Chapter 11
“Iwanted to plant him a facer,” Richard said when the serving maid departed. “As a younger man, I would have.”
He had not yet touched his midday meal, nor had Mabel started on hers. The private parlor was filled with the scent of toasted beef and brie sandwiches, steaming mashed potatoes redolent of butter, and new peas in basil sauce.
All to be washed down with a fine summer ale, and for once, Mabel hadn’t had to devise the menu, approve the recipes, and consider the inventory in the larder when making her decisions.
Wealtha had somehow inveigled St. Didier into stopping at one more glovemaker’s, and Mabel was exceedingly grateful for the respite from her cousin’s company.
“I often suppressed the urge to kick Wopley’s backside,” Mabel said. “He pontificated and prevaricated at such length, I was convinced he charged us by the word. You sent him packing?”
Richard, who’d chosen to sit across from her rather than at the head of the table, picked up half a sandwich. “I did. I lectured him a bit first. I should not have bothered.”
“He manages many estates. You lectured him on behalf of more widows and orphans than you know, my lord. They won’t take their business from him—they probably cannot, if they are heirs rather than estate owners—but he might be more circumspect in his thieving.
Eat that sandwich, or you will be too light-headed to buy me the best nanny goats. ”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mabel had suggested this inn for its highly respectable reputation and its kitchen.
She hadn’t patronized the place in years and was pleased to find it still thriving.
The parlor was spotless, the food appetizing, and the table adorned with a bouquet of red roses in a green glass vase. Best of all, no chattering Wealtha.
All very pleasant. Mabel was less sanguine about Richard’s distracted mood.
Was he having second thoughts about their kiss? Planning to leave for the south now that Wopley had been sacked?
He tore off a bite of his sandwich. “Raiding the shops with Wealtha has to be a rigorous undertaking. Is she plundering the entire town?”
“Not quite.” Mabel took her first bite of warm, golden toast; soft, pungent cheese; and beef done to a turn. “We’re sticking to the good shops, not the best of the best. Those tend to be wildly overpriced and slow to deliver.”
“I want you patronizing the best of the best.”
“So that Wealtha can have her heart’s desire?”
He munched slowly. “I wish I hadn’t said that. A reasonable adult would hear those words as a trite turn of phrase. Wealtha likely took them for a blood oath.”
“She lied to you about Abernathy’s will.
Orla refused to consider having it contested—not that we could afford any such undertaking—and Wealtha is still seething about that defection.
She will certainly be wroth should you disappoint her regarding her settlements.
” St. Didier’s earlier words came back to her.
Mabel owed Richard a warning before they left the topic of Wealtha’s moods. “My cousin-by-courtesy has a temper.”
“I do too. I wasted two good years and a fair amount of coin railing against fate and trying to shame my ducal relations into treating me like family instead of like the embarrassment I was. My plan was neither logical nor effective, and I had not one ally in the effort, but I do understand an occasional bout of ire.”
Mabel sipped her ale and wished Wealtha to Paris. “Her outbursts can be spectacular. An overly tired toddler who weighs in at eleven stone.” In high dudgeon, Wealtha was a force of nature, though not for two years at a stretch.
How angry Richard must have been. How hurt, frustrated, and lonely.
“Orla tolerates Wealtha’s childish behavior?” he asked.
“Orla is skilled at managing Wealtha’s moods, so the eruptions, which are blessedly rare, tend not to happen in Orla’s presence.”
Richard started on the second half of his sandwich. “Wealtha’s snits will tend not to happen around me either. Within reason, Wealtha can have what she wants by asking for it directly. Pouting and shouting will not be necessary.”
“Were you pouting and shouting to get what you wanted when you went rioting about Town?”
“Amabel, I was honestly half mad. Alone in the world, though everybody knew damned well I had an extant uncle, an aunt, cousins… half-siblings. I changed my name to that of the ducal branch—Richard Dolforth, at your service—though now I find I’m legally a Blackstock after all.
Do you know that, by the letter of the law, Wealtha has no settlements? ”
Mabel nearly choked on her ale. “You must not tell her that.”
“At the time of my choosing, I will tell her I doubled her portion from the initial thousand pounds to two thousand and hope she’s content with that.
Her thousand pounds has accrued interest, so she’s far from poor.
She also has a life estate in the dower house, which I suppose has gone to rack and ruin? ”
“Holland covers and dusting once a quarter, not ruin. How is it Wealtha has been disinherited altogether?”
She would not take that news well at all. Orla would be incensed on Wealtha’s behalf, and Mabel would have no peace until she married Horace Detwiler ten times over.
Perish the thought.
“Wealtha,” Richard said, “is illegitimate. Blackstock’s will makes no obvious provision for any illegitimate offspring of any description. I will read the whole thing word for word, because wills can be complicated even when they seem straightforward.”
“Complicated how?”
“Blackstock was in his forties when he had the will drawn up, and yet, he provided for legitimate sons—note the plural—legitimate daughters, and daughters in the absence of any sons, but as far as he might have known or feared at the time of his death, he had no legitimate sons or daughters. He had Marie declared dead, but did that knowing she might even at the time he made his will still be extant. Did he make no provision for an heir of last resort, or will I find that detail in some codicil Wopley failed to bring up?”
“What is an heir of last resort? An if-all-else-fails heir?”
“Exactly. If everybody who ought to inherit is dead, missing, or otherwise disqualified, then who ends up with the goods? Blackstock was wealthy, and he took good care of his property. He would not have wanted to see it languish in Chancery or handed over to the crown.”
“I did not know him well, but I assume he had cousins or a widowed auntie somewhere. Then too, if Orla knew about you, Orla’s husband might have known about you, and there’s every possibility Joseph Fielding acquainted Abernathy Blackstock with the facts as Joseph knew them.
My father was, above all, an honest man. ”
“An interesting speculation and possibly part of the reason why Orla is so unhappy with the idea of my looking into the past. It’s enough for Marie to have scandalized the family by her departure.
For Blackstock to have knowingly committed bigamy, and then disinherited the sole issue of his bigamous union, would make Marie’s behavior pale. This is good food.”
“Good company too.”
Richard saluted her with his ale, and they ate for a few moments in silence.
How exactly did a lady ask if a fellow regretted kissing her? If he’d been, on second thought, less than flattered by her offer of a dalliance? What would a dalliance entail in the mind of a former London rakehell?
But more immediately, how did Richard feel about the contents of Blackstock’s will?
“How did you tolerate Wopley?” Richard asked when his plate was clean. “I truly longed to do him an injury.”
“I avoided him as much as I could for the first few years, then I played stupid for as long as possible. When that tactic ceased to yield the desired result, I threatened to have an independent investigator search for you, a strategy Orla eventually came to support. Wopley was less contentious after that, though he doubtless thought you dead and gone. Mr. St. Didier and his peculiar skills were a godsend, else the Glen would have been bled dry in another few years.”
“Thank you for all you’ve done to prevent that fate,” Richard said, nudging the vase in the middle of the table closer to Mabel’s plate.
“St. Didier makes an odd sort of godsend, but thank you for your tenacity and ingenuity. I still don’t know as much as I’d like about my own mother, but I know more than I did. ”
“You know your aunt. That has to count for something.”
He considered the roses, which had to have been freshly picked, they were so lush and vibrant.
“Orla is a reluctant aunt,” he said, “and Wealtha is a sister in name only, but St. Didier’s searching led me to you, and for that, I will always be grateful.”
You mustn’t say such things. Mabel adored him for saying such things, adored the warmth his words kindled in her heart. Every woman—every person—should be gifted with such sentiments at some point, and Mabel had instead withstood their opposites.
My attentions to you have been a joke in plain sight, a whim in questionable taste. I’ve bedded you happily enough—you aren’t hideous—but marriage? Don’t be absurd.
“Where can Wealtha and St. Didier have got off to?” Mabel asked.
Richard smoothed his fingers over the back of her hand.
“Compliments and genuine gratitude make you shy. I’m uncomfortable with them, too, but I’m not as easily put to the blush as I used to be.
I hope Wealtha and St. Didier are thoroughly lost in the bowels of the Minster and won’t be seen again until spring, but then they’d have to marry, and the union would be unhappy on both sides. ”
He gave Mabel’s fingers a squeeze and sat back. “Has the appointed hour arrived for nanny goat shopping?”
“It has, and Wealtha has a list of five more shops we’re to visit. The sum owed will be considerable.”
Richard rose, came around the table, and held Mabel’s chair. “Two thousand pounds plus interest won’t placate her, will it?”
Two thousand pounds was a fortune. Mabel could have lived to commodious old age easily on such a sum.