Emilia rushed on before he could call back his man to drag her out. “Hear me out! You—you may be tolerated by society, at least when they’re winning at this club, but that would vanish in the blink of an eye if you should suffer a reverse. Imagine if just one aristocrat lost a fortune at your club and felt he’d been cheated. Imagine if he told everyone in London that you’d rigged the game! Would all your patrons keep playing here?”
He raised his brows in an expression of exaggerated alarm. “Good heavens. Rigged games! Aristocrats losing fortunes! Charges of cheating! How have I never once thought of those things, let alone dealt with them, in all these years of running every sort of card and dice game for the most inveterate gamblers in Europe?” He clapped one hand to his heart in a patently false swoon. “What a marvelous stroke of fortune you’ve come to inform me about the risks of running a gaming hell. I don’t know how I’ve survived without your insightful advice.” He dropped the affect and waved one hand at the door. “Go home, Miss Greene.”
Why, oh why, must this man be her only hope? “I am not leaving until you agree to my proposal, Mr. Dashwood.”
In the blink of an eye his face changed, becoming still and dangerous. “I have given my answer.”
Stubbornly she stayed. “It’s not only your position at stake! If there is no viscount, the estates will be put into Holland covers and fall into ruin. The servants have been turned out, even those who’ve been there for decades and have no place to go. The Sydenham seat in the House of Lords is sitting vacant, when heaven knows Parliament could use a sane, sensible voice—perhaps someone who’s seen more of the world than Eton and Cambridge and who might have some care for those less fortunate than himself.”
During this he had folded his arms, his expression cynical. “How very noble you make it all sound. Quite unlike the lords who sit in my salons every night, wagering away the fortunes their ancestors built, without regard to servants’ wages and Holland covers and certainly not for the less fortunate. What do you want?”
She blinked at the change of subject. “I—I want you to claim your rightful place—”
He snorted. “Ballocks.”
Emilia’s eyes opened wide in disbelief. That was twice he’d said that. He was being deliberately rude.
Dashwood came around his desk, his sharp gaze never wavering from her. “You didn’t mention your position, but that’s the one you care about most. You think I’m just an uncouth cardsharp—and you’re right.” To her shock, he gave a roguish wink. “But I didn’t get here by being a fool. You haven’t come for the sake of the poor servants who will lose their places, nor for the continued glory of the Sydenham family—which does not happen to include you, I notice. No, you said this was a business proposal, not a call to moral or patriotic duty.” He tilted his head, studying her with a piercing gaze. “You, Miss Emilia Greene, want something, and you’ve decided I’m your means of getting it. What is it?”
Her throat went dry, and her stomach gave a sickening lurch. “Very well,” she said a trifle unsteadily. “I do want something—not for myself but for someone very dear to me.” She paused. “The late viscount was not a good steward of his estate.”
Mr. Dashwood’s lip curled in derision. As if he knew, and had known all along, it would come down to money.
“Lord Sydenham left a daughter, a child of nine. If the estate reverts to the Crown, she will have nothing.” And that was the best outcome, compared to the alternatives. It shored up her nerve again. “Yes, Mr. Dashwood,” she declared defiantly. “I do want you to claim the viscounty of Sydenham. I want you to step into the role and care for the estate and the people who are supported by it, including and most especially this child. There are three entailed properties, from Norfolk to Dorset. You would be master of an impressive domain. It is an old title, with power and respectability that cannot be lost or wagered away.”
Unlike the fortune once associated with it. Emilia ignored that and looked him right in the face. “But you need help to get it, and I can supply that. I know where the necessary records are. I have identified a solicitor, practiced and knowledgeable about such things. And finally, I am close to the family. If I testify to your right to the viscounty, it will persuade people.”
“And in return for your inestimable help . . . ?” he prompted, still wearing that mocking smirk.
She took a deep breath. Persuade him. She summoned her most appealing smile. “All I ask is for you to help Lucinda. She is your cousin, after all.” His brow quirked cynically, and she fought hard to suppress her irritation at that. “Very distantly but still family, and a helpless child to boot.”
“How altruistic,” he said. “It explains nothing of why you are so eager to help me claim something I don’t want and don’t need.”
“I’m her governess. I’ve been with her for two years now.”
His brows went up again. “You must be the most devoted governess in Christendom, to track down a long-lost distant relation and try to bully him into amenability. Ah . . . but you’ll lose your place if this child is left with nothing, won’t you?”
She would. She could bear that. But Lucy . . . She could not, would not abandon Lucy.
At her silence, which he must have mistaken for guilt instead of fierce determination, the dratted man smiled. Not cruelly, but worse—in pity. “Go home, Miss Greene. My answer is no.”
Emilia reeled in disbelief. The prestige of the title was supposed to dazzle him. If that failed, she had mentioned the property and power associated with the title. She had tried to prick his conscience about the servants who would be harmed, and the precarious nature of his business. She had even told him of Lucy, whose life depended on him. How could none of those arguments move him, even when she was offering to do all the work and hand him a life of elegance and status? “What about your family?” she blurted in desperation.
He stiffened, his expression darkening.
“Being a viscount will make you eminently eligible,” she hurried on. She’d done her research; he was not married and had no children. “Almost any woman in Britain would receive you! Your children will have a rank and a preference they never would as commoners, not even with an enormous fortune. Refusing the viscounty may suit you, but can you refuse it for all your descendants to come?”
Dashwood said nothing, but Emilia thought it was calculation in his narrowed eyes now.
“You may be accepted by society because this club is popular,” she told him, sensing an advantage and pressing it. “It would be nothing to your status as Viscount Sydenham! And while a gaming club could fail and go out of business, a title cannot be taken away. It also casts a halo of sorts over your relations. Before you fling it aside like a cloak you don’t want, remember how it can enfold and protect those near you.”
At this his jaw tightened. “I’ve seen that society at close range. They’re not eager to welcome an outsider, no matter how gaudy the cloak he wears.”
“But when you are a lord, they will have no choice.”
He stared at her for a minute, his mouth hard, his eyes shadowed. “There is always a choice.”