Chapter 1 #2
Gearoid was his given name, but no one except his mother ever called him that. And usually, Lady Glenister only called him Gearoid when he’d done something particularly egregious. Otherwise, everyone called him Garret, which was the Anglicized version of the Irish Gearoid.
He settled for giving Liam a dark scowl and a shoulder bump as he pushed past him and into the town house.
The scent of tea and the lemon of furniture polish greeted him, just as much a part of the house as Dawkins, the butler, who stepped forward and took his greatcoat and hat.
Garret paused to glance at his chin in the gold-framed mirror in the vestibule.
The skin was slightly pink, but he didn’t think it would bruise.
Liam cleared his throat, and Garret sighed and started up the stairs.
The doors to the drawing room were wide open, and Garret strode inside, going immediately to his mother to kiss her cheek and then winking at Mariah, who sat beside her on the gold damask sofa.
Mama looked lovely as ever, her dark hair gathered artfully at the nape of her neck, and emerald earbobs, which matched her eyes and her green dress, dangling from her ears.
Mariah was also in green, her strawberry blond hair loose but held back from her face by a green velvet bow.
Like Mama, Mariah was petite, her green eyes almost owlish on her face.
The earl stood at the side of the hearth, an elbow resting on the mantel.
Like four of his offspring, he had red hair—his liberally sprinkled with gray.
He was of medium height and in good form due to his devotion to long walks and vigorous fencing.
He had brown eyes, like Garret, and they were usually filled with merriment.
The earl looked uncharacteristically sober this afternoon, however.
Garret sat across from his mother and sister in an armchair upholstered in red.
Killian took the matching one beside it.
Daire sat on the edge of a settee that made up the grouping of furnishings.
There was enough room for Liam to sit beside him, but true to form, Liam stood at the opposite end of the hearth, his arm on the mantel so that he mirrored his father.
Everyone had taken their usual places. The fire had been banked, but Garret still felt overly warm and as though his collar were too tight. He slid a finger inside to loosen it.
“Now that we are all here,” his father began, his voice lightly tinged with the accent of Ireland, “I have something important to discuss with you. You may have noticed I have been rather occupied lately with my solicitor.”
“You didn’t join us for dinner or cards the past three nights,” Mariah said.
Garret hadn’t dined at home last night, but he had the previous two evenings, and his father had indeed been absent.
The earl generally liked to read interesting tidbits from the paper while the others played cards, but the evenings had been quiet as Garret and Daire played chess and Mariah practiced her embroidery.
They would have rather played cards, but their mother claimed she had a megrim, and Liam never played cards.
It was difficult to play with only the three of them.
“I do apologize, Moppet,” the earl said with a smile for his youngest. “And I apologize for the news I must deliver. I’m afraid it is not very pleasant.”
“Say it quickly,” Mama told him, though from the way her brow knit, Garret suspected she already knew. “That is the best way to deliver bad news.”
The earl nodded. “Very well. I’m afraid that we are quite out of money.”
No one said anything for a long moment, the silence louder than the ticking of the bracket clock on the mantel.
Garret supposed everyone was as shocked as he by the statement.
His father never discussed finances. No one in their circle did.
Talk of money was common and something the merchant class might do.
The upper classes did not speak or even think of money.
Liam cleared his throat, seeming to recover first. “What do you mean, sir?”
The earl blew out a breath, and for the first time, he looked every day of his sixty years.
His face seemed to grow haggard, and his eyes hollowed out.
“When I married your mother, she had a sizable dowry. Between that and the income from Castle Glenister, we anticipated a comfortable life. However, a few years after our marriage, my father passed away, leaving rather large sums that had to be satisfied. I won’t go into the details, but settling those debts took a significant portion of your mother’s dowry. ”
Garret looked at Liam, judging whether he had known any of this. It was never easy to read Liam—he had a way of schooling his features so that his emotions did not show—but the rapt attention he gave their father seemed to imply he’d had no prior knowledge of the news their father now imparted.
“We were fortunate that my father had leased this town house for a period of thirty years and paid most of that cost in advance to secure it for so long. We relied on the income from the land in Ireland to keep us afloat. But the weather has not been kind the last dozen or so years. The crop yields have been poor, the tenants have been unable to pay their rent, and the taxes on the castle must be paid. I have tried to make several investments, taking out loans on the promised returns, but I don’t seem to have Daire’s skill in that area.
I lost money rather than gained it and lost the goodwill of our creditors in the process. ”
“I wish you’d consulted with me, sir,” Daire said.
“What’s done is done, son. The solicitor has given me the hard news. We will soon be out of money.” He sighed and closed his eyes, seeming to need a moment to breathe.
“What your father is saying, in practical terms,” the countess began, her very proper English accent sounding sharp after their father’s more dulcet tones, “is that we must now make some hard choices. The lease on the town house will expire in five years, not that it matters as we probably cannot afford to pay the servants or for the upkeep more than this last Season.”
This last Season. Those words slammed into Garret’s chest like a fist. His mother was saying this was their last Season in London.
He would not be here next year for the balls, the theater, the parties with his friends.
His gaze flew to Mariah. She would not have her come out, her presentation at Court, and all the trappings of a London Season.
“We have paid the taxes on Castle Glenister for this year,” the earl said. “Barely. I won’t be able to pay them next year.”
“I have some funds from my investments,” Daire said. “I will gladly give all that I’ve made to help.”
The earl gave Daire a look that all but broke Garret in two. Clearly, their father hadn’t wanted to ask such a thing of his son, and just as clearly, he was relieved Daire had offered. The gravity of the situation took Garret’s breath.
“Thank you, Daire. If you don’t mind, how much do you have?”
Garret heard Daire name a sum that seemed substantial. His father nodded. “That will pay for the upkeep of the town house and the servants’ salaries for this Season and perhaps next if we economize. It will buy us time to proceed.”
“And how should we proceed?” Killian asked. “Perhaps I might sell some of my paintings.”
“Or we could sell our jewelry,” Mariah said.
“Or some of the rare books,” Liam added.
“All of that may become necessary, but it won’t sustain us. As I see it, we have two options. First, we could sell Castle Glenister and the land not entailed.”
Everyone vocally objected. Garret rose from his seat. “No, Papa! That is your birthright.”
“What about the summer house?” Killian and Mariah said almost in unison.
“What about Liam?” Daire asked. “He’ll have a title and no land.”
No one had to point out that an earl without land was useless.
Already, the fact that the English had a long-standing dislike of the Irish—the family’s ancestral land was in Ireland, and Lord Glenister had been born in Ireland—meant the Kildares were barely considered part of the peerage.
The earl’s marriage to Lady Caroline Lambeth, one of the daughters of the Duke of Bedford, certainly elevated the family’s standing.
But they weren’t issued vouchers to Almack’s, they weren’t at the top of anyone’s guest list, and though the earl was a member of the Lords, he was barely recognized by the most powerful members of that body.
If the family did not have Castle Glenister, they would lose their position, however lowly, in Society, as well as any hope of income should the tenants have a good year with crop yields.
The earl couldn’t sell the entailed lands, of course, but these amounted to a few hundred acres of the actual property, which had been expanded over centuries.
The only structure on the entailed land was the crumbling remains of a crude medieval fort.
But like Killian and Mariah, Garret could think of another reason he did not want to lose the castle.
The summer house was a small building on the property bordered on one side by the lake and the other by a fallow field that bloomed with wildflowers in the spring.
When the children had been young, the family would spend the long summer days in the house.
They played hide-and-seek among the wildflowers or reenacted the Trojan War and the Wars of the Roses.
Garret and his brothers would swim or row their small boat out and fish or pretend they were sea captains.
Garret had always loved water as a child, partly because of those halcyon days.
Perhaps that was why he’d decided to join the navy.
But the realities of life on a ship had been anything but idyllic.