18 Money Considerations
E dward stood frozen, watching Tess’s retreating back. Well, he had made a mull of that! There she had been, in his arms, allowing him to kiss her and everything comfortable between them, and he had gone and ruined the whole thing — again. Every time he thought he was making a little progress with her, he found himself on the wrong side of her temper.
For once, his eternal optimism entirely deserted him. He would have to watch her marry Ulric, thereby ruining who knows how many lives, and it seemed there was nothing at all he could do about it. Such an amazing girl, to be thrown away on a man who could never appreciate her, and would never even see her except as someone to ride with occasionally. If she never went near the stables, Ulric would undoubtedly forget her very existence.
Yet Edward would have loved her forever and cherished her as she deserved to be. No one in her life had truly cared about Tess, or protected her as a girl should be protected. She had been left to find her own way in life, her mother restricted by her blindness, and her aunt, who might have taken an interest in the girl, occupied with her own brood. Tess had grown secretive and devious because of that neglect, and Edward was perhaps the only man of her class who did not mind that. Did not mind? He adored that aspect of her nature, for he was secretive and devious himself, if truth be told.
Eventually, voices approaching on the track from Birchall drove him to turn and walk back to the castle. He wondered forlornly where Tess had gone and whether, if he looked for her and apologised abjectly, she might be less hostile. Perhaps she might even let him kiss her again.
As he strode over the bridge to the castle’s main entrance, the butler rushed out to greet him.
“Oh, my lord, there you are! We wondered… when you dashed away so precipitately after Miss Nicholson… but she is here now. She returned a few moments ago.”
“I have seen Miss Nicholson.”
“Ah. Excellent. Captain Edgerton was enquiring for you, my lord.”
“Tell him to go and boil his head,” Edward said savagely.
“My lord?” the butler said, startled.
Edward sighed. It was hard to set aside the roiling emotions inside him and bring his mind back to more mundane matters. “Oh… tell him I will see him in a few minutes. Where is he?”
“The old schoolroom, my lord. Bedroom floor, south-eastern corner.”
“And remind me where my room is?”
“The south-western corner, my lord.” He flicked a finger and a footman jumped forward. “William will show you the way, my lord.”
Edward was grateful. Most great houses were modelled on a central block with wings to each side, and it was easy enough to navigate to one side or the other, but Corland was a solidly square house. He remembered, as he followed the silent footman up the stairs, that he needed only to turn to the left on the half landing and his door was directly opposite the top of the stair, but in his disordered state of mind, he was certain to have taken a wrong turn somewhere.
“Shall I send your man up?” the footman asked.
“No need.”
In the sanctuary of his room, he tore off his greatcoat, hat and gloves and sat on the bed in despair. It was a moment of unrelieved gloom. Just a few weeks ago, he had pridefully congratulated himself on having ordered his life perfectly to his own wishes. He had removed his mother and aunt from his orbit and established a delightful bachelor existence in town, and although he had to show himself at the occasional ball or musical evening or the wretched Almack’s to appease his mother, he could otherwise do as he pleased. It had amused him greatly to have a secret life that she knew nothing about and therefore could not scold him for. And how she would scold, if she knew what he did when she was not there to keep him in check!
But a mere few days in Tess Nicholson’s company had torn all his pride from him, and filled him with a conviction of his own worthlessness. He was rich, he was a baron, he was accounted handsome and pleasing to females, and yet none of that made him an acceptable husband to that shameless chit. She preferred her uneducated woodworker or poor horse-obsessed Ulric to Edward, Lord Tarvin of Harfield Priory and Grosvenor Street, London.
What was he to do now? Nothing. There was nothing he could do to win her.
***
T ess hid away in her favourite secret place, the balcony overlooking the great hall. The great advantage of wearing black, and possibly the only advantage, was that hiding was much easier. A flash of white muslin glimpsed between the balusters would perhaps attract attention, but in her mourning gown she was invisible, with no need to swathe herself in a dark cloak as she used to do.
For a few minutes she seethed with rage at Edward, who had taken it upon himself to interfere in her life. If she had been able to talk to Tom, to kiss him, perhaps, she could have turned his mind away from that stupid poultry maid, she was sure. Tom was as soft as butter in her hands, easy to mould to her own wishes. Easy to distract. All men were foolish where women were concerned. But men had power, too, the power to obtain a licence so that Tom could marry the poultry maid instantly, and put himself forever out of Tess’s reach.
Not that he had been within her reach, without her fortune. If she could only have got her hands on those gold bars! But there again, the interfering Edward had taken that option away from her. Such an arrogant, high-handed man! Now there was only Ulric left to her.
A shiver of uncertainty hit her, as she remembered Edward’s words. ‘I can give you something you can never get from Ulric,’ he had said, and then he had kissed her. She trembled as she remembered his kisses, soft and warm and gentle, infinitely tender. Tom’s kisses were enthusiastic, certainly, but had nothing of Edward’s comforting affection. And from Ulric, there would be no kisses at all, and could she live with that?
Below her in the great hall there was a bustle of activity, as one of the footmen who waited there was summoned to the entrance hall, returning moments later to lead a man of nondescript appearance up the stairs.
“I didn’t catch your name, sir. How shall I announce you?” the footman said, as he passed below Tess’s vantage point.
“Just say, ‘A person to see you’ ,” the man said.
“Is the captain expecting you, Sir?”
“Oh, yes.”
Neither his face nor his voice were familiar to Tess, but nevertheless, she thought she recognised something about him. He looked like a bailiff or perhaps a farmer, in the sort of hard-wearing, somewhat outmoded clothes that would be practical for outdoor work. She would not know anyone of that nature, but perhaps in a different context…
She had it! He had been a footman in the not too distant past, although a rather unusual one. Not one of theirs, a visiting one, although she could not remember whose. That was intriguing.
Impulsively she jumped up and slipped through the door to the service stairs, and up to the attic floor. There were a few tiny bedrooms for the servants there, but around the perimeter was a low space, just the right height for a smaller-than-average child to walk in. As an adult, she had to stoop but she could still creep about up there. Over the years, she had gradually loosened and shifted boards or even drilled small holes so that she could hear what was going on below her. It was only the bedrooms, so although she heard much snoring and other odd noises, there was little conversation to be overheard. A man discussing the arrangement of his neck cloth with his valet, perhaps. The women were more interesting. Aunt Caroline gossiped dreadfully with her lady’s maid, and Tess had learnt much of interest from her. Walter and Eustace had quarrelled sometimes, before Eustace had inherited his own house and moved out. And of course Izzy had always been entertaining with her melodramatic tantrums.
The old school room had not been used for a number of years, but now, with the arrival of Captain Edgerton and his associates to investigate her father’s murder, there was much that was worth listening to. Now she crept along the low space until she was above the room and could hear voices below. Then she stretched out on her stomach and laid her ear to the gap between the boards.
“…this letter, James.”
That was Captain Edgerton’s voice with its clipped military tones. For a while, there was silence, apart from the faint scratching of a pen.
“There! That should do it. Give that to the attorney, and this one from his lordship, and that should get you inside. You are to give them due notice — two days at least.”
“They will have hidden everything of interest,” a second voice said. The quiet tones of the man on the stairs.
“Yes, but those are the earl’s explicit orders. We cannot do otherwise. But then straight in. Take Sandy with you, and those two from the inn — the big fellow and his brother, and the attorney, of course. You have a bailiff arranged to value everything, I assume.”
“Of course. A Scarborough man. I wish you could be there, Michael.”
“So do I! But I must talk to Whyte.”
“Nicholson’s natural son?”
“That is the fellow. Shapman’s confession took him off my list for a while, but now I must talk to him. He is one of the few people who has a genuine grievance against Nicholson, and a quarrelsome family who just might turn to violence against the man who fathered a child on a girl and then refused even to acknowledge him. Not so much as a mention in the will, either. So I must see Whyte without further delay. I talked to the smith and a couple of the sons, and they hardly seem the type to break into the castle at dead of night and murder a man with an axe. A brawl in the street, certainly, and possibly a hostile delegation to talk to Nicholson and persuade him to do the right thing by the boy, but they are not secretive types, I should have thought.”
“And the boy is only sixteen.”
“Precisely!” Captain Edgerton said. “It seems most implausible, yet who else do we have? Only Miss Nicholson, who is even more implausible, and Shapman, who has a rock solid alibi. James, I depend on you to find me something useful at the Pickering house.”
“Apart from Miss Nicholson’s gold bars, you mean?”
“Yes, apart from that. Nicholson’s papers there may have something of interest.”
Tess heard a door open and close again.
“Ah, Lord Tarvin! Do come in, my lord. Thank you for attending so promptly. Rumour has it that you succeeded in setting Shapman free from prison.”
“And he was imprisoned again this morning, in the Holy state of matrimony,” Edward said.
“My goodness, that was quick work!” That was Mrs Edgerton again. “How did you pull that off?”
“With a bishop’s licence from the Archbishop of York, a fraught evening arranging everything and then running my carriage between Birchall and the bride’s church all morning. I had to spend last night at the parsonage to make everything work. I thought it best to get it done before Tess has a chance to insinuate herself into the situation again.”
“Does she know yet?”
“Unfortunately, she heard Shapman was free, rushed down to the village to see him and ran straight into the wedding party. She was… a bit upset.”
“Poor girl!” Mrs Edgerton’s voice was full of sympathy. “She has not had an easy life, and it is not getting any easier.”
“Not an easy life?” the captain said. “Born into an earl’s household? Never wanting for anything in her life?”
“Anything material,” Mrs Edgerton said. “Love… I think she has been starved of love.”
“Which she would not have got from Tom Shapman,” Edward said, a harsh tone in his voice. “Nor will she get it from Ulric Frith.”
“It seems to me that she wants money, rather than love.” Now who was that? The lawyer fellow, Tess thought. Mr Willerton-Forbes.
“And she shall have it, just as soon as we can extract those gold bars from Apstead House,” Edward said.
“That is precisely what Neate is about,” the captain said. “Do you remember my associate, James Neate, my lord? He has just arrived from Pickering to collect the letters of authority enabling him to gain admittance to the house. And the key to the safe, of course. In the course of investigating the house, he will discover afresh the safe and its contents, and be able to obtain a proper estimate of the value of those gold bars. There is a goldsmith coming up from London for the purpose.”
“Excellent. This news may cheer her a little,” Edward said.
“Unfortunately, there is a small problem,” the lawyer said in his ponderous way. “The late Mr Nicholson was helping himself to a sizeable proportion of the late earl’s rental income. The present earl engaged a land steward to deal with such matters, and so Nicholson devised other schemes to line his own pockets, but there was a substantial loss to the estate from the earlier depredations. The earl quite naturally wishes to recoup some of the losses.”
“But not to the extent of Miss Nicholson’s entire fortune, surely?” Edward said.
“My investigations are not yet complete,” the lawyer said slowly, “but my current estimate is that Mr Nicholson’s embezzlement may amount to forty thousand pounds or even more.” A long pause. “Do you still wish to tell Miss Nicholson?”
“No. Good God, no! This is dreadful! She could end up with nothing… not a penny!”
There was a profound silence from the room below.
Tess was too experienced at listening in to reveal herself by an injudicious sound or movement, but she was hard put to it not to squeak with shock. This was a severe blow! She had suspected her father’s perfidy for a long time, ever since she had realised that he bought a new coat or a fob for his waistcoat or a trinket for Mama after he had collected the Lady Day rents. Why should he have extra money to spend after gathering in the earl’s income? He was not usually free with his money, but once a year, he was a little more generous.
Once, she had tested her theory by asking him if she could have a new gown.
“Your Mama is the person to ask,” he had said absently, busy with his accounts. “She handles your allowance.”
“But you have plenty of money just now, so I thought you might share some of it with me.”
His head had come up sharply at that. “It is true that I have been fortunate at the card table lately.”
“The card table? Is that where it comes from?” she had said in innocent tones.
He had looked at her penetratingly. She could not have been more than nine or ten at the time, and he must have wondered whether this was truly childlike innocence or something more subtle.
Eventually, he chuckled, and set his pen down. “You are a clever little thing, Tess. Tell me, why do you think Lord Rennington is such a powerful man?”
“He’s an earl, Papa.”
“True, and everyone bows down to him for that reason. But the real power in the world is money. If you have money, you are a person of consequence even if you are lowly in other ways. Money is security and freedom and the ability to live your life however you choose. Money permits a recovery from any disaster, large or small. Money is independence, Tess, and not being beholden to anyone. Not being owned by anyone. How much would you like for your new gown?”
Tess had no idea what a gown would cost, but she knew that her father regularly won twenty pounds from the earl at piquet and the earl laughed it off. That was a trivial amount, then.
“Fifty pounds,” she said brightly.
He was so shocked she almost laughed. “Fifty pounds! Great heavens, Tess!” But then he began to laugh. “Still, such brazen impudence should be rewarded.” He opened a drawer and counted out five gold coins. “There. Five guineas. That should buy you a new gown and a pair of stockings, too. But never ask me for money again, do you hear? Everything I possess will be yours after I die, so you will get your hands on it then and not a moment sooner. Now leave me in peace, you little monkey.”
She had never again asked for money, but knowing where he kept his coins, it was not difficult to help herself to a few shillings now and then. After all, it would be hers one day anyway, so she was merely taking a small advance on her inheritance. She was very careful only to take small amounts, and only silver or copper, never gold. Even a careless man might know precisely how many guineas he had, and her father was anything but careless about money. Did he ever notice? If he did, he never gave any sign.
Now she wished she had taken more, and hidden it away instead of spending it. At least it would be hers, and no one could take it away from her. Now she would be penniless…
But not if she acted swiftly. There was yet a possibility of getting hold of some, at least, of her fortune.
The group below began to talk about Mr Neate’s journey to Pickering, and under cover of their conversation, Tess crept away, brushed off the accumulated dust and cobwebs her gown had acquired, and descended the service stairs to the ground floor. In the great hall, Simpson and Wellum were conferring, breaking off their discussion as she approached.
“Miss Nicholson? How may I be of service?” Simpson said.
“Is my uncle free at the moment, Simpson?”
“I believe he is not engaged at present,” the butler said, in his ponderous way.
“Would you ask him if he could spare me a few minutes?”
He could and did, returning very soon to say, “His lordship will see you now, Miss Tess.”
And there was that little niggle of discontent that always bubbled up. Josie and Izzy and Olivia were always ‘my lady’. Even now, the servants still called Olivia ‘my lady’ , and not ‘Miss Olivia’ , as she should be, but Tess would always be ‘Miss Tess’. Or Mrs Shapman, as she should have been, she thought resentfully. Mrs Frith, perhaps. Or Lady Tarvin. That made her scowl even more. As if she cared tuppence for him or his title! It was a question of respect, that was all.
Simpson led her through the ante-room to the library, and into the earl’s study.
“Miss Nicholson, my lord.”
“Tess! My dear girl! Come in, come in, do. How delightful to have this little chat. I do not see you often enough, not to talk to, for one cannot talk properly over dinner, can one? May I send for some tea for you?”
“I will have a glass of Madeira, thank you, uncle.”
His eyebrows rose a fraction, but he willingly dismissed the butler and poured a small glass for her and a larger one for himself.
“And how are you, my dear? You are well, I can see that, and happy, I am sure, with your future so well settled.” If only that were true! “We cannot wait to meet your young man, my dear. Such a whirlwind romance! I cannot tell you how happy it makes me, and your aunt…” A shadow crossed his face as he mentioned Lady Rennington. “I am sure she will be pleased about it, too, when she hears. Have you written to her?”
“Not yet, uncle. Everything is very much up in the air at the moment, so I hardly know what I am about. Have you not written to her?”
“Oh… not recently, no. She… she prefers me not to. Just until… things are settled. If I find someone to marry. But as to your happy news, I dare say your mama has told her all about it, although she would be glad to hear from you, I am sure. Was there anything in particular that you wished to talk to me about?”
“I am thinking ahead to my wedding in the spring. It cannot be sooner since Mama has not given her permission, but I should like to be prepared — wedding clothes and so forth. Under normal circumstances, my father would have paid for such things, but perhaps I could have the money he left me to begin with. Ten thousand in the bank, and a thousand in cash. That would enable me to make my preparations… put some renovations in hand at Mr Frith’s principal seat, that sort of thing.”
The earl frowned, and she knew at once that he was not going to fall for her stratagem.
“Ten, eleven thousand for wedding clothes, my dear?”
“And a carriage and horses, uncle. Perhaps two. I want to begin some work in the grounds, too. A summer house… a lake… a fountain…”
“Most of these plans, worthy though they are, are for your husband to undertake, Tess. Your wedding clothes… perhaps something might be done there, but a carriage? Building works? Wait until you are married, my dear. Your husband will have all your money then, and he will be the best person to decide what to do with it. There will be settlements, and so forth… your pin money, widow’s jointure, all that sort of thing. More important than a lake, I should think.”
“I am sure you are right, uncle, but perhaps something for wedding clothes now?”
“When you are still in deep mourning? My dear girl, it seems a little disrespectful to be thinking of such things now. When you have set a date for the wedding, talk to your mama about what you will need, and then come to me for the money. We shall not send you into matrimony in rags, you know! There now, you are excited about entering the married state and cannot wait to make a start, and that is perfectly natural, but you will have the rest of your life with Mr Frith, after all. A few more weeks to wait for wedding clothes is neither here nor there. Do not forget to write to Lady Rennington, will you? I am sure she would love to hear from you. And if she writes back to you, as I am sure she will, do not forget to let me know what she says and how she is, will you?”
Tess drank the rest of her Madeira in one mouthful, and left with as much politeness as she could muster.
Everything was going wrong! What a horrible day this was turning out to be.