THE BARONET'S DAUGHTER

CHAPTER FOUR

    His hypocrisy was astounding, and Eleanor looked at him scornfully. ‘Are you not in trade yourself, sir?’

    Granville’s expression showed keen anger for a moment, and then he smiled thinly.

    ‘My patronage of the oldest profession is merely a lucrative avocation and my connection with it well hidden, I assure you,’ he retorted. ‘My considerable wealth comes from more acceptable sources.’

    He laid his hat on a table nearby and also his stick. The stick was an ostentatious affair; a horse’s head encrusted with gem stones. It was obvious that Mr Granville mistook ostentation for quality and gentility.

    ‘Wealth does not make the gentleman, Mr Granville,’ Eleanor sneered. ‘You have no more breeding than the murderer Taplow.’

    Hot anger surged in his face and he looked dangerous. But within a moment or two he had regained control of his temper.

    ‘That can and will change,’ he said evenly. ‘I am seen as a man of mode, wealth and property. As you point out my position in Society is not as secure as I would wish.’ His smile was cold. ‘I need to remedy that fairly soon by marrying well; hence my offer for you.’

    He took a few strides closer to her. Eleanor shrank away, clutching her wrap protectively to her trembling body.

    ‘Keep back!’ she cried. ‘Come no closer.’

    He frowned at her withdrawal.

    ‘I am perplexed at your attitude, Eleanor.’ His voice had taken on a harder edge. ‘You don’t seem to grasp what marriage to me would mean for you; wealth, privilege.’

    ‘Speak no more of it!’

    ‘But I must, Eleanor,’ he insisted. ‘I count the Regent as a friend, yet he never ceases to remind me that I am no more that a rich cit.’ He shrugged. ‘The Regent’s patronage is a transient thing. For the moment I amuse him and am therefore in favour. However, should I fall from favour I shall drop into obscurity. The right wife could make my position secure for life. This is what I wish and will have.’

    ‘You are forgetting, sir, that my father’s estates are in deep debt, due to your connivance, I suspect. I have little to offer.’

    ‘It’s not your wealth I need, Eleanor, but your name,’ Granville said. ‘Your family has a celebrated name. It stands for good breeding and respectability. Your connection to the Duke of Wellington, for example, is not to be ignored.’

    ‘The connection is trifling,’ Eleanor said dismissively.

    He smiled. ‘Yet, I could make much of it to my advantage.’

    Eleanor was filled with revulsion as she looked at him. How could her father have been so blind? It was this blindness to reason and commonsense which had led her into this trap. How was she to escape?

    ‘You have intelligence, my dear,’ Granville continued. ‘Grace, beauty, all the right qualities which, married to my wealth and Court connection ought to make you among the most celebrated hostesses in London.’

    The very thought of such a union made her feel sick to her stomach. The man was unspeakable and she feared his intentions.

    ‘You betrayed my father. I cannot forgive that.’

    His expression was one of impatience and she saw that he would not hold back much longer.

    ‘Had you accepted my offer, Eleanor, Charnock Park and the estates would have come under good management,’ he said. ‘I could have prevented your father’s ruinous slide.’ He shrugged. ‘As it is, the house and the estates are now passed out of the Wellesley family, and you, my dear, are as destitute as a plucked pullet. You have no recourse but to marry me.’