Chapter 20
Twenty
Jack wasn’t familiar with mornings. He normally slept through them or arrived home with the rising of the sun, drunkenly oblivious.
But he now awoke with a vague hope the fresh day would bring a certain clarity.
Or at least that the confusion of the previous day would’ve sloughed away in the night, like a scab being knocked off, revealing fresh skin beneath.
No sign at all of anything having changed.
That’s what he wanted, he realised as he stood up from the bed and walked barefooted to the curtain.
He drew it partially aside and watched a tradesman’s cart trundle over the cobbles.
Chimney smoke drifted black against the raw pink-blue sky; a footman smothered a yawn as he trod up the steps of the house opposite.
Jack wanted to go back to last week, before things had got so confusing.
His father had been a great advocate of early rising. He loved the countryside and kept unfashionable hours, getting up with the lark and riding or walking for hours before the rest of the house stirred, his dogs at his heels.
A strapping, vigorous man, he’d often cross paths with Jack in the hall, Jack dawdling down the stairs on his way to breakfast, his father slapping a big, wind-cooled hand on his shoulder, the smell of grass and dew on his coat.
“Morning, son. All rested and ready for another day of mischief, eh? And look who I found to help you.”
Because often enough, there would be Min, found on her daily pilgrimage from her father’s house. A mop of warm brown curls and a glint of shy eyes peeping out, half hidden behind his father’s bulk. And Jack would smile. And the day would begin.
“She was the dawn,” he said to himself, then pulled a face, scowling in embarrassment, and, absurdly, glancing over his shoulder even though he was alone in the room.
“You’ve gone mad, Jack,” he said with more certainty. “Stark raving mad. And all because she looked nice in a dress. Of course she looked nice. She has—” But he cut himself off even as his hand lifted to sketch a curve in the air, refusing to dwell on Min’s…assets.
“And stop talking to yourself,” he said firmly, catching sight of his reflection in his room’s tall looking glass and seeing nothing good.
He was a mess, and not just because of the rumpled nightshirt and even more rumpled hair, disordered into wildness by a night tossing and turning.
It was his eyes. He dragged a hand over his jaw, the rasp of stubble loud, and tried to recognise himself.
A boy was what he saw. A little frightened. A little ashamed.
Well, that wouldn’t do, would it? He was the Viscount Orton. With a scowl, he pulled the bell for his valet.
He was dressed and downstairs at an hour that disconcerted his servants.
Dalcher appeared with his waistcoat misbuttoned and his thinning hair not quite arranged in its usual scalp-concealing manner.
Jack suppressed a smile at the glimpse of shining pate visible through the strands and took the stack of letters handed to him.
The sight of his man-of-business’s handwriting flattened his smile entirely, and he handed the letters back with the instruction to leave them on his desk, before setting forth on a brisk walk, leaving the kitchen staff scrambling to ready his breakfast.
The only one of his friends likely to be up at this hour was George.
And though Jack would normally turn to him for advice on the matter currently troubling him, he could hardly do so now.
Hello, old friend, in a spot of bother…discovered I’m highly attracted to your future wife…
Teeth gritted, Jack instead strode towards the nearest park.
He supposed it was a fine spring morning, but even trying its best, the park was uninspiring compared to the fulsome springs of his Herefordshire boyhood.
The spindly trees grew towards the smoke-smudged sky, paths trod down to bare earth struck out across the uneven grass.
There were neat beds of flowers here and there, beads of dew still adorning silken petals, and he wandered for a while, ruining his boots on the wet grass, and trying, he supposed, to find the spirit of his outdoors-loving father somewhere between the plants and the drifting clouds.
What the devil do I do? he asked. But in most of his memories, his father was laughing in that bluff, blunt way he had.
He’d do the same now, Jack was sure. Perhaps with a sympathetic wince and that heavy hand clapped hard on his shoulder, but the underlying message would be the same. Sorry, son, but you’re a grown man now.
Yes. Good grief. He was Lord Orton. He was the head of the family. He was a man of six-and-twenty—as old now as his father had been on the day of Jack’s birth. Of all the things he was responsible for, Jack knew he was certainly responsible for himself. But—
But really, came his father’s voice, wry and amused. Didn’t you see this coming?
“No!” Jack kicked a tussock of grass, then coloured in embarrassment as two nearby nurserymaids startled, hastily hurrying their charges away. Devil take it… He attempted to clear the black scowl from his face and slacken his furious pace to a more sober walk.
How could he have seen it coming? It was Min.
That odd little creature, half shy, half stubborn, head full of secret thoughts that were only sometimes revealed by the action of her clever fingers.
Sketches of places and faces and all the things that’d caught her eye, drawn with a vivacity that left him wondering if he’d ever truly seen the world at all…
Perhaps that was it. He’d never seen her. Until now.
But no. He knew her. He felt sure he knew her, as little as he’d ever appreciated it. The difference now was…her. Him. A man and a woman. That was very different from two clueless children. She’d grown up into a beautiful woman—
He stopped himself. Beautiful? Min? No…not fashionably beautiful but…
God, she was enchanting. She was absolutely delightful.
Those curls… To push a hand into that abundant softness…
Hadn’t he—honestly, hadn’t he been wanting to do that for a very long time?
Not just since yesterday, since that waltz, with the fullness of her figure in his arms, and some sweet, soft scent coming off her exposed skin, lips parted on a laugh, and the generous curve of—
George’s wife, he reminded himself, forcibly. She was to be George’s wife.
Oh God. Oh hell. What the devil could he do? Only pray that this Damascene conversion reversed as swiftly as it’d arrived.
And avoid her until then. Yes. That would be wise.
And, when he returned to his house and finally attended to his correspondence, it turned out to be unavoidable.
Mr Blatherstock stood up in surprise when Jack was shown into his office.
“Lord Orton, I would have come to you at your home—”
“Yes, yes,” agreed Jack, waving off the polite formality as he sat down before the man’s desk, “but now I’ve had…ah…time to read your letters, the matter seemed urgent, and the Lord knows you’ve wasted enough of your time trying to track me down.”
Blatherstock was a sensible man and opted not to deny this or waste time on obsequence. He gave one small nod, moved smoothly to the cabinet in the corner, and poured Jack a drink.
“That bad is it?” said Jack as he took the glass.
Blatherstock smiled thinly and sat back down. “Bad, Lord Orton, but far from hopeless.”
“I still don’t understand how my finances have become so…alarming. I know the mining business was a disaster—not to speak ill of the dead, but Lansbury, the late Lansbury, I mean, might as well have picked my pocket for all the return I saw on that investment.”
“I did advise it was extremely unlikely to—”
“Yes, yes. I know. But he was a friend of a friend.” He waved a hand. “You know how it is, a transaction between gentlemen, you can’t help but trust the other man—you ought to be able to trust them, God damn it, or what good is anything?”
“Quite,” agreed Blatherstock politely. “If we lived in an ideal world.”
“I only drew on a small part of my principal.”
“Which is fortunate, but it did diminish the whole. As have the additional demands placed upon it recently.”
Heat flushed Jack’s neck, and he sipped his drink as though the burn of the liquor would detract from the burn of shame. It was unfortunate he’d spent the morning trying so hard to summon the spirit of his father. His ghost was uncomfortably present at Jack’s shoulder.
“Those gaming debts will not be repeated,” he told Mr Blatherstock.
“And the recent acquisition of several horses, the alterations to Orton House, the ah, four new carriages you commissioned… The nine hundred pounds you withdrew last November was for the purchase of a racehorse, I believe?”
Damn Major Mellish, and Queensberry, and Leighton, and all of them. Jack should have known better than to get in with that sporting mad set. The excuse that everyone was doing it died unspoken on his lips.
“I can sell the horse.” Backing it to win certainly hadn’t done him any favours. “Sell several.” Though the thought made him grimace. “But…are things really so bad? I’d always believed that my fortune…well…that it was appropriate to my needs.”
“It is. Or rather, it was.”
But really, came the remembered voice of his father again, no amusement in it this time, didn’t you see this coming?
Jack shifted in his seat as Blatherstock continued, smooth, polite. Inexorable.
“Your principal has been depleted over the last few years by these and other demands, more significantly by the mining investment, and before that, the investments made in Canada and America. Not that you can be blamed for the disruptions to overseas business caused by the war, but perhaps a more critical scrutiny of world affairs, combined with less reliance on the word of…friends…might lead to more judicious investments in future.”
Jack managed a smile, though his fingers were uncomfortably tight on the glass he held. “And by listening to you?”
The man merely adjusted the papers on his desk.
“The real issue, Lord Orton, is that due to the significant depletion of your principal—taken together with the existence of mortgages on several of your properties, the poor harvests of recent years, and the subsequent reduction in income from your estates—your bank is unwilling to maintain your current interest rate. Bluntly, your current income no longer meets your basic expenditure.”
The muscles of his back were very rigid, a sickly cold feeling sliding down his spine. Consciously, he relaxed his grip on his glass and set it down carefully on the desk before him.
“So I cut costs, retrench a little, sell a few horses, that sort of thing?”
“I believe something more substantial may be required.”
Jack looked at the man. It took him a moment to say, “Sell some properties?”
Blatherstock only looked at him.
“Sell some…” Jack swallowed, his father’s ghost looming. “Sell some land too?”
“Unless you have another way to access a significant sum.”
Blatherstock said it casually, almost as though it was an afterthought, but Jack didn’t miss the implication. Marriage, he meant. Marry a rich enough heiress and the bank would back off, the immediate constrictions on his income would be relaxed.
“No.” Everything inside him rebelled at the idea. To be reduced to a fortune hunter? To use some poor woman like a banker’s draft? “No. I will look at my estates, my properties, and see what can be done.”
Blatherstock gave a small nod. He took a sheet from the neat pile in front of him and slid it across the table. “I took the liberty, my lord, of making some suggestions. With your permission, I’ll instruct my agent to visit your steward in Herefordshire—”
“No,” said Jack again, taking the paper and getting to his feet. “Thank you, Blatherstock, but this is a job I need to do with my own hands. And I need to…to speak with my mother. The news will come from me, and so will the remedy, for it’s my own mess to clear up.”
He bid Blatherstock farewell and left to prepare for his journey, but in the moment of shaking Blatherstock’s hand, he thought he felt the faint pressure of another hand on his shoulder. Heavy, firm, but containing the ghost of approval.