Chapter 22 #2
Though she had surely known the answer, Lady Lisbeth gasped a sob and seemed for a moment like she would grip his hand and beg, only to ball her fingers into tight fists. She glanced up at Lord Charborough, and bowed her head. “I don’t want to die,” she whispered.
A long, taut silence dragged in which no one spoke. Dashiell flexed his hands and looked up at the entry hall’s vaulted roof, daring no further words.
With a disgusted sniff, Leaf rose. “Come Lizzy,” she said, holding down her hands to her friend. “Let us go back upstairs together. We needn’t see anyone else for the rest of the night, or tomorrow either.”
For a moment it seemed as though Lady Lisbeth would turn back to the door, would tear at the sigils, but shrinking in upon herself, she took Leaf’s hands. And slowly, without a word to anyone, Leaf led her trembling companion out of the hall.
The archives of Monterris Court took up half of the vaulted crypt beneath the house.
Part cellar and part library, it was a strange, cluttered space by day, but without any light spilling down its light wells, the vast hall was oppressively dark.
Even Nic’s lantern seemed barely to illuminate an arm’s length in front of him as he made his way down the stairs.
Halfway down, his foot landed on what felt distinctly like an arm rather than a step, sending the memory of Rowerre’s unmoving body lancing through him at the speed of panic.
Nic swung the lantern down, revealing first a dark sleeve, then Dashiell’s bronze eyes hastily blinking beneath sleep-tousled hair.
The vowsmith winced, shielding his gaze from the light with one elegant hand. “Nic? I must have fallen asleep. Please get that out of my face.”
He did so, but folding his arms over the panicked racing of his heart, Nic went on glaring at him. “What are you doing here?” he said. “Were you sleeping on the stairs?”
“Not because I thought ‘Hey, you know what would be comfortable—stairs!’ I was waiting for you, you idiot.”
“What?”
Dashiell hauled himself to his feet, still blinking away sleep or the ghosts of bright light swimming in his vision. “What what? You said you were going to the archive tonight, and since you refused to take my concerns for your safety seriously, I waited here for you instead.”
“Thus putting yourself at risk?”
“I was keeping watch.”
“Until you fell asleep.”
“That part,” Dashiell admitted with a wry smile, “was unplanned. Did you bring anything to eat?”
Nic found himself staring at his old friend, unable to keep a smile from creeping upon him, so completely was Dashiell the young man he remembered in that moment.
“Ah, no. Sorry. No food.”
“Oh. Well, I’m still coming with you, but I want you to know, Nicholas Monterris, that I am very disappointed. We used to always take food on our late-night adventures.”
Nic grinned, unable to resist the pull of Dashiell’s smile, of how easily they could fall into their old camaraderie. “Duly noted, Master sa Vare. Duly noted.” He gestured to the door at the bottom of the stairs. “You’re likely to get in a lot of trouble if you’re caught in here, though, so—”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about that. Entering your archives doesn’t actually contravene any specific guild laws, so to get into trouble for it, either your father would have to lodge a complaint and risk losing the contract—”
“Which we know he won’t do.”
“Or Lord Charborough would have to lodge a complaint claiming that it diminished my ability to negotiate on his behalf. But since these are your archives, not his, that’s hardly a persuasive case.”
“Even so,” Nic said, descending the rest of the stairs. “You don’t have to be here.”
“I know.”
Nic huffed a small laugh, unable to argue with that and finding he didn’t want to.
“Well, thank you for coming,” he said as he paused in the entry arch to get his bearings.
“And not just because it’s safest to stick together.
I… didn’t actually want to do this alone, but I didn’t want to ask Leaf either.
These worries about Mama feel too personal to share with her just yet. ”
Belatedly realising the obvious conclusion Dashiell could draw from such a statement, Nic cleared his throat and added, “Besides, your knowledge of contracts might come in handy. I think the family ones are over here.”
It took some time to find the right shelves, but once they did, Dashiell dug around in the boxes until he found a heavy document laced down one side like a coverless book. He handed it over, and Nic tilted its front page toward the lantern he’d perched on one of the shelves.
Contained herein is the vowed and signed
marriage contract between
Valentine Nicholas Edmund Monterris,
His Grace the Duke of Vale,
and
Georgiana Elizabeth Cardwell
Georgiana Elizabeth Cardwell. How different a life she’d had with that name. Nic passed a hand over his eyes and heaved a sigh.
“Are you all right?” Dashiell asked. “If your headache is—”
“No, it’s fine, I just… don’t know if I’m ready to read this, even though I need to know what it says.”
Having let go another sigh that didn’t help, Nic forced himself to turn the cover page and read the opening paragraphs. Barely had he made it halfway through before a dreadful exhaustion crept over him.
“It’s all lists and numbers and clauses written in deliberately obtuse contract language,” he groaned. “I’m not sure what else I expected, really, but it’s so hard to read.”
With a dramatic flourish, Dashiell held out his hand. “Then allow me to offer you my services, my lord. Deliberately obtuse contract language and random collections of numbers are, in fact, my forte.”
Nic handed over the sheaf of papers, ashamed by how relieved he felt not to have to dig through it.
“I don’t know what it is,” he said, leaning back against the opposite shelf.
“I can read actual books for hours and forget to eat, but give me pages like that and my gaze slides off before the end of the first line.”
“A lot of people have that problem with different things,” Dashiell said, flicking over a page. “You’d be surprised. My eyes hate musical notation. Or, rather, my brain does. I couldn’t tell you how many times our music teacher smacked my wrist because my thoughts wandered.”
“Huh, I didn’t know that. I always just assumed you were amazing at everything.”
Dashiell glanced back over his shoulder. “Oh, like you? Yes, and that damn smile of yours. When you’re being mischievous you only have one dimple, did you know that?”
Nic hadn’t and found he couldn’t say so, found he couldn’t say anything at all when Dashiell’s gaze lingered, a knowing warmth in his smile. It took every ounce of Nic’s strength to keep his feet firmly planted, to look away and save them both from another indiscretion.
“So, what do you want to know?” Dashiell asked, returning to the contract.
“I don’t know. Everything, really.”
“We could be here for a long time if you want every detail. Ducal papers are, as a rule, about twice as long as everyone else’s due to all the additional responsibilities to the crown.”
“All right, well, how about whether anything to do with her money was unusual, like whether she brought in more or less than you’d expect. And… whether there was a stud clause.”
Dashiell had started flicking through the pages but he paused at that, looking up. Their eyes met, but when Nic didn’t explain, the vowsmith went back to turning pages. “All right. I’ll start there.”
Unable to stand still while Dashiell scoured the old marriage contract in search of Nic’s much needed truths, he started to pace.
“No stud clause.”
The words halted Nic in his tracks and he spun back. “Not at all?”
“None. You… were expecting one?”
A nod. To say more would mean exposing his mother’s personal words, and those words hadn’t been meant for Nic’s eyes let alone another’s ears.
A frown creased Dashiell’s brow, but he said no more, returning instead to the contract.
Pages were turned, and having been turned they were turned right back—the method of reading a contract not so much start to finish as a dance from clause to clause, tracing the net of sigils that bound it to the wider world.
“I can’t see anything particularly unusual in here either,” Dashiell said after a time, his quiet words all but swallowed by the cavernous space. “No caveats of note, no rules governing the use of her fortune or its return. Twenty thousand pounds is the dowry sum.”
“Twenty thousand pounds,” Nic repeated. “That should have been enough to invest in the estate and make it profitable again, don’t you think?”
“That might depend on what has been mortgaged and whether debts needed servicing, but I admit I don’t know much about estates as such. My older brother learned estate management while I was apprenticing.”
A hint of bitterness lay hidden in the admission, and Nic realised it was something they’d never talked about. The reminder that there were still so many things they had yet to discover about each other, and now never would, caused unexpected pain.
“Well,” Nic said to say something. “I guess we know about the same amount then, since my father has not yet deigned to teach me anything, though I have asked numerous times.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. Not about the estate, anyway. Echoes, yes. But that’s not very helpful when it comes to knowing how poor we are and why.”
Dashiell let the contract fall closed with a papery thud and handed it over, before setting off along the shadowy shelves. Nic hastily tucked the contract back into its box and hurried after him, lantern swinging.
“What are you looking for now?”
“Estate documents. I don’t know anything about estate management, but I do know how to read boring papers, which should help.”