been a rather precocious child.’

      James collected his scattered wits and found his tongue. ‘You’re his daughter, not his—’ He stopped there. If she was Hensleigh’s daughter—

      ‘Correct.’ The chill in her voice would have shaken an iceberg.

      ‘Do you expect an apology, Miss... Hensleigh?’ Hell’s teeth! Men did have daughters, even Hensleigh could have one. But—

      She stared at him. ‘What? Do I look stupid?’

      He took a careful breath. Delicate features, and the small fist gripping the polishing rag as though she’d like to shove it down his throat was gracefully formed, if grubby. She looked furious, not stupid. And her voice was well bred, even if it had an edge on it fit to flay a rhinoceros, and there was something about the way she held herself, and that damn polishing rag—an air of dignity. He’d meant it when he said that she could do better than Hensleigh. She was not a beauty, not in the strictest sense of the word, but—those eyes blazed, and the mouth was soft and lush—or it would be if it weren’t flat with anger. Damn it! There ought to be nothing remotely appealing about her! She was a redhead with the ghosts of last summer’s freckles dancing over her nose, the whole shabby room smelt of furniture polish, and the truth was that he didn’t want to believe that she could be Hensleigh’s mistress. Which was ridiculous. It didn’t matter a damn if she was Hensleigh’s mistress or not. Or did it? Stealing a man’s mistress was one thing, seducing his daughter quite another. And selling Hensleigh’s vowels if it might condemn this girl to an even worse situation was yet another thing.

      His gaze fell on a narrow door on the other side of the room. Had he been so intent on the girl he’d nearly missed that? Without a word he rose and strode across, shoved it open and looked in.

      ‘He’s not here!’ The girl’s voice was furious now. No fear, just raw fury. He had to admire that.

      A neatly made bed, washstand and small chest were the only furnishings. He closed the door and turned back to the girl.

      ‘Are you satisfied now?’ she demanded. ‘Or would you like to look under the bed?’

      ‘One bed, ma’am?’ he asked. ‘And where do you sleep?’ Talk about stupid! He’d damn near believed her!

      Her eyes spat green fire in an absolutely white face. She stormed across the room. ‘It’s none of your business, but—’ Reaching the far corner he’d assumed held a chamber pot, she flung back the curtain across it.

      His shocked gaze took in a thin, narrow pallet on the floor, covered with a totally inadequate blanket. A folded nightgown lay on top of the blanket and with it what looked like a violin case.

      It convinced him as nothing else could have. Any man with this girl for a mistress would have her warming his bed, not shivering there in the corner.

      ‘You sleep there?’ It was all he could find to say. What sort of man let his daughter sleep in a draughty corner on a pallet that would scarcely do for an unwanted dog, while he took the relatively comfortable bed?

      She jerked the curtain back into place. ‘As you see.’ Her cheeks were crimson. ‘I don’t care what you think of me,’ she went on, ‘and I doubt you care what I think of you, but you have forced your way into my home, insulted me in every conceivable way—I would prefer it if you left. I will tell my father you called.’

      ‘But you won’t tell me where he is.’ Why would she? The man is her father, for God’s sake. Even if he doesn’t look after her.

      ‘I don’t know where he is.’

      He cocked his head. There was something there in her voice. Fear?

      ‘Would you tell me if you did know?’ he asked gently.

      ‘He owes you money, doesn’t he?’

      He stiffened. No, she wasn’t stupid. But neither was he. If he told her the truth, what were the odds that he’d lose his quarry? ‘So quick to assume the worst,