Sir Durham’s Disarming Asset (Scarlett Affairs Book 7) debuts 9/17/26!! Get it for 99 cents now before price changes!Copyright 2026, Cerise DeLand. All rights reserved.
Zephora visits Rafe to tell him about her inheritance, a fortune gained from her father’s dubious investments.
“My reason to see you is a matter of business. I did not intend to come here to apologize.” Zephora's declaration pierced Rafe's indulgent ramblings. “Though I do believe in leaving the past where it is. No crying over spilt milk and all that. I hope you forgive my sour words of our last discussion. Today, however, I have news and I need your thoughts.”
The joy he felt at her statement relieved him of most cares about her appearance here before him. “Tell me all. I am yours.”
She blinked at that.
He didn’t blame her. Their recent past was too raw for him to speak with such sentiment. He tried for reason instead. “What has happened?”
“You know that I wished to learn what had happened to my father’s profits that he put in a French banker’s hands.”
“Lenoir was his name.”
“Yes. I was agonizing how to find him. I did not know where in England he was, nor even if he had landed here.”
“And?”
She arched two long, exquisite red brows. “He came to me this morning. Along with his daughter, who was a young friend of mine. She was at Campan’s school but for only a few months. Still, she was and is dear to me.”
Rafe leaned forward. “What did he say?”
“He has kept my father’s funds. Invested them, actually.”
“Amazing that the man had the ethics to keep your father’s money.”
She snorted. “I agree. Given his rather unethical reputation.”
“You knew the sums your father deposited with him, didn’t you?”
“I knew Papa had on deposit with Lenoir in 1802 the amount of five thousand dollars. I assume my father continued to deposit more each year for my upkeep. I do not know if that is so or the amount. These monies were profits my father earned by selling his tobacco in the port of Bordeaux.”
“And Lenoir had his banking centers originally in Bordeaux.”
“Most did until recently,” she said, looking bemused. “Then they went to Paris.”
He smiled at her. Smart woman, she was a rare beauty with an ironmonger’s grasp of might and a Les Halles broker’s grasp of finance.
“And Lenoir invested your father’s money in what?”
She frowned, her mouth moving in ways that implied the horror she considered speaking aloud.
Rafe knew what Lenoir did—controlling Frenchmen’s investment in the production of rifles, cannon, and rolling stock. Lenoir, along with his cousins the Jarre family, had been the leading banker for Bonaparte’s army. The size of the French Grand Army had grown from forty thousand to more than two hundred and fifty thousand in six years. So had grown the need to supply those soldiers with everything from uniforms and shoes to all the weapons of destruction a man might need to attack and defend himself on the field of battle.
“Rifles.” Her word held no emotion. “The same ones we Americans used to fight the British in our war for independence.”
The severity of this fell hard on her. She was a sensitive woman. Caring, honorable.
She could not bear to think of her father enslaving people. Why would she accept that her father also invested in weapons to kill people? “Zeph—”
She inhaled, at once a businesswoman, hard, logical. “I wanted you to know. I ask that you help me plan how to use this money to create a better life for others somewhere, somehow, and soon. That needs to be a complicated plan. I own too much money and others have so little. Think on this, do.” She stood up. “Meanwhile, I am pleased you have received me.”
Sweetheart— He swallowed the endearment and shot to his feet. “Anytime you appear, I will receive you.”
She arched one brow, skeptical. “Good to hear.”
As she whispered her excuses and turned away for the door, he caught up to her.
“You apologized. I did not. Allow me.” I would keep you forever if it were wise. “I was angry.”
Her golden eyes widened in question. “Really? I thought it something else.”
Frustration. Longing. “It was.”
Her gaze mellowed and she took a long, searching look at his eyes and his mouth. “Perhaps someday you will tell me.”
He sucked in a breath.
“Good afternoon, Rafe. Lovely to see you.”
He stood rooted to his floor because if he went after her, if he touched her, if he said any other word to her, he would carry her over his shoulder up his stairs like some madman. In the secret haven of his draped Tudor bed, he would lay her down and make her his own. She would not object. He knew it. She would welcome every caress, every kiss, even his intimate invasion of her body. And in one afternoon, she would be his. But only for that hour. Only for that day.
Because he would pause. She would rise and leave him.
And justly so.
He had apologized but had not said the words she needed, the ones he dared not speak, lest she see his fear—and leave him forever.
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