Chapter Eighteen
The Huddersfield Banking Company was an inauspicious building on Cloth Hall Street, austere and plain fronted with the exception of the tooled double door and its two large discs for knobs. To Fleur, the unexceptional mood of the building seemed at odds with the import of what would happen within its walls this morning. Justice would be satisfied. Her quest fulfilled. By evening she’d be home in London. All of this would be behind her.
She should be pleased. Her tenacity had paid off. Amid struggle and grief, she’d continued to fight. She ought to be proud of herself. But all she could feel as Jasper held the door for her was trepidation. Somehow her quest had become less just, less right.
‘My lord, it is good to see you again. How may we be of service?’ A neatly groomed man Jasper’s age, dressed in a banker’s plain dark suit hurried forward, recognising the Marquess of Meltham on sight.
‘Mr Sikes, I need to go over the family accounts, particularly my brother’s, from 1846,’ Jasper said smoothly, recognising the man in turn.
Fleur’s sense of trepidation tightened in a knot in her stomach, her coffee and roll churning. She did not like relying on Jasper for access to information that would betray him. But she could not have hoped to have access to these accounts without him. On her own, she would have had to go through legal channels, made petitions and a fuss to look at anyone’s financial records, let alone the relative of a peer. But Jasper had made it easy for her. And private. She shouldn’t forget that. This was not a decision entirely without benefit for him.
‘Mrs Griffiths.’ Jasper turned to her with a formal tone. ‘May I introduce Mr Sikes? He’s a valued assistant manager at the bank. He’s handled the Meltham account since I inherited. One might say we’ve come up the ranks together. I have no doubt one day he’ll make managing director.’ He smiled warmly at Sikes. ‘Mr Sikes, this is Mrs Griffiths, the head of the Griffiths News Syndicate. She is my guest today.’
Mr Sikes shook her hand. ‘It is a pleasure to assist you and to meet you in person. I am sorry about your husband. Allow me to offer belated condolences. One of your papers published an editorial of mine a couple years back about the importance of extending access to banks to the working classes for the purpose of creating savings accounts.’
He cleared his throat. ‘I think of all the money people lost in Holmfirth when the dam burst, actual coin that was never recovered, all because money was kept in their homes instead of in a bank. I think, too, how much comfort it would have offered families to know that even in the wake of destruction they had the security of a modest savings to help them start again.’
Fleur managed a smile, knowing the man meant well and that he couldn’t possibly know what was at stake today: truth, justice and a lonely heart that had only just now come back to life. ‘Thank you for your kind words and thoughts. I am glad our paper was able to be an outlet for your cause.’ Inside, she was sinking, her resolve wavering. She didn’t want Lord Orion Bexley’s perfidy revealed in front of this man who clearly held Jasper in great esteem. She’d not started this quest to shame the Marquess of Meltham or to ruin a family that was respected in the local eye.
Sikes led them to a small room off the lobby of the bank, which was as austere as the exterior, and left them to fetch the account books. Jasper laughed when she commented on the excess of plainness. ‘The board felt the bank would inspire more confidence with local clients if it was less ostentatious. The bank was formed after the panic in 1828. My father was one of the first to invest in it. He admired its mission to focus on local business and to focus on local growth. I was happy to continue banking here when I inherited. I should tell you that the Holmes River Reservoir Commission did much of its banking here.’
‘Yes,’ Fleur said quietly. She’d noted the bank in Captain Moody’s report and in her own documents. There’d been a two-thousand-pound loan the bank had made to the commission for repairs. She drew a deep breath, guilt eating into her. She had to say something before Mr Sikes came back. Her conscience demanded it. ‘Jasper, I am sorry.’ It was hard to say what she was sorry for. There was so much that required her penitence. She wasn’t sorry for the whole situation, certainly. For instance, she was not sorry to have been in his bed, to have had him as a lover. But she was sorry to repay those moments with trouble and scandal. ‘I didn’t mean it to be like this.’
Jasper held her gaze, his topaz eyes steady. She was feeling penitent. He knew what she wanted to hear, but he wouldn’t give her absolution. ‘You knew it could be like this, Fleur. You knew this was a risk.’ Then he added, ‘As did I. Still, I think it is better we face what is in those accounts as friends rather than foes.’ He hoped that was the case. This morning had been difficult on them both. They were in the belly of the beast now, forced to face the truth, forced to face their feelings and somehow reconcile them both in a way that didn’t leave them broken.
Mr Sikes came back with the records. ‘These are the accounts. Let me know if you need anything else,’ he offered before leaving them.
Jasper immediately set aside the family accounts, which he’d only requested to divert the bank’s attention from his brother. ‘This one is Orion’s account book,’ Jasper said solemnly, opening the ledger. He was aware of Fleur coming to stand beside him, positioning herself to read over his shoulder. He appreciated that she was letting him take the lead on combing through the ledger. He bounced his knee surreptitiously under the table, hoping they found nothing.
There were the usual deposits, the quarterly allowance from the estate, the payments made to tailors, club memberships and other young man’s pursuits. He winced at one large payment made to a club off St. James’s. There was another further down, and another.
‘Is that excessive?’ Fleur asked, pointing to the recurring entries.
‘Yes. Gaming hells are the vice of many young men.’ Jasper grimaced. ‘This was seven years ago. Orion had some trouble at a gaming hell.’ In customary Orion fashion, his brother had played over his head in an attempt to recoup his losses. When that had failed, Orion had tried to handle the debt on his own, but his allowance was not large enough.
‘Who are these people? Brown and Whitaker?’ Fleur leaned closer, the scent of her perfume intensifying with its nearness. Jasper swallowed, not against desire, but embarrassment on his brother’s behalf. He did not want another to see Orion like this. Orion was his brother, a fun-loving, caring, often short-sighted young man who was still looking for his place in the world. He was not what these numbers suggested. Jasper hadn’t even told his mother about it.
‘Those are some gentlemen who will make short-term loans at high interest rates to other gentlemen who find themselves short on cash.’ Instead of turning to him and asking him for help, Orion had taken a loan from Brown and Whitaker in Cheapside. ‘It was the beginning of a snowball of debt that got larger each month until I found out the hard way.’ He paused, remembering that horrible night. ‘Orion was found in an alley, badly beaten.’ Brown and Whitaker had taken their pound in flesh when coin had not been produced in a timely manner.
Fleur’s hand squeezed his shoulder. ‘How awful.’
‘I paid the debt the next morning and put Orion up at a hotel until he was fit for Mother to see him.’ Jasper pushed a hand through his hair. ‘I cut off all credit for him at the gaming hells. When his own funds ran out, he was not to be allowed to play.’ Jasper sighed. ‘He was not happy with me. We had many fights that spring.’
‘Well, it appears to have worked,’ Fleur said as they reached the end of the spring quarter account book. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any more payments to Brown and Whitaker or other such folks.’
Jasper reached for the summer and then the autumn books. ‘You take autumn, I’ll do summer. Then we can trade to double check each other.’ He hated this. Going through someone’s finances was like going through their underwear drawer. Yet it was the only way if Orion was to be vindicated. He’d just finished with summer, having spied nothing, when Fleur looked up. Her expression grim.
‘There’s a deposit in October of 1846 for seven thousand, eight hundred pounds,’ she said in a near whisper. Jasper froze. That was the exact sum request for dam repairs in the August work order.
‘Who is it from?’ Jasper asked, although it didn’t matter. What else could it be? It wasn’t Orion’s quarterly allowance. The timing was wrong and so was the amount. It was too much.
Fleur shook her head. ‘It doesn’t say.’
‘I’ll get Mr Sikes and have him check the bank records.’ It was the next logical step. Leaving the room also gave him a chance to get his emotions under control. Good God, Orion had really done it. He’d filed a work order and pocketed the money. And a few years later eighty-one people had died.
Jasper calmly made the request for Sikes to find the deposit record, but all the while his mind raced. What was he going to do? This would devastate his mother. What had Orion been thinking? Why had he done this? Had he got in trouble again and tried to find his own way out?
He waited until Sikes returned with the bank’s record of transactions. ‘Here’s the cheque.’ Sikes showed him the grey and mauve note used by the Huddersfield Banking Company. Jasper studied it, his eyes landing on the signature at the bottom, his gut tightening. It had been issued from Parliament for the express purpose of reservoir repairs. The only saving grace was that it had not been issued directly to Orion. It had been issued to the Holmes River Reservoir Commission.
Jasper furrowed his brow. ‘If this cheque was not issued to Orion, how was it possible he was able to deposit it into his account?’
Sikes set down the big book that kept track of deposits. He turned to the date the cheque had been deposited. ‘It didn’t go to his account. It went to the Commission’s account. You can see the amount right here. Then, a day later, one of the commission members transferred the funds to Orion’s personal account. I imagine whoever was the drawer at the time did the transfer.’ At which point, Jasper surmised, the funds fell out of the public eye. They were mixed with Orion’s personal monies and no longer traceable. Or maybe they were. ‘Sikes, I’d like the family ledgers for forty-seven.’
Fleur looked up when he returned, new ledgers in hand. ‘The cheque was a match, sort of.’ He explained how it had been deposited to the commission’s account first and the whole sum was later transferred to Orion. ‘I want to see if we can find where the money went. Was it frittered away on new purchases?’ Jasper tried to remember back that far. Had Orion gone through a spending phase that was over and above his usual? ‘Or...’ he offered another suggestion fearfully ‘...did it go to pay more debt?’ He handed Fleur a ledger. ‘If it went to pay debt, there would be a large outlay all at once.’
After an hour of combing ledgers, they’d come up with little. ‘There is nothing except for these four payments, made quarterly,’ Fleur remarked. ‘They caught my eye because they were regular occurrences, and because when you total up the amount, it comes out to seven thousand, eight hundred.’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t want it to.’
‘It’s not your fault.’ Jasper slouched in his chair. Perhaps it was his fault. Why had Orion done this and thought he could get away with it? That no one would find out? It didn’t make sense. ‘Who did the payments go to?’ He did not think for a moment the payments had gone for reservoir repairs. At some level, it didn’t matter where the money went. The bottom line was that Orion had taken it.
‘It doesn’t say. Your brother doesn’t seem to be a prolific record keeper. He just writes down the basics.’
Perhaps because he didn’t want anyone to know. If only he knew where Orion was now. He could get some answers, talk some sense into him. Jasper forced his mind to work. He had to think of next steps. ‘You were right. My brother embezzled money from the reservoir commission.’ When he looked at Fleur, she was pale, her expression tight.
‘I would prefer not to be right about this,’ Fleur said apologetically.
‘That’s not how you felt when this all began,’ he corrected. ‘You don’t need to feel that way now simply because things changed between us.’ No, this couldn’t be about them. This had to be about Orion. ‘What will you do with the information?’ It was the last piece she’d been looking for, the piece that proved a single man had been responsible for the collapse of the dam. If the money had gone to repair the waste pit, none of this would have happened.
‘The Tribune will break the story.’ They were speaking in whispers now. If they didn’t speak these horrible things too loudly, perhaps they wouldn’t become real.
‘The board of directors will be pleased. You will sell a lot of newspapers. It isn’t every day a peer’s brother is caught stealing money from the government.’ Just saying the words made him sick to his stomach. How could he tell her not to print the story when she had her evidence? That had been the only condition he’d asked her for, that if she did want to connect the deaths to Lord Orion that she have proof for it. Would it be enough? All that was left was the press of causal arguments. Could it be proven that this money had been given to the commission for the express and singular purpose of the repairing the waste pit? Or had it been meant for other repairs? If so, it was still embezzlement, but at least it wasn’t manslaughter.
‘How long until the story breaks?’
‘A week at most. With something this big, I do need the board of directors to approve it and they will need time.’ To her credit, Fleur did not break. He admired that. Perhaps another woman would have given in to the relationship between them and decided not to publish. But Fleur was made of sterner stuff, and he loved her all the more for it—for her conviction, for her strength, for her dedication in doing what was right even when it hurt. This was not easy for her. Nor for him.
He’d chosen the right words in his head a moment ago. He loved her, that very thing that brought pain with the joy, that very thing he’d sworn to avoid because he knew that pain first-hand from losing his father and watching his mother fall apart. Fleur had turned his well-protected logical world upside down and he loved her for it despite the cost. He would do it all again to have had this time with her, to have her in his world no matter how briefly. How ironic he should realise that now, here at the end.
‘I do not want to cause you pain, Jasper. I am sorry it didn’t turn out another way.’ What other way was there? With her losing her papers? Her position? That would not have helped them any more than this did. Perhaps she’d been right last night. A future for them was impossible.
She rose from the table. ‘I want to commend you for your integrity. I understand I’d never have been able to access these records without your co-operation. You could have obstructed all this. You could have lied to get what you wanted and you didn’t. And I am repaying you poorly.’
‘Say nothing more, Fleur. We are past words now. I’ll take you back to Rosefields.’
She shook her head. ‘No. There’s an afternoon train to London. I think it’s best that I take it. Good bye, Jasper.’
She made a clean break of it, then, walking out of the room and towards the front doors, the sound of the click of her heels diminishing on the tiles until the door shut behind her and she was gone.
She would go to London and he would go to Rosefields to plot his next move. He had a week to find Orion, to find a barrister with an impeccable reputation or to send Orion out of the country, which seemed fairly appealing at the moment. The legal system couldn’t prosecute a man they couldn’t find. Orion would never be able to come home, but perhaps that was better than the alternative. Then, when that was settled, he would try to put his heart back together, perhaps settle for one of the girls on his mother’s list, assuming anyone would have him with the taint of scandal on the family name.
Jasper pounded a fist on the table. Damn it. He’d been right all along. Love hurt. Why the hell had he decided to test that hypothesis once more? The results had been the same.