Page 23 of The Truth About Love and Dukes

“So you intend to purchase it only to shut it down?”

“Just so.”

“But you can’t! Society Snippets is the only remaining trace of my family’s newspaper business, a business started by my great-grandfather. The Deverill family has been publishing newspapers for over fifty years.”

“Unlike you, your father does not seem dismayed by the prospect of selling the last piece of his family legacy. On the contrary, he jumped at the chance to remove his daughters from a life of drudgery, and he was happy for the opportunity to once again be able to adequately take care of them and provide them with dowries as a responsible father should. He had only one additional request to my proposal.”

“Which was?”

“He asked that you and your sister be given some introductions into society. I agreed.”

He’d said a moment ago that arranging this had been easy, and she saw now just how easy it must have been. Everything Papa wanted for his daughters held out to him on a silver platter, and all he’d had to give up in exchange was something that had never been of interest to him in the first place.

“Aren’t the daughters of a middle-class newspaper hawker a bit too lowbrow for your class of people?”

“Some might say so, yes,” he acknowledged, seeming to miss or choosing to ignore the resentment in her voice. “But the granddaughters of a viscount are not.”

She gave a humorless laugh, not surprised that he had learned of her mother’s family. “Even if the viscount’s daughter married beneath her?”

“Since my own mother may soon do the same, I’m hardly in a position to turn up my nose at what your mother did, am I?”

She frowned. “You seem to know a great deal about my family.”

“Private detectives can find out many things.”

“Ah, I see. Before a man can exploit another man’s vulnerabilities he has to find out what they are.”

If her words evoked any feeling in him, he didn’t show it. Not a shred of guilt crossed the face Clara had declared so handsome. No apology or regret. He didn’t even blink.

“My God,” she choked, “does your heart pump blood, or ice water? Or perhaps you don’t have a heart at all.”

Another flicker of emotion crossed that implacable face, but it was gone in an instant, wiped away by his cold reply. “My heart, Miss Deverill, is not your concern.”

“Thank God for that,” she muttered, but if her shot hit home she didn’t know it, for she looked away, swamped by a feeling of desolation. If this man got his way, everything would be as it had been before her grandfather died, prosperous, comfortable, and mind-numbingly dull. Society Snippets was her creation, her vision. She’d poured countless hours into it, working hard to make it solvent. She’d hoped to make it successful. She hadn’t expected to love it.

And now it would be snuffed out, and she would be relegated back to managing household accounts and doing embroidery for the rest of her days, or—worse—marrying into the sort of world her father wanted for her, the one her mother had lived in and run away from. All she’d accomplished here would be forgotten, thanks to a privileged man who only had to write a bank draft and make a few introductions in order to get what he wanted. She could not let it happen, but how could she stop it?

Irene looked at him again, and as she met those eyes, eyes as cool and unfathomable as the North Sea, she felt so angry and so helpless, she didn’t know whether to burst into tears or jump over the desk and go for his throat.

“There might be,” he said, watching her, “an alternative.”

The very gentleness of his voice sent any impulse to cry straight to the wall. She opened her mouth, but even as the words go to hell hovered on her lips, she knew she could not say them.

“I’m listening,” she said instead.

He reached out, fingering one corner of the documents he’d placed on her desk. “As I said, I have not yet tendered the money. The contract stipulates that I have fourteen days to do so. If I do not, the agreement is voided, and I would be required to pay your father ten percent of the purchase price for reneging.”

“Under what circumstances would you renege?”

“Your advice has wreaked havoc upon my family, and in my view, it is your responsibility to repair the damage done. My mother intends to wed Mr. Foscarelli a fortnight from now, once he has secured the marriage license. That gives you fourteen days.”

“To do what?”

“To persuade my mother to change her mind and call off the wedding.”

Irene’s mind struggled mightily for a way to refuse, but she could see no way that wouldn’t lose her all that she had worked for.

“If you succeed,” he went on, “I will tear up this document, pay your father the required fee, and all will be forgot. You can continue to advise the lovelorn of London to follow their hearts until the end of your days. But if you fail, if my mother weds that man, you had best give up your journalistic aspirations and your desire to meddle in other people’s lives. I will follow through on this purchase of your publication and shut it down, and you will have to begin looking for a suitable spouse to whom to offer your fat new dowry.”

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