She had thought him cold-blooded to insist they wait a month, but this ruthless expediency, the cold disregard for anything except their own greed and needs was breathtaking in its awfulness.
To send her away and insist the child was given to some kind couple who would love it—that she could understand, even though she would never have agreed to it. But to hope that the infant would die, to help that to happen … They probably did not even think of it as anything worse than letting nature take its course, she thought numbly, hugging herself as though to protect a real child.
Then to contemplate disposing of her like a useless animal … No, that was cold-blooded evil. If there was no excuse for that, then there was no excuse for the other. They were murderers.
If she had not gone downstairs and heard that conversation, she would have made herself marry Bradon and perhaps she would never have understood just what manner of man he was. He would probably be a perfectly good father to his own children, Averil thought. It was just some poor little inconvenient scrap of humanity who got in his way that would be disposable. Only women who were of no use to him who could be discarded like rubbish.
This changed everything. She could not bring herself to speak to Bradon again; even the thought of seeing him filled her with sick horror. It did not matter that no child was at risk, he had revealed himself in his true colours and she would never be able to forget, never be able to trust him. She would never be able to let him touch her without recoiling.
Papa would not expect her to marry a man like that, nor into a family so callous and calculating and criminal. Bless him, she thought fondly. He was ambitious for the family, but he would protect a grandchild, even a scandalously illegitimate one, with his life.
She would have to go home to India, there was no other solution—and to do that she needed enough money for the return journey. Her courage almost failed her at the thought of another voyage with all its dangers, but there was nothing for her here in England. Nothing.
In the morning she would go to the City and Mr Wilton’s office and he would give her the money for her passage. Perhaps Grace would go with her. She must pay her off in any case, and find respectable lodgings while she waited for a ship. She would manage somehow and she would get home to people who loved her and hope they would forgive her for her imprudence.
Her mind was in turmoil. If she had never been shipwrecked, she would not have met Luc. She would not have been compromised and Bradon would have married her and she would have been tied to a ruthless, heartless man. It was the luckiest of escapes, it might even have saved her life. But then her heart would not have been broken and she would never have known what it was to love a man.
Dry-eyed, Averil curled up under the covers and waited, sleepless, for dawn.
Chapter Twenty
‘I do not understand. Why can you not give me money to return home?’ Averil looked around the dark panelled walls of the office as though she could find some explanation of the man’s adamant refusal pinned to them.
‘Because I am not authorised to, Miss Heydon.’ The lawyer looked over the top of his spectacles at her as though she was a rather stupid new office clerk who could not add up. ‘Sir Joshua instructed me on the disbursement of funds for your dowry on the occasion of your marriage to Lord Bradon and for reasonable expenses in the days before your marriage.
‘The additional expenditure resulting from the tragic loss of the ship is necessary to accomplish the marriage. But Sir Joshua intends you to marry Lord Bradon, not to return to India on a whim. It is, of course, highly regrettable that you are feeling homesick, but really, Miss Heydon—’
‘You do not understand, Mr Wilton. Lord Bradon is not what I thought. I cannot marry him. This is not a whim.’
‘Indeed? A false representation has been made?’ Mr Wilton sat up straighter and pushed his glasses more firmly on to his nose. ‘He is already married? Not of sound mind? Fatally ill?’
‘No, none of those things. There is no legal reason why I should not marry him. But I cannot like him.’ She could hardly accuse Bradon of a hypothetical murder of a child who did not exist or of threatening her life.
And she could not say either that she loved another man, that she was compromised. Instinct told her that the lawyer would be entirely in sympathy with Bradon’s solution to the problem, at least as far as secretly removing the child was concerned, and that he would dismiss her tale of what else she had heard last night as feminine hysterics.
‘Really, Miss Heydon, you cannot in all ser
iousness expect me to disburse a significant sum of my client’s money and to overturn almost two years of discussion and negotiations simply because you cannot like your future husband! On what grounds?’
‘He is cold.’ The lawyer did not say, And what does that matter? But his expression said it for him. ‘He is not kind.’
‘He has threatened you? Struck you?’
‘No …’ She had no evidence, only an overheard conversation in the middle of the night with no witnesses. How could she make this practical, unimaginative man understand? She could not, she realised.
‘You will forgive me, I trust, Miss Heydon, for my plain speaking. But I would be negligent in my duty to your father if I did anything to encourage this fancy of yours. Young ladies in your position do not marry for love, like the heroine of some fantastical romance novel. And no doubt halfway back to India you would change your mind again on another whim.’
‘But what am I to do if I cannot go home?’
‘Why, Lord Bradon’s house is your home now, Miss Heydon. You can, and must, return there.’
‘I will not—’
‘Then I will have to inform Lord Bradon that you appear to be suffering an affliction of the spirits and require medical attention. In fact,’ he said, frowning at her, ‘I wonder if I should not go back to the house with you and speak to his lordship. I am really most concerned. Perhaps you are suffering a brain fever brought on by delayed shock after your ordeal during the shipwreck. Yes, indeed, that must be it.’ He got up from behind the desk. ‘Now, I will call my carriage and we will get you home at once, my dear Miss Heydon.’
‘No!’ Averil saw a vision of herself trying to explain to the outraged Bradons why she had run away. She could imagine the scene all too clearly. They would be calm, appear concerned, they would assure Mr Wilton that they had no idea that she was unwell. How sorry they would be that by plunging her into the social whirl they had so distressed her poor, fragile mind. And the moment the door was closed behind the lawyer she would be a prisoner until they discovered it was safe to marry her to Bradon.
‘No,’ she said, conjuring up every ounce of control she possessed. ‘That is very kind, but I have my maid and a carriage.’ She pulled a handkerchief from her reticule and dabbed her dry eyes with it. ‘You are right, I must be unwell. I have not slept well since the wreck … Such nightmares. Perhaps they will allow me to go to the country estate and rest.’ She managed to make her voice tremble a little. ‘It will all seem better then, will it not, Mr Wilton?’