Shayla Black (2 page)

“
And naturally you believed everything he told you.” Brock’s voice held a faint note of derision, then he shrugged. “If you want your thousand pounds, I shall credit it toward your balance. I’ll even grant you eight-percent interest. You still owe me...” He cast his gaze to the ceiling, calculating. “Six thousand, seven hundred eighty-three pounds and twenty pence.”

“
I scarcely have two farthings to rub together, but I’m certain you knew that before buying up my debt.” Five years of choking resentment exploded with the force of a volcano. “What the devil do you want from me?”

“
A choice, Maddie. A simple choice.”

She scoffed. Nothing about Brock Taylor had ever been simple.

“
What?”

He shrugged casually, but Maddie caught the tension latent in his neck, his broad shoulders. “If you cannot repay me in full...”

“
I’ve said that I cannot,” she said through clenched teeth.

Brock rose from the armchair, the muscles of his hard thighs flexing beneath chocolate-hued breeches. Maddie chastised herself for noticing as he paced closer, brushing the muslin of her gray skirt as he walked past. He turned back to her. Their gazes locked. Brock’s stare penetrated her bravado, seeking to see into her soul.

“
Then you must marry me.”

Maddie nearly choked. He must be jesting, surely. But his strong, solemn face said quite the opposite. Her tea cup fell from her hand and to the carpet with a soft clatter.

Fresh fury made her whole body tremble. How could he even suggest they wed? Once upon a time, he had abandoned her. She had no wish to wed anyone, but if she had to choose between Brock and a snake, she would hope the snake would be content to share her quiet country life.

Because of this man, Maddie had suffered doubts about her moral character, her desirability, her judgment. She’d worried that her choices would someday haunt Aimee. Above all, Maddie had learned heartache.

Now she knew pure fear. The law gave a man complete power over his wife and her body. A husband could beat and belittle her without repercussion. Colin had plied his own form of torture mercilessly during their two year union. She shuddered at the thought of placing herself in that hell again, especially with an opportunistic liar who had proven his callousness so thoroughly.

Standing and meeting his gaze, she asked, “And if I refuse?”

“
You will be a debtor, and your options will be those of most debtors. Very unpleasant, if you ask me.”

Debtor’s prison?

Maddie gasped, going cold all over again. “You would send me to the Fleet?”

He shrugged, his face mildly apologetic. “It is a common fate, is it not?”

She grappled for a retort, unable to believe the ruthless cad’s ultimatum. Fleet Prison would mean squalor, hunger, and indefinite internment. Marriage to Brock would mean loss of independence and a legally binding pain she knew too well.

“
Y-you cannot mean to throw me in prison.”

Brock, looking every inch a wealthy man from the rich burgundy cravat of silk about his neck to the supple leather boots with their shiny toecaps, simply smiled. “I never say anything I do not mean.”

Liar! Five years ago, he’d uttered many untruths, including his “love” for her. He had also promised to marry her. Instead, he had abandoned her an hour after taking her virginity. She had never heard from him again...until tonight.

Purposely, Maddie raised her chin, glared at him as if he were an insect. “Marry
you?
It’s inconceivable.”

“
Since I conceived the idea, I must disagree.”

His smooth voice chafed over her like the coarsest wool. God, how she would love to set him down.

“
You are enjoying my distress, aren’t you?”

Brock only shot her an enigmatic half-smile in response. “Is it the idea of marrying your former stable hand you object to?”

“
I object to the entire idea of marriage, but particularly to you. Why would you desire such a ridiculous end?”

“
I doubt you’ll find your other option more appealing.”

He paced over the threadbare carpet, closer. She inhaled his spicy, musky scent with her next breath. It brought forth a surge of long-buried memories of shared kisses in the hay and racing hearts. The reminiscence mixed with anger in a potent rush. She could not deny that she had loved him desperately once...and she hated him all the more for it now.

“
Of course, I could be wrong,” he continued.

His tone mocked his words. Brock would never believe himself wrong. The man was more confident than most, for he had always been smarter. And more dangerous.

A mental picture of all she imagined Fleet Prison would be rose in her mind, almost too horrible to contemplate. Darkness. Dankness. Nothing to eat. No way out.

Blackness floated at the edge of her vision.

Stifling her fear, Maddie shot him a frosty glare. “Perhaps you
are
wrong.”

Brock moved closer still. His nearness called forth an image of their stolen intimacies in the stable years ago. Breathless kisses mixed with urgent sighs, nurtured by the love and dreams in her heart, all of which he had trampled to pursue his burning ambitions for fortune.

“
The choice is completely yours.”

Without family or the means to pay her debts, her incarceration would be long, stretching into years, possibly a decade—if she lived that long. But marriage to Brock would last until she went to her grave.

Clearly, he had honed his ruthless edge to razor sharpness in the last five years. Resisting the urge to rail at him, she thrust her chin forward with icy calm. “You planned this.”

“
How? It is your misfortune your late husband liked drinking and gaming beyond his means. I had no hand in that.”

“
Except to buy up his debt. It’s very much like you to take advantage of my misfortune.”

His expression never changed. “A smart man takes advantage of every opportunity.”

And Maddie knew well he saw opportunity everywhere, even under the skirts of an untried girl. The blackguard had nearly ruined her life when he had taken her innocence, along with her father's money, and left. She would not become his opportunity again.

“
Stop these games. What do you truly want? I doubt you paid my creditors a staggering eight thousand pounds for my hand because you harbor any feeling for me.”

He shrugged evasively. “Believe what you like.”

She never knew what to believe where Brock was concerned. Not five years ago, not now. She had believed in him once, in his brilliant mind, in his determination, to her detriment. The fact the passionately driven boy who had labored in her father’s stables had beaten the odds and became a shrewd man of means only made him more frightening now.

“
Blast you, what is it you truly seek from me?”

A thin smile turned up the corners of his mouth as he approached her again with measured steps. Rooted in place by anxiety, she watched him pace a circle around her, his fingers brushing an aging side table next to her. She shivered.

Brock had a scheme in mind, and he only tortured her by withholding it now for his perverse pleasure, no doubt.

Suddenly, he stopped before her and met her stare. In his eyes, she saw scalding desire and a frightening determination to possess her. Maddie couldn’t breathe.

“
We were compatible lovers, sweet girl.”

She couldn’t hold her gasp in. “Do
not
call me that!”

Her memory bombarded her with images of their spring together, the first time he’d nibbled her tingling neck and whispered that endearment. An ache she’d thought long dead flickered inside her.

“
You liked that name. And I liked saying it.” His eyes burned. “Years ago, your skin tasted sweet as a pastry. Does it still?”

Maddie gave Brock her back and drew in a trembling breath. He was toying with her, as a cat does a mouse. He wanted her off balance. She must not give him the satisfaction of recalling anything about that night, particularly not the feel of his callused palms sliding across her skin, between her thighs, making her writhe with the sort of pleasure she had never before imagined and never again experienced. Focusing on his betrayal and abandonment would better serve her.

She whirled to face him. “Certainly you do not expect me to believe that you bought up all of my debt and created some elaborate scheme of marriage simply so you could take me to your bed again.”

He raised a dark brow. “Why not?”

“
That is hardly logical.”

“
I am a wealthy man now. I can afford to be illogical, if I choose.”

Maddie saw his hand coming, knew he intended to touch her. She couldn’t move. Brock caressed her face with his fingers. Fire screamed across her skin. She flinched at the contact, but he did not let her go, damn him. Instead, he cupped his fingers around her neck and brushed his thumb across her cheek.

Her heart beat like an anvil, kicking the wall of her chest as he traced a torturously slow line down her jaw. Sensation burst through her. They played a dangerous game. She could not afford to be his toy.

Jerking away, Maddie sneered, “If it’s a companion you seek, crawl back to the gutter and buy yourself a two-pence whore.”

He looked unruffled by her insult. “Tsk, tsk, Maddie. That no longer suits me. I accept only the finest; I accept it on my terms. Now—” he brushed her collarbone with his fingertips— “I choose you.”

She willed her racing heart to slow. But it was impossible with Brock’s commanding gaze squarely on her, sliding down her body. Her stomach clenched. After all the hurt he had heaped upon her, she should never respond to him as a woman again.

But Brock gripped her wrist in his hot palm, then slid his thumb over the pulse point, a slow journey that wound to the center of her tingling palm and back. Maddie gasped as she felt the hot, needy clenching of her womb. With her heart beat quickening beneath his touch, he smiled.

Maddie pulled on her wrist, only to find herself locked in his steely grip. “Release me.”

Brock held her a long moment—to prove that he could—before he let go. “Once we’re wed, Maddie, I will never release you.”

“
I do not believe you’re willing to bind yourself to me for the rest of your life to—well, simply for...”

“
Sex?” His low voice rang with mischief. “It will be interesting to see if you still blush when I undress you.”

“
Stop dallying and tell me what the hell you want.”

“
My, my, my. What shocking language, Lady Wolcott. What would the ladies of the
ton
think?”

Maddie pursed her lips, refusing to reply.

Turning away, he paced past an armchair and gazed into the empty hearth, his expression contemplative. “Money has afforded me almost everything I’ve ever wanted, except entry into society. I count some of the wealthiest lords in England as my clients. I’ve helped them regain their fortunes with well-placed financial advice. They come to my office willing to pay staggering fees for my guidance and connections to lucrative investments. Some have even begged. Those same men ignore me when they see me on the street. I rival their fortunes, sometimes exceed them, yet they will not recognize me.”

That hardly surprised Maddie. Brock, a self-educated man born to the serving class, had little hope of that. The
ton
fraternized only with those who possessed the proper bloodlines.

“
They never will.”

“
Wrong. They will invite me into their homes, to their balls. I’ll make certain of it.”

“
You cannot force people to like you,” she pointed out.

“
I hardly care if they do.” A wicked grin curved his mouth. He relished the challenge.

Did he see her as a challenge, as well?

“
Let them loathe me, in fact. But if they want my help, they must accept me in their midst. The right social connections will enhance my business. But to gain entrée, I need you. After all, with a well-born wife, like an earl’s daughter, the
ton
could not ignore me quite so easily. The doors of my clients—and their friends—would open for me.”

The realization that Brock’s plan might indeed work zapped Maddie’s last hope that he had been trifling with her for the mere sport.

No!
She would not sacrifice herself for his ambition. Nor could she conceive of placing her body legally in his possession. Instinct told her he was not the same boy who had taken her in a sweet but hurried loving once upon a time. Gossip painted him as feral, ruthless to his enemies. He would treat her no differently. Though she had endured much during her marriage to Colin, Brock frightened her more. He was more calculating—and dangerous for it.