Chapter 4
Sebastian leaned against a high-backed wing chair in a posture society would have deemed too indolent for a man of his consequence.
Mr. Peabody sat in the leather chair opposite, his knees pressed tightly together, hat on his lap, his polished shoes tapping a nervous rhythm upon the carpet.
He had been his father’s solicitor; Sebastian had never employed Peabody’s services, preferring another firm.
The solicitor was a careful man of fifty, accustomed to the quiet privileges of a long connection with a noble family.
His hair had thinned and gone grey at the temples.
His jaw worked once as if he had swallowed a stone before he smiled, then sobered when it drew no response from Sebastian.
“My lord,” he ventured at last, after Sebastian had regarded him in silence for several minutes. “You sent for me, my lord.”
“Tell me about the other family my father kept.”
The solicitor blinked and assumed an air of bewildered innocence. “My lord, I am at a loss to know your meaning!”
“You are not,” Sebastian replied. “I shall not ask twice. Speak plainly.”
Peabody attempted a small, uncertain smile. “You refer perhaps to certain charitable remittances made in the late earl’s lifetime. Matters of benevolence are often conducted in private.”
“If you insist upon lying, I will make you regret it.” Sebastian’s voice dropped to a silken quiet.
“Prevaricate again, and I shall have the Lord Chancellor review every instrument you have lodged these twenty years. Should I discover fraud or concealment, I will see you ruined in every court that will hear me and stripped of the profession that has sheltered you. Now speak plainly.”
Peabody’s lips parted and closed. A bead of perspiration showed at his hairline. “Yes,” he said at last, voice low. “The late earl made provision for a lady. His lordship lodged her in a substantial but unostentatious cottage with seven bedchambers upon the Hertfordshire estate.”
Though he expected such an answer, Sebastian’s chest still squeezed. “How long?”
Peabody shuffled the papers before him, as though the answer might somehow be found amongst them. “I cannot be exact. Fifteen years, perhaps a little more.”
“What is this woman’s name?”
“Mary,” he said after a beat. “Mary Whitley. She styled herself Mrs. Whitley.”
Something dark and unfamiliar wrenched through Sebastian’s chest. He drummed his fingers once upon the desk, thinking.
If the woman had been beloved, why were she and her children left in such dire want?
He frowned, recalling that the coffers of the earldom had not been flush; only Sebastian’s own investments and, yes, his luck at the tables had enlarged his inheritance.
“You paid this mistress a regular allowance.”
“I did,” Peabody said. “From a private account the late earl kept in town. I drew the quarterly sums upon his instruction, and he signed where required. Receipts were kept.”
“He had children with her.”
The solicitor colored. “Three daughters, my lord. Mrs. Whitley also had an elder daughter by her first husband, whom the late earl raised as his own.”
“You are aware Mrs. Whitley died.”
“Yes, my lord. I verified the state of the property afterward. I spoke to the land steward when needed. I took no liberties.”
“You took the liberty of silence,” Sebastian said icily.
Peabody’s mouth pressed flat. “I did as I was instructed, my lord. I had no other intention. I beg your indulgence and forgiveness.”
Sebastian let the quiet lengthen. Cold pushed under his ribs, a slow, brutal tide.
He thought of his father and the looks exchanged with his mother across the dinner table.
Duty and love had been a coat put on and taken off with ease.
Part of him might have forgiven the infidelity; life had taught him that many men yielded to their baser urges.
But the ruin and pain this would visit upon his mother was something Sebastian could never forgive.
“Give me particulars,” he said. “The vicar who christened the children. The physician or midwife who attended their births.”
He meant for everything to be investigated and confirmed.
If they were truly his father’s illegitimate issue, Sebastian could not leave them to cold and indignity.
Yet he must be cautious; greater frauds had been contrived with the aid of solicitors and men of business, costing men their fortunes, reputations, and honor.
“I will have everything prepared with care and haste, my lord.”
Sebastian pinned the man with his hard stare. “Why did my father leave no provision for his children, bastards though they be?”
Peabody sat very still. “I… I… cannot fathom why the late earl—”
“Where is it?” Sebastian asked coldly.
There was the smallest pause. Color rose in the solicitor’s face, an unbecoming blotch. “There is none, my lord.”
“Try again.”
“There is none,” Peabody repeated, faster now.
“The property is strictly entailed. No codicil was lodged with me, nor with the London agents. I am sorry to say that upon the late earl’s death, there was nothing to be done for those persons beyond the ordinary charities.
The cottage forms part of the Hertfordshire estate and could not be granted away.
I was obliged, indeed constrained, to issue notice for them to quit. ”
“Yet you only thought to evict them after Miss Whitley contacted you. It seems you forgot their existence, Peabody, and when you saw their desperation, you acted with rank dishonor. You pressed the eviction to drive the eldest into accepting your protection, and from there into your bed.”
The man’s mouth opened and closed like a landed fish. Desperation entered his eyes. “My lord, if someone has leveled an unjust accusation against me, I ask to meet them so I may refute it with honor.”
A humorless sound escaped Sebastian. “Honor? You have mistaken the word for a cloak you may put on when convenient.”
Peabody’s flush deepened. “I only informed Miss Whitley that the cottage was entailed and therefore beyond any private arrangement. There was no income to cover their maintenance once remittances ceased. I… I could not manufacture a trust where none existed.”
A low scoff left Sebastian. “How quick you are with your answers.”
“My lord, I—”
“By the end of the day, I want the account books for the Hertfordshire estate before me, and the statements for the private account from which you drew. Then I shall see precisely how much money you misapplied while believing those ladies had no protection,” Sebastian said, his tone so flat it took the solicitor a beat to comprehend it.
Peabody’s head jerked. “My lord, I… I…” His words failed, and he looked as if he might choke.
“You are dismissed.”
Peabody rose. His hat wobbled where his fingers gripped the brim. “Yes, my lord.”
“One thing more,” Sebastian said. “Henceforth, you will regard those young ladies as persons under my protection. If any harm comes to them through negligence or malice, I will assign the blame to you first.”
The man bowed, pale and damp. “I understand, my lord.”
“Get out.”
He hastened out and closed the door. Sebastian stood and crossed to the window. The perverse weather persisted, a fine misting rain falling for the third day in succession. Rivulets ran in thin silver threads down the glass. He watched them fall until the lines blurred.
“Three sisters,” he murmured. “And one…Good God, what the hell is she? Sister to my sisters. Miss Whitley is nothing to me, except that she is everything to them.” He let out a low oath. “Which makes her my responsibility as well.”
The whole affair was a damnable mess.
He set his palm to the cool pane and tried to reconcile the man who had written so tenderly to this woman with the father he had revered.
The pieces would not fit. Who had given his father the right to leave such a tangle for him to mend?
That his father had left him to care for three young girls and one woman old enough to marry, all while concealing them from his mother and sister, offended every value Sebastian held.
What Sebastian wanted was a night of dissipation to drown the din in his head.
He stiffened when the image of Miss Whitley standing in the center of the room in that thin chemise flashed, unbidden, across his thoughts.
His cock hardened in swift, unwelcome response.
Shock and irritation rose hot in his throat.
He banished the vision with effort. Sebastian doubted he owed her anything; if obligation bound him at all, it was to the other three.
And that only if he chose to help at all.
A quiet, dissatisfied protest moved through him.
Sebastian raked his fingers through his hair.
He was a worldly man; he knew too well what awaited ladies without a protector or the means to be independent.
Honor demanded he act, yet how far he would go must be decided, for he would do nothing that imperiled his own household, and though blood bound him to three of them, blood alone did not yet make them family.
Darcy stepped down from the carriage after her sisters and paused upon the pavement, steadying herself with a light touch to the door.
Russell Square spread before her with its clipped trees and iron railings, the houses set in a noble row, each facade elegant, self-possessed, and very far from anything she had imagined when Lord Raine announced they would be moved from Grosvenor Square to “a more suitable arrangement.”
She had prepared herself for something modest, something set apart from the grandeur of London, somewhere that would make it plain they were to remain hidden, a quiet and inconvenient secret never meant to be brought into the light.
Instead, the townhouse before them bore its refinement with effortless restraint, elegant without ostentation.