Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Tell us, Bry, will you be offering for Wren?” Algernon asked when only Bryson, Hyperia, Miss Quiggan, and myself remained.
“Will you offer for Amelia?” Bryson countered.
“He will not,” I said. “He cannot. Algernon is like Prometheus bound to a rock of duty, scandal, and family loyalty. He has suffered a combination of bad fortune and unforeseen circumstances, and it has become imperative that neither Philomel nor Wren take a husband. As long as Philomel pursued Algernon, nobody would dare court Wren, and Algernon preserved his family from scandal for another day.”
Hyperia launched a slow smile in my direction. “The Delaplane settlements were pilfered to maintain the Keep?”
“They were not,” Miss Quiggan snapped. “It’s worse than that.”
“The settlements are either gone,” I said, “or substantially reduced. The baron was the trustee of record—he might still be—and thus the lack of funds redounds to his discredit. Algernon has taken over management of his father’s financial obligations, which has meant ensuring the missing settlement money never came to light. ”
Hyperia resumed her wing chair and gestured for Miss Quiggan to take the other. “And thus, nobody marries anybody lest the scandal become public, and the baron cannot replace the funds he’s taken. What a coil.”
Miss Quiggan threw herself onto the cushion as if finally finding rest after a fifty-mile forced march. “I’ve told Algie over and over he can use my settlements to look after Wren and Philomel—Sandy and I are also Lady Clo’s heirs—but Algie won’t do that either. Now he’ll probably be arrested.”
Young people are so dramatic these days. “One cannot be convicted,” I said, “in the absence of malfeasance. I gather Dunsford invested the funds in some wild scheme, and the value plummeted?” I could not see the baron or his heir engaging in outright theft.
Algernon nodded and sank onto the sofa. “Papa thinks I’ve moved the money to the cent-per-cents, and all is gradually coming right.
I was to marry Philomel the instant the sum would pass muster.
At the rate things are coming right, the funds should be doing decently well in about fifty years or so.
Peace has played the very devil with investing. ”
“Does Dunsford struggle with figures?” I asked.
Bryson answered. “Terribly. When our mother was alive, she could manage in his place without anybody the wiser. The entries were in Papa’s hand, but she did the ciphering.
When she died, everything fell into disarray, and the housekeeper, butler, and steward told us about the problem only when their wages weren’t being regularly paid.
They love the old man, though he’s too proud by half. ”
A silence took root and began to grow vines and leaves. I was apparently not through annoying people.
“Did the baron count on his fingers and have trouble with sums in his head?” I asked.
Algernon treated me to the first truly unpleasant expression I’d had from him. “And if he did?”
“Then, sir, you likely inherited your difficulty with figures from him. Be like he was in his younger years and accept a little help with a common shortcoming.”
“Algie, you can’t do math?” Bryson asked. “Truly? But how did I not know this?”
“Because I am the ruddy, rubbishing, rotten heir, that’s how. The tutors indulged me, I rioted my way through university, and I learned to avoid any occasion where I might be called upon to cipher in public.
“I am the national expert,” he went on, “at losing a hand of cards with careless élan. I handle only coins, never paper notes, because I can trust the shape and feel of the coins as I cannot trust damned written numbers. I can feel five shillings as I cannot see five shillings. I’m not as hopeless as Papa, but numbers hold me in unrelenting dislike. Apologies for the language, ladies.”
“Algie,” Miss Quiggan said, “I’ve told you over and over. I’ll help you. I’m no genius with figures, but I can keep books.”
“To help me, you’d have to be married to me, and I am about to be disgraced before the whole shire, because neither Wren nor Philomel will have the settlements they are owed. Papa will be heartbroken, and I… I will be relieved. Disgraced, but relieved. I’m sorry, Quiggy.”
Bryson rose. “I do not care one frozen horse dropping for Wren’s settlements.
She can inherit my acres in fee simple absolute for all I care.
My property is not entailed, nor shall it be.
If she’ll have me, we need not mention any specific amount in the agreements when it comes to the settlement funds.
Just leave them to her female offspring in the usual fashion. ”
Algernon flashed the sad family smile. “Now, Bry, I cannot let you do that.”
I was tired in body, mind, and spirit, or I might have allowed the chest-beating and noble self-sacrifice to go on until spring.
“Algernon, you must do as Bryson suggests,” I said, “even if it was you who inspired Wren to write her nasty notes.”
Hyperia nodded. “Makes perfect sense. Algernon is just another doting older brother to her. She likely confided her heartache to him, and he allowed as how she’d been sorely wronged.
He could not call out his own brother, she could not point a public finger at her sister in the vicarage, but Bryson at least could be made to suffer for his perfidy. ”
From Hyperia, the tale seemed believably human, though the whole business had initially struck me as too convoluted for mere sibling rivalry. Upon consideration of my own situation—a very grudging thanks to Harry—I had to allow that little about sibling rivalry was mere.
“I didn’t mean to set Wren off,” Algernon said, “not at first. I half believed her when she accused Bry in absentia of trysting with Robin. Then Michael ‘lost’ my gold snuffbox—gambled it away, the louse—and Peter forged my name on an IOU. I realized that Peter was as bad as any of us. We’d raised borrowing without permission to the status of a family recreation, but we would not borrow a lady’s favors from one another. ”
“Good of you to concede that much,” Bryson muttered.
“Right, well, you had seemed fairly gone on Wren, not that I’m an expert on courting swains.
All unbeknownst to anybody, Wren had set her cap for you and you alone, much as Robin would have Peter, even if that meant depriving Philomel of the honor and settlements going to the first past the post. The Delaplane women can entertain some very fixed notions. ”
Mrs. Fipps had likened Philomel to an irrationally determined child. The description fit Wren and Robin as well.
“Knowing that Wren was angry with Bryson,” I said, “you goaded her to act on her injured sensibilities.”
“No, I did not, Caldicott. I had already made all manner of sympathetic, avuncular noises in her direction—‘very bad of Bry, shameful even,’ ‘oh, you poor dear thing’—when I realized she might have come to a mistaken conclusion.”
“But,” Hyperia said, “you used her mistake to your advantage. You subtly encouraged her to continue threatening Bryson for a wrong he had not committed, because as soon as he came home, he’d be expected to marry, and the problem with the settlements would be revealed.”
Algernon looked more resigned than repentant.
“I wasn’t sure at first exactly what scheme Wren had hatched in Bry’s direction, though it somehow kept him in Surrey.
I needed him anywhere but home. I thought perhaps Wren was claiming to be a woman scorned, and Bry was waiting for another fellow to ask for her hand.
Then Wren made a few comments about Bry being banished, and I knew she had indulged in more dramatic measures. ”
Criminally dramatic, viewed in a certain light.
“Why not simply confide in your brother?” Hyperia asked. “Why not admit the settlements were a mess, you needed help with the books, and the estate was in trouble?”
Algernon studied her as if she’d lapsed into one of those barely qualifies-as-English dialects spoken by the elders of obscure villages and translatable only by their offspring.
“Cast myself on Bry’s mercy? Quiggy said Bry wouldn’t mind, and I could just marry Philomel, and nobody would ever know.
I cannot just marry Philomel, not even for Papa, Bry, and the Keep.
Neither could I dissuade Philomel’s pursuit of me lest some brave bachelor offer for her and bring the whole bungled settlement issue to light.
Had I known Sandy was in the running, I’d have taken him aside and had the obvious discussion.
I was too busy eluding capture myself to see his interest in Philomel. ”
One sympathized, however reluctantly. “And thus you encouraged Bryson to think Michael’s death was partly his responsibility,” I said, “for the same reason. You would have had to answer hard questions if Bryson had come home to stay. A guilty, brooding Bryson punishing himself in Surrey suited your agenda.”
Algernon ran a hand through his hair. “Bryson might well have put stupid notions in Michael’s head, but Michael’s head was already full of them.
I suspect Michael was trying to kill himself.
He was deeply in debt when he expired, drinking incessantly, and trying hard to become the first true Carstairs black sheep. ”
“Assuming neither you, the bungling baron, nor Parson Petey qualify, of course.”
I expected another peevish look.
Algernon aimed the saddest of sad smiles my way.
“Michael figured out that he could lob sizable rocks onto the ice and weaken it. He’d nigh broken his nose when he took a spill early one winter and didn’t want to be the only one banished from skating.
He wanted an opponent for chess, or backgammon, or billiards.
When Bry came to grief, Michael explained the how of it to me and swore me to secrecy.
I do believe he was ashamed of himself. He should have been. Bry wasn’t nearly so tall then.”
That was the brother Bryson grieved for?