Chapter Twelve
“My lady,”
Lord Lucian said when they reached the Courtenays’ town house, “would you like to walk a bit more?”
“Yes, do, Diantha,”
Drusilla said with a mischievous smile. “I’m famished. I’m going in. A pleasure, my lord,”
she said, then darted quickly up the steps.
“Very speedy indeed,”
Lord Lucian said as she disappeared inside the house. He turned toward Diantha. “Are you hungry? There is a small café nearby, if you would like something to eat. They serve tea and sandwiches.”
Diantha was suddenly starving. “Yes, that would be lovely.”
He took her arm as they walked back down the sidewalk. “I thought that today would not be all lost if we were able to speak about how we are going to implement the changes.”
He gave her a quick glance. “I understand the courts have decreed we have a month?”
The very thought made Diantha’s breath hitch. “Yes. A month.”
“A month to come up with a plan and get our parents to agree.”
He paused, then added in a rueful tone, “Shouldn’t be too difficult.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “In the measure of some of the things I’ve had to talk my parents into or out of, it ranks high, but it is not the highest.”
“And now you have to tell me what is the highest.”
She chuckled recalling it, though it had not been humorous at the time. “My father met a gentleman who worked at a bank in early ’44, I believe; he was so impressed by him he wanted to use only that bank’s notes as currency.”
She exhaled, then met his gaze. “A few months later, the government instituted the Bank Charter Act, which said only the Bank of England could issue notes. That bank’s notes would have been worthless, and we would have been in permanent eel times.”
“Well, now I have to know what eel times are.”
“That is when we only have money for eels, not lobsters. The Courtenays’ fortunes vacillate between eels and lobsters,”
she explained.
By now they had reached the café, and Lucian opened the door, allowing her inside first, then following.
It was not busy, and the server popped her head out from the kitchen and gestured for them to sit where they liked. He then indicated Diantha should choose.
Remarkable, she marveled again, that a gentleman would give her the opportunity for choice, even something as mundane as where to sit.
She chose a small table near the window, and the server came over to take their order.
Once again, he gave her an inquiring look.
“Tea and a cheese sandwich, please, if you have it.”
The server nodded. “The same for me, please,”
Lord Lucian said.
“I imagine the factory resolution could affect your eel/lobster measure, then,”
he said, when they were alone.
More than you know. “Yes,”
she replied simply.
“Then we should definitely figure out the details of it all.”
He narrowed his gaze in thought. “I assume neither one of us has actual business experience—”
“But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try,”
she interrupted.
He gave her a surprised look. “No, of course not. In fact, I am thinking our lack of actual experience might benefit us.”
He shrugged. “If we don’t have bad business habits, and we are presumably intelligent people, we can likely come up with something that will work.”
“What about your relation? That Mr. Bishop? He spoke about some sort of business or another.”
Now he looked as though he’d swallowed a bug. “I believe Mr. Bishop is a charlatan.”
His expression turned grim. “Something I can’t prove—yet—but I would warn you and your family to stay away from his investments.”
Diantha had too much experience with bad investments to be particularly surprised he’d reached that conclusion; she herself had felt Mr. Bishop was both smug and glib about his involvement with what she and Lord Lucian were doing, so it stood to reason he was the same in his own work.
Just then, the server returned with their order, placing the items on the table in front of them.
“Go ahead and eat,”
Lucian said, gesturing toward the food. “I can talk, and you can nod.”
She picked up one of the sandwiches and took a big, satisfying bite.
“As I see it,”
he began, “we’ll need to have someone who actually knows how to manage a factory working there. It’s one thing for us to say ‘We should produce thingamabobs,’ but neither one of us knows how to hire personnel for thingamabob production.”
She nodded agreement, but then looked inquisitively toward him.
“Yes, how will we find this person?”
he said, in response to her unspoken question. “I’ve been working with the duke’s household staff recently, and I know many of their family members have been adversely affected by the repeal of the Navigation Act and the outbreak of cholera we had a few years back.”
She swallowed, then spoke. “How does the son of a duke—particularly one like yourself—know about government repeals and deadly diseases?”
“Come now, my lady, I am not a complete dilettante.”
He grinned. “Perhaps a partial one, but I do listen. And I am sympathetic.”
Another shrug. “I want other people’s lives to be improved, not just my own. So I listen, and I want to help.”
She felt a warmth steal over her at his words. There was far more to this self-admitted partial dilettante than met the eye.
“So we ask your household staff who they might recommend for such a position? How will we tell if they are right for it?”
“My father is a lot of things, but he is efficient in whom he hires. At least for the positions that he works with directly. We can ask one of his secretaries to weigh in.”
“That sounds good, especially since if you engage your father’s staff, they will be more likely to support the eventual endeavor. Very good, my lord.”
“I do have attributes beyond—”
and he gestured to himself with a cheeky smile, making the color rise to her cheeks. “After you have finished eating, we should head out. I will ask the staff for their recommendations.”
“And I will document our decisions and process so we can refer to it later,”
she said, as he held his hand up to indicate they wanted the bill.
“We are a good team, are we not?” he asked.
A question she could not possibly answer. Not without revealing more of how she felt, when she didn’t have the first idea about how she felt.
“Yes, well, let us go,”
she said instead, rising hastily.
“That was a long visit to the museum,”
Mr. Bishop observed as Lucian walked into the study.
He was seated behind the duke’s desk, a snifter of brandy at his elbow, a sheaf of papers lying in front of him.
Lucian tamped down his immediate anger at seeing the other man trespassing, since Mr. Bishop didn’t know Lucian was using this room as his primary place of business.
“I presumed you wouldn’t be needing this space since you’re not actually doing that much, are you?”
And the anger ramped up again.
Lucian strode over to the side table holding the liquor, pouring himself a healthy two fingers’ worth of whiskey, then sat in one of the chairs in front of the desk. He took a sip, then spoke. He tried to keep his tone friendly. “How was your day? Productive, I hope?”
Mr. Bishop leaned back in the chair, looking smug. “Very. I walked in the park and encountered several people I’d met at the various functions we’ve attended. One lady in particular, a Mrs. Robens, was very eager to be one of the initial investors.”
“You mean Mrs. Robens the widow? The one who is related to one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting?”
“Yes, that is the one. She told me about her relative and also shared she is fortunate enough to have a pension from her husband.”
Lucian half rose out of his chair, then sat down abruptly. He should give the man the benefit of the doubt—shouldn’t he?
“You know that pension is all she has. She is able to make her way in the world because of her relative’s standing, and that she herself is a kind person, but she does not have any money to spare.”
Mr. Bishop’s expression was bored. “That is not my business. She is in the market to invest, and I have an investment opportunity. It is not my responsibility for any and all widows to have a full understanding of what they are investing in.”
Lucian immediately rescinded the benefit of the doubt. The man knew full well that any investment—even one sounder than his vague plan—was a risk, and deliberately targeting a woman who was just hanging on the fringes of Society was cruel.
“Besides,”
Mr. Bishop continued, “if she is left without anything, her relative can care for her.”
Spoken with a callous indifference that reminded Lucian of his father.
No wonder they had so much in common.
“Well,”
he said, rising as he downed the rest of his drink, “I will be off. I have a small errand to run.”
To pay a call on Mrs. Robens and explain to her how investments actually worked and that it was perhaps not a wise idea to put all of her money in the hands of Mr. Bishop.
But he would not share that information.