Vanessa gave a determined lift of her chin. She might be unworldly and naive after her sheltered life in Dorset, but she was no fool. She had good solicitors who were experienced men of business. They were well aware of the nature of marital relations amongst the upper crust in England.
But with any luck, Mason and Rogers might not even have to get involved. She could only try her best to reason with her neighbor. If she failed, well, then she would pay the piper.
If Clifford Stone would accept nothing less than all his money back immediately, she would have to keep her promise to her brother and wed the fiend.
CHAPTER FIVE
Gerald sipped his brandy moodily in his study. Clifford Stone had the most damnable luck. Of all the people to win her! What the hell was he going to do now?
Vanessa wasn't the addlepated ninny he had thought her to be after all. And his neighbor was certainly not going to relinquish the little pigeon now. It wasn't supposed to have happened like this. Not at all. They had all talked it through, even rehearsed it several times. Yet somehow his perfect plan had backfired...
Hell and damnation. There had to be another way to seize her fortune. He had to stop panicking, and simply think things through. The trouble was, Gerald was not very good at thinking. He had had what appeared to be a foolproof scheme, and it had gone very badly awry.
He saw red, and his hands began to tremble. Women. They were all the same. Foiled him at every turn. Tried to boss him around, stop him from having fun...
Carping hags, the whole lot of them. They were only good for one thing, and sometimes not even that.
He tossed back the rest of the drink and stood up, stomping towards the door. He would show Vanessa. She might be the most clever woman in England, but no one had outwitted him yet. He needed to come up with a better, more cunning stratagem. He was a man of the world. He would just have to think things though a bit more to find a way out of this muddle once and for all. He had never met an obstacle he couldn't surmount.
Or mount, he thought with a leer, before heading up to his room to count his wealth, look through his papers, and weave a new web of deceit.
A tap at the door some time later interrupted Vanessa's worried pacing to and fro.
"If you please, Miss, your cousins have come to pay a visit."
"Thank you, Simms."
"I've put them in the gold sitting room, Miss."
"Lovely, thank you. And some tea, perhaps? I know it won't be long before supper, but I fancy a cup myself and it is only hospitable, after all."
"Yes of course, Miss." He bowed out of the room deferentially.
Only after he was gone did she allow her annoyance to show on her face. She didn't know why she had felt required to explain herself to a mere servant.
Nor did she really wish to see her cousins. But she had fobbed them off the last few times that they had called since she had returned to Somerset. She had felt them just too wearing to be with considering her grief.
Yet sooner or later she was going to have to face them. She might even find allies amongst them. Surely they could not have approved of Gerald's behavior at their own soiree. It was true her Aunt Agatha had been no relation of theirs, but Peter assiduously courted people's good opinions. He would respect her mourning, and do his best to put out the fires of the scandal, she felt sure.
She checked her appearance in the glass, and thought with a little lift of her heart that perhaps her youngest cousin Paul, not much older than herself, might be with Peter and Toby. She hoped he had not left for Michaelmas term yet at Cambridge.
But when she arrived downstairs she saw only two men clustered around the tea table. They looked anything but friendly.
"I'm astonished that you should not send for us at once, Cousin. Nay, call upon us in your time of dire need," Peter Stephens said after the usual pleasantries had been exchanged.
His features were even more thin and sharp than she remembered, and he oozed disapproval from every pore. Yet he looked every bit the dapper man about Town in his fine cutaway coat in a rich hunter green velvet, with buff breeches and a sienna waistcoat.
"Dire need?" she echoed in confusion.
"Why, Gerald's appalling behavior last evening at our ball, of course," Peter replied swiftly, whilst Toby seated her and thrust a chipped cup and saucer into her hand.
"We would have come sooner, dear Vanessa, had it not been for having so much to prepare."
"Prepare?" She looked from one to another and wished she didn't sound so much like a parrot.
"Of course. You cannot possibly stay here after what Gerald has done. Mother will be so delighted to have a fellow female in the house at last, and--"