The Surrender of Miss Fairbourne (42 page)

Her gaze moved back up and met his. Her breath caught as the years fell away. She might have been seeing him at her threshold, so familiar was what passed between them. The instant bond, the promise of a quiet intimacy—it flashed
through her with an intense, vital reality, just as it had when they had been friends.

No, it was not quite the same. Those reunions had never made her uncomfortable, and this one did. Something new simmered in the familiarity. As if a gauzy veil had been lifted, certain aspects of her reaction sharpened and de-manded her attention. A sly, alluring disturbance wound its way around her other emotions.

She had intended to beg for his help, but his manner provoked her, and she decided to change her approach. There was no point in pleading in the name of a dead friendship. She would speak in a language he would understand and respect.

“I have not only come to visit, Andreas.”

“No, I expect that you have not.”

He sounded resigned. She thought that took some gall. After all,
she
had not dropped
his
friendship.

“I am in need of money. I will repay it,” she said.

His gaze shifted to the garden out the window. The old Andreas completely disappeared. Suddenly she was speaking with a stranger who had heard petitions like hers before. Too often.

The humiliation of what she was doing overwhelmed her. She gritted her teeth and forged on.

“I need one hundred pounds.”

He kept looking at the garden. “Your brother sent you, didn’t he? It was cowardly of him not to come himself and to use you in this way.”

“He did not send me. This was my decision.”

“The hell it was.” His gaze snapped back to her. “Since this is about trade, I must respond as a trader. I regret to say that I must refuse you. There is no way that this loan will be repaid, and I would be a fool to make it.”

His abrupt denial astonished her. Her heart wanted to sink down to her toes.

“It will be repaid. If you doubt my word—”

“One hundred pounds is a great sum. You have not seen
that much in the last five years combined. You may promise to repay it with an honest heart, but your brother never will.”

“It is my promise, not my brother’s. I will pledge property as surety. Our house is not worth that much, but there is also a small farm in Sussex, and together they should secure this debt.”

A bit of curiosity passed in the gaze piercing her. “Are you saying that the farm and the house are chartered to you?”

“No, but—”

“Then they are not yours to pledge and of no value to this discussion.”

She could not believe his cold indifference. Panic began beating in her heart. She was going to fail. She would not be able to save Reginald.

Andreas appeared angry with her. That made her own ire spike. He had probably agreed to such things often before and with people he knew less well. And if not for him, she would not be in this situation.

“Since you are convinced that my word will not do and that my brother will not honor my pledge of the property, let us make this an outright sale. I see that your love of tapestries has not abated.” She gestured to the rich hangings adorning the hall’s walls. “I still have mine. You often admired it and told me yourself that it was worth at least a hundred pounds. I will sell it to you now.”

It sickened her to say it. That tapestry, woven of silk and brought back from a crusade by an ancestor, was the only thing of value that she owned.

It would break her heart to give it up. Losing it would finally obliterate her small hold on a life she had once led. She would never let go of it to save herself, but now, faced with the need to save her brother, she had no choice.

She thought that she saw Andreas’s expression soften. She was sure that he would agree. Instead, he turned his attention once more to the garden.

“I cannot buy it, Giselle.”

“My attachment to it is long over, if that is your concern.”

“A man does not buy what he already owns. Reginald pledged that tapestry as surety against a loan years ago. The loan was not repaid.”

Shock numbed her for a ten count. Then fury crashed into her stunned mind—fury at Reginald and fury at this man sitting here in his damnable self-possession.

How dare her brother pledge her property. Bad enough that Reginald had depleted their meager wealth with ventures always ruined by unforseen misfortune. Bad enough that he had left tallies all over London to pay for garments he could not afford and wine long ago drunk. To have procured coin by using the tapestry was an inexcusable betrayal of their heritage.

Andreas knew what that weaving meant. He should have never agreed to such a thing. He only had because he coveted the tapestry.

She rose, barely controlling the anger trembling through her. “I can see that I have wasted my time and yours. I have nothing else to sell except my virtue, and I am sure that a great man like you will not consider that worth one hundred pounds.” She almost spit the words and did not care that her tone sounded bitter and sarcastic and imperious.

His gaze, full of sharp alertness, swung to her. The old warmth and connection entered it, along with that other, frightening intensity that had so unsettled her today.

She had intended to make a grand retreat, but suddenly she could not move.

“Actually, Giselle, the pledge of your virtue is the only one that I might consider.”

“You insult me, Andreas.”

“You raised the possibility, my lady. Not I.”

She dragged the remnants of her dignity around her like a shredded cloak. “I apologize for intruding on your household. It was a mistake. I knew that my brother and I were no longer of use to you, but I had not realized just how proud
and arrogant you had become. I see now that you despise us. Good day to you.”

Somehow she tore herself away from his blue eyes and his irritating, compelling presence and retreated with all of the nobility that she could muster.