Chapter Twenty-One
The document lay upon Nathaniel’s study desk in the grey light of a morning three weeks after Lady Marwood’s ball.
He read it twice before looking up.
Petherick stood by the window with his hands folded behind him and waited.
“He signed this without alteration?”
“He did; though not without complaint.”
Nathaniel looked down again.
The document was considerably shorter than anything Petherick usually produced.
Giles Calvert, Earl of Merrow, acknowledged that the garnet jewels had been the lawful personal property of the late Countess of Merrow and had passed by valid bequest to her daughter; that he possessed no lawful claim against Selina arising from their sale; and that the allegations he had made concerning concealed estate property were unsupported by the records subsequently produced.
The final clause bound him to make no further claim concerning the administration of the Merrow estate unless he possessed evidence capable of being put before a solicitor in the ordinary way.
It was not exile. It was not a threat hanging over the rest of Giles’s life. It was something Nathaniel had come, after several long conversations with Petherick and one shorter one with his wife, to prefer.
It was Giles’s name beneath the truth.
“He objected to ‘unsupported,’” Petherick said.
“I imagine he did.”
“He preferred ‘mistaken.’ I explained that a mistake generally becomes apparent when one is shown the document disproving it, and that repeating the mistake afterwards introduces difficulties of vocabulary which he might find still less flattering.”
Nathaniel looked up.
“Did you actually say that?”
“In substance.”
“I should have liked to hear the precise version.”
“No, Your Grace. You should not.”
Nathaniel almost smiled.
“What persuaded him?”
“The prospect of continuing.”
Petherick said it with the dryness of a man discussing weather.
“Lord Merrow discovered at Lady Marwood’s ball that making an accusation is considerably easier than sustaining one.
The codicil exists. Mr Dunmore’s accounts exist. Mr Aldingham’s record of the sale exists.
Lady Carbery heard Mr Rowland speak of Lord Merrow’s knowledge of the matter.
Lord Merrow may continue to tell London whatever story pleases him, but he now knows precisely what will be laid beside it every time. ”
“And if he begins again?”
“Then he begins with this beneath his own signature.”
Petherick tapped the document once.
“That is not nothing.”
“No.”
Nathaniel ran his eye over Giles’s name.
He had expected to feel more upon seeing it there.
Triumph, perhaps. Satisfaction at least. Instead, there was only a curious absence of urgency.
Giles had made himself dangerous by keeping everything uncertain: what he knew, what he possessed, what he might say, what Rowland might do for him.
Once brought into daylight, there had been remarkably little left.
“Has he left London?”
“Yesterday morning.”
“For good?”
“I did not ask him to make promises neither of us could enforce. He said that he intended to remain in the country for some time. I believe London has become less agreeable to him than formerly.”
“That will do.” Nathaniel folded the document along its existing crease. “And Rowland?”
Petherick’s expression altered by a degree.
“Mr Rowland proved more practical.”
“That is not a quality I had associated with him.”
“Necessity develops unexpected virtues.”
Petherick opened his case and removed a second paper.
“The fair copies intended for publication were, as you know, recovered from the printer. Mr Rowland retained Lady Georgiana’s originals.
I wrote to him after the ball and explained that the threatening correspondence in our possession would make any further attempt to use the letters a matter upon which he should expect no indulgence from this house. ”
“And?”
“He sent for me the following morning.”
Nathaniel’s attention sharpened.
“He gave them up?”
“Every original he admits to possessing. I required a written declaration that he had retained no copy and caused none to be made beyond those already recovered from the printer. I do not suggest his declaration is worth more than his character. But we have it.”
“How do we know the packet was complete?”
“We do not know absolutely.”
Petherick did not soften it, and Nathaniel was grateful.
“We know the printer’s copies correspond with the originals surrendered.
We know Mr Rowland has lost both the means and, I suspect, the appetite to continue.
We know his creditors have ceased waiting for an improvement in his circumstances which is plainly not coming.
Beyond that, certainty would require powers neither you nor I possess. ”
Nathaniel sat back. A month earlier he would have hated the answer. He found that he could live with it now.
“Where is he?”
“Gone north, I am told. Relations.”
“Do they know he is coming?”
“I am a solicitor, Your Grace, not a prophet.”
That time Nathaniel did smile.
Petherick gathered his papers. “There is one further matter.”
He reached into his case and produced a packet tied with plain string.
Nathaniel knew what it was before Petherick laid it on the desk.
“The originals?”
“Every one Mr Rowland admits to possessing.”
Nathaniel put his hand upon the packet but did not untie it. He looked at Georgiana’s handwriting visible beneath the string.
“Thank you, Petherick.”
***
Nathaniel found Georgiana in the small parlour after luncheon.
She was at the writing desk with a book open before her and appeared to have been reading the same page for some time. She looked up when he entered, saw the packet in his hand, and stopped.
“Are those mine?”
“Yes.”
She rose.
“All of them?”
“Every original Rowland admits to having kept. Petherick has also taken a written declaration from him that there are no others.”
Georgiana looked at the packet. “Do you believe him?”
Nathaniel considered the question. “I believe he has nothing left to gain by lying about it.”
He held the packet out. Georgiana took it. For several seconds, she did nothing. Nathaniel watched her thumb pass once over the string.
“I thought they would look different,” she said.
“Different how?”
“I do not know.” She gave a small, embarrassed shrug. “More dangerous.”
They were only folded paper.
Georgiana crossed to the hearth and sat upon the low stool before it. The fire was small in the mild weather, but there was enough of it.
Nathaniel remained standing.
“I can leave you.”
“No.”
He waited.
“I would rather you stayed.”
So he stayed.
Georgiana untied the string. Nathaniel had expected her to put the packet into the grate unopened. Instead, she unfolded the first letter and read it.
Her face coloured almost immediately.
Nathaniel looked towards the window.
She put the page into the fire.
The flame caught one corner, travelled rapidly along the fold and curled the paper in upon itself.
She opened another.
“This is worse.”
“I am certain I do not need to know.”
“You do not. Nobody does. That is now the point.” She read another line and closed her eyes. “I told him I should die if he failed to answer me by Thursday.”
Nathaniel said nothing, though his mouth moved. Georgiana caught it.
“You are laughing at me.”
“Not yet.”
“I shall throw you into the fire after them.”
“That would require a larger grate.”
She stared at him for a moment and then laughed.
It surprised them both. The sound went quickly, but something in her face remained easier afterwards.
She fed the second letter to the flames.
“Everyone was frightened of these.”
“Yes.”
“I was frightened of them.”
“You had reason to be.”
“But look at them.”
Nathaniel looked. A line of ink blackened, shrank and disappeared.
“They were dangerous because Rowland had them,” he said. “Not because you wrote them.”
Georgiana was quiet. She looked over her shoulder.
“Selina has been teaching you,” she said.
“Yes.”
“She charges too little.”
“I have told her so.”
Georgiana opened the next letter. This one she read for longer. Nathaniel did not ask why. She placed it carefully upon the fire and watched until nothing legible remained before reaching for another.
They went that way through the packet. Some she barely glanced at. Some she read to the bottom. Once she laughed under her breath; once she went very still. Nathaniel stayed where he was and let every choice belong to her.
At last, there was only one. Georgiana turned it over.
“The first,” she said.
Nathaniel recognised nothing about it.
“The first I wrote him. Before I had even met him properly.” She looked at the page. “I thought he understood me. He did understand me, I suppose. That was how he knew what to say.”
There was no useful answer to that.
Georgiana folded the letter again along its old crease.
“I do not think I was foolish to want to be understood.”
“No.”
“Only to mistake being studied for being known.”
Nathaniel looked at his sister.
“No,” he said. “That is not the same thing at all.”
She put the final letter into the grate. The flame took longer this time. It caught the edge, went out, caught again. Georgiana reached for the poker and shifted the paper until the fire found it properly.
Neither of them spoke until it was gone.
Then Georgiana laid the poker aside.
“That is all?”
“That is all.”
She sat watching the ashes for another moment.
“I expected to feel something larger.”
“So did I.”
“What do you feel?”
Nathaniel considered it.
“Relieved.”
“That is disappointingly ordinary.”
“I am discovering some affection for ordinary things.”
Georgiana rose and brushed her skirt. “I am hungry.”
“You have just eaten luncheon.”
“That was some time ago.”
“It was less than an hour.”
She considered this.
“I was under considerable strain.”
“Of course.”
“I believe cake is indicated.”
“On medical grounds?”
“Strictly.”
Nathaniel opened the door for her.
At the threshold, Georgiana stopped and looked back at the grate. Nothing remained there but blackened scraps collapsing quietly into ash.
She turned away first.