A Night, A Consequence, A Vow. Angela Bissell

       CHAPTER TWO

      EMILY ROYCE SAT behind her desk and took a deep breath that somehow failed to fill her lungs. For a moment she thought she might be sick and the feeling sent a rising tide of disbelief through her.

      This was not how she reacted to bad news. Emily had learnt how to handle disappointment a long time ago. She did not buckle under its weight. When bad news came, she received it with equanimity. Practicality. Calm.

      And yet there was no denying the sudden stab of nausea in her belly. Or the cold, prickling sensation sweeping over her skin.

      She dug her fingers into the arms of her chair, some dark corner of her mind imagining her father’s neck beneath her clenched hands.

      She was going to kill him.

      At the very least she was going to hunt him down, drag him out of whichever opulent hotel suite or illicit den of pleasure he was currently holed up in and yell at him until she was hoarse.

      Except she wouldn’t.

      Emily knew she wouldn’t.

      Because no matter how many times in her life she’d imagined venting her anger, letting loose even a bit of the hurt and disappointment she’d stored up and kept tightly lidded over the years, she never had.

      And this time would be no different. She would do what she always did. What she had to do. She would shove her emotions aside and pour all her energy into limiting the damage. Into doing whatever was necessary to sweep Maxwell Royce’s latest indiscretion under the rug and in so doing keep his reputation—and, by association, the reputation of The Royce—intact.

      Only this time, if what she had just been told was true, Maxwell had outdone himself. He’d created a situation so dire she struggled to accept that even he could have done such a stupid, irresponsible, selfish thing.

      And this would not be a mere matter of slipping a wad of cash to some unscrupulous opportunist to prevent embarrassing, compromising photos of her father from finding their way to the tabloids. Or of dipping into her personal savings and hastily rebalancing the club’s books, with the help of their accountant, to cover up Maxwell’s misappropriation of funds from one of their business accounts.

      Not that any of her father’s prior indiscretions could be labelled trivial, but this...this...

      Her grandfather would turn in his grave. As would his father, and his father before him.

      Edward Royce, Emily’s great-great-grandfather and a wealthy, respected pillar of British high society at the turn of the twentieth century, had founded the club on which he’d bestowed his name in 1904. Since then ownership of the prestigious establishment had been proudly passed down through three generations of Royces, all male heirs—until Emily. More than a hundred years later, The Royce remained a traditional gentlemen’s club and one of western Europe’s last great bastions of male exclusivity and chauvinism. A society of powerful, influential men who between them controlled a good portion of the world’s major industries, not forgetting those who presided over governments and ruled their own countries and principalities.

      On occasion Emily amused herself with thoughts of how the majority of their members would react to learning that fifty per cent of their precious club was now owned by a woman.

      She imagined there’d be deep rumblings of discontent and much sputtering of cigar smoke and Scotch beneath the lighted chandeliers in the Great Salon. But she also knew her grandfather had acted with calculated intent when he’d bequeathed half of the club’s ownership to his only grandchild. Gordon Royce had known his errant son could not be trusted with sole proprietorship. Rewriting his will to leave fifty per cent of the shares to Emily—the granddaughter he’d wished had been born a boy—had surely been an undesirable but necessary course of action in Gordon’s mind.

      Not that her grandfather had been able to overcome his misogynistic tendencies altogether. He’d gone to significant lengths to ensure the Royce name would live on through a male heir.

      It was terribly ironic—that her grandfather should manipulate her life from beyond the grave when he’d shown scarcely a flicker of interest in her while he’d been alive.

      Emily closed her eyes a moment. Her mind was wandering. She needed to harness her thoughts, to wrestle her brain around the problem and come up with a solution. She needed time to think. Alone. Without the sinister presence of the man who sat in the upholstered chair on the other side of her desk.

      She stood slowly, her features composed, her legs steady only through sheer force of will.

      ‘I think you should leave now, Mr Skinner.’

      She spoke with all the authority she could muster but her cool directive failed to have any visible impact on her visitor.

      His head tilted to the side, his thin lips stretching into a humourless smile that sent an icy ripple down Emily’s spine. ‘That’s a pity,’ he said. ‘I was just starting to enjoy our conversation.’

      Emily didn’t like the way he looked at her. Carl Skinner—one of London’s most notorious loan sharks—looked old enough to be her father, yet there was nothing paternal in the way his gaze crawled over her body. She fisted her hands by her sides. Her pinstriped skirt and white silk blouse were smart and conservative and not the least bit revealing. There was nothing for him to feast his filthy eyes on, she assured herself—except maybe for the angry colour rising in her cheeks.

      ‘Our conversation is over.’ She gestured towards the single sheet of paper he’d produced with a smug flourish when she’d questioned the veracity of his claim. It lay upon her desk now, the signature scrawled at the foot of the agreement unmistakably her father’s. ‘I’ll be seeking a legal opinion on this.’

      ‘You can have a hundred lawyers look over it, sweetheart.’

      Emily tried not to flinch at the endearment.

      ‘It was legally binding when Royce signed it seven days ago,’ he continued. ‘And it’ll be legally binding in another seven days when I collect on the debt.’ He leaned back, his gaze roving around the interior of her small but beautifully appointed office, with its view overlooking one of Mayfair’s most elegant streets, before landing back on her. ‘You know, I’ve always fancied myself as a member of one of these clubs.’

      Emily almost snorted. The idea of this man rubbing shoulders with princes and presidents was ludicrous, but she endeavoured to keep the thought from showing on her face. Skinner’s business suit and neatly cropped hair might afford him a civilised veneer but she sensed the danger emanating from him. Insulting this man would be far from wise.

      ‘Mr Royce’s debt will be settled in full by the end of the week.’ She injected her voice with a confidence she prayed wasn’t misplaced. If her father’s gambling debt wasn’t settled within the week, the alternative—Carl Skinner getting his hands on a fifty per cent shareholding of The Royce—was an outcome far too horrendous to contemplate. She would not let it happen.

      ‘You sound very certain about that, little lady.’

      ‘I am.’

      Skinner’s lips pursed. ‘You understand that assurance would carry more weight if I heard it straight from your boss?’

      ‘My