Chapter Eighteen
“I could leak something to the scandal sheets,” Lark said at the club that night. “A rumor that a certain Duke of R— is having an affair with a Lieutenant H— that would bring them both down, and yet they persist…”
“Subtlety, thy name is a scandal sheet,” said Owen.
Fletcher sat in his usual seat in the club and enjoyed his friends’ attempts both to strategize and cheer him up.
Hugh leveled his gaze at Lark. “You don’t think Rotherfeld would retaliate?”
Lark shrugged. “I’m not saying I thought it through.”
“I have to buy him out, right?” said Fletcher. “I have to push a giant pile of money at Rotherfeld, buy the farm for more than it’s worth, and go into business with Lord Petty, who would then become my father-in-law.”
“Sure,” said Lark, “you could make some kind of deal in a smoke-filled room, out of the gaze of the public, or you could bring the man down in the papers. I’ve got an in with Talk of the Town. He’ll never track the rumor back to me.”
“You’re in a suspiciously positive mood,” said Hugh. “And possibly have a death wish.”
Lark shrugged. “Things are looking up. Although perhaps not for Fletcher, if he is about to be parted with a large sum of money.”
“I don’t want to own a sheep farm,” said Fletcher. “I can barely handle all of my father’s holdings as it is.”
“Hire someone to oversee your part of the investment but let Petty run it otherwise,” Hugh suggested.
“This is all seeming a bit…” Fletcher struggled to find the word. “I don’t know. Unseemly. Like I’m bribing Lord Petty into letting me marry Louisa.”
“Normally it’s the other way around,” Owen pointed out.
“I don’t understand why money must be involved at all,” said Fletcher.
“Why do we make marriage into a business arrangement? Don’t answer that, I know why, I just…
Louisa does not want to marry Rotherfeld, I am trying to rescue her, but now I might have to buy half a sheep farm, and it all seems absurd. ”
“What’s your plan?” asked Hugh. “You’re real plan, not Lark’s plan to tarnish his reputation.”
“I don’t know. Talk to Rotherfeld, I suppose.”
“Are you having second thoughts?” asked Hugh. “About marrying Louisa, I mean.”
“No.” And he genuinely didn’t. “But I thought I had the solution. No doubt, if she breaks the engagement, there will be social fallout, but it will blow over, especially since it’s not like this will render her unmarriageable.
I plan to marry her, after all. And then we can leave town until next season, when everyone’s attention will have moved on to something else. ”
“That’s a good plan,” said Lark.
“But only if Rotherfeld agrees to give up on the engagement. Unfortunately, it sounds like that is something he is unwilling to do, and he’s basically bribed Louisa’s father to keep him from ending things.”
“Did Petty say how much his investment in the farm was?” asked Owen.
“No, but this afternoon, I dropped a hint with my man of business that I was interested in finding out, so he’s probably got half of Scotland Yard combing through public records. I fear it is a large amount, though, or Petty would not be so reluctant to part with the money.”
“So, what now?” said Hugh. “Is it expected that Louisa just say yes at the wedding if Rotherfeld does not relent? If you want to marry her, why not just elope?”
“I want to do this right,” said Fletcher. “I’m not marrying her just to rescue her from Rotherfeld. I’m marrying her because I love her.”
“And that’s noble,” said Owen. “But sometimes marriages are not love affairs.”
Said a man whose marriage was arranged after he was caught kissing his now-wife.
Fletcher sighed. “I am running out of time. I may have to be that man who shows up at the wedding and objects to the union.”
“That would keep tongues wagging,” said Lark, sounding delighted.
“Larkin Woodville,” said Hugh. “What has gotten into you?”
Lark shrugged. “It’s good that everyone is making summer plans, because it looks like I won’t be staying in London this summer, either. Anthony and I will head to his country estate to hide for a bit. See if we can make a go of things.”
This was not met with the enthusiastic response Lark was probably expecting.
“Are you sure?” asked Hugh.
Lark laughed ruefully. “No. I’m not really sure about anything except that I love him.
Maybe us spending a summer in close proximity will inspire enmity.
That feels likely, in fact. Or perhaps we will discover that we are in fact well-suited, and we’ll spend the rest of our lives together, albeit not publicly.
That little boy is precious and deserves all the love in the world now that his mother is gone, and I can contribute to that. ”
“What an odd, untraditional assortment of men we turned out to be,” said Hugh.
“My mother didn’t approve of my wife. Owen planned to install his wife in Wales so they could lead separate lives and fell in love with her anyway.
Fletcher has to rescue his love from a nefarious duke.
And Lark is going to build a family with a man who, until a few years ago, we all found irritating. ”
“Your mother still doesn’t approve of your wife,” Lark pointed out.
“And even so,” said Hugh, “the next Duke of Swynford is walking around and sassing his grandmother, so I feel like I got the last laugh there.”
“Sassing her? Really?” said Lark.
“Mother came for luncheon a few days ago and wanted to visit with her grandson, who told her, repeatedly, that she was old and boring.”
“Isn’t he two? Does he know the words old and boring?” asked Fletcher.
“He knows a frightening number of words. Some of them are nonsense, but he’s stringing sentences together now and it’s both adorable and alarming.”
“I hope you know what you’re in for, Lark,” said Owen.
“The nursery is directly above my bedroom, and I woke up this morning to the sounds of the nanny running after my son. Like this.” Owen drummed his hands against his thigh to demonstrate.
“For a half hour. Until Grace woke up, too, and went up there to see what was going on. The nanny suggested we let the boy run around the garden during the day. To let him outside like we would a dog, basically.”
Hugh nodded. “You need to let them tire themselves out sometimes.”
“Having anything to do with your children is… Is it a new development for this generation?” asked Fletcher. “I imagine if you’d asked my father what I was like as a child, he wouldn’t be able to tell you.”
“It’s likely not normal,” said Hugh. “I don’t think it’s the done thing for fathers to be so…hands-on. Nor to talk about their children over whisky like this. But as I’ve established, we are…outliers.”
“I regret that my father and I were not closer,” said Fletcher. “So I understand why you are behaving as you are. It just struck me as odd, but maybe it shouldn’t have.”
“Perhaps the key to becoming an adult is that you realize you don’t have to do things the way your parents did,” said Lark. “My own parents have stopped asking me when I’m going to get married. They have, perhaps, given up.”
“My mother hasn’t,” said Fletcher. “Since Father died, she’s been somewhat relentless. But I haven’t wanted to tell her about Louisa until I know how everything will be when the dust settles.”
“The dust settles where?” asked Anthony, suddenly appearing.
“Ah, you made it out after all,” Lark said.
“I was going to go mad if I spent any more time glaring at the wallpaper in my sitting room,” said Anthony, settling into the chair an attendant brought over.
“Mrs. Church, little Henry’s nurse, insisted I leave the house for my own sanity, so here I am.
But I promise to try to be the most delightful company. What are we discussing?”
Fletcher gave Anthony an appraising look. He’d cut his hair shorter recently and he wore all black, making him look decidedly not like himself, but he had a familiar glint in his eye.
“Well, darling,” said Lark, “we are discussing Fletcher’s impending nuptials, or not.”
“Oh, right, the business with Rotherfeld.” Anthony leaned forward as though he were interested in these proceedings.
Fletcher assumed Lark had already filled Anthony in, but he said, “There is a precarious financial transaction at the heart of all this.”
“How foolish we have been as a society to make something so intimate into a business transaction,” Anthony said.
“Or, how foolish of modern society to make a business transaction about love and intimacy,” said Lark.
“For decades, our royals, for example, have married European princesses but carried on affairs with the women they truly cared for or were attracted to. Are we moving into an era in which men choose wives they truly love instead? It seems to me it makes married life far more pleasant.”
“Each generation wants their lives to be better than their parents,” said Anthony.
“But I believe we’ve arrived at a turning point in history, no?
Radicals agitating for women to have more freedom, for society to be less buttoned up, our notions of what marriage could or should be shifting, machinery is making the things we buy, our clothing has become a little less restrictive, and so on and so on.
New freedoms lurk around the corners, gents.
And though perhaps we as individuals are not the tip of the spear for change, you can’t deny that change is happening. ”
Fletcher just stared at Anthony, not really appreciating this philosophical turn. Anthony was right, but this was hardly the time. “Yes, change is an unyielding tide and all that. I don’t see how that helps my current predicament.”
“Maybe what you should do is go to the wedding, object when appropriate, and then give Rotherfeld a swift kick to the gut,” said Lark. “Push him out of the way and marry Louisa yourself. I mean, your family will be in attendance, will they not?”
“My mother was invited, yes. And several cousins, actually.”
“Then they cannot object to you getting married without their presence.”