Chapter 6
Christopher Blackwood had positioned himself beneath the portrait of the fourth Duke of Rothbury, whose painted horse possessed better quarters than half the residents of Waterloo House.
Henry noticed the choice before he noticed the document.
The portrait gallery ran the length of the west front, with windows to the square on one side and generations of Blackwoods suspended in cold gilding on the other.
Beeswax lay freshly upon the floor. It warmed beneath the lamps and gave off a clean, faint sweetness that did nothing to soften the ancestral faces.
Each appeared to have been painted while considering whether the viewer had sufficient income to justify occupying the carpet.
At the centre of the gallery, a long inspection table had been brought from the adjoining document room.
Christopher stood behind it with his solicitor at his left and a clerk beside a locked leather case.
Dyer occupied the opposite side with a blank record sheet, two sharpened pens, and the expression of a man prepared to make every lie inconvenient by giving it a date and margin.
Margaret stood at Henry’s right.
Not behind him. Christopher had left space there, as though a newly married woman might naturally choose the shelter of her husband’s shoulder. Margaret had crossed the gallery, inspected the table, and placed herself beside Dyer where she could see the papers and the faces answering for them.
Lady Georgiana had taken a gilt chair near the window and refused the cushion offered by a footman on the ground that it looked less trustworthy than the chair.
No one else was present. The outer gallery doors stood closed against household traffic but had not been locked. The door to the document room remained open, and a fire burned there beneath a marble mantel, though its warmth stopped several feet short of the gallery.
Henry counted exits, witnesses, documents, and distances before he permitted himself to look fully at Christopher.
His cousin was forty-one, narrow through the shoulders, and dressed with the severe precision of a man who wished tailoring to supply weight that nature had omitted.
Reddish-brown hair had been brushed smoothly back from his temples.
His gloves lay in a perfect pair beside the leather case, but one thumb worried the seam of the other while his solicitor spoke.
The movement did not make Christopher innocent. It made him less certain than his letters.
“His Grace has been allowed to examine the certified copy already delivered to the trust,” Mr. Harcourt said. “Mr. Blackwood has now produced the extract upon which that copy was based, together with the accompanying certification obtained from the parish.”
He gestured to the document without touching it.
The extract had been laid upon a linen backing to protect the folds.
A parish seal appeared beneath the copied entry, and two signatures occupied the certification.
The ink was dark, the ruling straight, and the marginal notation declaring Henry’s parents’ marriage defective had been reproduced with sufficient care to resemble authority from three feet away.
Dyer leaned nearer without placing a hand upon the linen. “Who attached the backing?”
“The copyist retained for preservation,” Harcourt said.
“Name?”
Harcourt supplied one. Dyer recorded it.
“Date of attachment?”
“The twelfth of this month.”
Dyer wrote again. “Before or after the certification?”
Harcourt glanced toward his clerk, who opened the leather case and consulted a folded memorandum.
“After.”
“Witnessed?”
“The copyist’s account will show the work.”
“That was not my question.”
Harcourt’s courtesy cooled by one degree. “I cannot presently say who witnessed the mounting.”
Dyer entered that answer as carefully as the name.
Christopher looked at Henry. “Must we pretend linen alters the marriage?”
“No,” Henry said. “We must determine what the linen conceals.”
His voice carried too well along the gallery. The painted dukes heard him without appearing impressed.
Christopher’s mouth tightened. “The entry is legible. The notation is legible. The parish has certified the extract. The trustees cannot continue to treat your authority as certain merely because examination causes discomfort.”
Henry had prepared for the sentence in several forms. Christopher might call him illegitimate.
He might speak of a false dukedom, a corrupted succession, or a family embarrassment.
Instead, he used the language of caution, as Croft had done.
Men often found it easier to injure another person if they first converted him into a procedural concern.
Henry kept both feet evenly placed. The gallery’s cold had entered his knee during the first quarter hour, but a chair stood within reach and Margaret knew enough now to recognize concealment. He would not make her divide her attention between evidence and his pride.
“Which trustees?” she asked.
Christopher looked at her as though the question had arrived from the furniture.
“Your Grace?”
“You said the trustees cannot treat my husband’s authority as certain. Sir Reginald has already expressed that view. Which other trustee has adopted it?”
Christopher recovered quickly. “The sensible course does not change according to the number willing to acknowledge it.”
“That is often true of arithmetic. Less often of governance.”
Henry did not look at her. Christopher did, and that was the purpose.
He said, “You cannot reasonably propose to exercise an office derived entirely from a disputed appointment.”
“I propose to exercise the office until competent authority determines that the appointment failed. At present you have produced a copied entry, a copied notation, and a certification whose route has not been explained.”
“The route is the parish.”
Margaret rested two gloved fingertips upon the table, well clear of the document. “Who requested the search?”
“My solicitors made inquiries.”
Harcourt said, “The initial information came to our attention through an interested party.”
“Who?”
“That communication was confidential.”
“Then who instructed the parish copyist?”
“The inquiry passed through ordinary professional channels.”
Margaret’s voice became quieter. “Name the person who wrote to the incumbent.”
Harcourt looked at Christopher.
Christopher looked back at him.
The pause exposed more than either answer might have done.
Henry watched Christopher’s right hand flatten against the table. His cousin had expected to defend the meaning of a document, not the people who had carried it. He had brought a seal into a room where Margaret intended to ask who paid for the wax.
Harcourt said, “A clerk formerly employed in trust business was able to identify the parish and assist with the necessary approach.”
“Edmund Vale?” Margaret asked.
Christopher’s head turned toward her.
It was a small reaction and the most honest thing he had yet offered.
Dyer’s pen stopped above the record. “Is Mr. Vale the person to whom you refer?”
Harcourt closed the memorandum. “Mr. Vale’s name has arisen in correspondence. I am not instructed to disclose privileged communications.”
“You are not required to disclose advice,” Dyer said. “I am asking whether the former clerk contacted the parish, commissioned the copy, paid the copyist, or transmitted the result.”
“The exact division of clerical work is not material to the entry.”
“It is material to provenance.”
Christopher said, “The register either records a valid marriage or it does not.”
Margaret turned her attention to him. “Have you seen the register?”
“I have seen the extract.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“No.”
“Has Mr. Harcourt?”
Harcourt answered for himself. “No.”
“Has anyone employed by your solicitors inspected the original volume in the presence of its lawful custodian?”
“The parish certification states—”
“Has anyone?”
Harcourt’s mouth thinned. “Not to my knowledge.”
Margaret nodded as though he had supplied an item for a household inventory. “Was the marginal notation present when the original was inspected?”
“The extract reproduces it.”
“Who saw it?”
“The copyist.”
“Name?”
Harcourt gave the same name as before.
“Is he the parish clerk?”
“No.”
“Churchwarden?”
“No.”
“Incumbent?”
“No.”
“Then in what capacity did he handle the register?”
Harcourt drew a measured breath. “He was retained to make an accurate transcript under parish authority.”
“By whom was that authority given?”
“I have not brought the letter.”
“Who holds it?”
“I shall inquire.”
“Do so.”
Christopher’s color had begun to rise beneath his carefully barbered cheek. “This is theatre.”
“No,” Margaret said. “Theatre generally rehearses.”
Lady Georgiana’s mouth moved at the window. She concealed the result by examining the fourth duke’s horse.
Henry allowed himself one slow breath. Margaret had not defended him by declaring Christopher malicious or the document false. She had refused to let certification perform the work of knowledge. Every question returned the matter to an identifiable hand, an instruction, a payment, or a witness.
Christopher looked toward Henry again. “You have taught her suspicion quickly.”
The remark was meant to reduce Margaret’s authority to a husband’s influence and Henry’s marriage to strategy. It found its mark because both accusations contained enough truth to wound if accepted carelessly.
Henry replied, “Her Grace required no instruction from me.”
“I had understood she managed accounts.”
“She does.”
“And now peerage evidence.”
Margaret said, “They have the same discouraging habit. Entries rarely improve when one asks who made them.”
Dyer resumed writing. “Mr. Harcourt, the trust requests a copy of the parish authority, the copyist’s account, every transmission record, and the identity of the person who first directed attention to the register. The request does not concede the authenticity or effect of the extract.”
“You may send it formally,” Harcourt said.
“I am recording that it was made in person before witnesses. Formal paper will follow.”