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Uncertain whether she was comforted by such words or not, Ivy took a long sip of hot tea, welcoming the warmth spreading through her as if soothing away the uncertainty churning her stomach.
“Aunt Sarah, why did you not tell me any of this?”
“I would not have wished to have been seen as interfering.”
Ivy pinched the bridge of her nose. “This has to be the first time you have ever not interfered, Aunt Sarah.”
Her aunt’s lips twitched. “Goodness, you really do have some mettle now you are married, do you not?”
“Did you discover anything at all? What of this Mary?”
“All I remember of her was her being a sickly sort of a woman.” She shrugged, plucked a meringue from the plate, and chewed slowly on it.
Ivy stared at her. She couldn’t believe Aunt Sarah knew of these rumors and said nothing. If she had gone into the marriage with knowledge of this, she would have been prepared, she would have—
“You feared I would believe the rumors, did you not?”
She scooped a couple of white crumbs from the edge of her lips into her mouth. “I wanted this marriage to be a success and whilst you are not the sort of young woman to judge a person before meeting them, how could one hope to have a good marriage if one already has preconceived notions about their husband?”
Ivy eyed the delicate blue and white pattern circling the edge of her teacup. Aunt Sarah wasn’t wrong. She might not have been ready to believe her husband was a murderer, but she had been terrified of marrying a stranger as it was. Imagine if she heard such rumors prior to their wedding.
“Now you have had time to get to know your husband and I do believe it is going quite well.”
Ivy glared at her aunt as she offered a smug expression and popped another meringue into her mouth.
“It will be better, Aunt Sarah, once I figure out what happened to Mary.”
“I’m not fibbing when I tell I know very little. I preferred London as a diversion, and she rarely attended social events prior to her disappearance. From what I heard, she was constantly nauseated and there were quite a few people who believed she might be in the family way.”
Ivy frowned. It was the first time she heard such a thing but that could explain her disappearance. What if she had decided she did not want the scandal of being with child and the worst had happened? But if Harry Marshall offered for her hand, it made no sense. They could have wed with haste and had a supposedly premature baby like quite a few women often had.
Unless it wasn’t Mr. Marshall’s child. Unless he’d killed her when he discovered it was someone else’s. Perhaps that was why Marshall was so furious with her husband. He believed it was Cillian’s—maybe even blamed Cillian for forcing his hand.
Cillian said they were just friends and she believed him. But that wouldn’t change what Mr. Marshall did and what he believed. She needed to get to the truth of this matter sooner rather than later. A man willing to kill a pregnant woman was a dangerous man indeed.
***
Cillian eased out a breath. He faced down the three men, knowing nothing had changed. He could lay out all the facts, but these investors would never trust him.
This wasn’t about their money or the mills or the lives of the workers. This was about him.
But what could he do? He couldn’t change how people viewed him, his scars and his simple upbringing.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and looked at the three men in turn across the glossy mahogany table. He wasn’t one of them and there was nothing to be done about it. They peered back at him, their backs straight, an air of importance simmering in their unemotional gazes and running down the lines of their noses and lifted chins.
He didn’t want to be one of them.
These were men who had been wealthy from birth. Men who had never scrabbled in the dirt to survive or been treated poorly because of their looks or how they sounded. They simply expected the world to mold around them and their fortunes. They were men with wives at home who they never saw. Men with mistresses and courtesans who only wanted them for their pocketbooks.
He didn’t want any of that.
He only wanted Ivy.
Slowly, Cillian reached around and untied his eyepatch. He set it on the table before looking up to see the horror in at least two of the men’s faces. Only Sir Wicksteed managed not to look perturbed though a crease of confusion etched between his brows.
“Here are the facts, gentlemen. I have three mills, all performing well. They could be doing substantially better.” He looked at each one of them in turn. “You do not trust me because I am not one of you, because I was never raised to inherit a title and a fortune, but the fact is, I know the type of people working at these mills and I have visited each of them and seen exactly what could be done to improve them in every way. I have experience of life that you do not, and if you were clever, you would put that to good use.” He rose slowly and picked up the eyepatch, stuffing it in his pocket. “These mills will prove even more successful given time. I would prefer not to take that time. I would prefer to do it with your investment.” Cillian shrugged. “But mark my words, gentlemen, if you do not invest, I shall do what I have always done and survive. I will concentrate my every breath and every hour into surviving. You shall not be rid of me, and you shall regret the day you did not take up this opportunity, because men like me...well—” He smirked. “Men like me are what make men like you your fortunes.”
He didn’t bother waiting for their reactions or even sparing them a glance. He’d played their game too long—dressing like a gentleman and pretending to have airs and graces. The fact was, he was the sort of man who could get dirty and work for hours on end, something none of them had ever done. With or without them, he’d thrive. It was what he’d always done. No matter the hand life had given him, he’d thrived.
