Kathleen E. Woodiwiss(2)
His words had nipped at Shanna’s pride, bringing a rush of tears to her eyes. Heedless of her distress, her father had ranted on, setting the spur deeper.
“Damn me, girl! What have I built my fortune for, if not for my own kin? But seen to your way, ‘twill go no further than your grave. Blast it all, I want grandchildren! Are you set to be a spinster who rejects every man that comes courting? Your children could be powers at court if they have a title to aid them. They’ll need but two things to be successful in this world and accepted by royalty. I give them one—wealth—more than you can spend in a lifetime. You can gain them the other—a name no one would dare question, a name with a lineage so pure and fine ’twill need a good stock of common blood to strengthen it. Such a name can do as much to open doors as riches. But with no other name than Trahern, they’ll be little more than merchants.” His voice had sharpened in anger. “ ‘Tis my hell that I am given a daughter with the looks to choose among the bluest lines, one to make barons, earls, even dukes fawn and drool upon themselves for the want of her. But she dallies like some dreamy twit for a silver knight on a white charger who might match her own untouched purity.”
Shanna’s folly had been in answering her father rashly and with heated words. They were soon engaged in a stormy exchange which had ended abruptly when he slammed down his brawny fist and dared her to speak further. His angry glare had burned into her.
“You have a year to settle your fancies,” he roared. “Your period of grace ceases on your first-and-twentieth year, the day marking your birth. If you have not wed into a family of the aristocracy by then, I’ll name the next ready swain still young enough to get you with child as your husband. And if I must drag you to the altar in chains, you will obey!”
Shanna had been stunned into incredulous silence at his crudity, but she knew with a sinking heart it was no jest. Orlan Trahern’s word was a promise never broken.
Her father continued in a somewhat subdued tone. “Since we are ever at odds these days, I will give you ease of my presence. Ralston sails for London on my business. You will go with him, and Pitney as well. I know you can bend Pitney around your little finger—you’ve done it ever since you were a child. But Ralston should be able to keep the two of you out of mischief and honest enough for what I want. You may take your maid Hergus as well. On the second of December next, your year is done, and you will return to Los Camellos with or without a spouse. And if ‘tis none you’ve found, the matter shall be out of your hands.”
Orlan Trahern had known a hard life as a youth. At the age of twelve, he saw his father, a Welsh highwayman, hanged from a roadside tree for his crimes. His mother, reduced to working as a scullery maid, died just a few years later of the ague, weakened by years of overwork, meager food, and cold winter drafts. Orlan had buried her and had sworn he would make a better way for himself and his own.
Remembering the gray oak where his father had swung, the lad had worked hard and wisely, careful to be scrupulously honest. His tongue was quick, as was his wit, and his mind was agile. He soon grasped the ways of money, rents, interest, investments, and, most of all, the calculated risk for high return. Young Trahern first borrowed money for his ventures but soon was using his own. Then others began to come to him for money. Anything his talents touched fattened his coffers, and he began to acquire country estates, townhouses, stately manors, and property. In return for notes redeemable by the Crown he had accepted a grant to a small, verdant isle of the Caribbean to which he immediately retreated to enjoy his riches and more leisurely manage the flow of wealth into his accounts.
His successes had earned him the title “Lord” Trahern from dirty-faced vendors and crafty merchants, for he was indeed the lord of the marketplace. Aristocrats used the title out of necessity when they went to him for loans, finding small comfort in having to beg him for moneys but considering him well beneath them they rejected him socially. Orlan yearned to be accepted as their peer, and it was difficult for him to accept that desire in himself. He was not a man to crawl, and he learned to pull the strings well on a man’s life. Now he tried to do it with his only child. The slights that he had received during the years spent accumulating his fortune were in a large part responsible for the rift that now made his beautiful daughter withdraw into herself.
But Shanna was of the same temperament as her stubborn and forthright father. While Georgiana Trahern was alive, she had soothed the rifts and softened the arguments between her husband and child, but her passing five years previous had taken from them their mediator. Now there was no one who could gently dissuade the willful, elder Trahern or ply the daughter with her duties.