Mutual Consent Read Free Page B

waited, his expression one of cold distaste. But what the cit had to say was nothing that he could ever have anticipated.
    “My daughter may be a trollop. I do not know, nor do I care. That is for you to discover. However, I do not think you shall find her common,” Cribbage said.
    Lord Chatworth had the capacity to be shocked further than he thought possible.”You speak as though she is but a brood mare,” he said.
    “So she is,” Cribbage responded with a marked sneer. “The most valuable mare in my stable. And I have bought you, my lord, for her stud.”
    Lord Chatworth spun on his heel. He jerked open the door and it slammed shut behind his swiftly retreating figure.
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Chapter 3
    As the hackney cab rolled over the cobbled London streets, Miss Barbara Cribbage had much to reflect upon. Not more than a month before, her father had abruptly summoned her to London. He had kept her kicking her heels for days before he had finally informed her why he had ordered her presence.
    He had found her a husband.
    Barbara was actually not much surprised by her father’s announcement. After all, she had been expecting such news for better than two years.
    At age seventeen, at the end of the disastrous Season she had endured, her father had cursed her for not receiving a noble offer. Fortunately for her sensitive hide, her maternal aunt had rather cuttingly reminded her enraged parent that he could not expect a common merchant’s daughter to receive a spectacular offer no matter how well the girl was turned out or how well dowered. “For the ton, it is bloodline that counts in the end. Barbara has blue blood from only the one side,” had said Lady Azaela.
    Mr. Cribbage’s eyes had bulged with his fury. Though it was impossible for him to publicly acknowledge it, he knew that his despised sister-in-law spoke only the truth. He had run up against the insufferable arrogance of the quality too many times in the past to be mistaken in its scent this time.
    “Then take the chit with you and keep her under wraps until I send for her. She may not be thought good enough to be courted as the wife of a peer of the realm, but we shall see what my wealth may purchase for her.”
    With that awful pronouncement still ringing in her ears, Barbara had retired with Lady Azaela to her aunt’s house in the Derbyshire countryside. She had been very content to resume the quiet life she had led with Lady Azaela Terowne and the succession of excellent governesses and instructors that her aunt had provided for her.
    But it had all been only a reprieve. It had come time to once more assume her role as her father’s pawn.
    For that was what she was, she thought. Her father’s one and wholly consuming passion for years had been to become accepted into the ton. He had contemptuously brushed aside the consideration of birth in his ignorance of society, believing that the doings of one’s ancestors conferred nothing of note upon a man and that it was what a man made of himself that counted.
    Mr. Cribbage had been swiftly and brutally disabused of his mistaken notion that wealth alone could provide the entree into the elite five hundred. He had never forgiven those who had so shredded his pride, and he had become more determined than ever to take his place among those considered England’s leaders.
    He had sought a noble bride and finally acquired the hand of the daughter of an impecunious lord, in exchange for whom he had paid every outstanding debt owed by the family. He had thought gratitude and the simple business conducted would gain him the social status he desired through his wife’s connections. But his wife’s family snubbed him and washed their hands of their kinswoman’s ignoble fate. She had gone to the altar a sacrificial lamb, and to her family, her new lower station in life made her as good as dead.
    Mr. Cribbage had been maddened by this second, and worse, wound to his large pride and ego. His ambition evolved into a consuming