Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
The Investigation
The offices of Thorne & Associates smelled of old paper and regret.
Frederick had been staring at the same clause for seventeen minutes. Seventeen, he thought, before he could stop himself. As though counting the minutes might somehow make the words rearrange themselves into something less damning.
They did not.
The leather of his chair creaked as he shifted.
Dust motes drifted through the afternoon light, suspended in the air like questions he was not yet prepared to ask.
The room pressed close around him—shelves of leather-bound ledgers climbing toward a ceiling stained yellow by decades of candle smoke, the faint scratch of a clerk’s pen from somewhere beyond the door.
“Your Grace?” Mr. Thorne peered at him over wire-rimmed spectacles. “You appear troubled.”
Frederick tapped the page. His finger left a small smudge on the parchment—evidence, he supposed, that dukes were as capable of perspiring palms as common men. “This clause. Section four, subsection three.”
He read it aloud, though the words had already carved themselves into his memory: “‘The bride shall be delivered unto the marriage in a state of unblemished virtue, such virtue to be attested by examination should any party raise question of same.’”
Thorne’s chair gave a small squeak. “A standard provision, Your Grace. Common in contracts of this nature.”
“Is it?” Frederick looked up. The solicitor’s face was carefully arranged into an expression of professional neutrality, but there was a tightness around his mouth that suggested he found this conversation about as comfortable as sitting on broken glass.
“I have seen betrothal contracts before, Mr. Thorne. My father’s solicitors drew up three of them for my sisters. None contained language this…”
He searched for the word. Specific seemed inadequate. Suspicious seemed too honest.
“…thorough,” he finished.
Thorne’s spectacles caught the light as he inclined his head. “Perhaps Lord Ashworth wished to be thorough.”
“Or perhaps Lord Ashworth anticipated a challenge.”
The words hung between them like smoke from a discharged pistol.
Thorne’s hands moved to his desk—straightening papers that did not require straightening, aligning a pen that was already perfectly aligned.
Frederick had spent enough years reading men across negotiating tables to recognise discomfort when he saw it.
He had also spent enough years on battlefields to recognise when someone was deciding whether to lie.
“Your Grace.” Thorne’s voice had gone careful, measured. “I must advise caution. If you are suggesting—”
“I am suggesting nothing.” Frederick set down the contract. The parchment whispered against the desk like a secret being buried. “I am observing. There is a difference.”
A very small difference, he did not add. The sort of difference that would not survive close examination by anyone with functioning eyes.
* * *
He had come to London three days ago, telling himself it was estate business.
There were always matters requiring attention—investments to review, parliamentary votes to consider, the endless machinery of a dukedom that did not pause simply because its master had developed an inconvenient obsession with contract law.
The estate business had taken half a day.
The rest of his time had been spent here, in this chair that smelled faintly of hair oil and anxiety, reading and rereading a document he had signed eighteen months ago without bothering to examine the particulars.
He had been numb then.
He had not cared about particulars.
He cared now, which was perhaps the most damning particular of all.
“Walk me through the financial provisions again,” he said.
Thorne sighed—the long-suffering exhalation of a man who had explained the same document four times in three days and was beginning to suspect his client had taken leave of his senses. He reached for his notes, the papers rustling like autumn leaves.
“Lady Penelope’s dowry consists of twelve thousand pounds in trust, to be released upon the marriage. Additionally, the Ashworth family contributes a parcel of land adjoining the Carthedge northern boundary—approximately two hundred acres of farmland and forest.”
Frederick’s fingers drummed once against his thigh. He stilled them. “And in return?”
“In return, you provide Lady Penelope with a jointure of three thousand per annum should she be widowed, residence at the Dower House at Carthedge, and—” Thorne hesitated. His pen tapped twice against the desk before going still.
“And?”
“And the settlement of Lord Ashworth’s outstanding debts, to a sum not exceeding fifteen thousand pounds.”
Frederick went still.
The clock on the mantel ticked. Three, he counted. Four. Five. The sound seemed very loud in the silence.
“I do not recall that provision.”
“It is in the supplementary documents, Your Grace.” Thorne’s voice had gone very quiet. “Signed by your late father’s solicitor on your behalf, during your service in Spain.”
Spain. Where he had been bleeding in a surgeon’s tent whilst someone sold his future for fifteen thousand pounds and two hundred acres of questionable farmland.
“Show me.”
Thorne produced another sheaf of papers. Frederick read them with the same focused attention he had once given to battle maps and troop movements—which was to say, with the cold understanding that what he found might determine whether he lived or died.
The language was dense, the clauses nested within clauses like Russian dolls designed by a particularly vindictive lawyer. But the meaning was clear enough.
Lord Ashworth was drowning. And this marriage was not an alliance between families.
It was a rescue.
“Has Lord Ashworth’s financial situation…” Frederick kept his voice even. “…improved since this contract was signed?”
“I could not say, Your Grace.”
“But you could find out.”
Thorne’s spectacles flashed. His fingers had gone white where they gripped his pen. “That would require… enquiries of a delicate nature.”
“I am authorising you to make them.” Frederick met the solicitor’s eyes and held them. “Discreetly. I wish to know the current state of the Ashworth accounts, the source of any recent income, and—”
He paused. Outside the window, a cart rattled past. A hawker called something unintelligible. The ordinary sounds of London going about its business whilst Frederick contemplated destroying his honour piece by careful piece.
“—any rumours regarding Lady Penelope that might be relevant to the contract’s validity.”
“Your Grace.” Thorne’s voice held a warning now. “If you are seeking grounds to void this contract, I must counsel you on the risks. Lord Ashworth is not a man who accepts defeat gracefully. There would be scandal. Accusations. Lady Penelope’s reputation—”
“I am not seeking anything.” Frederick stood. His chair scraped against the floorboards—a sound that seemed to echo in the cramped office like a judge’s gavel. “I am gathering information. There is a difference.”
A very small difference indeed, whispered the part of his mind that had been counting golden threads since a garden in Surrey. The sort of difference that would not survive close examination by anyone with functioning eyes—or a conscience.
He ignored it.
He was getting rather good at ignoring things.
* * *
The letter from his mother arrived that evening.
Frederick opened it in his study, where the firelight cast long shadows across the Persian carpet and the whisky in his glass glowed amber.
He had been expecting the usual complaints—his absence noted, his wedding preparations questioned, his mother’s disappointment expressed in language that somehow managed to be both excessively polite and deeply cutting.
What he found was worse.
Dearest Frederick,
I trust your business in London progresses satisfactorily. Penelope and I have been occupied with wedding arrangements—she is a dear girl, so eager to please, though I confess her mother’s influence is sometimes trying.
I thought you would wish to know that Miss Ashbourne has received several callers since your departure.
Lady Raventhorn mentioned at tea that Lord Camberton has called twice this week—apparently he is quite taken with Miss Ashbourne’s knowledge of horticulture.
He is a bachelor, I am told, with a respectable estate in the neighbouring county.
Frederick read the paragraph three times.
Four, he thought, before he could stop himself.
Lord Camberton. He knew the name—a minor baron who had inherited his estate two years past and was known primarily for his passionate interest in agricultural improvement. Hedgerows, if Frederick recalled correctly. The man was obsessed with hedgerows.
Hedgerows.
Frederick set down the letter. Picked it up again. Read the paragraph a fifth time, as though the words might rearrange themselves into a less objectionable configuration.
They did not. They seemed, in fact, to become more objectionable with each reading.
Twice this week. Lord Camberton had called twice.
Lord Camberton, with his hedgerows and his respectable estate and his presumable lack of a betrothal contract binding him to another woman.
Lord Camberton, who was free to call upon Florinda Ashbourne as often as he wished, to take tea in her garden, to admire her roses, to perhaps reach out and brush the dirt from her cheek without destroying everything he had been raised to believe about honour and duty and keeping one’s word.
Frederick crossed to the window.
The London street below was empty save for a lamplighter making his rounds, his pole a dark line against the gathering dusk. Frederick watched him move from lamp to lamp, counting without meaning to.
Seven, he thought. Eight. Nine.
He calculated the distance from London to Ashbourne. Forty-seven miles. Eight hours by carriage. Five on a fast horse.
He owned a stable of Arabians. He held a ducal coronet. He commanded an estate that dwarfed Camberton’s modest holdings by a factor of ten.
And yet Camberton was taking tea with her whilst Frederick examined contract law in a solicitor’s office, searching for loopholes like a drowning man grasping at flotsam.
Hedgerows, his mind repeated, with a venom that surprised him. He wishes to discuss hedgerows with her. The audacity. The sheer, unmitigated gall.
This was absurd.
He was jealous of hedgerows.
Frederick returned to his desk. Drew out a fresh sheet of paper. The pen felt heavy in his hand—or perhaps that was merely the weight of what he was about to do.
He began to write.
Expand the scope of your enquiries. I wish to know everything about Lord Ashworth’s finances—every creditor, every loan, every asset he has leveraged against the marriage contract.
Additionally, make discreet enquiries regarding Lady Penelope’s activities prior to the betrothal.
Any rumours. Any irregularities. Spare no expense.
He signed the letter. Sealed it. Set it aside for the morning post.
The wax hardened beneath his fingers, red as blood. Red as shame.
Then he stared at the fire and thought about hedgerows.
* * *
That night, he wrote another letter—the twenty-ninth.
The paper was thick beneath his fingers, cream-coloured and expensive, the sort of stationery a duke was expected to use for correspondence that would never be sent. He had purchased an entire ream of it three weeks ago. At this rate, he would need to purchase another.
He did not let himself reread what he had written.
He never did. The words came out of him like blood from a wound—necessary, perhaps, but nothing he wished to examine too closely.
He folded the paper with practised precision, three creases that aligned perfectly, and locked it in the drawer with the others.
Twenty-nine, he thought.
Twenty-nine letters to a woman who would never read them, written by a man who had no right to write them, about feelings he had no business feeling.
He was beginning to suspect he might be going mad.
The fire had burned low. The whisky in his glass had gone warm. Outside, London settled into the quiet of deep night—the occasional rattle of a late carriage, the distant bark of a dog, the soft footsteps of servants moving through darkened hallways.
Frederick sat in his chair and did not sleep.
Seventy-four hours since her garden.
Seventy-five.
Seventy-six.
He counted them the way other men counted sheep—not to find sleep, but to fill the silence where sleep should have been. The hours accumulated like debts, each one a reminder of what he had almost done, what he had not quite done, what he desperately wanted to do.
Somewhere in Surrey, a man who cared about hedgerows was probably sleeping peacefully.
Frederick hoped, with a viciousness that surprised him, that Lord Camberton’s hedgerows developed blight.
Seventy-seven.
Seventy-eight.
He counted until dawn.