Chapter 22 #3
Nic trailed after Dashiell in silence, carrying their lantern while the vowsmith strode from shelf to shelf, muttering to himself and scanning dates.
It took him some time to gather the various papers he apparently needed, before he stopped and sank cross-legged onto the stones in the middle of the floor.
Piles were made, important pages were lined up for easy reference, and short stacks were sorted and laid out with the cover papers perpendicular underneath—the whole such an organised affair that Nic felt like an intruder in a private space.
All he could do was stand at the edge and hold the lantern aloft, watching the movement of Dashiell’s hands, the shifting of his expression, and the way he tapped his fingers on the papers as he read.
It was excruciatingly slow with the night chill seeping in, yet Nic could have stayed all night in that comfortable closeness—an intimate scene in which there was no charge of passion, just the delight of watching Dashiell work with no hint of his professional mask.
Too easily could Nic imagine long nights spent sitting so by a warm fire, just the two of them.
“Oh,” Dashiell said eventually, breaking the companionable silence.
Nic switched hands on the lantern, causing the light to swing over Dashiell’s workspace. “Oh?”
Dashiell didn’t elaborate, just flipped more pages and checked more dates, his expression darkening.
Nic’s patience fractured. “Oh what? What is it?” And when the vowsmith seemed not to hear, he added, “Dash?”
Dashiell looked up, and his lips started moving silently as though trying out words only to find them all insufficient. At last, he sighed and dropped a short stack of papers to run a hand over his eyes.
“I, uh, can’t be entirely sure of course. I could be missing something, because while I understand business papers, I don’t understand estates. Also your father’s system is pretty complicated and dense. And—”
“Yes, I understand that all your pronouncements come with caveats—you’re a vowsmith. Now spit it out!”
The vowsmith huffed a little laugh, but it was soon swallowed by something all too like dread, and Nic’s heart slammed into his ribs as he waited. Eventually, Dashiell said, “It’s gone.”
“What is?”
“The money.”
“My mother’s money?”
“No, all the money.”
Nic stared at him. “I don’t understand.”
“The principal, the estate, almost all the original investments,” Dashiell said, shifting some papers around as he spoke. “They’re almost all gone.”
“I still don’t understand. What do you mean the estate is gone?”
“I mean that the Monterris family owns very little land, having sold it off in pieces to satisfy the demands of very large debts.”
“My grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s gambling debts?”
Dashiell held some papers up for him to see, though they may as well have been in a foreign language for how little Nic understood them.
“Yes, but see here? There are more, in the time since your father became duke. Although not recently. During your lifetime it’s been all shifting money around and desperately trying to stay afloat. ”
“Are you telling me my father gambles too?”
“No, that seems unlikely, but perhaps Lord Francis did.”
For a moment Nic could only stare at him, stomach hollowing. “How big were these debts?”
“As best I can tell, about a hundred thousand pounds, give or take.”
“A hundred thou—” Nic clamped a hand across his own mouth, as though by forcing the words back in, he could change their meaning.
Dashiell reached out a hand—an instinctive offer of comfort he soon let fall.
“I’m sorry, Nic. I think the reason your father doesn’t teach you anything about the estate is because there’s nothing to teach, and because if you had access to…
all this, you would know what he doesn’t want anyone to know. ”
No land. No money. His inheritance nothing but a name and a history and a mortgaged and mouldering old house filled with hatred and ghosts.
He’d always thought distantly of what he would do when he inherited the estate—the knowledge that it would one day be his a constant that underpinned his life.
Now even that poor surety dropped away, leaving him standing on nothing.
On the floor, Dashiell gathered up the papers and began carefully reorganising them into their respective piles and boxes. As he worked, his gaze flitted back to Nic over and over—a man wary lest Nic fall. But Nic did not fall, not yet.
“Thank you,” he said, managing a smile once Dashiell had finished putting everything away. “I wouldn’t have found out any of that without your help.”
Dashiell grimaced. “I do not feel worthy of thanks, having been the bearer of such news. Remember, I could be wrong, I might have missed something entirely, but…”
“But you’re confident enough that even your doubt sounds doubtful. And don’t blame yourself. Better I know the truth.”
“Are you all right?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Nic said as they started back toward the archive door. “That wasn’t what I was expecting. I think it will take some time to sink in.”
So as not to draw attention to themselves, they walked in silence back through the dark house.
It was no short journey, so widely did Monterris Court sprawl, yet in Dashiell’s company the time passed as though it were nothing.
All too soon they were making their way up the stairs to their respective rooms.
Dashiell had accompanied him because it wasn’t safe for anyone to walk around the house alone, but Nic stopped when they reached the second-floor landing where their paths diverged.
He held out the lantern. “You take this. I don’t need the light.
I could reach my door from here with my eyes closed. ”
“You want to part here?”
“We have to somewhere,” Nic said, hating how perfectly those words mirrored their future—a future down to mere days now the king’s men were already on their way.
Dashiell hesitated, but he took the lantern. “All right.”
“Thank you, again,” Nic said, hyperaware of the way light fell across Dashiell’s face, touching him in ways Nic could only dream of. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
Like a man fighting the force of gravity, Nic continued up the stairs. No sound of Dashiell’s retreating steps joined the chorus of his own, but he dared not turn and risk seeing him just standing there, because then he might never turn back.
The corridors of Monterris Court felt colder in Dashiell’s absence, and Nic took the last flight of stairs two at a time, thinking of his warm bed. At the top, he paused a moment and glanced back to be sure the vowsmith hadn’t followed, only for a nearby creak to rip terror down his spine.
“Who’s there?” Nic spun about, gripping tight to the banister. When nothing struck him from out of the darkness, he peered into the shadows, his heart slamming into his ribs. “Hello?”
No movement. No sound. Until a little farther away along the passage, a step scuffed.
“Who is that?” Nic demanded, starting after the retreating sound.
Foolish to shout at a ghost and even more foolish to follow one, yet the need to know trumped self-preservation and he gave chase along the dark passage.
That it could be the automaton only occurred to him an instant before the figure froze and turned, betraying the smooth curve of a pale face like a crescent moon against the night.
Nic drew a sharp breath but didn’t slow.
“Wait!”
He lunged, snatching at the thing’s arm, only for his fingers to slide right through and close upon air, a spark teasing his skin like the flick of flint and steel.
The lack of solidity overbalanced him and he stumbled forward, through a ghost and into the darkness beyond—an empty darkness that stretched away to where the passage ended in a small pool of moonlight.
Breath catching, Nic spun, the space around him feeling suddenly too open, too vulnerable—hands ready to reach from every direction. Nothing but cold darkness limned with moonlight stared back, its emptiness as frightening.