CHAPTER ONE #2
Henry looked down at the hat in his lap. “I cannot answer for what my sister thought.”
“How delicate your conscience becomes when it is asked to serve her.”
The rebuke struck him. Henry’s mouth compressed, and for a moment some feeling rose in him that might have been anger or shame, though neither did him much credit now.
“There was no betrothal,” he said. “There was no offer. There was no formal attachment of any kind. A gentleman admired her for a time, and the matter ended before it could become anything of consequence.”
“To whom?”
Henry’s head lifted. “Your Grace?”
“To whom did it become nothing? To him, to you, or to your sister?”
Henry did not answer.
Theodore leaned back, his gaze coldly steady. “I see.”
“It was a Season’s attachment,” Henry said, hurriedly now, as though speed might make the statement less ugly. “A very ordinary thing. Young ladies have admirers. Gentlemen are attentive. Nothing need come of it.”
“That is often said by the people who are least injured when nothing comes of it.”
Henry swallowed. “If Your Grace means to suggest that I have concealed some binding claim upon her, I have not. She is free to enter into a matrimony.”
“Free,” Theodore repeated, with enough quiet distaste to make Henry color.
“Legally free, Your Grace.”
“Ah. A comforting standard.”
Henry’s hand bent the brim of the hat. “There is no other standard the law recognises.”
“The law recognises many things that should shame the men who profit by them.”
The boy looked as if he had been struck, and Theodore found no satisfaction in it.
The shape of the matter was clear enough.
A girl of twenty had cared for someone, or had been made to care, or had allowed herself the private folly of hope.
Her brother had chosen silence because the truth was inconvenient to the buyer. Across the desk sat the buyer.
Theodore let himself look at it plainly because he had made a rule of plainness, and the rule did not soften merely because it had turned inward.
Henry was selling a sister who may have been waiting for another man.
He was doing it from fear, from selfishness, and from that particular weakness of a young gentleman who had never in his life been required to do a hard thing well.
That part was simple. Theodore could despise him and find the clean edge of contempt almost restful.
His own part refused to stay clean.
He was five-and-thirty. Twice this year, once by his solicitor and once by his aunt, he had been advised that he must take a wife and produce an heir before the matter ceased to be private and became a subject family lawyers discussed when he was absent.
A wife had become a thing he delayed the way a man delayed a tooth being drawn, privately, repeatedly, and with increasing irritation.
Now one had been delivered to his study on terms he would set himself. There would be no courtship to endure, no mother to flatter, no Season to attend, no smiling in overheated rooms while ambitious families presented their daughters like fine china and expected him to admire the pattern.
The convenience of it disgusted him. Worse was that he went on seeing it clearly, item by item, the way a man reads a bill he has no intention of querying.
“And if I decline,” Theodore said, “what then?”
Henry looked down. “Then I am ruined within the month.”
“Men survive ruin.”
“I do not expect to.”
Theodore’s gaze sharpened. “Explain yourself.”
Henry spoke to the hat. “I expect I shall shoot myself.”
Theodore did not move.
After a moment, Henry looked up, perhaps expecting horror, pity, alarm or something softer than the expression he received.
“You do not believe me,” Henry said.
“I believe you are frightened. That is not the same thing.”
“I am past frightened, Your Grace.”
“Men who are past frightened do not usually announce their demises as if declining soup.”
Henry’s lips parted, then closed again. “You think me a coward.”
“I think you have discovered a threat that costs nothing to make and may purchase sympathy.”
Henry rose halfway from the chair, then seemed to recall himself and sat back down with visible effort. “I came to you because I had nowhere else to go.”
“No. You came to me because you believed I would be cold enough to consider the bargain.”
That silenced him.
Theodore stood and walked to the window.
The square below was grey with October damp.
A maidservant knelt on the steps of the house opposite, sleeves pushed up as she scrubbed at stone already darkened by soot and weather.
A coal cart had stopped at the corner. Men moved, servants worked, horses shifted in harness, and the common commerce of the afternoon went on below as though no one upstairs had been asked to decide the course of a stranger’s life.
Behind him, Henry drew breath.
“Do not speak,” Theodore said.
The breath was released without words.
That restraint surprised him, and raised the boy a little in his estimation.
He did the arithmetic. The notes and the private debts together would come to something under nine thousand pounds. He could find nine thousand pounds without selling anything or troubling anyone, which made the sum almost insulting in its smallness against the thing it would buy.
He did the other arithmetic too, the one he liked less.
A wife was an opening.
A man with no wife, no children, and no domestic affections presented an enemy with very little to take hold of. Theodore had spent nine years presenting precisely that to the one enemy who mattered.
The Earl of Greaves had watched him for those nine years, patient as a tick, ever since Theodore had stood in the Lords in his second session and defeated the sugar bill that would have made the Greaves fortune whole.
Forty thousand pounds, Greaves had lost, or had expected to make, which to a certain kind of man amounted to the same grievance.
The earl had never moved against him. He had never needed to, and more importantly, he had never been able to.
Theodore had given him no flank to come at.
A wife was a flank.
A wife could be frightened, flattered, followed, or worse still, compromised. Greaves was exactly the sort of man who studied the soft places of others while keeping his own coat buttoned to the throat.
Theodore set that beside the nine thousand pounds, the convenience, Henry’s omissions, and the girl who may have been waiting for someone.
Then he proceeded, because the alternative to Theodore taking her was some other man taking her, and that man might not weigh the thing at all.
Some other man would simply take. At least under Theodore’s roof the rain stayed out, and no one raised a hand to a wife, and the worst she would suffer was the cold of a husband who did not pretend to warmth he did not possess.
It was not reasoning of a high order. He had heard better arguments made for worse things.
He turned from the window. “You spoke of my requirements.”
Henry stood at once, as if summoned to judgment. “Yes, Your Grace.”
“You have heard, I suppose, what is remarked upon in certain quarters concerning my character.”
“I have heard Your Grace called severe.”
“Pray, try again.”
Henry’s eyes betrayed a momentary agitation.
Theodore’s voice remained even. “You have heard me called worse than severe, or you would not have come to me first.”
Henry’s grip shifted on his hat. “I came because Your Grace is able to settle the matter.”
“You came because you believed me capable of accepting what another man might refuse out of sentiment.”
“I did not say that.”
“You did not have to.”
Henry looked away.
“That silence is your first intelligent answer,” Theodore said. “It does not signify. Hear me now, and remember it, because I will say it once.”
Henry lifted his gaze. “I am listening.”
“You will return tomorrow at ten on the hour with a complete and honest accounting of every debt you hold, written in your own hand.”
“Every debt?”
“The notes, the private debts, the sums you have already admitted, and the ones you decided this afternoon not to mention.”
Henry’s mouth tightened. “I have not concealed anything material.”
“A man who says material when asked for honesty has already begun arranging his defense.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“If I discover later that you have concealed a single shilling from me, our arrangement ends that hour. The notes I hold are called in the same week, and you will learn precisely how patient I am not. Do you understand the terms?”
“Yes.”
“You will say nothing of this to your sister.”
Henry’s head came up. “Nothing at all?”
“Not a word. Not a hint. Not the smallest preparation of her mind for it until I give you leave.”
“She will ask questions.”
“Then you will discover whether invention is easier when it is practiced upon someone who trusts you.”
Henry flinched, and Theodore allowed the blow to remain where it fell.
“Is that understood?”
Henry’s voice had thinned. “Yes, Your Grace.”
““Excellent. Go away.”
Henry stood. He had the grace, at least, not to thank him, which would have been intolerable. He bowed with a stiffness that belonged more to exhaustion than pride. He walked to the door and took his leave.
Theodore returned to the window.
Below, Henry emerged onto the steps and stopped for a moment in the grey afternoon. He placed his hat on his head, looked once toward the north side of the square, and walked away with the particular care of a man concentrating very hard on not running.
Theodore did not return to his desk.
He rang.
When the footman entered, Theodore did not turn from the window. “My coat and hat.”
“Shall I have the carriage brought round, Your Grace?”
“No.”
“A man to attend you?”
“No.”
The footman paused for a fraction of a moment. “Very well , Your Grace.”
Theodore heard the question that had not been asked and left it unanswered. Men who served him for long learned that curiosity was safest when buried early. The coat was brought. The hat was placed ready. The door was held open with professional silence.