“You stupid cow,” he hissed. “Well, lucky for you Haselby won’t know how to tell a virgin from a whore.”
“Uncle Robert!” Lucy shook with horror. She had not grown so bold that she could brazenly allow him to think her impure. “I would never— I didn’t— How could you think it of me?”
“Because you are acting like a bloody idiot,” he snapped. “As of this minute, you will not leave this house until you leave for your wedding. If I have to post guards at your bedchamber door, I will.”
“No!” Lucy cried out. “How could you do this to me? What does it matter? We don’t need their money. We don’t need their connections. Why can’t I marry for love?”
At first her uncle did not react. He stood as if frozen, the only movement a vein pounding in his temple. And then, just when Lucy thought she might begin to breathe again, he cursed violently and lunged toward her, pinning her against the wall.
“Uncle Robert!” she gasped. His hand was on her chin, forcing her head into an unnatural position. She tried to swallow, but it was almost impossible with her neck arched so tightly. “Don’t,” she managed to get out, but it was barely a whimper. “Please . . . Stop.”
But his grip only tightened, and his forearm pressed against her collarbone, the bones of his wrist digging painfully into her skin.
“You will marry Lord Haselby,” he hissed. “You’ll marry him, and I will tell you why.”
Lucy said nothing, just stared at him with frantic eyes.
“You, my dear Lucinda, are the final payment of a long-standing debt to Lord Davenport.”
“What do you mean?” she whispered.
“Blackmail,” Uncle Robert said in a grim voice. “We have been paying Davenport for years.”
“But why?” Lucy asked. What could they have possibly done to warrant blackmail?
Her uncle’s lip curled mockingly. “Your father, the beloved eighth Earl of Fennsworth, was a traitor.”
Lucy gasped, and it felt as if her throat were tightening, tying itself into a knot. It couldn’t be true. She’d thought perhaps an extramarital affair. Maybe an earl who wasn’t really an Abernathy. But treason? Dear God . . . no.
“Uncle Robert,” she said, trying to reason with him. “There must be a mistake. A misunderstanding. My father . . . He was not a traitor.”
“Oh, I assure you he was, and Davenport knows it.”
Lucy thought of her father. She could still see him in her mind—tall, handsome, with laughing blue eyes. He had spent money far too freely; even as a small child she had known that. But he was not a traitor. He could not have been. He had a gentleman’s honor. She remembered that. It was in the way he’d stood, the things he’d taught her.
“You are lying,” she said, the words burning in her throat. “Or misinformed.”
“There is proof,” her uncle said, abruptly releasing her and striding across the room to his decanter of brandy. He poured a glass and took a long gulp. “And Davenport has it.”
“How?”
“I don’t know how,” he snapped. “I only know that he does. I have seen it.”
Lucy swallowed and hugged her arms to her chest, still trying to absorb what he was telling her. “What sort of proof?”
“Letters,” he said grimly. “Written in your father’s hand.”
“They could be forged.”
“They have his seal!” he thundered, slamming his glass down.
Lucy’s eyes widened as she watched the brandy slosh over the side of the glass and off the edge of the desk.
“Do you think I would accept something like this without verifying it myself?” her uncle demanded. “There was information—details—things only your father could have known. Do you think I would have paid Davenport’s blackmail all these years if there was a chance it was false?”
Lucy shook her head. Her uncle was many things, but he was not a fool.
“He came to me six months after your father died. I have been paying him ever since.”