Nicola Cornick: Desired

He broke off as Emma brought her hand down hard on the kitchen table, sending the bread knife skittering away across the surface.

“Tom, stop!” She took a breath, lowered her tone. “It’s too late,” she said. A void of hopelessness opened up beneath her heart. “I don’t know if I believe anything you say anymore. You always were such a liar.”

“I love you,” Tom said. “I swear it’s true.”

Emma shook her head. “Don’t, Tom,” she said. “I don’t want to hear it.”

Tom was very pale now. He swayed a little. Emma made an instinctive move towards him but stopped herself and dropped her hand to her side. She could never trust him now. He had abandoned her with no word, leaving her facing a life alone with no money, no home and no reputation left. She had known he was a scoundrel when she wed him. It was that very air of danger about him that she had found so fatally attractive. Now, though, the young girl who had fallen for Tom Bradshaw’s charm was like a stranger to her, someone from another life.

“It was your half-brother who helped me,” she said, holding his gaze with eyes that burned hot with unshed tears. “You remember your half-brother, Garrick Farne—the man you wanted to ruin, the man whose wife you tried to kill? ”

Tom was white to the lips. “I admit I have done some terrible things,” he said, “but that is all at an end. I’ve changed. I’ll prove it to you. I promise you….”

“Oh, Tom,” Emma said. “It’s too late to do that.” She turned away. “If you do love me,” she said, with difficulty, “the best thing you can do for me is never to see me again.”

“No,” Tom said. “Emma—”

“Go,” Emma said.

When she turned back Tom had gone and the kitchen was empty and cold. The door swung closed softly with a click of the latch. Moving very slowly, feeling cold all the way through to her bones, Emma locked the door and went back down the passage to the little parlour. The fire had been banked down in the grate; she tried to warm her shaking hands before it. There was a plate of cold ham and bread and cheese for her supper and a glass of wine on the table, but she could not touch it now. Her mouth felt as dry as dust, her throat blocked.

I don’t need him , she told herself fiercely, blinking past the tears. I don’t need Tom. He’ll only hurt me again .

The parlour was comfortingly warm but Emma found that the fire could not stave off the cold that was inside her rather than out. With a sigh, she picked up the tray and carried it through to the kitchen, replacing the food untouched in the cold larder and making her way upstairs to bed. It was only once she was beneath the covers, curled around the stone hot-water bottle, seeking a comfort she could not find, that she permitted herself to cry, because she had wanted to believe that there was an ounce of goodness in Tom, that he could reform, but to trust him would have been the most foolish thing she could have done. She had already been hurt far too much.

She wished that Tess Darent were there to advise her. Emma often thought that she would do just about anything for Tess, who had shown her kindness and generosity when everyone else had turned their backs on her. She did not know Tess well and she understood her even less, for there was beneath Tess’s outward manner an impenetrable reserve, but she loved Tess all the same with a fierce loyalty she had never felt for anyone else in her life. She had often wondered if Tess, too, had suffered at the hands of men and if that was why she had helped her. Perhaps she would never know of Tess’s experiences. But she would always be grateful to her.

TESS LOOKED FROM THE LETTER in her hand to the flushed, fatuous face of the man standing on her sister’s hearthrug, hands clasped behind his back, substantial paunch jutting. He was warming his posterior before the blazing fire. His smug stance said that he held all the cards and Tess, a skilful gambler herself, was rather afraid that he was correct. She was in a bind. There was no doubt.

Play for time .

“Let me understand you properly, Lord Corwen,” she said.

You noxious toad …

“You are proposing that I should give permission, as guardian to my twin stepchildren, for you to wed Lady Sybil Darent and if I do not—” her tone dropped by several degrees from cold to frozen “—you will foreclose on a private loan you apparently advanced to my late husband and oblige my stepson, Lord Darent, to sell off all unentailed parts of his estate. To you, of course.”

You vile, grasping beast …

Corwen smiled, a lupine smile that left his small eyes cold. “You have it precisely, Lady Darent.”

Tess tapped the lawyer’s letter against the palm of her hand. News of the loan had come as a shock to her but she could not afford the scandal of challenging Corwen in the law courts and he knew it. She wanted to take him to court because she knew he was a charlatan who had tricked the elderly Marquis of Darent into signing away half his estate in exchange for the loan. Towards the end of his life Darent had been almost insensible from excess laudanum and would have signed almost anything put in front of him. There were plenty of scandalmongers who said that was precisely how Tess had persuaded Darent to marry her in the first place.

“I’ll pay the loan off myself.” Her heart thumped in her chest and the words stuck in her throat but she forced them out. Forty-eight thousand pounds was no small sum and she hardly wanted to throw it away on Lord Corwen, but three widow’s portions, a successful gambling career and some careful investment had made her a rich woman and she could easily afford it. It was also the least painful option for her stepchildren. She would die before she saw either of them fall into the power of this man.

But Corwen was shaking his head, smiling a dissolute smile that made her skin crawl. “I will not accept your money, Lady Darent. The debt is against the Darent estate. And as I say—” he cleared his throat but it did nothing to disguise the thickness of lechery in his voice “—I wish for marriage to Lady Sybil and then I will cancel the debt entirely.”

“Lady Sybil is fifteen years old.” Tess could not keep the distaste from her voice. “She is a schoolgirl.”

And you are disgusting .

“I am prepared to wait a year provided that we may come to terms now.” Lord Corwen rocked back on his heels. “Sixteen would be a charming age for Lady Sybil to wed. I saw her on her most recent visit from Bath. She is a delightful young woman. Fresh, biddable, innocent …” His voice caressed the final word.

Tess set her teeth. Not long ago, a mere ten years, she had been a bride herself when not yet out of her teens. Twice. And Corwen, predatory, hiding his dissolution under that unpleasantly avuncular manner, reminded her all too forcibly of Charles Brokeby, her second husband. A tremor shook her deep inside. Sybil must never, never , be subjected to what she had endured.

“And you are …” She looked at Corwen, at his fat jowls and the lines of dissipation scored deep around his eyes. “Forty-five, forty-six?”

Corwen frowned. “I will be seven and forty next year. It is a good age to remarry.”

“Not to my stepdaughter,” Tess said. “She is far too young. I cannot permit it and, anyway, I share the responsibility for her upbringing with Lady Sybil’s aunt and uncle. They would agree with me that such a marriage is out of the question.”

Disconcertingly, Corwen did not appear taken aback. Perhaps he thought her protests only token. Since he was threatening to foreclose on a loan of approaching fifty thousand pounds, Tess imagined he thought he could dictate his terms at will.