Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
“I tell you this, my lord, and you may quote me.” James Fletcher didn’t bother with admonitory glances as he pronounced judgment.
“If Alphonse had shown me the sort of disrespect that the present Lord Dantry exhibits toward his noble patrimony and toward his own blameless family—what family he has left—I would disown my nephew before you could say ‘God save our gracious king.’ The earl is up to a lot of damned foolishness, and I’ve told him as much to his face. ”
James Fletcher, his face lean and lined, his nose reminiscent of Roman busts, and his white hair bringing to mind a grouchy Ancient of Days, likely saw much of life as damned foolishness.
No tea tray sat before us, and Fletcher had received me in a formal parlor as frigid as it was elegant, despite the meager coal fire burning on the andirons.
“Who are Dantry’s enemies?” I asked.
“A gentleman does not have enemies. A nation has enemies. You should know that.”
I was growing tired of being lectured by old men—about politics, about the workings of Society, about my place in the greater scheme.
“Dantry has been missing for the better part of a week, Fletcher. Sir Clive has no idea of his lordship’s whereabouts. The earl is not biding at his London residence. He boarded no stagecoach. He did not hire a horse or borrow one from Sir Clive.”
“A woman—”
I held up a hand. “No angry papa or distraught mama has presented themselves at the Knot. Lord Dantry was not known to be courting or otherwise fostering any romantic liaisons.” Not quite true, of course, at least according to the rhapsodizing and elusive B.
“He was biding with family before once again taking up his responsibilities in Parliament.”
“Responsibilities in Parliament.” Fletcher spat the words syllable by contemptuous syllable.
“Dantry would not know responsibilities if they bit him on his handsome arse. The Dovecote was a model estate, a testament to sound management and good husbandry, when he inherited. Five years on, and he’s applied for not a single enclosure, when enclosure is known to make the land more productive.
If he’s so bothered by the Corn Laws, why doesn’t he do more to make his acres productive? ”
“You are in favor of enclosures?” Most wealthy gentry were, despite the expense of building miles of high walls and despite the horrendous consequences to the small holders and villagers in their communities.
Caldicott holdings remained unenclosed, and I doubted Arthur would break with that tradition.
“Enclosure is the epitome of progressive agriculture, my lord. My own bill was completed in draft three years ago, but then Dantry intervened, and my bill cannot get even a first reading. That is Dantry’s version of tending to his responsibilities.”
“You’ve discussed the matter with Dantry?” A smaller enclosure, some acknowledgment of common rights lost by the poorer families, an agreement to employ only local laborers… Surely, Fletcher would have waved a few compromises at his titled neighbor?
“There is no discussing the topic with Dantry,” Fletcher retorted. “He’s too busy giving speeches to empty galleries. Poor Sheldon is left to manage the Dovecote, which is no small undertaking. The previous earl is turning in his grave, my lord. Of that, I am certain.”
The previous earl might well have spent the family into bankruptcy. “The tenants and creditors will suffer mightily if Sheldon must wait seven years to have his brother declared dead, sir. Sheldon will suffer while the solicitors alone prosper.”
Mine host glowered at me, while I wondered why he’d bothered having a fire lit in the hearth at all. Appearances, most likely. The parlor put me in mind of Dante’s innermost circle of hell, where betrayers of charitable benefactors were frozen into permanent, icy agony.
To add affront to frostbite, the cushions on my seat were horsehair. I resisted the urge to scratch, barely.
“Sheldon is blameless,” Fletcher said. “Sheldon is a paragon compared to his brother. I might even allow Dantry his queer starts—a bit of mental oddity on the dam side, you know—but I am personally affronted at how he trumpets his views all over creation.”
“The aristocracy are no longer permitted to trumpet their views?” Bad of me, but was no part of Fletcher concerned for a man gone missing with no explanation?
Concerned that murder might well have been done?
That Sheldon, who had only the one brother to call upon, might have lost even that lone sibling?
“The aristocracy have no need of trumpets, my lord. Sheldon understands this, and if it is the will of the Almighty that Sheldon becomes the earl, few will begrudge him that honor. He’s a canny lad, whereas Dantry…
a walking simpleton, my lord. An utter dunce.
Not right in the brainbox. Inbred, perhaps. ”
As Fletcher bleated on, I realized that he considered himself part of the aristocracy.
Not gentry, not a peer, but inhabiting the exalted space loftier than either.
He was free from the rigid codes of conduct and inheritance protocols required by titled ancestry, and he had means well beyond his neighbors, who merely worked the land.
Nobility might obligate, but from Fletcher’s perspective, wealth entitled. Finances gave him the right to pass judgment on all and sundry.
And thus far, his only positive comments had been directed toward Dantry’s brother.
“Sheldon is very concerned for his sibling,” I said. “Sir Clive is concerned for his cousin. They will both grieve Dantry’s passing sincerely and at length if the earl has gone to his reward. I hope to spare them that, if I can.”
“Sheldon,” Fletcher snapped, “will be the better earl. He understands that if a peer’s sympathies incline toward the masses—happens even in the best families from time to time—that peer can fund committees and hire pamphleteers.
He will join the right clubs and donate to the right charities.
The peer himself does not get down in the muck. Not done, my lord. Simply not done.”
How odd. I would have thought lecturing a guest, one who happened to be a ducal heir, was not done. Expecting that guest to freeze by a smoldering hearth was not done. Speaking ill of a neighbor, refusing to spare a caller even a cup of hot tea in the dead of winter…
Apparently, I was mistaken in many regards, but by Fletcher’s lights, murder or kidnapping of a peer was probably not done either, in which case, I was wasting my time.
“Perhaps new challenges require a new kind of peer,” I said, getting to my feet.
Fletcher rose creakily and harrumphed. “The challenge we face now is peace. We excel at war. We English think nothing of battling for a hundred years at one go, and because we are such superb pugilists by nature, we are building an empire Rome would envy. The Corsican—may he rot in a flea-infested tower—taught us how to manufacture the materiel of war efficiently. If that hard-won achievement is to be used for the benefit of mankind, then a lot of plowmen and shopkeepers cannot be left in charge of it.”
Had the peerage dug the ore, manned the foundries, trained the mules…? And how would efficiency in building the materiel of war benefit mankind?
I was well and truly angry, on behalf of every infantryman who’d taken up arms before he’d learned to shave properly. I was angry for the women who’d followed the drum in all weather and for the mothers and fathers who’d sent to war the sons they had hoped would inherit the shops and farms.
Perhaps my ire made me not quite right in the brainbox, but then, the brainbox wasn’t where honor resided.
“If I recall aright,” I said, “your grandfather was an industrious yeoman. He married well, as did his brothers and sisters, and then he inherited well from all three of his wives. By the end of his life, he was gentry. Would your grandpapa take the same dim view of Dantry that you do?”
I’d allowed myself that salvo as we left the arctic hospitality of the formal parlor and moved through a chilly, sunlit corridor toward the front of the house.
Fletcher could doubtless afford to heat his public rooms, but he chose not to.
The blood of the thrifty yeoman yet ran in his veins, or perhaps—cheering notion—Fletcher’s investments had failed to prosper.
“You come under my roof,” he said as a sniffy, etiolated butler handed me my hat. “You all but accuse me and mine of murder most foul, and then you insult my ancestry. How dare you…”
I draped my cape about my shoulders and did up the buttons.
“I will own neither the insult nor the accusations, sir. I am making inquiries in hopes of locating a neighbor who has gone missing, possibly as the result of foul play. You have been singularly unforthcoming in aiding those inquiries. With respect to your lineage, I state facts. Now, I will presume to pass on some advice.”
I was yielding to temper, possibly as a result of poor sleep and possibly because my investigation had gone nowhere. Every day that passed was a day when the trail, such as it existed, went colder.
Nobody looked for me.
Fletcher’s complexion had turned choleric. “Say your piece and get out, if you please. I am a busy man, and you have taken up enough of my time with your prying and pontificating.”
“I will be brief. You and Alphonse have publicly insulted Dantry on many occasions. You ridicule, deride, and mock him at every turn, despite the merits of many of his arguments.”
“Merits? Lord Huffnagel thinks little of Dantry as well, I can assure you.”