Truly Yours Read Free Page B

bargain all around, with Amanda the loser. She lost her mother to despair, having to watch her pretty parent fade into a fearful shadow that disappeared altogether after five years of drunken tirades and ungoverned rages.
    Amanda vowed not to make the same mistakes, and vowed to escape Sir Frederick as soon as she was out of mourning and her stepsister was older. That was three years ago. Sir Frederick had other ideas. Having himself declared her guardian, her stepfather rejected any number of suitors, claiming they were fortune hunters or philanderers, when he actually had no intention of parting with her dowry, her trust fund, or the interest they brought.
    No matter that Mr. Charles Ashway was above reproach. Sir Frederick was going to turn away his offer for Amanda’s hand. Further, the baronet had shouted that fateful morning, he intended to refuse any other suitors she managed to bring up to scratch. By the time she reached five-and-twenty, he swore, he intended to see her fortune dissipated to a pittance.
    “Bad investments, don’t you know.”
    She would be a penniless spinster with no hope for a home or a family of her own. The servants, no, the whole neighborhood, could hear her opinion of that. They all saw the red mark on her cheek from where Sir Frederick had struck her, threatening worse if she went to the solicitor or the bank.
    She went to Almack’s that night anyway, certain to find Mr. Ashway there. Surely such a worthy gentleman as Mr. Ashway would understand Amanda’s plight, would be willing to wed her in Gretna if need be, then fight in the courts for her inheritance.
    Mr. Ashway turned his back on her.
    She boldly placed her gloved hand on his sleeve. “But sir, we were to have this first dance, recall? We spoke of it yesterday.”
    Mr. Ashway looked down at her hand, then toward his mother and sisters, who sat on the sidelines of the assembly rooms. He adjusted his neckcloth, then led her toward the room set aside for refreshments.
    “I take it you have spoken to my stepfather?”
    Mr. Ashway swallowed his lemonade and made a grimace, whether for the insipid drink or the distasteful Sir Frederick, Amanda did not know. “You must not pay heed to whatever my stepfather said. We can circumvent his control; I know we can.”
    “The same way you circumvented the rules of polite society? I think not. After all, I have my sisters’ reputation to consider, and my family name.”
    Amanda was confused. “What do you mean? What could he have said?”
    Her onetime suitor put his glass back on the table. “He said he could not let a fellow gentleman marry soiled goods. Need I be more specific, madam?” He turned without offering her escort back into the ballroom, where Amanda’s stepsister and Sir Frederick’s sister, their chaperone, waited.
    Amanda did not seek them out. She called for her wrap and went home in a hackney, too furious to think clearly beyond telling the doorman that she was ill. She had to let herself into the house, since the servants were not expecting them back until much later. She was not sure what she could do, yet she could not simply do nothing. Her good name was being destroyed, her dowry being siphoned off to her stepfather’s account. Soon she would have nothing left, and less hope.
    A light gleamed under Sir Frederick’s library door, and she was so angry she went in to confront the fiend with this latest crime. If nothing else, she would make him see how blackening her reputation would reflect poorly on his seventeen-year-old daughter, Elaine, whom he had hopes of marrying off to a wealthy peer.
    He was not in the library. The fool had left an uncovered candle burning, though. Amanda went to extinguish it, but she tripped over something that should not have been lying on the Aubusson carpet.
    A gun? Had Sir Frederick become so dangerous then, or so drunk, that he was threatening the servants with loaded pistols? Suddenly realizing her own vulnerability, Amanda was glad