"Vanessa!" her aunt gasped, her hand coming up to her heaving bosom.
Vanessa waved her free hand in front of her, and squeezed Clifford's fingers reassuringly. "Bah, all of you fashionable young men about town goad each other to make so called conquests, as if it were on a par with hunting a fox. I don't care what Clifford has done in his past. None of us is lily-white. Every one of us has things we would not like to have to own up to in public.
"Whatever he may or may not have done prior to being engaged to me is no one's business but his own. It's the future that counts. I can't imagine any of you giving up your pleasures once you secured my fortune for yourselves. In fact, quite the opposite. I think my fortune would pay for your ever increasing excesses."
"How can you accuse your own cousins of being so mercenary?"
"Very easily, Aunt," Vanessa said, shrugging. "They would no more ask me my opinion on the war or crops than they would your prize Berkshire boar. And that would be precisely what I would be treated like if I were to marry either one of you. I would be a piece of property. There would be no respect, no regard."
"And you're going to get all this respect you wish for from a man who gambled you like a cravat pin?"
"He didn't gamble me. Gerald did. Clifford merely won me."
"Aye, and now that I have, I'm not letting her go," Clifford said firmly, taking her delicate hand in both her own now. "I hate to see ill feeling between family members, but you're all as transparent as glass. And you, Madame, should have offered to come her to chaperone her if you felt so concerned about her welfare, rather than insist upon dragging her back with you to live under the same roof with three unmarried young men. Even if she did succeed in holding out against you, her reputation would be in tatters in no time. Vanessa is a thinking feeling human being, not an African slave."
"How d-d-dare you--" Toby began to sputter.
"So if you've said all you've come to say, I think you'd better leave."
"We're not finished. Not at all," her aunt said in a tone so frosty it would have chilled the Devil himself.
"Oh?" Clifford said, sounding bored.
Her piggy little eyes positively gleamed with malice as she said coolly, "It only takes two signatures from a family member to commit someone to an asylum. Strictly for her own good, you understand."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Vanessa blindly clung to Clifford's warm, strong hand, clinging to him in terror as her aunt's threat to have her committed to a mental asylum hung over the room like a funeral pall.
God, it was just like her nightmare... She thought she had awoken from it. Now she was sure it was just beginning.
"All right," Clifford said with a weary air of resignation.
"No, Clifford, no--" Vanessa gasped, sure he was going to turn her over for her own good rather than risk seeing her committed.
"How much? How much do you need to get yourselves out of the River Tick?" Clifford demanded, looking fron one to the other.
Peter and Toby peeped furtively at each other. Aunt Helen almost licked her lips.
Vanessa's eyes widened even further now, as she realised he had assessed the situation correctly. "Clifford, no, you can't. It's not fair--"
"I can. It will be far better than have them hounding you constantly. I'm sorry, pet, that you had to find out what they were really like in such an appalling manner, but--"
"Now wait a minute," Peter protested. "We only want what's best for her--"
"And Bedlam is it, is it?" Clifford sneered.
"Everyone knows she isn't well in the--"
Clifford dropped Vanessa's hand and stepped towards her eldest cousin. "If you value your teeth, don't say it. In fact, get the hell out, right now, the three of you. That's what's best for her. To stay as far away from you scheming and manipulation as possible."
Vanessa's eyes glistened with tears. All the fight had gone out of her like a sail suddenly emptied of wind.
Clifford turned to look at his bride to be. He had never seen anyone look so stunned and defeated. He held her close around the shoulders, earning himself scowls of outraged disapproval from their three guests.
"I ought to call you out, Peter. I think at this moment in time I would take the greatest satisfaction in putting a bullet in you. Not to kill, mind, but just to maim you enough to make your life a miserable hell.
"Have you seen see any of the men coming back from the war with groin injuries? Not a pretty sight. Ah well, you would have no use for any woman you married anyway other than for her money, now would you, Peter?"