A Rogue of Her Own (Windham Brides #4)(95)

Charlotte stalked back to her seat, scooped up the orange peels, and tossed the lot into the parlor stove.

“You, sir, are being impossible.”

Sherbourne wanted to apologize for ruining the meal, such as it was, but he could not apologize for having taken on an investor whose past had included a quiet scandal years ago. Investing in a mine wasn’t an application for ordination.

“Charlotte, if I could find a way to untangle Brantford from this colliery, I’d do it. I simply don’t see how. Perhaps he’ll untangle himself when he learns I’ve hired a blind engineer.”

In the normal course, Charlotte would have corrected that overstatement—Jones wasn’t blind, yet—but she sat two feet away, staring at her hands.

“Griffin said something about sums being pleasing because they have one right answer. He called it a just-so answer. I have considered our situation from every possible angle and have reached such an answer.”

Her answer did not make her happy. “What have you concluded?”

“If you could extricate yourself from Brantford’s clutches, you would, and it’s not a lack of business acumen that prevents you from doing so. The problem is the money, isn’t it? You paid too much for me, and now you haven’t room to maneuver with Brantford. I’m the reason you cannot act as your conscience dictates, and you have been too decent to point out the obvious to me.”

You paid too much for me. Never in Sherbourne’s most private self-indulgent rants had he connected Charlotte’s settlements with Brantford’s greed. Brantford’s arrogant sense of entitlement, his conviction that all rules should be rewritten to benefit him was the root of the problem.

Sherbourne mentally stopped short of admitting that, like Charlotte’s late friend, he too was a victim of titled hubris.

“Your question has no acceptable answer, Mrs. Sherbourne. If I admit that my finances are overextended, I have failed you as a husband. If I dissemble and expect my wife to accept untruths from me, I’m a failure as a gentleman.”

Charlotte regarded him levelly. “We’re in dun territory?”

Sherbourne got up to toss a scoop of coal onto the fire dying in the stove. He wanted to march straight out into the bitter air and keep going until he found Quinton, Earl of Brantford, and pounded him to dust.

And he wanted to grab Charlotte by the shoulders and shake her for marrying a man who had nothing to offer but wealth. She deserved better of course, but so did Sherbourne. He’d glimpsed what a real marriage with Charlotte might look like—an intimate partnership full of trust, understanding, and loyalty.

Thanks to sodding Brantford, the marriage would never have a chance to be that.

“I am not in dun territory. I am entirely solvent and can pay my bills in the ordinary course, but I underestimated the cost of building out this damned mine. I certainly did not foresee a mudslide, and I did not foresee that my bank would encounter difficulties right at the moment I might have called upon that resource to support this colliery. Neither did I foresee an engineer whose abilities I have cause to doubt.”

“You did not foresee that I’d impress two of your masons into working on the steeple, either. I’m sorry.”

Two of his best masons, because a steeple was a difficult undertaking. “They’re almost finished with the steeple, but you’re right. Being short-handed hasn’t been helpful, the rain hasn’t been helpful, and Brantford prancing around the works wasn’t helpful. Now I’ve reason to question Jones’s faculties. That’s very unhelpful.”

Charlotte rose and pulled on her gloves. Sherbourne thought she’d plunk her bonnet on her head and leave him to his woes, but she instead took the last slice of cheese, nibbled a bite, and passed it back to him.

“I am consoled to know that you are determined to make a success of this colliery for many reasons, not simply to impress Brantford. If you are in dun territory, then we are in dun territory. Let’s be very clear on that.”

“We are not.” Sherbourne finished the cheese because he didn’t know what else to do with it. Already the food tasted like coal dust and dirt.

Everything tasted like coal dust and dirt, and now Charlotte was lecturing him about some damned arcane point or other.

“I don’t care a rotten fig for Brantford’s opinion,” Sherbourne said, an oddly liberating truth. Six weeks and several Sunday dinners ago, the cachet of having an earl’s money to fund the coal mine had been gratifying. Now Sherbourne wished he’d never met the man.

Charlotte stepped closer. “Can you abandon the works long enough to drive me to the posting inn?”

What was she going on about now? “As long as you’re not taking the stage for London.”

He’d meant it as a joke, but Charlotte was too astute for that. She patted his lapel. “I blame myself, you see. You can’t know how little store I set by your money, because I’ve done nothing to make that plain to you. You hold my hand, you don’t laugh at me when I’m terrified. You have faith in my numbers, and you have settled your differences with Haverford, all because of me, or at least in part because of me.”

She grabbed his lapel and glowered up at him. “I do not care half a rotten fig for your money, Lucas Sherbourne. It’s you I married, and you I love.”

Her kiss conveyed a no-nonsense declaration of possession and not a shred of relenting.