Chapter Seventeen
Petherick arrived at ten the following morning.
Selina was already in Nathaniel’s study.
Sowerby’s reports lay upon the desk beside Giles’s accusation concerning the jewels, the recovered copies of Georgiana’s letters and several sheets of Selina’s own notes.
Nathaniel had been there for twenty minutes and had not once reminded her of the promise made the previous evening.
Tomorrow had arrived. He left the arrival to her.
Petherick removed his gloves, accepted the chair Nathaniel indicated and looked at the accumulation of paper.
“I understand there is a further matter, Your Grace.”
“There is.”
Selina took a folded account from her reticule and placed it upon the desk.
“The payments Mr Rowland mentioned were mine.”
Nathaniel said nothing.
“They began four years ago. Giles appears to know that regular sums were sent through an attorney after the Merrow estate had been administered. What he does not know, or what I believe he does not know, is where the money came from or where it went.”
Petherick unfolded the paper.
“And the attorney?”
“Mr Dunmore. He has chambers in Lincoln’s Inn and has handled the remittances from the beginning. He will have records.”
“Good.”
“He is also discreet.”
“Better.”
Petherick looked down the page. “Before we concern ourselves with what Lord Merrow intends to allege, I must know the truth of it.”
“That is why you are here.”
Selina folded her hands in her lap.
“The first money came from my mother’s garnets.”
Nathaniel’s attention sharpened.
“The jewels you sold four winters ago.”
“Yes. They were mine absolutely. My mother left them to me by name in the codicil I told you of. After the sale, I kept only what I required immediately and placed the remainder with Mr Dunmore.”
“For what purpose?” Petherick asked.
Selina looked first at him and then at Nathaniel.
“To send to a widow named Loxley.”
Nathaniel went very still.
“Loxley.”
“Yes.”
“The man your father was convicted of murdering was Thomas Loxley.”
“His wife,” Selina said. “Mrs Anne Loxley.”
The room became quiet.
Petherick lowered his eyes to the account, granting her the small privacy of not being watched.
Nathaniel did not look away.
“After the money from the jewels was exhausted,” Selina continued, “I had taken the situation in Suffolk. A portion of my wages went to Mr Dunmore every quarter, and he remitted it to Mrs Loxley. When the situation ended, I continued as well as I could from what remained to me. The amounts are all there.”
Petherick turned the account over.
“And Lord Merrow knows of these remittances?”
“He appears to know that they exist. I do not know how. That is one of the things I should very much like you to discover.”
“But he does not know the recipient.”
“If he did, Rowland would have used her name at Lady Marwood’s. Instead, he spoke only of regular payments and of Giles possessing papers. I think Giles knows enough to make them look suspicious and very little more.”
Petherick considered the account. “What do you believe he intends to allege?”
“That I emerged from my father’s ruin claiming to possess almost nothing, yet continued to dispose of money for years afterwards. He will suggest that I concealed assets which ought to have passed through the administration of the estate.”
Nathaniel frowned. “But the garnets were legally yours.”
“Giles knows that. He knows my mother left them to me by name.”
“Then the allegation is knowingly false.”
“Yes. But most of London has never read my mother’s codicil. If he calls the jewels estate property and points to four years of unexplained payments besides, the two things may appear to support one another long enough to do the damage.”
Petherick nodded. “Then he does not require a case capable of surviving a court. He requires an accusation capable of surviving a drawing room.”
“Precisely.”
“Which makes the documents no less important,” Petherick said. “If he means to lie publicly, we must be able to answer him publicly, and without delay.”
Selina looked down at the account. “That is what concerns me.”
Nathaniel looked at Selina.
“And Mrs Loxley?”
Her gaze dropped to her folded hands. “She lost her husband because of my father.”
“You did not kill him.”
“No. Nor did she bring about my father’s crime, and yet she paid for it.”
There was no bitterness in the words. That made them harder to hear.
“She had done nothing,” Selina continued.
“Whatever else was said at the trial, that much never altered. She lost her husband and whatever security his income provided. My family fell very publicly. There were newspapers and lawyers and people willing to discuss what would become of the Earl of Merrow’s daughter.
Mrs Loxley had the smaller name. She disappeared from the story almost at once. ”
“And you found her.”
“Mr Dunmore did.”
“Why?”
Selina looked at Nathaniel as though the answer ought to have been obvious. “Because I could not stop thinking about her.”
Something in his face changed.
“When I sold the jewels, there was more money than I had possessed in years. Not a fortune. Much less than they were worth. But enough that, for one afternoon, I could choose what happened to some of it.” She touched the edge of the account. “So I chose her.”
Petherick remained very still over the papers.
“You have never met her?” Nathaniel asked.
“No.”
“But she knows the money came from you.”
“Mr Dunmore was instructed not to conceal my name from her if she asked. She asked after the second payment.”
“And continued to accept it.”
“Yes.”
Nathaniel looked down at the account.
“Why did you never tell me?”
“I did not want it turned into evidence of my character.” Her mouth tightened. “The moment one tells people that one has been secretly giving money to a widow, the secrecy becomes rather theatrical.”
Petherick looked studiously at the opposite wall.
Selina noticed and almost smiled.
“I did not do it because I am unusually good,” she continued. “I did it because whenever I thought of my father’s death, I remembered that another household had been destroyed before ours. I had no means of repairing it. Money was the only useful thing I could send.”
“You sent it while going hungry yourself,” Nathaniel said.
“Not always.”
“Often enough.”
Selina did not answer.
Nathaniel was quiet for a moment.
“And during all those years,” he said, “who was looking after you?”
Her eyes lifted to his.
The question was not accusatory. That made it worse.
“No one.”
He absorbed the answer without attempting to contradict it.
“You are not alone now,” he said.
Selina looked away. “I know.”
Her voice failed slightly on the final word.
Nathaniel came around the desk, then stopped.
“May I hold you?”
She gave a small, helpless laugh which did not resemble amusement.
“You ask the strangest questions at the worst times.”
“I can withdraw it.”
“No.”
She stood. The distance between them vanished because she crossed it.
Selina put her face against his coat and held on. For several seconds she remained perfectly still, as though even now some part of her believed composure might be recovered if she waited.
Then it gave way.
Nathaniel held her. He did not tell her that she had been brave. He did not tell her that her father’s sins were not hers, or that everything would be well, or that Mrs Loxley must have loved her for remembering.
He knew enough now to understand that none of those things was required.
Selina wept quietly against him; one hand closed in his coat. His arms remained around her, steady and unhurried.
Behind them, Petherick removed his spectacles.
“I believe,” he said to the papers, “that the codicil will require my attention at Doctors’ Commons.”
Selina made a sound against Nathaniel’s coat that might almost have been a laugh.
“You are a very tactful man, Mr Petherick.”
“I charge accordingly, Your Grace.”
He gathered the documents he required and withdrew.
Nathaniel waited until the door had closed.
Selina drew back eventually, though not very far.
“I had intended to tell you that with considerably greater dignity.”
“I noticed.”
She gave him a damp, reproachful look.
“I shall forget the undignified portion.”
“You will do no such thing.”
“Perhaps not.”
Her hand was still against the front of his coat. She seemed to notice it and, after a moment, elected to leave it there.
“You said you loved me,” she said quietly.
“I did.”
“You have made the fact rather inconvenient.”
“I am sorry.”
“No, you are not.”
“No.”
A faint smile came and went.
Selina stepped back and straightened her sleeves. “We should return to the matter at hand.”
Nathaniel wisely agreed.
***
Over the next two days, the answer took documentary form.
The jewels came first.
Petherick obtained the proved copy of the codicil in which Selina’s mother had left the garnet set to her daughter by name. The wording was explicit. The jewels had been the countess’s personal property and had never formed part of the settled goods of the Merrow estate.
Beside it he placed the surviving account of Mr Aldingham, the Ludgate broker who had purchased the garnets four winters earlier. The entry recorded the set, the price, the seller and the date.
Nathaniel read both papers.
“So Giles’s first allegation fails.”
“Entirely,” Petherick said. “He may describe the jewels as entailed until he exhausts himself. The codicil remains what it is.”
“And the money?”
“That required more work.”
Mr Dunmore’s records arrived that afternoon.
He had kept them with precisely the dull accuracy Petherick had hoped for: dates, sums received from Selina, remittances made to Mrs Loxley and acknowledgements of receipt.
The earliest payments corresponded to the period following the garnet sale.
Later sums corresponded to Selina’s years in Suffolk and were modest enough to be consistent with the wages she had described.
There were no mysterious deposits from the Merrow estate. No concealed capital. No continuing estate account under Selina’s control.
Only money arriving in small sums and leaving again.
Petherick laid the sequence across the desk.
“This does not merely answer Lord Merrow’s insinuation. It shows how he has constructed it. He possesses, or has learnt of, enough of the outward payments to raise the question without possessing the records which answer it.”
“Which is why he has not gone to a court,” Selina said.
“Precisely. A court is troublesome about evidence.”
“But a ballroom is not,” Nathaniel said.
Petherick looked at him over his spectacles. “Ballrooms are outside my professional competence, Your Grace.”
“You are fortunate.”
“I have always thought so.”
Selina examined Dunmore’s accounts.
“Can we prove the later money was mine?”
“Enough for any honest purpose. The amounts are compatible with your known income, and Mr Dunmore can attest that the sums were delivered by you or on your instruction. More importantly, Lord Merrow would bear the burden of establishing his allegation that they came from concealed estate property. There is nothing here which does so.”
“And if he makes the accusation before people who do not wait for burdens of proof?”
Petherick’s expression hardened slightly.
“Then we make certain the simple facts are simpler than the lie.”
That evening the papers occupied most of Nathaniel’s study desk.
Selina stood beside him arranging them into an order only she understood.
“The codicil first,” she said. “Never begin with the sentimental answer when a legal one will do.”
“Is that instruction intended for Petherick or me?”
“Both of you.”
“I suspected as much.”
She set Dunmore’s account beneath it.
“The jewels were mine. The sale was lawful. The payments came from my own money. Everything after that is explanation, not defence.”
“And Mrs Loxley?”
Selina’s hand stopped upon the papers.
“She is not evidence unless she chooses to be.”
Nathaniel looked at her.
“I will not have her brought into this merely because her existence would make Giles look cruel. He has already made use of one woman who did not consent to being part of his scheme.”
“Georgiana.”
“Yes.”
Nathaniel nodded.
“Then we do not approach Mrs Loxley unless there is a reason.”
“Exactly.”
***
The reason arrived the following morning.
Giles’s card came openly, in the same cold copperplate Selina remembered from family correspondence years before.
Bassett brought it to the breakfast room.
Nathaniel read it first, then handed it to her.