“I want no gowns,” Esme ground out. “I want my dowry.”
“By gad, you’re as obstinate as your pa—and without half his wits. How in the name of all that’s holy did he beget such a ninnyhammer?”
Lady Brentmor bolted up from the sofa and took a furious turn about the room. Then she sailed at her granddaughter again. “For the hundredth time, you haven’t got a dowry. Not until I say you do.”
“Then I shall write a letter to the Times,” Esme said. “I shall tell the world what you have done.”
“The Times? THE TIMES?” the dowager shrieked.
“Yes, and all the other newspapers as well. Also, I shall stand up in church on Sunday and tell everyone how my husband is forced to desert me because my family does not fulfill the marriage contract.”
Lady Brentmor opened her mouth, then shut it. She sat down again and stared at Esme.
Esme sat poker straight, her hands tightly folded, her mouth set in a stubborn line.
There was a long silence.
Then the dowager’s sharp crack of laughter.
“Plague take you! Stand up before the congregation, will you? A letter to the Times? On my honor that’s good. Did Percival help you think of it?”
“He suggested the newspaper, but the announcement in the church was my own idea,” Esme stiffly admitted.
“I thought you took it too quiet yesterday. Damn, but you’re pigheaded. I told you it wouldn’t do any good. Edenmont won’t be running back to collect you. You can’t buy his company, child. He’ll only spend what he gets on gaming, liquor, and tarts.”
The words stabbed deep, but Esme answered doggedly, “It is Varian’s decision how he spends it. If he does not wish to come for me, I cannot force him to. I did not beg him to keep me with him, and shall not. I brought nothing to my marriage. Now at least I have a dowry and may hold my head up. My honor demands it be paid.”
“Blast and botheration! You talk just like a man!” Lady Brentmor again bounced up. “Very well, my honorable lady, if you wish to manage everybody, and think you know better than your elders.”
She moved to the library door. “Come along with me to the counting house, and I’ll show you the Pandora’s box you want to open.”
Mystified, yet firm in her resolve, Esme marched after her grandmother to the gloomy study.
There the dowager unlocked a desk drawer, took out a sheaf of letters, and thrust them into Esme’s hands. Then she sat, waiting in silence, but for her index finger tapping impatiently upon the desk.
After a few minutes, Esme looked up from the endless rows of figures and explanatory notes. “You had this man spy upon my uncle?”
“I had him look into Gerald’s accounts. I only wish I had a proper spy, to find out how Gerald managed it.” The old lady gestured at the letters. “He told me he’d had a few setbacks—but what those figures amount to is near ruin. How, I ask you, could he come to a crash with such sound investments? I ought to know. That’s where I’ve been investing my funds these last thirty years.”
“I do not understand these matters,” Esme said. “Yet I have heard of speculations in which men lose fortunes.”
“He’s been up to something worse than that, or he’d have admitted he was under the hatches.”
Esme handed back the letters. “His money concerns are his problem. I do not see what this has to do with my dowry.”
“Oh, don’t you?” The dowager locked away the letters. “Then think, child.”
After giving Esme exactly three seconds to do so, she went on, “Gerald is desperate for money. Even without knowing how bad it was, I wouldn’t give him any. Not until I could be sure his troubles weren’t his own stupidity. I don’t throw good money after bad, as I hope you understand by now.”
“Yes, Grandmother, but—”
“The chess set,” Lady Brentmor said impatiently. “Worth thousands—complete, that is. That’s why Percival kept the queen hid from his pa. The boy had that much sense at least. He knows Gerald can’t be trusted.”
This Esme did not find difficult to believe. In Corfu, not only had her uncle been cold and insulting, but he’d lied about her grandmother. All that talk about trying to soften her toward Jason and about her threats to disown Percival—all lies.
“Gerald must know about Diana’s bequest, but he ain’t mentioned it,” the dowager continued, “though the set’s worth little to any buyer with a piece missing. That tells me he ain’t given up hope of getting the queen back, and won’t give the set up easy if he does. Soon as he finds out we’ve got the queen, there’ll be trouble. For one, he’ll surely threaten to contest Diana’s will in Chancery.”
Esme frowned. “I have heard these lawsuits are very expensive. Also, Percival told me some Chancery suits have continued for generations. How can my uncle—”
“When he’s got next to no money? He don’t need to actually go through with it. Only threaten. Or maybe just spend a few quid to get things started. Then what’s Edenmont to do, when he’s got less than nothing? I’ll tell you what. Settle out of court for some measly sum. Or, if he’s wise enough to call Gerald’s bluff ...” Lady Brentmor shook her head.
“No,” Esme said firmly. “No ominous hints and shaking your head at me. Tell me plain what you suspect.”
“Ain’t you seen enough among them heathens to work it out for yourself?” Her grandmother gestured at the ledgers lining the room’s walls. “Any business that can’t be writ down plain for all the world to see is dirty business, in my experience. Which means one’s dealing with dirty people. If Gerald’s sunk to that and he’s desperate, he could sink deeper.”
It required little imagination to take the hint. Esme felt chilled. “You mean violence. Like hiring these dirty people to—to put Varian out of the way. You truly believe my uncle would do such a thing?”
“When I smell something bad, I usually find rottenness at the bottom of it. There’s a stench about Gerald since he come back. Worse than usual. Now you know as much as I do. Now you can think about it, like I’ve been doing, since the curst day I found that bedamned chess piece.”
Esme didn’t need to think. She’d seen the evil men could do, for lust, for greed, even for the pettiest reasons or no reason at all. Her father had been murdered on her account. She would not tempt another villain to rid her of her husband.
She looked at her grandmother. “Will you tell me one thing?”
“That depends what it is.”
“Do you believe the chess set is rightfully mine, for my dowry, and must be given to my husband?”
“Bother the child!” The old lady’s scowl was fearsome. “Do you think I’ve no conscience at all? Of course it’s yours—or that pretty-faced lackwit’s, if you insist. I only wish you wasn’t so moony about him. I wish you could’ve been sensible and listened to me and said, ‘Yes, Grandmother. Whatever you think is best.’”
“I am sorry, truly, Grandmother.”
The scowl eased ever so slightly. “It ain’t right for a young gel to be dragged into these filthy doings. It ain’t right for you to know anything about ‘em. You got enough trouble, with that paperskulled debauchee roistering in the cesspits of London. Damn and blast that son of mine! If he hadn’t gone and got himself killed, none of this would have happened. If he wasn’t dead already, I’d throttle him myself.”
Esme rose and walked round the desk. She bent and dropped a kiss on her grandmother’s papery cheek.
Lady Brentmor’s eyes widened. As Esme straightened, she discerned a glitter in those eyes. Tears?
But her grandmother gave an indignant snort, and the glitter vanished. “I’m forgiven, I take it,” she grumbled.
“It’s I who should seek forgiveness,” Esme said. “To tell you frankly, I did not wish to give Varian money he would be tempted to spend on women. I am very jealous, and the women would vex me more than drunkenness or gaming. Still, I believed it was my duty.”
“So it was,” the dowager grudgingly agree
d.
“Also, I must have some faith in him. I told you yesterday how he has been good to me. And brave. Perhaps you see this, too—else you would not care what my uncle might do to him. Yet you see a great deal else in my husband that troubles you, and you wish to spare me. I am not certain you are altogether correct, but I must believe in you, too.”
This earned Esme a sharp look. “Does this mean you’ll hold your tongue about your dratted dowry? And stop plaguing me?”
“For now, yes, because you think there is a chance my uncle will harm Varian. Still, you are very clever—and I am not altogether brainless. We will think of something.”
Another snort. “We, indeed.”
“Yes. We two. In the meantime, I shall cease my ‘moping’ and choose gowns, if that will please you. Also, I will have the dancing master—and whatever else you believe will help make a lady of me.”
Esme straightened her shoulders and walked away from the desk. “If—when Varian returns to me, he must have no cause to be ashamed. And if—when he mends his troubles, he must have a worthy baroness beside him.”
***
Lord Edenmont gazed unhappily about him at the shabby interior of the small cottage. He had left London the day after he’d sent Willoughby the brief note. He’d been at Mount Eden for five days, and this was the first cottage he’d mustered the courage to enter.
It was tidy, despite its shabbiness, as were the six children—ranging in age from thirteen to two. This brood stood behind their noticeably pregnant mama and gazed at him in unblinking wonder.
“Gravity again,” said Gideon, coming away from inspection of the chimney. “It’s pulling down the chimney and the roof.”
The mother of the brood flushed. “John’s not had a chance to mend the roof, my lord. He’s had to take work where he can get it, and that’s took—taken—him to Aylesbury this month.”
Varian suppressed a sigh. John Gillis was only one of many who’d been forced to abandon the land his family had worked for generations.
While Varian considered how to respond, he saw Annie give her eldest—a lanky, tow-haired boy—a sharp nudge. When the boy didn’t react, she whispered something. The boy backed out of the room.
“Well...” Varian glanced uneasily at his brother. “Well, Annie, there’s not much to be got out of farming…here. I cannot…” He trailed off as the lanky boy re-entered, bearing a small earthenware jar.
As the boy gave it to his mother, his shoulders sagged, but he shuffled back into position beside her without a word.
Annie emptied the jar’s contents into her hand. “It’s all here,” she said. “Every last farthing for the past five years’ rent. No one ever come—came—for it, and there was nobody at the great house to give it to. So we put it aside.”
“The rent?” Varian repeated numbly. “Five years?”
“Aye.” She held it out to him, a pitifully small pile of coins. Judging by the chagrin on the eldest boy’s face, however, she might have been offering up a fortune.
So it was, Varian reflected. To them. To take it was criminal. To refuse would insult her, and she was proud. She and John would not have saved those precious funds if they were not. Varian thought quickly.
He accepted the money with polite thanks. “It must be properly invested, of course. In the estate.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Which at present means it must be invested in people. The land is worthless unfarmed. If men must go away to work, they’re not farming it. We must persuade them—and make it worth their while—to return. It would appear my income would be most wisely invested in that way. Don’t you agree, Gideon?”
“Very wise,” came the stolid answer.
“Then it’s settled.” Varian carefully counted out the coins and gave all but one shilling back to the bewildered Mrs. Gillis.
“These constitute John’s advance wages,” he said, “to make it worth his while to work my land again. When he returns, perhaps he’ll be so good as to call on Gideon, who’ll discuss the practical details with him and put the agreement in writing.”
Gideon nodded composedly, just as though he was fully prepared, at any given moment, to provide every sort of detail about everything under the sun.
Annie stared at the coins in her hand.
Varian turned his attention to the lanky boy. “You are old enough to work, and strong enough, I’d say.”
Annie tore her gaze from the money. “Oh, yes, my lord,” she said eagerly. “He’s the man of the house while John’s away. Does what he’s told, Bertie—Albert—does, and quick, too. And he can read and write as well,” she added with pride. “I learned—taught him.”
Varian remembered that his mother had devoted a good deal of time to seeing local young people educated. She’d insisted both sexes must be taught, despite strong opposition to education, not only among her peers but among the older tenantry as well. Yet the people had loved her for it, and his father, too, for other reasons. The heap of coins was proof of that affection and loyalty. Certainly Varian had never earned it.
Aloud, he said, “If Albert can be spared, I should welcome his help at the house. Mount Eden must be made presentable for its mistress, and we are all at sixes and sevens.” Varian held up the coin. “I should like to engage you to help us make a start, Albert.”
“Indeed he will,” Annie answered for the dumbstruck boy. “This cold weather will put the planting back, and John can manage well enough without him, and anyhow...” She hesitated a moment. “It’ll be good to have the family among us again, my lord.”
After naming a time tomorrow for Albert to report for work, Varian took his leave of the Gillises and set out with Gideon through the new-fallen snow.
They trudged a ways in silence, each brother reflecting in his own way upon the scene they’d just left.
“That was well done,” Gideon said finally. “By sunrise, we’ll find a line of tenants at the door, ready to strike their own bargains with us.”
“I’ll let you do the bargaining, if you don’t mind. I’ve no head for these matters.”
“You did well enough on the spur of the moment. I shall follow your lead. Those as honest as John Gillis and his wife will come with their rent and get the same offer. The others I’ll persuade to work on speculation or some sort of trade arrangement. Or perhaps a reduction in rent. We won’t see much income at the end of the year, but the land will be worked at least and, as you said, it’s no good unfarmed.”
“Good heavens. Was I really so sensible? I had better lie down the instant we get home. On second thought, I’d better not. Gad, I do wish we might have salvaged a few beds at least.” Varian laughed in spite of himself. “Do you know how often I dreamed of home and a soft bed? I slept on the bare ground, and wet it was, and on wooden floors. How Esme will laugh when I tell her…”
His humor faded. “No, I can’t tell her, can I?” He paused. “I told her ‘a few weeks,’ Gideon.”
“You said she was levelheaded. She’ll understand.”
“Will she understand when I tell her it must be months—years, perhaps? Damnation.” Varian gazed bleakly about him. “That cottage was probably the best of them. I must do something for the Gillises, and the others. They can’t live in hovels. But how the devil am I to repair the cottages when my own roof is ready to drop on my head?”
“Mount Eden’s roof will endure a while,” said Gideon. “As to the other essential repairs, including the cottages—the cost of materials is negligible. It’s the labor and skill we need.”
“We’ve no money to hire anybody.” Varian resumed walking. “Still, I helped repair a mill in Albania, and it didn’t kill me.” He glanced at Gideon. “I don’t suppose you know how to mend a roof or a chimney?”
“I understand the principles.”
“Will you stay long enough to tell me how to go about it—and watch the first time to be sure I do it correctly?”
Gideon exhaled a sigh. “I daresay you’ve never lis
tened to a word Damon and I have uttered on this topic. We are not returning to London. Only tell us what we’re to do and we’ll do it—so long as it’s sensible. If we think it isn’t, we’ll tell you. What you propose appears the only sensible course, in the present circumstances.”
“Dammit, Gilly, I told you—”
“You don’t understand, do you?” Gideon’s stiff-set countenance eased into a grin. “It isn’t for you, my lord, but for the fascinating creature we’re so eager to meet. The sooner we repair the ancestral ruin, the sooner we get a glimpse of the young lady you want so desperately to impress.”
Varian’s face grew hot.
“Good grief. Edenmont blushing. Lord Alvanley would give a pony to see it.”
“Devil take you, Gideon!”
Gideon laughed. “You said you owed us a great deal, did you not? Mayhap we’ll take it out in plaguing you about your bride. For your own good, of course. It’ll keep your wits sharp, and then you shan’t be sinking into melancholy.” Gideon gave his lordship an avuncular pat on the shoulder. “For your own good, my noble brother. Can’t have you blowing your brains out. Not until you’ve got an heir at least.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
April arrived in a drizzle, to launch in earnest the London Season’s annual round of gaiety. But Sir Gerald Brentmor took no interest in society’s profitless amusements. At midnight, while the Beau Monde danced and gossiped, he was neatly tucked in his bed, dreaming of annuities, cent-per-cents, and promissory notes.
Though a sound sleeper, he bolted up from the pillow the instant the hot wax splattered on his forehead. He’d no time to scream, scarce time to open his mouth before he felt the cold blade of a dagger against his throat.
“Cry out, and your soul flies to hell,” a low voice warned.
The voice was disagreeably familiar. Despite the panic that froze his brain as well as his heart, Sir Gerald retained sufficient reason to identify its owner: Risto.
The dripping candle retreated and was returned to the bedstand. By someone else. Good God, there were two of them.