Chapter 2 #2
“The Quiggans are the MacHugans by Manx lights,” Carstairs said.
“Lady Clo is my mother’s step-cousin once removed by marriage or close association.
I have never been clear on the connection.
She does not care for my father at all. Our land marches with hers.
If I had a shilling for every time Papa has tried to buy a certain parcel of acres from her, I would not be keeping game for my living. ”
“You like much of what your job entails.” Not the killing, though. He would not enjoy that at all.
“I have time to write poems and brood, though neither endeavor does much to advance the glory of old England.” He smiled in a half-mocking, half-sad fashion characteristic of him. “I must be fatigued indeed to maunder on so.”
“You never did answer my question about means, Carstairs. If you are penniless, then it makes sense that nobody would plague you for money. If you have means, then antagonizing you becomes a riskier proposition, no matter the status of your detractor. If you were awash in wealth, then we’d conclude whoever sought to plague you must be either a great fool or very convinced of your villainy.
Your financial status has relevance to your difficulties. ”
He regarded me owlishly.
“My means are adequate. I inherited a few thousand pounds from my mother, and that sum has been doing yeoman duty in the cent-per-cents for about fifteen years. Around the same time, an uncle left me a competence of one hundred pounds per annum, which I also dump into the cent-per-cents because I have no need of it. I own a modest tenant property adjacent to the family seat—part of Mama’s dower portion that should have gone to my younger brother, but he willed it to me.
That rent, when anybody bothers to pay it, goes into the funds too. ”
Depending on the initial sum invested and any rent collected, Carstairs might be sitting on something like fifteen thousand pounds.
His interest income, along with his competence and rent, could well top a thousand pounds per annum, and he owned acreage, meaning he need not pay rent anywhere himself.
He was comfortable, as younger sons went, and wealthy compared to most of the population. “You qualify for blackmail, handily, but have received no demands for money.”
He peered at me from the shadows of the poetry corner. “The objective is to keep me away from home, then, or my enemy has no idea that I’m modestly well set up.” He took a lamp down from a sconce and examined the books more closely. “Have you read most of these?”
A change of subject, and smoothly done. “Probably. For a time, I decided to be the scholarly brother. Arthur was the heir, Harry the spare and abundantly charming. I was not interested in the Church, so I investigated other avenues.”
“And you are still investigating.” He took down a slim volume bound in brown leather. “I will take the Libertine up to bed with me. That doesn’t sound as literary as I meant it to.”
I made a mental note to inquire regarding Carstairs’s relations with the fairer sex. Hell hath no fury and so forth.
“I will see you at breakfast. I trust your quarters are suitable?” He’d been given a tour prior to supper.
“My quarters make me long for home, Caldicott. For a place where my sheets are scented with lavender and warmed each night before I seek my bed. For cutlery that matches, for toddies redolent of spices instead of a tot from my flask. It’s not that I’m a sybarite—soldiering cures a man of those vanities—but I am… ”
“Homesick,” I said. “You have been granted five days’ leave from your gamekeeping, and we will make the most of them.”
I left him among the poets, determined that I would pen an epistle before bedtime to my dear Perry. When I dipped my quill, though, and stared at the empty page, I found I had nothing of substance to say.
Dying soldiers often called out for their mothers, as I knew from having witnessed many a man’s battlefield passing. Sweethearts figured on the list, as did old dogs—a hound known to the soldier in his youth, whom he was perhaps greeting in a merciful premortem hallucination.
I had had no such faithful canine.
And as for my mother… Even in my final hour, I might be loath to impose on Dorothea, Her Grace of Waltham. I nevertheless made the journey to Hampshire to confer with her, despite winter weather and lack of an invitation from her or her hostess.
My mother received me graciously. With the duchess, graciousness was often evident in abundance without more than a hint of warmth. Hyperia claimed my mother and I were too much alike.
I had labored under the misconception that Harry had been the duchess’s favorite, and Mama had likely harbored misconceptions about my solitary nature. She and I were making progress, slowly.
“This is a surprise, Julian. A pleasant surprise.” She poured out two cups of China black with the casual elegance of one who’d wrangled tea trays for royalty. “I trust you bring greetings from Miss West?”
Her Grace wasn’t one to waste ammunition firing warning shots. “I’ve come straight from the Hall,” I said. “I might detour to Town on the way home, though Hyperia’s letters suggest she’s quite involved in the holiday whirl.”
“Are you in a drop-of-honey mood or a plain-and-strong mood?” the duchess asked, taking up the honeypot. “I vow, the approaching holidays can put me in a dash-of-brandy mood.”
“Two drops of honey, please.” If Mama admitted that she was tempted to tipple, I could relent a bit as well. “The roads were abominable.”
“And yet, here you are, looking distracted and decidedly unjolly. Has Miss West thrown you over?”
Only Her Grace would ask such a devastating question while drizzling honey into a tea cup.
“Hyperia has not cried off. We’ve come close a time or two, and we still haven’t set a date, but hope springs and all that.” Hope sprang, though no epistolary courtship had sprung from my pen in recent days—or from Hyperia’s.
The duchess deftly twisted the honey whisk and put it back into the pot, not a drop of sweetness spilled.
“Julian, the Waltham ducal succession is imperiled. I mention the obvious only because I know you are haunted by a responsibility you never sought. Very bad of Harry to leave the burden to you, with Arthur utterly indifferent to the ladies. If Miss West has no interest in wearing your ring, she owes you the courtesy of an honest rejection.”
Why on earth were we discussing my most secret and worst fear? “Hyperia claims an abiding fondness for my person.”
Her Grace fixed her own tea in silence. She was a tallish, aging redhead and quite well formed despite bringing seven children into the world. The Duchess of Waltham was all the more influential in Town circles because she exerted her power rarely and only for good cause.
Mama made her shots count, in other words. Loyal to her friends, icily correct to those she disdained.
“Fondness can be enough,” she said, sipping daintily. “Fondness and respect.” Spoken like a woman who’d had to instruct an obstreperous duke regarding the particulars of respecting his duchess. “You did not come all this way to be questioned regarding the state of your engagement.”
“Do you doubt the suitability of the match?” I loved Hyperia madly and could not see ever giving my heart to another. She’d been loyal to me at my worst, and I hadn’t even known it.
“I thought you and she would make a fine pair, but one season after another goes by, and you don’t make the match.
When your father proposed to me, I wanted a special license and a six-month wedding journey.
He was enthusiastic about both notions, though we limited the wedding journey to three months. ”
By the end of which, my brother Arthur had already been on the way. She left that part unsaid.
“Hyperia and I have different views about the desirability of children.” Admitting even that much felt toweringly disloyal. “She is adamant about avoiding the dangers of childbed.”
Or so she claimed.
“Then why on earth would she give any Caldicott male leave to court her, much less one with a duty to the succession?”
Because at the time I’d proposed, I’d been incapable of… I’d been incapable. The match had made a crooked kind of sense under those circumstances, and Arthur had not pressured me to safeguard the ruddy succession.
Over a long progression of months, my manly humors had restored themselves. For the first time in human history, a fellow had cause for consternation rather than ebullient rejoicing when reunited with his animal spirits.
I sipped my tea and tried to exude calm dignity while my mother treated me to one of those inspections that inspired in adult men the inner quaking of dimwitted schoolboys. I resisted the urge to glance at the clock, help myself to tea cakes, or otherwise betray battle nerves.
“Young people,” the duchess muttered. “You criticize your elders for fussing and fretting, but I daresay the traits emerge early in life and to no good purpose. If you are not here to tell me of your impending nuptials, why desert the Hall as the holidays approach?”
I should have been relieved at the change of subject, but Mama’s willingness to move on to another topic left me wondering what she knew—about me, about Hyperia, about courting couples, about family history—that inspired her to abandon discussion of my engagement.
“Why did you leave the Hall?” I asked. “We rubbed along together through last year’s holidays.”
She smiled, a genuine expression of warmth. “We did, didn’t we? To try for two consecutive years of holiday cheer would have been to tempt fate. Besides, Lady Clo invited me, and we hadn’t seen each other in ages—we both avoid Town far more than we used to—and we have been catching up.”
All true, but not the whole truth. “Do you avoid Town because I am in disgrace?”