Chapter Nineteen
Rosefields was not the same without her. Jasper wandered the garden at sunset, his footsteps aimless, his thoughts picking over each scene, each moment of the week they’d shared here. How was it possible that a person could make such an impact on a place in such a short time? Perhaps because it wasn’t the place they impacted, but the people in it. Wasn’t that why he loved Rosefields? Here was where the reminders of his childhood lived, of days spent with his father, of happy summers and snowy Christmases.
Jasper kicked a pebble, watching it roll away. Rosefields was the home of his childhood. By necessity, London was the home of his adulthood at present. But he’d always imagined Rosefields would be the home of his own family when the time came. He’d marry here in the little chapel on the property in the off season, not at St George’s in town. His children would be baptised here as he and Orion had been. A family would give him reason to spend less time in London, to run his politics from a distance.
Now, he wondered if that time would ever come. He stopped to watch a bee burrowing deep in a rose. Had that time, perhaps, already come and he’d missed it? Had Fleur been his chance? For a moment he stilled, thinking there’d been a sound in the garden, the crunching of gravel beneath a foot. He looked up, wild, illogical hope beating in his chest. Had she come back? But the garden was empty. There was just him and his thoughts.
Jasper pulled out his pocket watch. She would be in London now. Had she gone home, or had she gone straight to the office? Would she stay up all night crafting her article? He snapped the watch shut. Would she think of him and Rosefields at all? She belonged here with her love of the countryside, with her desire for family and children.
He could give all of that to her here: a country home, children, time away from the paper. These were all things Adam Griffiths had chosen not to give his wife. By doing so, he’d chosen her life for her. Which begged the question: would she give up the syndicate for Rosefields? He supposed the question bore asking in the little hypothesis he was testing. If he ever were to offer her Rosefields and a family, would she take it? Or was she wedded to the ghost of the life she’d had with Adam? Did she stay at the paper for Dead Adam, or did she stay for herself?
He gave a harsh chuckle. What did any of these questions matter? She was gone and Orion was in trouble. Her newspaper was going to expose what he’d done and how that act had led to the Holmfirth flood deaths. He needed to think about Orion now. He couldn’t save his relationship with Fleur, but perhaps he could find a way to save his brother.
Two days later, Jasper had something of a plan. He’d consulted the family solicitor on retainer in Huddersfield, who’d recommended an excellent barrister with ties to the region. Both Jasper and the solicitor felt that a home-grown connection might help if the time came. Or rather when that time came. Short of Fleur not publishing the article, that time would come and it was coming quickly. The article would not print before tomorrow at the earliest and he hoped that it was more reasonable to assume it would print the day after.
Jasper poured himself a drink and settled in to pass the long evening reading. All that was left now was to go back to London and brace his mother. His trunk was packed, ready to go to the station tomorrow for the morning train.
‘My lord,’ the butler interrupted shortly after nine o’clock. ‘Your brother is here to see you. Shall I show him in?’
‘Orion is here?’ Jasper leaped up. Despite the trials of the week, his first reaction was one of relief. ‘Yes, show him up. No, I’ll go down.’ He was in too much of a hurry to wait. His brother was home, safe, a bright spot in difficult times.
‘Orion!’ he called from the top of the stairs, his brother turning to face him. Jasper raced down the stairs and pulled his brother into a tight embrace. ‘I was so worried. I didn’t know where you’d gone or how long you’d be.’ He hugged his brother and then stepped back to look at him, relief giving way to concern. Orion was well dressed as usual, sporting an elegant silk waistcoat of lavender paisley, but he was tired. There were dark circles beneath his eyes and his typically lively gaze was dull concern.
‘Jasper, your welcome makes me feel quite the prodigal.’ He gave a half-laugh.
‘Where have you been?’ Jasper asked.
‘Everywhere, nowhere. Thinking, or at least trying to think. I keep reaching the same conclusion. I am in trouble, Jasper, and I need your help.’ Orion pressed a hand to his mouth in a visible effort to hold on to his control. It took a moment for him to recover himself. ‘I am sorry. I am so sorry.’
‘Come, sit. You don’t look as if you’ve eaten. I’ll have a tray sent to the library and we can talk.’ Rather, Orion would talk and he would listen. Jasper led his brother upstairs. He could guess what this was about, but he wanted to hear it from Orion. He poured his brother a drink and settled him in a chair. ‘Now, tell me what this is all about.’
‘It’s about those articles regarding the Bilberry Dam accident, the ones that name me as being primarily responsible.’ Orion looked down at his drink. ‘I am afraid of what the newspaper will find if they keep digging.’
‘Why would you be afraid of that?’ Jasper asked carefully.
‘Because there was a deposit made to my account for a sum meant to be used for repairs to the waste pit. It will look as though I took the money and the waste pit repair never happened. It’s why the dam burst. We need to make sure the paper can’t get a hold of my accounts. You can block that, right?’ Orion’s blue eyes held his in earnest desperation.
‘I suppose I could. But it wouldn’t be moral, Orion. It would be deliberately hiding evidence.’
Orion’s eyes sparked. ‘I would think philosophical ethics would be the least of your concerns. Do you know what it would mean? The case could be reopened. I could go to trial and be convicted for embezzlement, for manslaughter.’ His voice rose in panic.
‘Calm down, Orion. That hasn’t happened yet,’ Jasper said in careful, evenly measured tones. He wanted to tell his brother it would be all right, that they would fix it. In part because he couldn’t—it was too late for that—but also in part because he shouldn’t. Perhaps that had been his Achilles heel with Orion all along. He’d been so intent on helping him, on cleaning up Orion’s messes instead of making Orion clean them up. He’d made the messes go away without asking for atonement. And Orion had learned a very different lesson than the one he’d intended to impart.
‘Since you’ve been gone, some things have happened. I need to tell you, so please listen without losing your head,’ Jasper said sternly. ‘The paper has indeed dug deeper and they have found the deposit.’
Orion blanched. ‘How did they get my accounts? Surely that is an inadmissible sort of evidence. They can’t go get a man’s private accounts without a warrant or something.’
‘I gave permission. I went to the bank with Fleur Griffiths. I was the one that went through the account book and had the bank cross-reference the cheque with their deposit records.’
Orion exploded out of his chair and began pacing. ‘You! Do you understand what this means? You’ve all but delivered me for trial and admitted my guilt for me.’ Orion flashed a hurt look. ‘All for a woman? She really got to you. But she’ll sell you short, too. Do you think you’ll emerge unscathed? That you will look like a hero? This will touch all of us. Think what it will do to Mother. She won’t be able to hold her head up. Think of what this will do to your marital prospects. Who will want a scandal-tainted marquess for a son-in-law?’ Orion shoved a hand through his hair. ‘Was she worth it? I never thought you’d throw me over for a woman. I thought you were better than that.’
Orion made him sound like a traitor and Fleur a harlot. ‘I will not obscure the truth for you, Orion.’ It took willpower to keep his temper on a firm leash. ‘Yes, what you have done will have ugly consequences for innocent people like myself and Mother, and that is not fair to us, but that doesn’t mean you should be excused of the responsibility. Perhaps I’ve excused you from too much responsibility in the past.’
‘You would see me face a trial? Be sentenced for crimes?’ Orion was aghast. ‘All to teach me a lesson?’
The leash of his control slipped a little. He’d been desperate to see his brother and relieved to have him here. But now he wanted Orion to accept responsibility for what he’d done and Orion would not. Orion only wanted a way out. Yet, to not give him a way out would be to condemn him. ‘Eighty-one people died, Orion. Whole families were killed. Babies drowned in their sleep. Children washed away while parents looked on helpless. Homes were destroyed, mills were destroyed. I saw Holmfirth last week, over a year since the flood. The place still bears scars. Bridges have not been replaced, mills have not been rebuilt, some wreckage has still not been removed. People lost homes, lives and livelihoods. They can’t work if the mills don’t run. No work means no wages, no way to support families.’
There was a long silence between the brothers, the tray of food untouched. Jasper hoped the import of what had happened was weighing at last on Orion’s conscience. ‘I have engaged a barrister with an excellent reputation,’ he said after a while.
Orion glared. ‘You’ve engaged a barrister? That is your idea of help? Let the newspaper print the opportunity and drag me to trial? And then what? Just throw up your hands and hope for the best? How am I supposed to be vindicated when they’ve got the cheque and the financial records?’
‘We can make arguments of causation. If we can show that the money was for repairs in general, that it wasn’t specifically for funding only the waste pit, we can argue you weren’t directly culpable. If we can show that there were other problems with the dam that contributed to the accident, we can mitigate the role of the waste pit. We can show it to be one of many flaws in the dam’s engineering. Those arguments stand a good chance of being successful since they’ve already been made and the original findings conclude there were a variety of factors. I do think the burden of proof is on paper.’
Orion shot him a sardonic look. ‘And if you’re wrong? This is my life you’re playing with. It’s bad enough you are willing to trot me out into the public eye and let the Griffiths news syndicate attempt to pin this on me.’
Jasper answered with a solemn stare. ‘All right then, let’s back up. Did you do it? Did you take the money? Did you place the work order and not see it carried out?’
‘Yes. No.’ Orion shook his head. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘That’s not an answer. Try again. First, have a sandwich. There is no rush. We have all night.’ He couldn’t save Orion if Orion was not willing to save himself.
Orion sat and Jasper waited patiently while his brother ate. At last Orion was ready to talk and the eating had done its job in settling his emotions.
‘I sent in the work order requesting repairs on the waste pit,’ Orion began. ‘It was a request that came from all three of us assigned to oversee the Bilberry reservoir. My name is on the order only because I drew the short straw and had to fill out the paperwork. It just happened to be my turn. When the money was awarded, it went into the commission’s account first. Then, William Hendricks, who was the current drawer and who was also on my subcommittee for Bilberry, asked if the money could be transferred to my account so that the money could be easily accessed by us to oversee our repairs. He said he was concerned that the money would get used by other reservoirs or eaten up by other expenses. He wanted it separate, given the commission’s history of insolvency.’ Orion gave a tell-tale fidget and Jasper interrupted.
‘The ledger shows evenly quarterly distributions over the course of the year that total up to the deposit amount. Did those go to repairs?’ Even if that money hadn’t gone to the waste pit repair, it would definitely eradicate charges of embezzlement. It would be a start.
Orion shook his head. ‘The money went to Hendricks. He volunteered to be in charge of hiring engineers for the repairs.’
‘Did he ever hire anyone?’ This would also be helpful. If someone had been hired, they could find a contract. It would show that Orion had not wilfully ignored the need for repairs.
‘I don’t know. Hendricks rotated off the subcommittee at the end of his term. By then, the money had all been transferred to his account.’ Orion was nervous. He was bouncing his leg. There was something amiss here.
‘Let me understand. You transferred the repair funds to Hendricks once a quarter and yet no repairs were made and no one was hired. Did you question him about that? Make him accountable?’
Orion fiddled with a sandwich. ‘No. But neither did our third member.’ He let out a sigh. ‘What do you want me to say? That I didn’t follow up? That I didn’t hold another committee member accountable for his actions? That I was lazy? That I didn’t take my position on the commission as seriously as you would have? A position, by the way, that I didn’t want and you foisted it on me not for just one term, but two.’
‘I was trying to give you purpose,’ Jasper explained. ‘I thought after the engineering corps, that dam work would put some of those skills to use. I thought it was a good fit.’
Orion took a savage bite of his sandwich. ‘Except that I hated the engineering corps. I was a horrid engineer.’
‘It was better than your option, which was do nothing,’ Jasper shot back, remembering how difficult Orion had been after university—which he hadn’t quite finished. The don had felt academics weren’t Orion’s calling.
Orion gave him a baleful stare. ‘I’m not you, Jasper. I don’t have answers for everything. I don’t have a sense of purpose. I just move from disaster to disaster, or perhaps I am the disaster. I suppose every family has to have one.’
‘None of that is true, not even the part about me.’ Jasper blew out a breath. If it was, he might not have lost Fleur. They were getting sidetracked now.
‘Being incompetent is unfortunate, but it is not a crime,’ Orion drawled.
Jasper nodded. ‘Where is William Hendricks these days?’ He could hunt down Hendricks, make him accountable. Orion had not acted alone.
Orion took a swallow of brandy. ‘He’s dead. Died last year in April in a hunting accident on the moors, although some say it was suicide because April isn’t exactly hunting season, is it?’ There’d certainly be no hunting down Hendricks, but Jasper could still get his hands on Hendricks’s accounts. Hendricks’s accounts could clear Orion while still giving Fleur a story. Jasper made a note of the date of Hendricks’s death. Just two months after the flood.
Jasper swirled the remainder of the brandy in his snifter. ‘Why did you do it, Orion? Surely, something must have seemed off to you after that first disbursement and no one had been hired to start repairs?’
Orion was silent for a long time and Jasper felt that he’d at last come to the crux of the matter. Orion met his gaze, regret etched in his face. ‘Because I owed him money and he offered to wipe the debt clean if I’d just let him park the reservoir funds in my account.’ Orion sighed. ‘I couldn’t really say no. I didn’t have the funds to pay him back. It seemed like a good option at the time. It was true that there was concern the funds would be used for other expenses. His argument wasn’t illogical. It did make sense to have access to the funds.’ Orion shook his head. ‘But when he didn’t actually disburse those funds for repairs, I couldn’t call him out on it.’
‘That was a better option than coming to me?’ Jasper put in, hurt.
‘Yes, given that I had just so recently disappointed you with my little run-in with the moneylenders.’ Orion closed his eyes, struggling for control. ‘That was eight years ago. I haven’t gambled over my means since. You know that.’ He opened his eyes and Jasper saw real regret there. ‘I told myself it wouldn’t matter. The reservoir waste pit was fine as long as the water didn’t exceed a certain level. Chances were the waste pit would never reach excess. I took a gamble on that. Who would have thought the whole dam would go?’
‘Hendricks was using extortion in order to launder money through your account.’ Jasper drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. ‘It would be harder to trace that way. It would have been too obvious if the whole sum had just shown up in his account all at once and then no work materialised.’ A hypothesis was forming. Perhaps Hendricks’s death had been a suicide after all. Riddled with guilt over the dam deaths, fear of being found out for extortion or connected to the dam accident, and whatever other problems the man had—it would be interesting to find out—Hendricks had taken his own life before he could be discovered.
As the clock chimed one, Jasper came to certain conclusions. Yes, Orion had put himself in trouble’s way, yet again. Yes, he’d need to bear responsibility for his part in it. But his part was no longer the role of the perpetrator. He was guilty of negligent oversight, for not calling for accountability, but he was also the victim of extortion. Orion was guilty of many things, but not the failure of the dam, at least not any more so than of the other commission members.
‘What are we going to do?’ Orion asked.
‘We are going to get some sleep. Tomorrow, we are going to London to stop the presses. There’s an afternoon train and with luck we’ll make it.’
Fleur Griffiths had the wrong man. For his sake and for hers, Jasper hoped they got to London in time.