“By selling its daughters?” Daniel asked.
Arthur’s hand closed around the ledger.
“Mind your tongue.”
“Then mind yours when you speak of Miss Harrington.”
For several seconds only the rain could be heard.
Arthur recovered first.
“If you are too proud for my generosity, you can crawl back into the storm.”
Daniel stood slowly.
“I have no intention of accepting a woman as payment for a meal.”
He turned to Emily.
“If Miss Harrington ever chooses to marry, the decision will belong to her.”
Emily had heard men speak of duty, honor, and propriety all her life.
She had never heard one defend her right to decide anything.
Arthur swept the ledger from the table.
“You will be gone by dawn.”
Daniel inclined his head.
“If I can walk, I shall be.”
He did not tell Arthur that he could buy Oak Haven without borrowing a penny.
He did not tell him that the papers in the missing carriage concerned debts attached to the very estate in which they stood.
And he did not tell Emily that the Harrington name had been on his desk in London three days earlier.
Those omissions would trouble him before the week was out.
At dawn the storm had weakened to a cold mist.
Emily woke to the sound of a horse in the yard and hurried downstairs with a loaf wrapped in cloth.
She found Daniel standing beneath the stable arch, examining a chestnut mare whose left foreleg was swollen.
The stable boy looked miserable.
“His lordship says she is the only horse you may have, sir.”
Daniel ran a practiced hand along the animal’s leg.
“She will not carry anyone today.”
“Father knows that,” Emily said.
The boy dropped his gaze.
Daniel straightened.
“Then I shall walk.”
“You cannot walk three miles with that injury.”
“I have walked farther in worse weather.”
“That is not the same as having made a sensible decision.”
She handed him the bread.
He accepted it with a seriousness that made the small gift feel important.
“Thank you, Miss Harrington.”
“You need not thank me for breakfast.”
“I was thanking you for last night.”
Before she could answer, Higgins came through the yard gate with a young man in a soaked wool coat.
The young man introduced himself as Matthew Pike, the blacksmith’s son.
They had found the overturned carriage near the bridge, but the coachman was gone.
The wheels had been stripped, the baggage taken, and the horses cut loose.
