At once, she summoned Mr. Stephens, the steward, a man who had remained part of the household in gratitude to her late grandfather. A grizzled, plain-speaking man, he had quickly become one of her favorite people on the estate, and it was to him that she now wished to turn for advice.
“Debts?” he asked, scratching the back of his head.
“Yes. Gambling debts.”
“How much?”
“Enough it would involve piecing the land, and perhaps selling the house itself, to pay them back.”
He looked at her from under bushy, gray brows. “You don’t have a figure?”
“My father did not see fit to give methatinformation.” Her voice dripped with disdain. “I suspect he thought me incapable of processing such a number. All he told me was that I must deliver the letter to Mrs. Dove-Lyon, and later that I would be married as a means of paying off these debts. Not,” she added, “that he went so far as to volunteer that information directly, naturally. Such a thing would have come as a surprise if he’d had his way.”
Mr. Stephens frowned. “Are the debts to a specific gentleman or the establishment itself?”
“I imagine the establishment, as my father couldn’t tell me to whom he was offering my hand.” Christiana strode about her father’s study—now functionally her own—her skirts catching on her legs. Her glasses slipped down her nose, and she pushed them up with one finger as she thought.
“You can refuse,” Mr. Stephens said. “There’s nothing he can do to force you, short of dragging you to London himself, and we both know he doesn’t have the strength for that.”
“But?”
“If the debt’s as big as you say, it’ll come for the house.” He offered her a sympathetic glance. “And your father can turn you out if he chooses.”
That was the eventuality she’d been afraid of. She chewed her lip. “Is there a way of paying off the debt without resorting to marriage?”
“It’s possible. I don’t know this Mrs. Dove-Lyon in question, but it depends on the terms of the contract.”
She closed her eyes. Her father would have signed anything, probably drunk out of his wits. A gambler—of course she’d had the ill fortune to be born the daughter of an inveterate gambler. Her mother had died too early to offer any hope of saving Christiana.
Then again, her mother had been Society’s darling, and Christiana with her glasses and lanky, overlong limbs and distaste for social events, was not. Her mother had despised her as a child; no doubt she would have despised her more still as an adult.
Perhaps it was better Christiana only had herself to consider.
“I could return to my mother’s parents,” she said, swinging her gaze back to Mr. Stephens. “They live in Kent.”
“You could, miss.” His tone was gentle as he added, “But I remember when they visited after your parents’ wedding. They left things on a sour note. The servants were all talking about it. Your mother married down, they said, and they wanted nothing more to do with her.”
“Or me,” Christiana said, filling in the gaps. That was a shame. “My father’s brother?”
“I believe he died two years ago.”
“Heavens, why have so many members of my family perished? It’s highly inconvenient.” She reached the window and looked out over the lush hills that characterized the Yorkshire Dales. Her home. She had grown up on these hills, learning toride in the paddocks here, exploring every nook and cranny with single-minded focus after reading that book on natural history.
She shook herself. There was no point in getting sentimental.
“I need a new approach,” she said. “If I cannot cast myself on the generosity of my family, what’s left?”
Mr. Stephens said nothing, but Christiana could read the silence as the quiet answer neither of them wished to utter. A lady in her position, penniless and without friends, had very little recourse in this world. She knew it as well as he.
“Mrs. Dove-Lyon,” she murmured. She’d met the lady once or twice during her illicit forays into the world of gambling dens, but she remembered very little about her. The widow of a captain, perhaps? Certainly, she dressed as though she were perpetually in mourning. And, although Christiana had never entered this part of the world, she arranged matches between London’s elite, facilitating marriages between reluctant sons, disgraced daughters, scandalous gentlemen, and more.
Evidently, her father intended her to become one of their ranks.
The question was, which breed of disgraced, scandalous gentleman would Mrs. Dove-Lyon select for her?
Not that she had any intention of going along with her father’s diabolical plan. There had to be another way of resolving the issue that didn’t involve selling herself into the hands of a gentleman desperate enough to buy a bride. One who, therefore, she assumed incapable of finding a bride the usual way.
That was not a fate she was willing to endure.