Chapter 19
The footman who answered Kerr’s card looked doubtful, but the name on the folded note—Roark—seemed to pass him through some invisible gate. He was shown into a room that smelt faintly of leather and lemon oil.
Viscount Hatherleigh entered without ceremony. He was perhaps forty, smooth-faced, precise, and dressed like a man who cared more for cut than colour.
“Mr Kerr,” he said. “A pleasure, though the subject is vulgar enough. You’ll forgive the absence of decanter—I prefer tea at this hour.”
Kerr inclined his head. “As you wish, my lord.”
They sat opposite. The tea was poured from a silver pot, each movement deliberate.
“I had the sense,” Hatherleigh said, “that your employer preferred fists to courtesies. I am relieved to be mistaken.”
“I was asked to remind, not compel.”
“Ah,” said Hatherleigh, smiling faintly. “A civil word for an uncivil trade. Still, I commend your method.”
Kerr said nothing.
Hatherleigh stirred his cup. “You are Scots, are you not? I hear it—somewhere beneath the polish.”
Kerr’s mouth tightened. “A long way beneath.”
“Keep it there,” said Hatherleigh. “It lends you distance.”
“My lord, I was not sent to discuss my defects.”
Hatherleigh’s smile deepened. “No. You were sent to discuss mine.”
Kerr looked up. “Mr Roark asks only that the account be settled quietly.”
“My account is not with Mr Roark,” Hatherleigh said. “It is with the table.”
“The table has no memory,” Kerr replied. “Men do.”
Hatherleigh set down his cup. For the first time, the porcelain gave a sound.
“You threaten me prettily,” he said.
“No, my lord. I remind.”
“And if I prefer not to be reminded?”
“Then the next man will come by the front door,” Kerr said, “and I shall be obliged to accompany him.”
A silence followed, civil in shape and ugly beneath it.
Hatherleigh reached into a drawer, withdrew an envelope, and set it on the table. “My account, settled. Tell your master he need not send another man.”
Kerr took it. “Thank you, my lord.”
“Do not thank me. Gratitude sits oddly in the mouth of a man who has just named the knife.” Hatherleigh lifted his cup. “Next time, Mr Kerr, send the footman up first. It is always better to let a house announce its own disgrace.”
Kerr bowed and withdrew. In the street, the air was cold and clean, the sound of hooves muffled by the fog. He weighed the envelope in his hand—a gentleman’s coin for a gentleman’s sin—and with a discomfort almost like pleasure, knew Hatherleigh had not mistaken him for a servant.
The insult had been precise; so had the courtesy. Kerr found, to his disgust, that the courtesy stung deeper.
* * *
Upper Gower Street, April 1811
The fog had thinned to a low drift that clung to the railings and the lamps. Kerr walked with his collar up, the list folded in his pocket.
Mowbray had paid before the kettle cooled—afraid, perhaps, of soiling his hands with coin touched by Roark’s name.
Barstow had needed a firmer tone, promises smelling of ale and delay.
Titherington talked of law and consequence; Kerr left him a deadline instead.
Denby had offered violence; his poker left a bruise across Kerr’s ribs. When Kerr related the incident, Roark’s reply had been brief:
“Lick your wounds. Denby will soon do the same.”
Hargreaves signed quickly, perspiring through his linen.
Penworth wept as he wrote his draft, sealing it with ink and despair.
The street ahead was quiet, lined with lamps and polished doors. He paused before the next house on his list and felt a short, involuntary laugh rise in his throat.
Mr George Wickham, Upper Gower Street.
Four doors from his own.
He looked at the light in the window, steady and warm, and for a moment wondered that debt could lie so near and still go unseen.
The house at No. 14 bore the look of gentility too long in service: clean steps, paint beginning to fade, a brass plate polished past legibility. The faint smell of boiled cabbage clung to the rail.
Kerr knocked. The door opened a fist’s breadth. A woman in a dark shawl looked out, one hand flat against the wood, the other holding the latch. Her cap had yellowed at the edge; a ring of keys hung from her waist.
“Mr Wickham?”
She lowered her eyes to his cuffs, his gloves, the mud at his boot, then returned to his face. “He lets the second-floor front. Are you expected?”
Kerr glanced up; a curtain vibrated, then stilled. He offered his card. “He will wish to see me.”
She looked at the card, then at him. Kerr did not lower his eyes. She pursed her lips, then stood aside. “Mind the stair; the carpet’s loose.”
The hall was narrow, the air heavy with starch and furniture polish. Voices murmured behind a closed door, and somewhere above, a piano played ill. At the second landing, Kerr knocked.
The door opened at once. A man stood there in a well-cut coat of dove grey, a striped waistcoat, and fresh linen. His hair was brushed with care. His smile came before Kerr could speak.
“Mr Kerr,” he said, as though the name were familiar. “From Roark, I suppose. I had wondered whether he would send civility or compulsion.”
Kerr inclined his head. “Today, sir, he sends civility.”
Wickham laughed lightly, with a polish the stairwell did not deserve. “Come in, sir. We needn’t transact business on the step. It lowers the tone of the street, and I am barely keeping it afloat as it is.”
The room beyond was modest but ordered: a worn carpet, two decent chairs, a decanter half-empty on the sideboard. Wickham touched the back of one chair.
“You’ll forgive the lack of fire,” Wickham said, taking his own chair with the ease of habit. “Coal’s dear, and I have a weakness for warmth in conversation rather than hearths.”
Kerr sat. Wickham’s every movement looked easy. His accent carried a trace of the north smoothed at the edges; his manner all the polish of gentility but not of the surroundings.
“You know my employer’s terms,” Kerr said. “He expects settlement—or promise of it—by the month’s end.”
“Of course,” said Wickham, pouring two glasses of wine. “I have no quarrel with obligation, only with circumstance. Do you take claret?”
“It’s not my habit to drink on business.”
“Then consider this a courtesy between gentlemen,” Wickham replied, handing him a glass. “You strike me as a man who understands the difference.”
Kerr accepted.
“You know, Mr Kerr, we are not so unlike. The world teaches men like us gratitude for breeding, then withholds the rewards of it. A man learns to take credit where respect is denied him.”
Kerr looked at him over the rim of the glass. “That is bitterness talking, not wisdom.”
“No,” Wickham said, “it is reality.” He lifted his own glass. “To gentlemen who know the value of a name—and the cost of keeping one.”
Kerr let the rim touch his mouth, then drank. The wine was thin. The appeal was not.
Wickham set down his glass. “There is Scotland in your voice.”
Kerr said nothing.
“And not poverty,” Wickham continued. “Not by birth, at least.”
Kerr’s fingers tightened once upon the stem of his glass. Wickham saw it; his smile did not move.
“I was born on the wrong side of an inheritance,” Kerr said.
Wickham’s eyes brightened. “Then you know the injury.”
Kerr lowered the glass. “I know accounts. Yours is overdue.”
“Ah.” Wickham touched two fingers to his breast. “Then we must not let sentiment interfere with commerce.”
“No.”
“And yet commerce has a narrow imagination. It asks only what a man has in his purse.” Wickham glanced round the room. “A poor question, in my case. A foolish one, too.”
Kerr waited.
“I have no money today,” Wickham said. “If I had, I should give it you with every appearance of regret. But I have expectations.”
“Men in debt generally do.”
Wickham smiled. “Mine have names.”
Kerr set the glass upon the table. Not too quickly. Wickham would have taken haste for alarm.
“You collect for Roark,” Wickham continued. “Very proper. Very necessary. But a commission upon a poor man’s debt cannot be large.”
“Large enough.”
“For supper, perhaps. For a future?” Wickham shook his head softly. “No, Mr Kerr. A man wronged by inheritance should not spend his life fetching coin for another man’s ledger.”
Kerr’s hand remained upon the glass a moment too long. Then he let it go.
“You speak freely for a debtor,” he said.
“I speak freely because I recognise an ally.”
Kerr looked at him then. Wickham’s smile remained easy, but his hand had stilled upon the stem of his glass.
The fireless grate, the thin wine, the man dressed above his circumstances—Kerr marked them all and found no payment among them. Only names remained, and Kerr did not yet know whether they were coin or air. That uncertainty ought to have ended the interview. Instead, it held him there.
Kerr rose. “Then I shall report promise, not payment.”
“Report improvement,” Wickham said. “It sounds handsomer.”
Wickham came with him to the door and opened it himself. “Until then, Mr Kerr, let us part as gentlemen.”
Kerr paused on the threshold. Gentility cost nothing. Neither did refusal. He inclined his head. “Until the month’s end.”
Wickham’s smile deepened. “I remain obliged to your discretion.”
* * *
A knock sounded at Kerr’s sitting-room door—two light taps, no more.
Kerr looked up from the list of names. The fire had burned to ash, and the lamp guttered low.
Mrs Price opened the sitting-room door only so far as duty required. Wickham stood behind her, hat in hand, collar turned up against the damp.
“Mr Wickham, sir,” she said, without pleasure.
“At this hour?”
Mrs Price did not move.
Kerr folded the list and laid it face down. “Thank you, Mrs Price.”
She hesitated, then withdrew.
“Forgive the hour,” Wickham said. “Mrs Price was good enough to say you had not yet retired. I thought it best to call before Mr Roark hears your account.”
Kerr did not rise. “You mean before I tell Roark you cannot pay.”
“Cannot,” Wickham said, waiting at the threshold, “is a temporary condition. I dislike being judged by the present.”
Kerr let him stand there a moment longer. “Come in, then.”
Wickham entered, drew off his gloves, and laid them beside the list.
“You are a practical man, Mr Kerr. I admire practicality. It saves time.”
Kerr glanced at the gloves.
“I owe Mr Roark a sum, yes. But within a month, I expect a settlement large enough to satisfy him twice over.”
“A bold assurance from a debtor.”
Wickham smiled. “Boldness is only credit by another name. With proper acquaintance, it may even pass for security.”
He leant closer, the lamplight catching his eyes. “What I am promised, when it comes, would clear my account, yours, and every name upon that list there—a king’s ransom, if ever there was one.”
Kerr inclined his head. “Who pays such sums?”
“A gentleman in Derbyshire.”
“There are many gentlemen in Derbyshire.”
“Not with Pemberley beneath his feet.”
Kerr did not react. That was Wickham’s first error. He had given the estate name too much care. Kerr gave it none at all.
“Ten thousand a year makes this gentleman singular, even in Derbyshire.”
“And this gentleman owes you?”
“Owes me?” Wickham laughed softly. “Let us say he has had more than his share of fortune, and I have had less than mine.”
He reached for his gloves. “Tell Roark my circumstances are improving.”
“Roark prefers coin.”
Wickham drew on his gloves, one finger at a time. “Give me the month, Mr Kerr. You may find patience the better investment.”
“I shall give Roark your words.”
Wickham bowed slightly. “Then I shall make them profitable.”