A Christmas Promise Read Free

possession. A millstone about his neck.
    “Why?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
    “Why did I buy ’em?” Mr. Transome asked. “To do you a favor, my lord. It is better, less confusing, I always think, to owe money all in one place than all over London and the southern counties. Would you not agree, my lord?”
    “I find the thought enormously comforting,” the earl said. “So you have come to put the squeeze on me, Transome? You are going to have to wait. I will pay off every penny of the debt eventually. But it will take time.”
    Mr. Transome laughed. “I have worked hard all my life, my lord,” he said. “Through diligence and a little good luck too, I have amassed almost everything a man could want in this life. Only one thing I have very little of, and it is the very commodity you ask of me. Time. I have very little time.”
    “Then,” the earl said, “I shall have to reconcile my mind to debtors’ prison, I suppose. I am sorry, sir, but I cannot reach into a pocket and bring out the sum I owe you. I wish I could. Believe me.”
    “I do, my lord,” the merchant said, resuming his old occupation of rubbing his hands together. “But your debts can be canceled in a moment, my lord.”
    The earl smiled arctically.
    “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, so to speak,” Mr. Transome said. “You do something for me, my lord, and I’ll cancel your debt. Every last penny of it. And make sure that you have the wherewithal to make Grenfell Park one of the showpieces of England and its farms the most prosperous. And to spend some time and money at your tailor’s again.”
    The earl raised his eyebrows.
    “You are waiting to hear what it is you must do for me,” Mr. Transome said. “It is a small something, my lord, in exchange for what you will get in return. But it will mean a great deal to me.”
    The earl did not change his expression.
    “I will cancel your debts and settle half of my fortune on you, my lord—and it is a considerable fortune,” the man said, “if you will marry my daughter. And most of the remaining half of my fortune will be hers after my death and so in effect will be yours too.”
    The Earl of Falloden stared in disbelief at his visitor. “You want me to marry your daughter,” he said faintly, wondering for a moment if he had walked into some strange dream. A cit’s daughter. A coal merchant’s daughter. A total stranger.
    “She is nineteen years old and a beauty, even if I do say so myself,” Mr. Transome said. “And if it is refinement you want, my lord, you cannot do better than my Ellie. I had her educated at Miss Tweedsmuir’s academy. Two lords’ daughters were there at the same time and a colonel’s daughter too. She was particular friends with Lord Hutchins’s girl.”
    “How do you know I am not married already?” the earl asked coldly. “No, disregard that question. I do not have a doubt that you know everything about my life, sir. Doubtless you know of my attachment, though not betrothal, to Miss Dorothea Lovestone. Doubtless you know of the mistress I have had in keeping for a year past.”
    “Miss Alice Freeman,” Mr. Transome said. “And a beauty she is too, if you don’t mind my saying so, my lord. She is a credit to your good taste. But then so will Ellie be. You will have her beauty and her refinement and education and half my fortune, my lord. And she will be your countess. She will bear you the heir to Grenfell Park and your earldom. It is all I ask, my lord.” He chuckled. “To be grandfather to an earl.”
    “Mr. Transome,” the earl said quietly, “get out of my house.”
    The merchant scratched his balding head. “I understand that you are a man of pride, my lord,” he said. “What member of the peerage is not? And I know that it goes against the grain, so to speak, to consider marrying into the merchant classes. But sometimes necessity must swallow up pride. I really cannot see that you have any alternative to what I have