As the Devil Dares (Capturing the Carlisles #3)(12)
Clenching his jaw as the lilting sound of her laugh twisted into his gut like a knife, he dropped his hand away. No dowry, with her reputation—Christ. He’d been bitten, all right.
She clucked her tongue disapprovingly. “First rule of business: never commit to an agreement until you know all the terms.” A victorious gleam lit her eyes. “All the terms.”
Ignoring her baiting, he fought to keep the incredulity from his face. “You don’t have a dowry?”
“Not one ha’penny.” With the smile of the cat that ate the canary, she turned away from him, snatching up her glass of bourbon as she went. “Neither of us Winslow daughters do. Oh, Papa is wealthy enough to negotiate a fine marriage settlement, but he doesn’t believe in them.” She paused in front of the fireplace. “Marital bribery, in his opinion.” Bracing her arm against the mantel, she gestured with the glass and puffed out her chest in an impression of Henry Winslow. “‘If a man wants my money, let him come to work for me to get it!’”
A rather good impression, he admitted grudgingly, as the harsh realization of what he was truly up against spiraled through him.
“‘If he wants my daughter, then money shouldn’t matter.’” She raised the glass in a toast as she belted out in a deep voice that sounded eerily like her father’s, “‘And if he wants both my money and my daughter, then he is a greedy bastard who deserves neither!’”
With a flourish of the glass in the air, she finished the impression by tossing back the remaining bourbon in a single swallow. And that was as equally impressive as the impersonation.
Applauding her performance with a slow clapping of his hands, he walked toward her. “Very nicely played.” He bit back his opinion that she had better odds of becoming a successful actress than she did of gaining the partnership, wanting to escape the afternoon unslapped. “But the man you marry will still become part of Winslow Shipping. His share of the company serves as your dowry.”
“No.” Her eyes grew serious, all traces of her previous teasing vanishing. “My father will never bring a son-in-law into the business. You see, my grandfather did with the man my aunt married, giving him both her dowry and a large part of the company, only to watch him change into a drunkard and a gambler. He turned my aunt against her family, then ruined the marriage and nearly destroyed the company before they were able to force him out. Until the day she died, my aunt never again spoke to my father.” She shook her head sadly, as if grieving for all that her family had lost. “Papa might eventually relent and bestow a dowry, but believe me when I tell you that he will never relent on that.”
The hole around him grew deeper, and the sensation gripped him that the partnership was once more slipping through his fingers. “Then your husband will wait until your father dies to get his due.” He was grasping at straws now. Anything to keep hold of this opportunity. “You’ll still be an heiress, dowry or not.”
“Unlikely. Knowing Papa, he’s probably left the company to some distant relative none of us knows just to keep Winslow Shipping out of the hands of fortune hunters.”
Which was exactly something Henry Winslow would do. The same things that drew Robert’s interest in partnering with him—his success, his shrewdness, his belief that a man needed to prove his worth—now cut like a double-edged sword.
“Doesn’t it bother you that he’s made it so difficult for you to secure a husband?” he bit out, wanting commiseration in his mounting frustration.
“Actually, in that,” she replied with full sincerity, “I agree with him. It would be terrible to wonder which my husband wanted more, my money or me. This way, I’ll know he wants me.” She gave a soft sigh, as if she’d often pondered exactly that. “So you see, it isn’t going to be as easy to marry me off as you think. You’ll have to find suitors who want to court me because they actually like me, and, well…” She shrugged as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I’ll make it difficult for anyone to like me.”
“Oh, I’m certain of that,” he muttered.
She laughed with a genuine amusement that fell through him like a warm summer breeze.
Frustration blistered inside him. If the damned woman wanted to, she could easily find a man willing to take her for her beauty and mind. Dowry be damned. Her wit alone could keep a man happily challenged for years.
Yet he also knew the slim odds of finding a love match for a woman hanging on to the fringe of society by her fingertips.
“Don’t you want a husband?” he pressed. “A family and home of your own?”
“I’d rather have Winslow Shipping.” Her voice emerged so intensely that it quavered. “The company is my family, as much a part of me as any child could ever be.” She took a deep breath, and he knew she was genuinely trying to make him understand. “I have wanted to help my father run the business since I was a little girl, since the first time I visited the wharves. I was mesmerized by all those ships, by the sailors and porters as they worked. Papa showed me everything, pointing out all the small details and explaining how trade worked. It was magical, and I have never forgotten it.”
Coming from anyone else, he would have called her speech poetic and na?ve. But from her, the words landed with quiet authority and heartfelt dedication. She was no simpering debutante bedazzled by the sights of the season; she was a woman in full, one who knew exactly what she wanted. He should have felt the cut of that hard edge to her, yet she fascinated him even more because of it.