Read Chapter 2: A Debt Unpaid

Julian Sterling’s carriage had barely turned the corner of the gravel drive before Clara was reaching for her bonnet. She did not ring for the maid. She did not pause to compose a speech. She simply walked out the front door of Ashworth Park and down the long, unkempt path toward the village, her boots crunching over drifts of fallen leaves that no one had bothered to rake.

The morning air was sharp, carrying the first true bite of autumn. She had twenty-four days. Lord Umbridge would be at the White Hart Inn, taking his nuncheon before returning to London, and she intended to catch him before his carriage was called.

She found him exactly where the footman had said—seated alone in the private parlor, a plate of cold mutton before him, a glass of Madeira in his hand. He looked up as she entered, his heavy jowls settling into a smile that did not reach his eyes.

“Lady Clara.” He did not rise. “I confess I did not expect the pleasure of your company.”

“I imagine not.” Clara closed the door behind her, cutting off the curious gaze of the innkeeper’s wife. “We both know why I am here, my lord. Let us not waste one another’s time with pretense.”

Umbridge set down his glass. He was a broad man, gone to fat in the way of those who have never wanted for anything, and his coat strained at the shoulders. But it was his eyes that unsettled her—small, pale, and entirely without warmth. They roved over her as though pricing the fabric of her gown.

“Very well.” He gestured to the chair across from him. “Sit. You may as well be comfortable while I disappoint you.”

Clara sat, folding her gloved hands in her lap. She kept her spine straight, her chin level. She had practiced this posture for years, the armor of a lady who must negotiate from a position of nothing.

“I have come to ask for an extension,” she said. “My father is abroad, attending to—“

“Your father is not abroad.” Umbridge’s voice cut through her rehearsed words like a blade through silk. “Your father is in debtor’s prison in Dover. Has been for six weeks.”

Clara’s breath caught. She had known. Of course she had known—the letters had stopped, and then the servants had whispered, and then she had sent her own inquiries to London and received only evasive replies. But to hear it spoken aloud, without pretense, without the careful fictions of polite society, was something else entirely.

Umbridge watched her face with undisguised interest. “The viscount thought to flee to the Continent, I believe. He did not make it past the coast. My agents were most efficient.”

“Your agents.” Clara’s voice came out steadier than she felt. “You had my father arrested.”

“I had my debt collected.” Umbridge shrugged, a gesture of enormous indifference. “The arrest was a natural consequence of the viscount’s refusal to pay what he owes. A man cannot simply walk away from forty thousand pounds, Lady Clara, however distinguished his lineage.”

Forty thousand. The figure landed in Clara’s chest like a stone, but she did not flinch. She had known the debt was vast. She had not known it was quite that vast.

“The estate is worth more than that,” she said. “The land alone—“

“The land alone is worth nothing if it cannot be sold.” Umbridge leaned forward, and now his voice took on a different quality—almost avuncular, as though he were explaining a simple lesson to a dull child. “Ashworth Park is entailed, is it not? The title passes through the male line, and with your father in prison and no son to inherit, the estate sits in limbo. The law does not allow me to seize it outright, and yet—” He spread his hands. “—neither can you pay me. So we are at an impasse, you and I. Unless.”

Clara’s heart hammered. She would not give him the satisfaction of asking. She waited, letting the silence stretch, and eventually Umbridge smiled.

“Unless I foreclose through the courts,” he said. “Which I am perfectly prepared to do. The process will take some months, but the outcome is certain. I will own your land, your house, the very portrait of your great-grandmother in the hall. All of it will belong to me, and you will be turned out with nothing but the clothes on your back.”

He let the words hang, and Clara felt them settle over her like a shroud.

“Or,” Umbridge continued, “you may find a way to pay me. Perhaps a marriage to someone with means. You are still young, and passably pretty. There are men who would take you with the debt attached, if you offered them something more than a bankrupt title.”

The suggestion was so crude that Clara felt a hot flush rise to her cheeks. She stood, her chair scraping back against the floorboards.

“I did not come here to be insulted, my lord.”

“I am not insulting you.” Umbridge’s voice was level, indifferent. “I am being honest. You asked for an extension. You came to beg. I am telling you that begging will do you no good. Ashworth Park will be mine by Christmas, one way or another. The only question is whether you will leave it gracefully or be thrown out ignominiously.”

Clara stood very still, her hands clenched at her sides. She wanted to scream, to rage, to seize the decanter of Madeira and hurl it at his satisfied face. Instead, she spoke in a voice that did not shake.

“Twenty-four days,” she said. “That is what your solicitor told me. Twenty-four days until the debt comes due in full.”

Umbridge raised an eyebrow. “So I understand.”

“Then I will have an answer for you before that time is up.”

She turned and walked out before he could respond, her boots ringing sharp and fast against the floorboards. She mounted her pony and rode back to Ashworth Park at a pace that would have scandalized her mother, and when she reached the stables she threw the reins to a startled groom and marched up the path to the house.

Julian Sterling was waiting on the front steps, his dark coat immaculate against the mellow stone of the manor, a leather document case tucked under his arm. He looked up as she approached, and for a moment Clara saw something flicker in his eyes—surprise, perhaps, at the state of her, flushed and windswept and barely composed.

“Lady Clara.” He gave a slight bow. “I hope I do not intrude. I called to inquire whether you had reached a decision.”

Clara stopped before him on the gravel path. The sun had emerged from behind the clouds, and it caught the sharp planes of his face, the strong line of his jaw. His left hand was gloved, as always.

“You said you knew about my father’s debts,” she said. “You knew the amount.”

Julian inclined his head. “I did.”

“That was why you came. You knew the debt was due to Umbridge. You knew I could not pay it. You calculated that I would have no choice but to accept your offer.”

A ghost of a smile crossed his lips. “I calculated that you would be sensible enough to recognize a bona fide offer when you received one. Was I wrong?”

Clara felt the weight of the morning pressing down on her—Umbridge’s threats, the figure of forty thousand pounds, the image of her father behind bars in Dover. She had spent the past several weeks casting about for any solution, any salvation. None had presented itself. All that remained was the man before her, with his cold manner and his scarred hand and his unsettling certainty.

“Your terms,” she said. “You took a wife for social purchase. I am to give you consequence, and in exchange you pay my debts.”

“And you keep your independence,” Julian said. “We agreed on that. A marriage in name only. Our lives continue as they did before, in all matters of consequence.”

“Then I want one year,” Clara said. “One year of this arrangement, during which I will endeavor to restore my family’s finances. At the end of that year, I will pay you back what you have laid out—the debt, the interest, and a reasonable sum for your trouble. And we will dissolve the marriage quietly, with no further obligation on either side.”

Julian regarded her for a long moment. His eyes were dark and unreadable, and Clara had the unnerving sense that he was weighing her, testing the strength of her resolve.

“That is not what I proposed,” he said.

“It is what I demand.”

The silence stretched between them, broken only by the call of a rook from the treetops. Then Julian smiled—a small, cold curve of his lips—and reached into his document case.

“Very well,” he said. “One year. You will make good on your debt, or the estate will become mine in full.” He drew out a sheaf of papers, neatly inked, and held them toward her. “I have prepared the contract already. If you wish to make amendments, I will have my clerk redraft it this afternoon. Otherwise, it awaits your signature.”

Clara took the papers. She did not read them. She knew what they contained—the details of her surrender, rendered in fine legal language.

“You will understand,” Julian said, and his voice had lost its earlier courtesy, growing as cold and flat as a sheet of ice, “that I expect nothing from this arrangement but the letter of the contract. I will not pretend to affection, and I will not tolerate pretense from you. We are entering a bargain, Lady Clara. Nothing more.”

Clara lifted her chin. She had signed her pride away a hundred times in her mind since his first visit. The actual act could be no more painful.

She could not believe she was doing this. But she had stood in an inn and been threatened and insulted by a man who would own her home by Christmas if she did not act. She had no choice.

“When do we marry?” she asked, and the words came out steadier than she felt.