Chapter 15
“There you are.” Wealtha charged into the library not a quarter hour after Amabel had decamped to discuss with Cook the riveting matter of opening the summer kitchen.
Why that decision required Amabel’s imprimatur, Richard did not know, but apparently everything, from whether to put hind shoes on Fergus Fothergill’s gelding to how many sheep might be run on Angus Dinwiddy’s south pasture, required a consultation with Amabel Fielding.
Running an import business would be no challenge at all for her, and yet, Richard had allowed that one enterprise to absorb most of his waking hours in recent years.
“I am here,” Richard said, rising. “I have been closeted here rather longer than I prefer on such a pretty day. Your papa’s ledgers are not exactly scintillating company, meaning no offense.” The scintillating company was at that moment likely opening dusty cupboards.
Wealtha reversed course and closed the library door. “Papa’s ledgers can wait. I have business to discuss with you. You stopped at the bank when we were in York.”
How had she ascertained…? Ah, by interrogating St. Didier, perhaps. “I did stop at the bank.”
“Aunt Orla says you have taken my settlements in hand, just as you said you would.”
She stood on the other side of the reading table, exuding neither good cheer nor ire. Had anybody told Richard that Wealtha Blackstock could be hard to read, he’d have been astonished, but he could not discern her mood.
“I did make some arrangements regarding your settlements while I was at the bank. I generally keep my word, Wealtha, absent exigent catastrophes. I hope you already know me that well.”
She paced around the table and began fussing. A sketch of the Glen in high summer had to be tilted a quarter inch to the right. She moved the candelabrum on the mantel two inches closer to the center and closed the French door that had been letting in a pleasant breeze.
As negotiation tactics went, her dithering failed to impress. Richard was supposed to be so concerned by her apparent agitation that he would ask her to unburden herself. Whatever followed would then be at his invitation.
He instead tidied up the papers and ledgers on the table, taking a moment to admire Amabel’s lovely penmanship. She was a delight to flirt with, so prim at her ledgers, while she indulged in surreptitious boot-kisses beneath the table…
“I truly don’t know you,” Wealtha said, pausing under an oil portrait of her grandfather. She had her progenitor’s somewhat definite chin, though she’d been spared his nose. “We aren’t even genuinely related, and that is not my fault.”
Well, then. Her mood was petulant. Richard adopted the tone he’d use with a Portuguese drayman intent on fleecing a gormless Englishman.
“Nor is it my fault, Wealtha. We share unusual circumstances, though they need not be trying circumstances.”
“When you lark about the village asking peculiar questions, you try my patience sorely, my lord.”
She sounded exactly like a cranky governess.
“My patience is tried even more sorely when questions having to do with my mother and my own origins are met with either supposed ignorance or a scold. I have interviewed exactly two people, Wealtha, and neither one of them was forthcoming in the least.” Four, if he counted old Fothergill and Aunt Orla.
“They weren’t?”
“Both extolled Abernathy Blackstock’s virtues at length and admonished me to stop prying, just as Aunt Orla did. I fail to see how the matter involves you, just as I fail to see what motivates a universal silence regarding my mother’s past.”
“Then you are a dunderhead, and I wish you weren’t my brother.”
Were she not fingering a vase of exquisite Sèvres porcelain as she spoke, her taunt would have come across as juvenile. Instead, she was becoming tiresome.
“Wealtha, we are more or less stuck with each other. If I have done something to discommode you, and you’d like me to repair the situation, you must state the problem plainly.”
“You already talk all viscount-ish. You could leave. Then you would not discommode me in any way.”
This again. “I very likely will leave from time to time. I have business to tend to, and Yorkshire winters are legendarily fierce.” What has you in such a snit? He would not ask. She’d sought him out. Let her state her case like a rational adult.
“Winter is months away.”
“So it is.” Not for the first time, Richard was glad this young woman was no relation of his. She was not related to Amabel either, and yet, Amabel had endured her company for years.
“Do you not realize, sir, that if you ask all and sundry to think back to your mother’s disastrous behavior, that they might also ponder when exactly she died?”
“In the first place, two elderly people aren’t ‘all and sundry.’ In the second, your neighbors have had years to wonder when Marie Blackstock died, and not a one of them has asked me about it, nor would I be forthcoming with a specific date if they did.
That information is not easily obtained, Wealtha.
Marie used a different name once she left the Glen, and she died just as quietly as she lived.
She was also declared dead by the courts before you arrived to this earth. ”
Richard kept his voice level by sheer self-discipline. He and his nominal sibling weren’t debating the price of a good wine or the cost to ship it. Wealtha was attacking his right to understand his own mother and the choices Marie had made that had resulted in his birth.
Mama had known he believed himself to be illegitimate, when the legalities placed him in a very different and higher, more acceptable status.
“You don’t know our neighbors,” Wealtha said. “They smile to your face and gossip behind your back. Vicar Whidman has no discretion whatsoever.”
“He will be discreet. He presided at the wedding of Marie and Abernathy without ascertaining whether the bride was coerced.”
Wealtha moved the vase six inches to the left. “She was not coerced. Marie was lucky to marry my papa. He was handsome, charming, one of the wealthiest men in the shire, and his third cousin or something was a viscount. Why wouldn’t Marie want to marry him?”
“Given the reticence that prevails regarding the past, I’ll probably never know. I assure you, Wealtha, that your origins will remain a private family matter.”
“About my settlements. I would like to know the details.”
In her present mood, she would likely find the crown jewels of England, France, and Russia insufficient.
A tap on the door heralded Kepler’s timely arrival. “A visitor, my lord. Mrs. Johnson and her son Mr. Magnus Johnson.”
Wealtha became a different person. Her features smoothed into cheerful welcome, her posture relaxed, and she put the vase back where it belonged.
“You must receive them,” she said. “They are old family friends, and if you try to stand on some ridiculous high-stickling notion of protocol and make them wait for you to pay the first call, I will never live down the shame, and neither will you.”
Richard would welcome with open arms anybody whose arrival spared him more of Wealtha’s pouting and seething.
“I have lived down more shame than you can imagine, Wealtha Blackstock. Some of it not even of my own making. As it happens, Magnus Johnson and I crossed paths the other day by the yearling pasture. I will happily receive my neighbors, even if they are not necessarily overjoyed to receive me.”
Richard assayed that minor tirade just to see how Wealtha would react with Kepler standing silently by the door.
She chose retreat, suggesting she wasn’t at all as featherbrained as she wanted the world to sometimes think her.
“I meant no offense, my lord. I’ll just freshen up and join you in the formal parlor shortly.”
“The informal parlor,” Richard said. “Neighbors paying a casual call can be received without pomp and posturing.”
She glared at him, balled her fists, and swanned out without another word.
“How did I do?” Richard asked.
Kepler shook his head. “With that one, winning a skirmish is often followed by losing a battle. You certainly held your ground, my lord.”
“I’m out to win the war, Kepler, but I will settle for besting her in a skirmish for the nonce. Please let the kitchen know we have guests and ask Cook to do the Glen proud with the tea tray.”
“And Mrs. Fielding, sir? Should I inform her that callers have arrived?”
“Mrs. Fielding’s rooms overlook the drive.
She will already be aware that we have visitors, and she will know who they are based on their conveyance.
Wealtha will inform her, and if my aunt does not care to join us, I am perfectly capable of greeting neighbors on my own.
If Miss Fielding is available, she ought to be told. ”
Rescued from the dread bowels of the summer kitchen, more like.
Kepler bowed shallowly. “Very good, my lord.”
Richard wasn’t sure ignoring Aunt Orla’s role as hostess was at all sound tactics, but she needed to realize that he wasn’t going away, nor would he support the notion that she could in any regard tell him what to do.
If he won enough skirmishes with his newfound family, perhaps all-out war might be avoided.
And perhaps not.
Mabel regarded another stack of packages on the sideboard next to the footmen’s stairs. Truly, Wealtha had outdone herself in York. Two hatboxes, another box that doubtless held the green merino cloak Wealtha had insisted she must have, and several more parcels from the mercer’s.
Fabric that Mabel was expected to stitch into the latest fashions, finishing at least one frock before the assembly.
She stacked the plunder from the mercer’s in her arms and headed up the footmen’s steps.
If Wealtha caught sight of the treasure, she’d commence reminding Mabel that the assembly was just days away—a fortnight was composed of days, after all—and a young lady did want to look her best especially on public occasions.