She leaned forward, hands clasped, eyes shining with excitement. "I've received the first installment of my inheritance. We could share it, equal parts."
He swallowed. "In exchange for what, precisely?"
"Your name," she beamed. "And nothing more."
Inheritance. Equal share. He hated the greedy whispers lacing his thoughts. "Fifty percent?"
"It would hardly be right to offer less. It is a rather large favor, after all."
"And after we are wed?" Why? Why was he even asking? This was lunacy. She must have slipped the asylum fence somewhere.
Miss Blake smacked her hands together, then threw them wide. "We part ways!"
Now he sat up. "Part ways?"
"We part ways. I may enjoy my adventure with all the protections afforded a married woman," here, Patrick stifled a laugh, "and you may have the noble command you deserve."
Oh my God, he groaned inwardly. She was a highwayman's dream. A swindler's absolute fantasy. He couldn't in good conscience let her go on. There must be something he could do or say to dissuade her. At least there might be someone he could summon. "Miss Blake, who is your father?"
She swallowed, looking extinguished for the first time. "I did not know my father. Or my mother. My grandfather, Mister Edison Eaphram Morely-Tate, raised me." Now she lost some of her wilt and smiled. "He was a man of science, a very learned gentleman and renowned member of the Royal Academy. Now that he's…" She swallowed again. "Well, there is no reason for me to stay in London, now that he's gone."
Patrick's heart ached, and he began to grasp the purpose of her make-believe hanging about her like a protective cloak. "It is generous of you, but I fear unscrupulous of me to take half of your means, Miss Blake."
"Oh no!" She sat forward, slender fingers resting on his knee and quickening his heartbeat. "This is only one installment, you understand. Seven more, over the next three years. Each share increases fifty percent, until my twenty-first birthday."
His weak moral fiber unraveled faster at her every word. "This?" he repeated.
With a slippered heel she banged a battered oak chest that was wedged half beneath her seat. "Four thousand pounds, sterling and notes."
Patrick gasped, a force of air so sudden that it stung his lungs and started a coughing fit. "You brought-" He paused, pounding a fist against his chest. "You have on your person, in the wild, four thousand pounds? Have you any notion how foolish that is!"
He expected her to look stung, but Miss Blake only rolled her eyes. "Sterling and notes; it's not as though it weighs two tons." She pressed a finger to her lips. "No one knows it's coin in there. I told the driver it was science equipment."