Chapter 25
Henswick House received her Friday afternoon with its familiar warmth, her mother’s embrace at the door nearly as fierce as it had been on her wedding day.
Her father waited in the hall, his expression suggesting he understood more about the true purpose of her visit than her letter had explicitly revealed.
“He arrives at seven,” he said quietly, once her mother had been persuaded to release her long enough for private conversation in the study.
“I have told him only that a family friend wished to hear his account directly and that she could be trusted with whatever he chose to share. I have not mentioned Ashvale or your title, thinking it wiser if he speaks plainly before he learns precisely whose wife is listening.”
“That was well thought out, Father. Thank you.”
“I only hope it proves worth the trouble, for your sake as much as his.”
Thomas Whitmore arrived precisely at seven. He was a tall young man of perhaps thirty, well dressed, with the careful bearing of someone who had learned the hard way to measure every word before offering it. He bowed properly to Louisa upon introduction, his eyes assessing but not unkind.
Louisa found herself studying him across the drawing room before dinner, inclined to believe her father’s assessment more than she had expected to.
“Lord Henswick tells me you wished to hear my account directly, My Lady, though he has not told me why, and I confess I find myself curious.”
“I have my own reasons, Mr. Whitmore, which I hope you will forgive me for keeping to myself a while longer. I promise you they are not unkind.”
“Then I shall trust Lord Henswick's judgment, since it has always struck me as sound.” Thomas’s mouth twitched, something wry beneath the careful formality.
“Though I confess that these past years I have grown accustomed to people who wish to hear my account only so they might dismiss it afterward.”
“I do not intend to dismiss anything, Mr. Whitmore. I intend to listen.”
They spoke of lighter matters through the first half of dinner, Lady Henswick steering the conversation with practiced ease toward the weather and the state of the roads, until the final course had been cleared and Lord Henswick suggested, with a meaningful glance toward Louisa, that the ladies might excuse the gentlemen to the study for a private conversation.
“I should like to hear it too, if Mr. Whitmore does not object.”
Thomas studied her for a moment, some careful calculation behind his eyes, then inclined his head. “I have no objection, My Lady, provided you understand I mean to speak plainly, whatever the subject touches upon.”
“I would want nothing less.”
The fire in the study had been built up against the evening chill. Thomas settled into the chair Lord Henswick offered him, a leather folio resting across his knees that he did not immediately open.
“My father was a partner in a shipping venture fifteen years ago, along with a man named Cavendish and another, a Sir Edmund Vane, who managed the venture’s accounts,” he began. “The business prospered for some years. Then, quite suddenly, it did not.”
His hands rested still on the folio, though his voice carried the controlled steadiness of a man who had told this story many times and had learned, through repetition, to keep his grief from overwhelming the facts.
“Cavendish claimed my father had falsified certain shipping manifests, understating losses to secure further investment under false pretenses, and he had evidence that seemed genuine.”
He sniffed. “The claim ruined him entirely within the month. No one bothered to properly examine the ledgers before believing it. His partners abandoned him. His creditors descended upon him. He died three years later, having never cleared his name and having entirely lost the will to try after several failed attempts.”
“I am sorry,” Louisa said quietly.
“So am I, My Lady, though sorrow alone accomplishes very little.” Thomas opened the folio at last, drawing out several yellowed pages, his hands steady despite the visible weight the papers seemed to carry for him.
“I spent years believing there was nothing to be done, until I came across these while sorting through some of my father’s old effects that had been stored with a solicitor since his death. ”
He passed the first page to Louisa. It was a letter, the hand unfamiliar, dated some fifteen years past.
Vane,
The manifests will not survive close examination if Whitmore’s man ever thinks to request the original entries rather than the fair copies. See that the originals are destroyed before the quarter’s audit, and Whitmore need never know his own hand has been altered against him.
Cavendish.
Louisa read it twice, her chest tightening, and then passed it to her father, who read it with a darkening expression before handing it back.
“There are four more in Cavendish’s hand, each confirming the same arrangement,” Thomas continued, drawing out more papers.
“And two bearing Vane’s reply, agreeing to the scheme and specifying his share of the gains once my father’s holdings were sold off cheaply to cover the manufactured losses.
He couldn’t use them as evidence only because Vane threatened to harm me and my father feared for my life. ”
Louisa read each in turn, and found, by the fourth, that she no longer had any doubt as to their authenticity, the hand consistent throughout, the details too specific, too damning, too carefully unglamorous to have been invented by a grieving son seeking revenge rather than truth.
“Why have you not made these public before now, Mr. Whitmore?”
“Because I am not seeking revenge, My Lady, whatever Sir Edmund may have told anyone who asked him.” Thomas’s voice remained level, though something raw moved beneath it.
“I want my father’s name cleared. I want the world to know that he was an honest man ruined by dishonest people, rather than the reckless fool his ruin painted him as for fifteen years. ”
He thumbed at the folio. “I have no wish to destroy the Cavendish name, nor to see the present Duke, who I understand was scarcely more than a boy when this happened, made to pay for his father’s sins. I only want the truth known, and my father’s memory restored to what it should have always been.”
Louisa sat with that for a long moment, the letters still in her hands, and felt something settle into firm resolve in her chest.
“Mr. Whitmore, I must tell you something now that I have withheld from you this entire evening, and I hope you will forgive the deception once you understand the reason for it.” She met his eyes steadily.
“I am the Duchess of Ashvale. The present Duke, whom you rightly say bears no blame for his father’s sins, is my husband.
Sir Edmund Vane has already spoken to him, insisting that you be discredited before your account can reach a wider audience. ”
Thomas went very still, some old wariness returning to his expression. “I confess I do not know what to make of this evening, Your Grace, if you have come merely to gather what I know before it can be used against me.”
“I have come,” Louisa said firmly, “because I do not believe Sir Edmund’s account, and because I believe my husband deserves to know the truth of his father’s conduct rather than being asked to protect a lie on Vane’s behalf.
I intend to bring this to him myself, Mr. Whitmore, and I intend to see that your father’s name is cleared, whatever the costs. ”
Thomas studied her for a long while, something in his guarded expression slowly easing toward cautious hope. “Then I believe, Your Grace, that I owe you more gratitude than I expected to owe anyone this evening.”
Louisa left Henswick House the following morning with the folio’s contents committed carefully to memory. The uncertainty that had followed her there had been replaced by a fierce resolve to see the truth brought to light.
Whatever it cost, Julian deserves to hear it from me.
She would not have him discover it later, twisted and half-formed through Vane’s careful manipulations.
The carriage ride back to Ashvale Park gave her rather too much time to decide how to tell him. She rehearsed several versions of the conversation in her head, discarded each one, then began again. Every attempt seemed either too cautious or far too alarming.
By the time the carriage rolled through the gates a little past noon, she had settled on the simplest course.
I will tell him everything.
She found Julian in his study, as she had expected, correspondence spread across his desk and several unopened letters waiting at his elbow. He looked up at the creak of the door.
His expression softened when he saw her, so subtle that another person might have missed it entirely. Louisa did not.
He had missed her.
The realization touched her more deeply than she had expected, and for one brief moment, she nearly forgot the carefully arranged words waiting in her mind.
“You are back sooner than I expected,” he noted.
“I wished to come home.” She crossed the room and settled into the chair opposite his desk, gathering her thoughts.
He watched her with an attentiveness that made the coming confession considerably harder than it should be.
“Your Grace, I must tell you something, and I would rather you heard it from me directly than piece it together some other way.”
“You sound as though you are bracing for something. Should I be worried?”
“I am bracing for something, indeed.” She drew in a slow breath.
“I did not go to Henswick House merely to see my parents. My father wrote to say that he had located Thomas Whitmore and believed him an honest man. He had arranged for him to dine at Henswick House so I might judge his character for myself. I went to meet him last evening. My father and mother were present.”
Julian went very still, his expression shifting from ease into something considerably more guarded. “You met Thomas Whitmore.”
“I did.”
“Without telling me.”