with the signature of Stuart Winston Aysgarth and one for his entailment with the signature of Mount Villiars.
Emma’s eyes boggled at the numbers as she mentally tallied the flow of both across her portion of the table. The fifteen thousand pounds was the tip of it, a pittance compared to the whole. He was borrowing almost nine hundred thousand pounds, some of it just on his name, the rest backed by various properties, stocks, and assets.
Good, she thought. He wouldn’t even notice fifty pounds gone missing in all these transactions. My goodness, were his finances complicated!
Better still, when he sat forward to sign the first of the documents, she watched very stylized writing flow from his hand, lots of loops, florid. Ha, she might have known! It would be easy to imitate; the fanciest always were. If this was it, she couldn’t imagine what all the fuss was about.
After signing, however, he brought forth from the inside pocket of his frock coat a flat gold case, opened it, and took out a seal and stick of red wax. Well, of course, she thought. Two men jumped up to offer a flame for melting the wax ontothe document. The bank governor won, offering an official-looking lighter of some sort, a bird with a flame out its bill. The viscount’s gloved hand held the wax stick in the flame, his eyelids lowered as he stared down at it. The small light made a faint, rather satanic waver up over his severe face, offsetting the shadows of a deep brow and a hat brim.
For a moment, light played up into his face with its wide, clean-shaven jaw and high cheekbones. And Emma thought, oh dear, there was a certain type of woman, more the pity for her, who would not stand a chance against such a man.
Mount Villiars was romantically handsome, his face severe in its Anglo-Saxon proportion, if dark from coloring of peoples farther south. A sharply angled face, underlined by hollow and bone and coloring. Not to mention a bearing, an air about his tall, slender body. It made one wonder at the logic of nature that a man who already had so much should have this too—a stunning physical presence.
His dark eyes—even in good light as dark as Turkish coffee—blinked when wax splashed down: two small red splotches onto the white page. More drips quickly pooled into a bright bloodred puddle of wax. He covered this with his seal and pressed, rocking the instrument once.
Emma caught herself: Turkish coffee. When was the last time she’d drunk that? Ah, never mind; in London. But didn’t old Stuart here embody every last rare thing, come to think of it, that was available in the wicked, old cosmopolitan place?
Done, she thought with satisfaction, as she stared at red wax hardening into an embossed salamander, the emblem of French kings, if she remembered correctly. ( Ah, Zach, where are you when I need you? It was the sort of useless information he could have confirmed in his sleep—in a stupor, dead drunk.) In any case, she could easily do a reverse impression of the seal, and the viscount’s neat, ornate handwriting was going to be a breeze to duplicate. She could already feel the triumph: the flow of his signature in her mind, its curve and stoke within her fingers. Aah, the old, talented fingers—
That was when he produced another thin box, this time silver. It was smaller, looking like an antique patch box, the sort carried two hundred years ago by the aristocracy when “beauty marks” were all the vogue as a way to cover facial flaws. He opened it, click , and there was what looked like…an ink pad. She frowned as he set this down and took the finger of one glove in his teeth, pulling. He removed the glove, revealing long, slender fingers on a large palm, fingers that turned up slightly at the tips, smooth, round, trimmed nails. He folded his graceful hand into a loose fist, extending his thumb, and pressed it onto the ink pad, then onto the document.
His thumb print in blue ink. Emma stared down at the first loan paper,
Emma’s eyes boggled at the numbers as she mentally tallied the flow of both across her portion of the table. The fifteen thousand pounds was the tip of it, a pittance compared to the whole. He was borrowing almost nine hundred thousand pounds, some of it just on his name, the rest backed by various properties, stocks, and assets.
Good, she thought. He wouldn’t even notice fifty pounds gone missing in all these transactions. My goodness, were his finances complicated!
Better still, when he sat forward to sign the first of the documents, she watched very stylized writing flow from his hand, lots of loops, florid. Ha, she might have known! It would be easy to imitate; the fanciest always were. If this was it, she couldn’t imagine what all the fuss was about.
After signing, however, he brought forth from the inside pocket of his frock coat a flat gold case, opened it, and took out a seal and stick of red wax. Well, of course, she thought. Two men jumped up to offer a flame for melting the wax ontothe document. The bank governor won, offering an official-looking lighter of some sort, a bird with a flame out its bill. The viscount’s gloved hand held the wax stick in the flame, his eyelids lowered as he stared down at it. The small light made a faint, rather satanic waver up over his severe face, offsetting the shadows of a deep brow and a hat brim.
For a moment, light played up into his face with its wide, clean-shaven jaw and high cheekbones. And Emma thought, oh dear, there was a certain type of woman, more the pity for her, who would not stand a chance against such a man.
Mount Villiars was romantically handsome, his face severe in its Anglo-Saxon proportion, if dark from coloring of peoples farther south. A sharply angled face, underlined by hollow and bone and coloring. Not to mention a bearing, an air about his tall, slender body. It made one wonder at the logic of nature that a man who already had so much should have this too—a stunning physical presence.
His dark eyes—even in good light as dark as Turkish coffee—blinked when wax splashed down: two small red splotches onto the white page. More drips quickly pooled into a bright bloodred puddle of wax. He covered this with his seal and pressed, rocking the instrument once.
Emma caught herself: Turkish coffee. When was the last time she’d drunk that? Ah, never mind; in London. But didn’t old Stuart here embody every last rare thing, come to think of it, that was available in the wicked, old cosmopolitan place?
Done, she thought with satisfaction, as she stared at red wax hardening into an embossed salamander, the emblem of French kings, if she remembered correctly. ( Ah, Zach, where are you when I need you? It was the sort of useless information he could have confirmed in his sleep—in a stupor, dead drunk.) In any case, she could easily do a reverse impression of the seal, and the viscount’s neat, ornate handwriting was going to be a breeze to duplicate. She could already feel the triumph: the flow of his signature in her mind, its curve and stoke within her fingers. Aah, the old, talented fingers—
That was when he produced another thin box, this time silver. It was smaller, looking like an antique patch box, the sort carried two hundred years ago by the aristocracy when “beauty marks” were all the vogue as a way to cover facial flaws. He opened it, click , and there was what looked like…an ink pad. She frowned as he set this down and took the finger of one glove in his teeth, pulling. He removed the glove, revealing long, slender fingers on a large palm, fingers that turned up slightly at the tips, smooth, round, trimmed nails. He folded his graceful hand into a loose fist, extending his thumb, and pressed it onto the ink pad, then onto the document.
His thumb print in blue ink. Emma stared down at the first loan paper,
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