My Husband Bought Me To Settle A Debt — He Didn’t Expect Me To Fire His Entire Staff

Part 2

He leaned forward, lacing his fingers together on the desk.

His gaze dropped deliberately to the floor.

A puddle was forming around my boots, seeping into the edge of a priceless, centuries-old rug.

“You are ruining my carpet.”

I looked down at my feet.

I did not gasp, and I certainly did not apologize.

I simply took a step backward onto the bare floorboards.

“Your butler left me in a room with a leaky window for seven hours,” I said.

My voice was an alto and slightly raspy, the voice of a woman who frequently had to shout over the wind.

“My apologies to the rug, but I’m sure it has suffered worse indignities than rainwater.”

Greg’s eyebrows twitched.

He studied my face, assessing me with a piercing gaze.

I was not beautiful in the conventional porcelain doll sense like the thirty women before me.

My jaw was too square and my cheekbones cast harsh shadows in the dim light.

My dull brown hair was plastered to my forehead in unruly strands.

But my striking pale hazel eyes were fixed on him with an intense focus.

I was not pleading.

I was assessing him right back.

He gestured vaguely to the velvet wingback chair.

“Sit.”

I looked at the cream velvet upholstery and then down at my sodden cloak.

“I prefer to stand,” I said flatly.

“If I sit, I will ruin the upholstery, and you will spend the rest of our brief acquaintance tallying the cost of the damage.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw.

He hated that I had completely anticipated his petty arithmetic.

“Suit yourself,” he said.

The leather chair groaned as he leaned back.

“Brian informs me you are Dan’s niece.”

He tapped his silver pen rhythmically against the desk.

“I assume you are aware of your uncle’s financial obligations to this estate.”

“I am aware my uncle is a gambler, a drunk, and a fool who owes you three thousand pounds he does not have,” I said.

Greg blinked, the bluntness of my words feeling like a physical slap to him.

“He sent me here,” I continued.

My stiff, red-knuckled fingers unfastened the brass clasp of my cloak.

“Under the delusion that if I managed to secure your hand, you would forgive the debt.”

I finally managed the clasp and shrugged off the heavy wet wool.

Beneath it, I wore a simple, unadorned dress of dark blue merino.

It was worn at the elbows and hemmed a fraction too short.

“And do you share his delusion?”

Greg asked, his voice dripping with cool sarcasm.

“No.”

I met his gaze squarely.

“I think a man who interviews thirty women in one day for the position of a wife is treating the matter as a business acquisition.”

The rhythmic tapping of the pen stopped entirely.

“And a smart businessman does not buy a liability to forgive a bad debt.”

Silence stretched thick and heavy in the room, broken only by the ticking of the mantel clock.

He felt a strange, unsettling sensation.

I wasn’t playing the game.

I was kicking over the board.

“If you know you have no chance of success,” Greg said deliberately.

He tilted his head.

“Why did you insist on staying?”

I shifted my weight, the defiant spark in my eyes flickering.

“Because I have twenty pounds to my name, and my uncle will turn me out before winter if I fail.”

I stood a little straighter.

“I decided that if I am to be humiliated, I will at least have the satisfaction of taking up fifteen minutes of your very expensive time.”

Greg set the silver pen down, staring at me.

“Brian, leave us and close the door.”

The heavy oak door clicked shut, leaving us completely alone in the dimming light.

He stood up and walked toward me.

What conditions was I about to demand to save myself from ruin?