The Price of Desire Read Free Page B

of a dowry, there was no reason for me to look twice at Kitty Earnshaw. Though she seems quiet and amenable enough, she is not half as pretty or as spirited as you are. But now you have none…” He spread his hands wide in a gesture of helplessness. “You must understand my situation.”

    She did not care to understand him further. All that mattered to her now was that he would pay her a goodly amount so he could wed Kitty’s dowry. “What will you pay me to break our engagement?” Her voice came out hard.

    “When Kitty and I are wed, I will pay the rent on a modest house in town for you, and add an annuity of two hundred pounds a year…”

    A rent-free cottage and two hundred pounds a year would be barely enough for all five of them to scrape by on, but with a little bit of luck, it would be enough. Though it was by no means generous, the sum would at least keep them out of the workhouse. She felt no guilt in accepting it. It was little enough for him to pay to exchange a poor fiancée for a rich one.

    “…an extra payment of five hundred pounds for every child you bear me, and a reduced annuity of fifty pounds a year if ever our liaison should come to an end.”

    She’d been so fixated on the tantalizing prospect of a modest competency to support her family that she almost missed the end of his proposal. Her eyes widened in horror as the realization of what he was offering her struck home. “You are offering to become my keeper? You want me to be your whore?”

    A black cloud of despair descended over her. He was asking her to release him from their engagement and to become his mistress instead. For two hundred pounds a year. Such a sum would scarce keep her and her family in coal over the winter. The offer which half a minute ago had seemed tolerable enough was now exposed as hopelessly and insultingly mean and penny-pinching. “And what of poor Kitty? You would marry her though you do not love her enough to be faithful to her?”

    If her father had been alive, the Captain would never have dared to make her such an offer. If only her father had not given up hope that his speculations would one day be successful. But he had given up hope. Last Thursday night in his study he had put a gun to his head and abandoned them all.

    “Do not worry about Kitty.” He brushed aside her fears with a wave of his hand. “I will be kind enough to the girl. She will have no cause to regret marrying me.”

    Though she had no reason to love Kitty, his callous dismissal of his intended bride made her stomach roil with anger. “Even though you would use her money to set me up as your mistress?”

    “I cannot marry you, but I still love you.” His voice turned smooth and pleading, as if it were coated in cream. “Think about it, Caroline. If we were to marry, we would be poor together. You are too fine a woman to live in poverty.”

    “I do not fear being poor.” Poverty was manageable, tolerable even. She had already learned to live with it. Utter destitution was what she really feared. The workhouse. It sent a shiver of fear snaking up her spine whenever she thought of it.

    “Be sensible, Caroline, and look logically at the situation. My way we both get what we need. I can set myself up in business and still be with the woman I love, and you get to live a comfortable life with your family and still be with the man you love. For you do love me, don’t you?”

    For a horrible moment she wanted to accept. She wanted to be generous and allow him to be generous to her in return. Two hundred pounds a year was a goodly sum to a family that was facing the workhouse. Surely her father would have understood the dire straits that led her to take such a desperate path.
     
    That much, at least, she knew was true. Her father would have understood and he would have forgiven her.

    But her pride was stronger than her fear. She would not take the easy way out like her father had. He had spared himself the shame of his