He looked at his father again, at the broken old man who was staring back at him with watery, hopeless eyes, and suddenly, he was filled with anger.
“How could you?” he condemned, and his voice was ice. “Over a game of cards?”
In his whole life, he’d never spoken to his father other than respectfully—but this situation was beyond belief.
The earl said nothing, dropping his gaze to his desk.
After a minute’s silence, Gil tried again. “So, who owns them now?”
“Davenport.”
“Davenport?” Gilbert parroted, stunned. “The man who was just here?” He saw Miles Davenport again in his mind; his handsome, amiable face and his perfectly tailored clothes. He had felt a young man’s admiration for Davenport’s easy sophistication. Now he felt like a fool. “What was he doing here today? Why did you let him come here?” A new awful thought occurred to him. “Does he own this house as well?” He felt angry that he didn’t know the answer to that already.
“No,” the earl answered quickly. “The townhouse is part of the entailed estate.”
Gil made no attempt to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Well, thank God for small mercies.”
“Davenport was bringing his daughter to meet you,” the earl said.
“What? That little ghost of a girl? Why?” But even as Gil spoke, the truth was beginning to dawn.
“Davenport is prepared to make the properties back over to us—as a dowry—if you marry her.”
Gil laughed, a harsh, incredulous sound. “That child?” he finally managed in scathing tones.
“She’s seventeen. Old enough to marry.”
Gil laughed again. “She doesn’t look it.”
The earl ignored that. “Davenport won the properties fair and square, m’boy. He could just sell them and put the money in trust for his daughter—she’d have a tidy fortune. It’s generous of him to offer them as a dowry.”
Gil stared at his father in astonishment. “Generous?” he exclaimed. “He took them from you on the turn of a card! And now he seeks to make his daughter a viscountess by tossing them back to you as carelessly as you turned them over to him?” He shook with anger. “And who is to pay for this? Me? Saddled with an ugly child for a wife? No! I won’t do it!”
“If you won’t do it, we’re ruined. All of us.” The earl’s gaze was steady, but his pale blue eyes shimmered. And Christ, but Gil had never thought to see his father cry.
Gil had to swallow past a lump in his own throat before he could get his next words out. “What about Tilly?”
“What about her?”
I love her.
He couldn’t say that, though. His father never spoke of feelings. He’d find it vulgar, incomprehensible, for Gil to do so. Instead, Gil resorted to the language of obligation.
“You know, Father. We’re practically engaged.”
“Practically? Are you or aren’t you?”
“No, but—”
The earl sighed. “It wouldn’t matter even if you were,” he said. “Her father would never let an impoverished man have her.”
And that was the hell of it. Not that Gil would even offer for Tilly if he couldn’t afford to keep her in the style she deserved. Oh, she’d no doubt tell him she could be happy being a scullery maid so long as they were together—that was just the sort of thing she’d say—but he wouldn’t want her to have to scrimp by on nothing. She was a carefree, blithe girl, and she had no idea how harsh the real world could be.
He pictured Tilly in his mind as he’d last seen her: dancing opposite him in a country dance, her pale gold hair swept up to reveal her swan-like neck. So very lovely. And then, quite unbidden, Rose Davenport, with her pinched, imperfect face, took Tilly’s place, and he felt bleak and angry.
“Why didn’t you tell me what was going on before Davenport came today?” he demanded.
His father paled. “He was insistent the marriage would only take place if the girl liked you. I thought that if you knew the full circumstances you might—well, find it difficult to be pleasant to her.”
Gil laughed again, the same humourless bark. “As it was, I was positively charming to the little viper!”
“I don’t think the girl knows anything about the dowry arrangements,” the earl replied reproachfully.
“Thinks I’m going to marry her for her looks, does she?” Gil stood up, violently thrusting his chair aside, and strode to the window. The library was one floor up, looking down on Berkeley Square. It was the same lovely spring day outside that it had been this morning. Yet now the whole world looked different to him. Whatever happened now, he was facing a future he hadn’t imagined this morning. One of two possible futures, each equally unappealing. The ruin of his family or a loveless marriage. And no place for Tilly in either of them.