Page 107 of A Cinderella to Redeem the Earl

She sighed. ‘Very well, come in if you must.’ She folded her arms over her chest.

The door opened to reveal Dart with an anxious-looking Susan peering around him.

‘It is all right, Susan. I will speak to His Lordship. Please give us a few minutes.’

The girl nodded. ‘I’ll be downstairs. Give a shout if you need me.’ She gave Dart a pointed glare and left muttering something about people barging into other people’s homes.

Damian winced. ‘I couldn’t do anything else. She was determined to keep me out.’

‘You should have taken no for an answer.’

‘I needed to speak with you.’

‘I don’t think we have anything to say to each other. Not only did you try to ruin poor Mr Long, you intended my ruin also.’

‘About that—’

‘I do not care to hear your excuses.’

The thought of it somehow seemed to penetrate the cold. It hurt. Badly. All over again. She turned away. Pretended to look out of the window, but could see nothing because her vision was blurred.

‘You don’t understand,’ he said.

‘No. I don’t. And I do not care to either. Please leave.’ Somehow she managed not to start sobbing.

‘Please. Give me a few minutes. To explain.’

‘Very well. Five minutes. I have a great deal to do today.’ Five minutes was about all she thought she could bear of the pain of seeing him here.

‘I made a promise to my father, when he was dying,’ he said softly, with a note of pleading in his voice. ‘I promised I wouldn’t let the people who ruined my family get away with it. My mother might have been alive now if they hadn’t cheated my father.’

She turned back slowly. ‘Long cheated your father? He couldn’t have.’

‘Not him. His father. He offered my father a chance to invest in a scheme he said would make him rich. Another man, a man my father thought was a good friend, encouraged him to borrow the money to invest. He couldn’t pay it back when the scheme collapsed. The scheme was a fraud.’

‘That is why you were brought up in France?’

‘Father was ruined. Left with nothing. We had to flee to France to avoid our creditors. To avoid prison. My mother was delicate. She could never have survived in prison.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘She didn’t survive the awful conditions in Marseilles either. Nor did my father for very long. I was fourteen when he died.’

‘How did you survive?’

‘I lived on the streets. Doing what I had to do. That is where I met Pip. But I swore to my father as he lay dying that I would avenge Mother’s death. That I would have justice for the way my father was cheated. It took me years to reach the point where I could return to England and keep my promise.’

The pain in his voice was tangible.

She sat down on the bed and gestured for him to do the same. ‘So you are punishing Long’s son? That hardly seems fair.’

‘It hardly seems fair that his son got to live a life of ease while I was forced to steal to eat.’

‘I see.’

‘My father said the sins of the father’s should be visited upon the children, as they were visited upon me.’

She frowned. ‘Are you saying my father was involved? Is that why...?’

Damian grimaced. ‘He was the one who talked my father in to borrowing the money to invest in the scheme. While he profited, my father lost everything.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t believe you. He wasn’t the sort to—What sort of investment was it?’