Chapter 17
The next morning, Anthony did not knock. He never knocked when something was wrong, and whatever had been in Alexander's message had been wrong enough to bring him across London before he had finished his breakfast.
He pushed open the study door and stopped.
Alexander was behind his desk. Two men Anthony did not recognize sat opposite him — soberly dressed, with the particular stillness of men accustomed to rooms where important things were decided.
Documents covered the desk between them.
The portfolio, Alexander's worn leather portfolio, lay open at the center of it.
"I came as quickly as I could," Anthony said. "What has happened?"
"Sit down, Anthony."
Anthony sat, in the chair beside the two strangers, and looked at his cousin's face and did not ask again.
"Mr. Caldwell and Mr. Price," Alexander said. "Lady Beatrice Ashworth introduced them to me yesterday evening. They are barristers. We begin today."
Anthony looked at the two men, then back at Alexander. For perhaps the first time in his adult life, he had nothing to say.
"Our own lawyers are not an option," Alexander continued, his voice entirely level.
"Several of them have existing relationships with the men we are accusing.
I will not hand this to people who may be working against us before we have started.
" He paused. "Mr. Caldwell and Mr. Price have no such connections.
Lady Beatrice has worked with both of them before. I am satisfied."
Mr. Caldwell inclined his head. Mr. Price said nothing, but made a small note.
Anthony absorbed this in silence. Then: "And Catherine? Have you found a way to reach her?"
"Not yet."
"And to protect yourself when this breaks? We said we had not solved that problem."
"We are solving it now." Alexander gestured at the papers between them. "That is what this morning is for."
Anthony nodded slowly, and looked at the desk, and at the portfolio, and at his cousin's face, which had the expression he had come to recognize over the past weeks — the one that meant the decision had been made and what remained was only the doing of it.
"What do you need from me?" Anthony asked.
"You have already done a great deal, cousin. The factory, the dinners, the information you have brought me." Alexander shook his head slightly. "I would not ask more."
"Nonsense." Anthony said it without heat, as a simple statement of fact. "Tell me what is left."
Alexander was quiet a moment. "Beatrice has the press in hand. She has connections there I could not have built in five years. That is managed."
"Then I will handle the ton."
Alexander looked at him. "We are accusing men of treason, Anthony. Illegal slave trade. This is not a question of social reputation — it is the kind of charge that makes enemies who do not forget. I will not put you in front of that."
"You are not putting me in front of anything.
" Anthony's voice was mild but entirely immovable.
"I put myself there. And in any case, I am not proposing to stand in a courtroom and point fingers.
I am considerably more useful than that.
" He leaned forward slightly. "I have seen the evidence, Alex.
I know the names. I know which men in this city are clean and which are not, and more importantly I know where the clean ones dine on a Thursday evening.
" He allowed himself a small smile. "I intend to be at several of those dinners in the next fortnight.
Quite by chance. And over the course of whatever conversation arises, I intend to make it very clear — subtly, of course, entirely in passing — that the evidence against these men is substantial, that it is in the hands of serious legal counsel, and that the outcome is not in doubt.
" He paused. "Every intelligent man in London will want to be seen, when this is over, as one of the aristocrats who stood on the right side of it.
They simply need to be persuaded, before the moment arrives, that there is a right side to stand on and that we are it.
Once they believe we will win, they will not work against us. Some of them may even help."
Alexander looked at his cousin for a long moment.
"That," he said, "would be very useful indeed."
"Yes," Anthony agreed pleasantly. "I thought so."
He rose, straightened his coat, and nodded to Mr. Caldwell and Mr. Price with the easy courtesy he deployed everywhere.
"Gentlemen. I will leave you to your work." He glanced back at Alexander from the door. "Send word when you need me."
Then he was gone, and the study settled back into its working quiet, and Alexander turned to the lawyers and the open portfolio and the long morning ahead.
◆◆◆
Catherine came down to lunch later than she should have. She had heard the front door twice that morning, and the raised voices in her father's study, and she had sat at her window and waited until the house went quiet again before she descended.
Her father was already at the table. He looked up when she entered, and the expression on his face stopped her in the doorway for a moment — not anger, not yet, but something beneath anger, something tightly wound and barely contained.
"I was beginning to wonder when you would appear," he said.
Catherine took her seat. The footman poured her water. She unfolded her napkin and waited.
"Your Duke," the Earl said, setting down his fork with a precision that suggested he was controlling the force of it deliberately, "has this morning placed legal accusations against the Duke of Cornwall and several of his associates.
Illegal slave trade. Treason. Documents submitted to counsel, case filed, and the story given to the press.
" He looked at his daughter across the table.
"It will be in every newspaper in London by tomorrow morning.
He has lit a fire, Catherine, that could engulf this entire country. And us along with it."
Catherine looked at her father's face. She thought of the portfolio. She thought of Alexander at his desk in the small hours, beginning to write.
She smiled.
It was not a performance. It arrived before she could consider whether it was wise, and she did not try to take it back.
"He wants to make the world better," she said quietly.
"That is all he has ever wanted. He was given a name, a title, and a great deal of power, and he has chosen to use it for something that matters rather than something comfortable.
" She held her father's gaze. "I believe that deep down, Papa, you understand that.
I believe you admire it. I think it is the thing about him you have never quite been able to dismiss, however much you wished to. "
The Earl's composure broke.
"Watch your mouth," he said, his voice dropping to something that was more dangerous than shouting.
"Charles." Lady Eleanor's voice was quiet but firm.
"I knew about all of it," Catherine continued, and her voice was steady.
"The evidence, the plan, the men he was building the case against. I knew, and I believed in it, and I still do.
" She paused. "And I know he moved now — today, before he was ready — because of me.
Because of what Cornwall was arranging. He did not do this to destroy our family, Papa.
He did it to stop me from being handed to Cornwall's son like a debt being settled. "
"I will not sit at my own table," the Earl said, his voice rising now despite himself, "and listen to you defend a man who has returned from wherever he has been to bring ruin down on everything I have spent my life building.
I do not want to hear another word about him. Go to your room, Catherine. Now."
Catherine rose. She did not hurry. At the door she paused, but thought better of it, and went.
The dining room was very quiet for a moment after her footsteps faded.
"You should not have shouted at her," Eleanor said.
"I did not shout."
Eleanor looked at him.
"I raised my voice," he amended. He pushed his plate away.
"Eleanor, you do not yet understand the full extent of what this means.
Cornwall and I are partners in no fewer than four colonial ventures.
If those ventures are named in this case — and they will be named, because Cornwall's name is on every document connected to them — then we are named alongside him.
Everything. The investments, the returns, the associations.
" He pressed his hand briefly to his forehead.
"I am not a corrupt man. I have never knowingly involved myself in anything of this nature.
But the papers will not make that distinction.
The papers will print names, and our name will be among them. "
"I know," Eleanor said.
"First she manoeuvred me into accepting the Duke at all, when every instinct I had told me to proceed carefully.
I set those instincts aside because I trusted her judgment and because I was —" He stopped.
"Because I was dazzled, Eleanor. By the match.
By the possibility of it. And I was wrong to be, and now we are here.
" He shook his head. "She has cost us Cornwall, and Cornwall's son, and whatever protection that connection might have offered, and now she stands in my dining room and smiles about it. "
"She is in love," Eleanor said. "And she is not wrong about him.
That is the thing you cannot say aloud, Charles, but it is true and you know it.
" She refilled his water glass with the calm movements of a woman who had learned long ago that the most useful thing one could do in a storm was to keep one's hands occupied.
"He has done what none of those men had the courage to do.
That does not make it convenient for us. But it does not make her wrong."
The Earl said nothing.