Page 20 of When the Scoundrel Sins

“Very generous of him,” he commented sincerely. “I’ve never heard of another peer leaving an estate to someone who wasn’t a blood relative.”

Belle knew how special she must have been to the viscount, and certainly he meant the world to her. She blinked back the stinging in her eyes. “He loved me like a true father. Far more than my own father ever did.”

He frowned. “Then why not give you the property outright, rather than risk you losing it?”

She looked down at her hands as she held them in her lap, idly twisting her fingers. “He wanted to protect me.”

The glass lowered slowly from his lips, and he stared at her, his eyes dark with concern. “From what?”

“My father,” she answered quietly. Feeling him tense beside her, she took back the glass of whisky. “If I inherited without that clause, then my male guardian would have the right to control my property, as if it were his.” She stared down into the empty glass. “So if my father were ever to return, if he asserted himself back into my life…”

Her voice trailed off.Speak of the devil.She didn’t dare put her thoughts into words, for fear that the devil would appear.

“Which is why the property is only granted to me upon marriage,” she continued, “when my husband becomes the man legally responsible for me.” She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, but it emerged far shakier than she intended. “That way, my father could never get his hands on Glenarvon.”

“That was clever of Uncle Charles,” Quinn commented. He knowingly quirked a brow. “Except…”

“Except that now I’m about to turn twenty-five without a husband in sight?” A grim smile pulled at her lips. The irony was biting. “I suspect Lord Ainsley thought twenty-five would be a good age to end the trust. After all, both of his wives hadn’t yet turned twenty when he married them, and all three of his daughters were wedded by the time they reached their majority. He thought I’d do the same when he originally wrote the stipulation into his will, although by the time I’d turned twenty-one and had no serious suitors, he’d begun to rethink it.” A knot of grief choked her throat. “But he died before he could make the change.”

Self-consciously, she darted her hand up to swipe at her eyes.

Quinn silently reached for the bottle to refill her glass, as if he knew how much distress remembering that dark time caused her. But of course he would. He’d recently lost his own father.

With a trembling hand that jiggled the golden liquid in the glass, she raised it to her lips and took a small swallow, more to give herself time to recover than for the taste of the stuff.

“So now I have four weeks to marry, or I lose my home,” she whispered. Fourvery shortweeks. “And not a proper suitor in sight.”

“A beautiful woman whose dowry is an entire estate?” he murmured, shaking his head. “I’m surprised you don’t have men bivouacking in the rear garden for their chance at you.”

She couldn’t help but smile at that ludicrous image. “Actually, only a handful of people know that I’ll inherit Glenarvon.” She protectively drew her knees up to her chest and drew the shawl tighter around her shoulders. “But now, we have no choice but to reveal it.”

He shook his head. “You’re setting yourself up for capture by a fortune hunter.”

“Which is why you’re here.” The relentless frustration of her desperate situation sank over her once more. “To make certain that doesn’t happen.”

He gave a short laugh at the absurdity of that. “By sorting out the rotten apples?”

“Among other things,” she replied carefully, studying him from the corner of her eye.

He took back the glass. “And if you don’t marry?”

“Then the Church gains the estate,” she whispered, so softly she feared for a moment that he might not be able to hear her. But his continued expression of concern told her that he heard every word. “Lady Ainsley and I would move into the dower house in London until she passes away, then most likely I would be placed into a cottage somewhere on one of the Ainsley properties, if the current viscount feels charitable. If not…” When her words started to choke in her throat, she cut herself off with a wave of her hand, but the tears were dangerously close to falling.

His eyes softened with concern. “Have you tried speaking with the solicitor, to find a legal way out of this?”

“Yes, and the stipulation cannot be altered.” She sucked in a painful breath at the grief that clawed at her chest at being forced into a marriage she didn’t want to prevent being torn away from the home she loved. Quinton had become her only salvation. “I have to marry in order to inherit.”

“This Sir Harold whom Aunt Agatha mentioned—he’s offered for you?” A casual question, certainly one he had a right to ask. Yet Belle thought she heard a deeper edge to it. When she nodded, Quinn said, “Then he’s solved your marriage problem.”

Oh, Sir Harold was the farthest thing from a solution! Surely, Quinn thought he was helping, but being reminded of that marriage offer only squeezed her heart tighter with desperation. “I don’t want to marry him.”

He frowned into the glass. “Why not?”

“I don’t love him,” she admitted quietly, fearing that he would think her a sentimental ninny for saying so. “And he doesn’t love me.”

He stared at her for a long moment, as if she were some kind of new creature in the Tower menagerie that he simply couldn’t fathom. “Most husbands and wives don’t love each other.”

Hearing the cold truth from him didn’t ease the dread weighing heavy in her chest. Or the fear that she’d end up trapped like her mother. “I don’t want to be one of those women.”