Chapter Eighteen
“It is done,” Cole said, setting his case upon the table, “or as nearly done as the law ever permits anything to be.”
“Tell me plainly.” Victoria took the chair opposite him and folded her hands. “I have spent too much of my life being told that the law was complicated and I ought not to trouble myself with it. I should like the whole of it.”
The morning room held the light kindly. Coffee stood cooling upon the tray, untouched, while Cole arranged his papers with the care of a man laying out a hand whose strength he already knew.
Victoria had dressed for the news with particular care. It was an old habit, born of years in which hard tidings had seemed easier to endure if the world could find no fault with the woman receiving them. She no longer expected the worst, but the habit had dressed her all the same.
“Then you shall have it as I would give it to another lawyer,” Cole said. “You may stop me when I become tedious.”
He drew out the first paper.
“Sir Roland Hemsworth has signed. Every claim, petition, and authority he asserted over your daughter has been withdrawn in writing, witnessed, and lodged. Sir Giles Marret saw him execute the documents in Hertfordshire. Four days later, Hemsworth sailed from Harwich upon a packet bound for Holland.”
“He is gone,” Elias said.
“He is. And he has reason to remain so. If he returns, he will not merely find you waiting, my lord. He will find proceedings for the fraud by which he obtained the order.” A faint dryness entered Cole’s expression.
“He chose departure. I confess I had not been certain he would. Men of his kind seldom believe ruin has become real until the shore is behind them.”
Victoria tried to take in the fact of it.
The man who had occupied so many of her worst nights was now somewhere beyond England, with no claim upon her daughter and little prospect of returning without consequence. The knowledge was too large to feel real at once. She set it aside for later belief.
“And the guardianship?” she asked. “That is the part which still wakes me. Roland may have withdrawn his claims, but Gerald’s will named him. I keep fearing that a paper written years ago may prove stronger than everything we have done since.”
“It would have carried considerable weight had Hemsworth merely proved cold, foolish, or unsuitable,” Cole said.
“A father’s appointment is not lightly disturbed.
But he did more than make himself a poor choice.
He procured an order upon false evidence, contrived the very danger upon which he relied, and paid another man to compromise you. ”
Cole leant forward.
“No court will preserve such a guardianship out of tenderness for the father’s intention. Whatever Gerald believed he was providing for, it was not this.”
“You are certain?”
“As certain as I am willing to be of anything conducted beneath a judicial wig. Crayle’s sworn statement, the drafts, the financial trail, and Hemsworth’s own withdrawal are already before the court. His formal removal remains to be entered, but the issue itself is no longer seriously in doubt.”
Victoria looked at the papers.
“Then who replaces him?”
Cole did not answer at once.
“If the court removes the guardian named in the will,” she continued, “it must appoint another. The law does not simply decide that a mother will suffice. I learnt that in the worst manner possible.” Her hands tightened together. “So is it?”
“It is Lord Harwood,” Cole said, and let it land. “Provided the two of you wish it.”
Victoria went very still.
“The court will not leave vacant the place of the male guardian named under Sir Gerald’s will,” Cole continued. “It must appoint another gentleman in Hemsworth’s stead. I have therefore petitioned for Lord Harwood.”
“And I?”
“You remain Sophy’s mother, with her care and custody undisturbed. The appointment does not displace you. It places Lord Harwood between you and any future claim resembling Hemsworth’s.”
Cole met her eyes.
“I have no reason to expect the petition will fail.”
“And no other man may come between us again upon Gerald’s will?”
“Not while Lord Harwood remains her guardian and the court remains satisfied with her care.”
The room fell quiet.
Victoria looked across to Elias. “You truly wish this?”
He looked almost surprised by the question.
“There is nothing in the world I could wish more.”
“She is not your daughter.”
“No,” he said softly. “She is yours.”
He smiled then, only a little.
“And if the law permits me the honour of standing in that place for her, I shall spend the rest of my life trying to deserve it.”
Cole closed the file.
“The remaining questions concern trustees, accounts, and settlements. They will occupy me for some months yet, but they need not occupy either of you today. They are matters of administration now, not of danger.”
For the first time that morning, Victoria smiled without effort.
***
The judgment of society arrived the following afternoon in the person of Lady Maribel, who swept into the drawing room in a great rustle of purple, with Nathaniel and Miss Ellery following in her wake.
“Do not rise, and do not order anything elaborate. I have come to learn whether what I have been telling London is true.”
She installed herself in the best chair and set her ear-trumpet upon the table.
Nathaniel bowed with his usual careful gravity. Miss Ellery settled near the window, composed and observant, and he contrived within several minutes to occupy the chair nearest hers without appearing to have intended it.
“I am told,” Lady Maribel continued, “that the dreadful cousin has gone to the Low Countries, that the scandal at Ashcombe was purchased, and that the business with Sophy was the work of the same hand. Tell me I have been correctly informed. I have repeated it in several important houses already, and it would be tedious to retract.”
“You are correctly informed,” Victoria said. “Sir Roland bought Crayle’s debts, arranged what happened at Ashcombe, and obtained Sophy under a false order. His claims have been withdrawn, and he has left England.”
“Excellent. Not the events, naturally. The clarity.”
Lady Maribel accepted the account with grim satisfaction.
“The season began by calling you imprudent and will end by calling you grievously wronged. Society seldom apologises when it may revise its memory instead, but the result will serve. By next week, everyone will insist they suspected Hemsworth from the first.”
“And Lady Agatha?” Victoria asked.
“Still at the grey house, receiving very few callers and pretending she prefers it so. The law may have no sentence for a woman who kept her name off every paper, but drawing rooms possess their own forms of judgment. She will discover that a great family name makes poor company when no one wishes to dine beneath it.”
Victoria found that the news gave her neither pleasure nor pity. Lady Agatha remained in the house she had made, surrounded by the values she had defended. Nothing further was required of Victoria.
“You helped turn the room when it most needed turning,” Elias said to his aunt. “I have not properly thanked you.”
“You have thanked me by proving my judgment sound. It is the rarest repayment any relative has ever made me.”
Her gaze moved towards the window, where Miss Ellery had said something too low to carry and Nathaniel was attempting an answer.
Lady Maribel lowered her voice by a degree.
“He has been trying to speak to her properly for months.”
“Then perhaps you ought not to watch him do it,” Victoria murmured.
“I have waited too long to begin practising delicacy now.”
Nevertheless, she turned back towards the fire.
A moment later, Miss Ellery laughed softly. Nathaniel looked startled, then pleased, and resumed whatever he had been saying with rather less difficulty.
Victoria watched them only long enough to recognise the small change. Once, she might have missed it. Now, she had become attentive to quiet beginnings.
Lady Maribel gave a satisfied nod.
“That will do.”
She did not interfere again.
For the remainder of the visit, the room divided easily into conversation.
No one discussed orders, guardianship, or evidence.
Nathaniel eventually went in search of Sophy and Bishop; Miss Ellery accompanied him after only the briefest hesitation.
Lady Maribel pretended not to observe their departure.
The afternoon light moved slowly across the carpet, and no one appeared anxious to be elsewhere.
Victoria was only beginning to understand what a luxury that was.
Later, when the visitors had gone and the house had folded into its evening quiet, she stood at the parlour window watching the last light leave the paddock. Bishop remained near the fence in his customary attitude of settled disapproval.
The day had left her with a peculiar weariness: not the old exhaustion of keeping watch, but the ache of receiving more good news than she yet knew how to hold. She had years of practice at bracing and almost none at rest.
Elias came to stand beside her.
“It is strange,” she said. “Once, I thought the best I might hope for was to be left alone. Now Sophy is safe, London has remembered the truth, and Cole assures us there is nothing urgent left for us to do.”
“That sounds almost ominous.”
“It does. I do not know what to make of so much peace.”
“Nor do I.”
She looked at him. “And what are we to do with it?”
Elias offered her his hand.
“Live in it, I think. Until it no longer feels strange.”
Victoria placed her hand in his.
“And if that takes a long while?”
“Then we shall have a long while in which to learn.”