“I don’t know,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders indifferently. “I only stated that you required a dress to wear to dinner, and someone fetched it.”
“And you don’t care where it came from?” she pressed. He shook his head.
“Why should I be bothered with that?” His tone was very sincere, as though he truly wondered what her response might be.
“How do you know it wasn’t stolen?” Beatrix asked, emphasizing her last word slightly.
“Why on earth would one of my servants steal a dress if I had told them to go get it? Do you think I cannot pay my bills?” He actually laughed for a moment, and Beatrix narrowed her eyes in a keen glare.
“I don’t know that you can pay your bills, now that you’ve brought it up. I don’t even know that you are employed.” She stared at him, wide-eyed, daring him to challenge her doubt. “What exactly does a marquess do?”
“I do a lot of things,” he answered, refusing to take the bait.
“Yes, yes, I’m sure you have a great number of interests and hobbies,” Beatrix shot back. “But I meant for a living. What does a marquess do to earn his wealth, rather than merely inherit it well after having the good fortune to choose his parents wisely?”
“First, my wealth—like that of many other members of the peerage—earns interest when others borrow against it. We provide a valuable service to the people. As for employment, I happen to own a vineyard and produce a great quantity of wine each year.”
“Well, you don’t, you mean. You produce nothing. Your laborers actually produce the wine, don’t they?” Beatrix raised an eyebrow, waiting expectantly for an explanation.
“How would the laborers produce the wine if I did not own the vineyard?” he shot back, seeming to be amused and enjoying the banter of their conversation. “Would they grow grapes along the sides of the riverbank, harvest them and press them, then sell their fermented product? Who would buy it?”
“Ah, so you’re running a charitable organization by allowing the workers to toil for you endlessly! I see now, what a saint you must be,” she said, scolding him with her wit. “Tell me, if your only role in the operation is to own the entire process, why do you take the lion’s share of the profit?”
“What else would I do?” he asked, confused.
“I should think the profit would be divided and apportioned to each according to how much work he performed. You sit at a desk and sign your name to papers… you must not be worth very much. They break their backs in your service at every season of the year… they should earn a great deal.”
“That is not how business works, I’m afraid,” the Marquess answered rather condescendingly.
“I’m well aware that it’s not. But the only reason it doesn’t work that way is because those who have the power to correct it are the very souls who take all the money and do none of the work.” Beatrix smiled. “But enough of that pleasant chit-chat, what are we to dine on? Beef that your laborers tended and slaughtered then cooked to your liking? Carrots that they pulled from the ground and handed over to you, all because your ancestors have owned this land for a few hundred years?”
“Do you do this with every person you converse with?” he asked, causing Beatrix to wince. She shook her head.
“No, only those who insist on keeping me locked up over a trinket they have somehow misplaced.”
“So you don’t have it,” he conceded. “Yet you refuse to tell me who does have it so that I might retrieve it.”
“It’s as I have already said,” Beatrix explained, keeping her words soft. “To you it is another prized possession, but to my family, it stands for not only their next meal, but their very freedom. Should I tell you who those men were, who I am, then all of our lives are forfeited. And for what? Pray, tell me why this one object is worth the lives of everyone I hold dear. Convince me that my cooperation is worth the price they would pay.”
Callum was silent. The young lady across from him was right, and he’d been so very wrong all this time. There was nothing he could say that would justify the harm that may come to her family, not even something that mattered so much to his mother.
“It is only a trinket, as you have said,” he replied in a stony voice. “It is of no importance after all.”
“That cannot be true,” the woman said kindly. “You would have to be the stupidest man alive to keep me prisoner for days and then change your mind about the whole affair. And you, sir, are many loathsome things… but you are not stupid.”
Callum looked up at her statement and saw the corners of her mouth turn up in a mirthful smile. She so obviously enjoyed taunting him, baiting him with each new utterance. Instead of taking offense, Callum found it refreshing. He’d never conversed with anyone so willing to speak their mind, man or woman.
“I greatly appreciate your assessment of my intelligence,” he answered, but there was very little humor in his tone. Instead, Callum was suddenly resigned to his loss, all of the anger that had driven him thus far having faded away. “But I’m actually feeling rather dull. I’ve treated you horribly, thinking you to be no better than a common thief who runs the streets—”
“Ah, but if I was this common thief, you would be justified in locking me up?” she challenged. “So you are only in the wrong because I’ve proven myself to be witty and somewhat relentless in my conversations with you?”
“No, of course not,” Callum answered, shaking his head. “That is not what I meant, I apologize.”
“Then tell me what you did mean,” she demanded in a low voice. “What justifies you—a man of wealth and title—taking my very freedom from me, a woman of… well, considerablyless.”
Callum was silent for another long moment. In truth, he had no answer, but he knew his lack of response was as wrong as his motives.
Beatrix sat back in her chair and waited, watching Callum’s face. “I want to know what this property was, why it was so important.”
