Chapter 2
“What is it, Uncle?” David spread out both arms wide as he walked into his uncle’s drawing room.
The hour was late, and given his present delight with all that had been exchanged between himself and Lady Nora, he wanted nothing more than to celebrate.
He had not even known that Viscount Cheltenham was present at the very same ball as he, not until his uncle had caught his arm and told him, in no uncertain terms, that they had to speak that very evening.
“What could possibly be of such importance that you pull me away from my bed?”
Lord Cheltenham grimaced, already seated by the hearth, which had a low fire burning in it, chasing away the chill from the early morning hours. It was a most extraordinary time to be meeting, but nonetheless, Lord Cheltenham had been most determined. “It is good to see you, nephew.”
The study was dim, all thick shadows and the amber glow of a single lamp set too far from where David stood.
The curtains had been drawn against the evening, and the air was close, heavy with the smell of old leather and something sharper beneath it — medicine, perhaps, or the sour, vinegar-laced liniment the physician insisted upon.
Lord Cheltenham sat behind his desk like a man barricading himself against his own mortality, a decanter of brandy at his elbow, its stopper removed.
The glass beside it was empty, the golden residue dried in a thin ring at the bottom.
On the far wall, the portrait of Cheltenham’s late wife had been removed from its hook, leaving a pale rectangle on the wallpaper where the frame had hung for years.
In its place, someone had set a small landscape — a view of the coast, impersonal and bland — that did not fit the space.
David noticed it without understanding it, the way one notices a piece of furniture that has been moved in a familiar room.
David took a steadying breath and kept his position near the door, uncertain why he had been summoned at this late hour and with such urgency.
His uncle’s hands, resting atop the desk’s leather surface, were not still.
The fingers of the right hand twitched, tapping an erratic rhythm against a stack of papers.
It was a tell David had never seen before — his uncle had always been a man of implacable composure — and it unsettled him more than the shadows, more than the illness etched into the deep lines of Cheltenham’s face.
“Sit down, Hampshire.” The command came with a small cough that Cheltenham turned away to disguise. When he faced David again, there was a sheen on his forehead that the dim light could not quite conceal. “I will not keep you long.”
David sat. His uncle’s gaze tracked him with an intensity that felt more like desperation than authority. There was something in Cheltenham’s eyes — a wildness he had never seen there, a cornered-animal quality that sat ill on a man who had commanded rooms all his life.
“There is a matter of some… importance that I must discuss with you.” Cheltenham’s hand went to the decanter and then stopped, the fingers hovering over the cut glass before he thought better of it.
He withdrew them and laid them flat on the desk instead, pressing down hard enough that David could see the tendons shift beneath the papery skin. “It concerns Frederica.”
David’s brow furrowed. “Is she unwell?”
“No. She is perfectly well.” Another cough, this one sharper, cutting across his words.
“But she will not remain so without your assistance.” Cheltenham leaned forward, and in the lamplight, the hollows of his cheeks deepened into dark crescents.
“There is a codicil to my will, Hampshire. It pertains to you — and to my daughter.”
He spoke the word codicil with the kind of weight that made David’s stomach tighten, the warmth of the evening, the memory of Nora’s smile, the lingering intoxication of the waltz — all of it contracting to a single, cold point.
“I do not understand, Uncle.” David’s voice sounded strange to his own ears, stripped of its usual ease. He pressed his hands to his knees to keep them from moving.
“You will.” Cheltenham reached for the brandy again and this time completed the motion, pouring with a hand that shook visibly, the amber liquid splashing against the inside of the glass with an unsteady sound that filled the silence between them.
He did not offer any to David. “You will understand — and you will obey.”
The word obey hung in the room like gunsmoke.
David said nothing. The joy of the evening — Nora’s smile, the warmth of the waltz, the promise that had passed between them — was already receding, pulled back like a tide that would not return.
“You are my heir,” Cheltenham continued, and his voice had taken on the cadence of a man who has rehearsed what he is about to say.
“You will take on the estate and the title when I pass from this life to the next. You will be both the Earl of Hampshire and the Viscount Cheltenham. Not every gentleman has such a privilege, my dear boy.”
He paused, and in the pause, reached for the brandy glass with that unsteady hand. He did not drink. He simply held it, turning it slowly, the amber catching the lamplight.
“I have my daughter, Frederica. Your cousin.” His eyes returned to David’s, and the wildness in them had hardened into something closer to resolution.
“Yesterday, I added a codicil to my will. It states that you will marry Frederica. You will make her your wife. Then, and only then, will her inheritance come to her. If it does not, then it will be left to someone entirely undeserving.”
The shock sent David into turmoil, a faint ringing in his ears. He could not summon any response, his words dying away as the room around him drew inwards, sweat breaking out across his forehead.
“You – you cannot expect me to do this.”
His uncle did not look at him, his gaze fixed on the hearth and the gentle glow of the red embers. “I did not want to cause you harm, my boy. But this is required of you.”
David lifted his chin, a sudden fierceness in his chest. “Would you truly treat your daughter with such coldness? Would you use her in such an ill way?”
“Ah, but it is for her best, whether you wish to see that or not.” A sharpness came into his uncle’s voice, a hardness about his eyes as he looked again at David. “You have duty and responsibility, Hampshire. Will you truly turn away from that?”
Bile rose in David’s throat. The very thought of binding himself to his cousin out of a sense of duty rather than affection made him shudder, thinking of the love he had come to share with Lady Nora – a love so new and so fresh, it was breathtaking.
Perhaps never to be shared again.
“This is madness, Uncle! I do not need to marry Frederica. Can she not make her own match?”
“No.” Lord Cheltenham lifted his gaze towards David and held it steady.
“She will never be permitted to make her own match, for she has no good sense in her for that. You will marry her, Hampshire. Else she will be without fortune. She will have no inheritance to speak of, not even a substantial dowry. Which gentleman would marry her then?”
“Then I will care for her myself, with my own fortune.”
To David’s astonishment, Lord Cheltenham threw himself from his chair, striding across towards him and jabbing one finger in his direction.
“Should you do so, then the codicil states the manor house will be taken from you. It is not entailed. Do you think that society will think well of that? That they will not become eager to know what it is you have done to make you lose the manor house? My Frederica will have no home of her own – and whilst you might believe that you can take her into your home, think of what will be said of that also!”
Astonishment rose in David’s mind, his heart pounding wildly. He had never once seen his uncle in such a state, the fury in his eyes burning up any hint of resolve to set himself against this.
“You have a duty to care for my daughter once I am gone.” Breathing heavily, the air began to rasp out of Lord Cheltenham’s lungs. “I have made certain that you cannot step back from her.”
David’s eyes closed. “You know I would do nothing to disgrace the title nor our family.”
“Then you will marry her.” His uncle put out one hand, setting it onto David’s shoulder as he waited for his response.
David opened his eyes, but the edges of his vision were still blurring.
Two doors stood before him, each leading to a separate future, and he could not bring himself to open either one.
One would lead him away from Lady Nora, the other would pull him towards her.
One would bind him to his cousin, the other would leave her penniless and shamed.
How could he choose?
“I ask you this in the knowledge that you will choose rightly,” his uncle said, a wheeze in his breath now. “You may still find affection, Hampshire. One day, it might wind its way between you both.”
David looked up, wanting to refuse, to tell his uncle that he could not bear to do such a thing – only for him to stagger back, beginning to cough again as he went.
Rising to his feet hurriedly, David grasped his uncle’s arm and led him carefully back to his chair, watching with concern as he continued to cough and hack.
“Something to drink,” Lord Cheltenham managed to say, as David looked around the room, seeing a decanter in the corner. “Anything will do.”
Obliging, David poured a measure of brandy and brought it to his uncle, his worries mounting. It took some minutes, but eventually Lord Cheltenham settled back into his chair, his eyes closing and a long breath of relief pulling from him.
For a moment, something crossed his uncle’s face that was not fury or command.
It was there and then gone — a flicker, as if the man behind the demand had surfaced briefly and looked upon the wreckage he was making.
Lord Cheltenham’s hand lifted, trembling, as if he meant to reach for David, and his lips parted on something unspoken — something softer, perhaps even an apology.
But the moment passed. His jaw set again, and his eyes hardened, and when he spoke, the guilt had been folded away like a letter one cannot bear to send.
“You will marry her, then. I will have the announcement of your engagement in the paper first thing tomorrow morning.”
Wanting to protest, wanting to state that he had made no decision and did not think that he could ever bring himself to marry a lady he did not love, David let his gaze settle on his uncle’s face.
The man was pale, his skin mottled, his lips purple.
Did he realize he was unwell? Was this the reason behind such manipulation?
The hope that he would have his daughter wed before the day of his passing came?
Dropping his head, David pushed his hand through his hair and groaned, drained of all strength.
And despite the agony in his heart, despite the pain that lingered there, David knew he had no choice but to give in to it.