Chapter 7
Financial Shadows
The ache behind his eyes had settled in sometime before dawn and refused to leave.
Alistair pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose and waited for the dull throb to subside.
It did not. The morning light through the study windows was the colour of weak tea, thin and ungenerous, and it did nothing to improve the state of his head.
He had slept poorly. He had slept poorly for three nights running, ever since the seaside encounter with Miss Sophia Ainsworth, and the lack of rest was beginning to show in the sharpness of his temper.
He had not intended to seek her out on the Marine Parade.
That was the trouble. He had gone for air, for solitude, for a respite from his mother’s relentless orchestration of the forthcoming ball, and instead he had found himself standing at the iron railing beside a woman whose eyes held the same exhaustion with performance that he felt in his own bones.
She had laughed. Not the practised, musical laugh of a debutante deploying charm like a weapon, but something startled and real, pulled from her before she could stop it.
He had made her laugh, and the sound had stayed with him longer than it should have.
He dropped his hand and reached for the coffee that Parsons had left on the sideboard twenty minutes ago. Cold. He drank it anyway.
The study was quiet. Too quiet, perhaps.
The household was still stirring itself into the day’s rhythms, servants moving through corridors with the soft-footed efficiency that his mother demanded, and somewhere upstairs Lady Beatrice Cavendish was no doubt composing the morning’s directives.
Alistair had avoided her since the previous evening.
She had questions about the Ainsworth girl.
She always had questions, and her questions were never merely questions.
He set down the cup and turned to the correspondence that had accumulated on his desk.
Invitations. Bills. A letter from his man of business in London, which he opened with the reluctance of a man who already knew its contents would be tedious.
The estate in Derbyshire required attention.
The tenant farmers in the north field were requesting a reduction in rent after a poor harvest. The roof of the east wing needed repairs before winter.
Each item was a small weight added to the ledger of obligations that came with his name, and he read them all with the same flat disinterest he had felt for years.
What he wanted was another essay.
The Brighton Observer had not published since the piece on social masquerade, the one that had sent his mother into a quiet fury behind closed doors.
Alistair had read it four times. We wear masks at breakfast, at tea, at dinner, and we call them smiles.
The line had the precision of a scalpel.
Whoever she was, she saw the world as he saw it, and she was not afraid to name what she saw.
He had told Arthur as much two nights ago, in this very room, the candle flame bending in the draft from the door.
He had told Arthur he intended to find her.
And Arthur had told him to be careful.
Alistair had dismissed the warning at the time.
Now, in the thin morning light, it returned to him with an uncomfortable persistence.
He was not a careful man. He had built a reputation on being precisely the opposite.
But something about this pursuit felt different from the idle amusements that had filled his seasons before now.
He wanted to find the Observer not to expose her, not to conquer her, but to speak with her.
To ask her what she saw when she looked at him.
Whether she could see through the performance.
The thought was dangerous. He knew it was dangerous. He let it sit anyway.
A knock at the door pulled him from his reverie.
“Enter.”
It was not Parsons. It was Arthur Finch, still in his morning coat, his cravat tied with the slightly asymmetrical care of a man who dressed himself without a valet’s assistance. Arthur hovered in the doorway as if uncertain of his welcome, which was his habitual posture in every room he entered.
“I hope I am not disturbing you.”
“You are,” Alistair said. “But I was accomplishing nothing of value. Sit down.”
Arthur crossed to the chair opposite the desk and lowered himself into it with the caution of a man who did not trust furniture to hold his weight. He was not a large man. The caution was temperamental, not physical.
“I wondered if you had given further thought to our conversation,” Arthur said. “The other night.”
“I have given it nothing but thought.” Alistair leaned back in his chair. “It has become something of an affliction.”
“Have you made inquiries at the printer’s?”
“Not yet. My mother has me tethered to the preparations for this infernal ball. I have not had a morning free.” He paused. “And I find myself hesitating.”
Arthur’s eyebrows rose. “That is unlike you.”
“Is it?” Alistair reached for the cold coffee, remembered it was cold, and pushed it away. “Perhaps I am developing caution in my old age.”
“You are eight-and-twenty.”
“Ancient. Decrepit. I shall be ordering a bath chair by Michaelmas.”
Arthur did not laugh. He was studying Alistair with the quiet, assessing gaze that Alistair had learned to recognise over the past week. Arthur Finch saw more than he said. It was, Alistair reflected, a trait they shared, though Arthur wore it with less flamboyance.
“You spoke with Miss Ainsworth,” Arthur said. It was not a question.
Alistair went still. “Who told you that?”
“No one. I observed you speaking with her at the Hargraves’ reception, and then again on the Marine Parade the following day. I happened to be walking.”
“You happen to be walking in remarkably convenient locations.”
“I walk a great deal.” Arthur’s expression did not change. “She is clever.”
“Yes.”
“And you find her interesting.”
“I find many people interesting.”
“You find very few people interesting,” Arthur said. “You find most people tedious. You have told me so repeatedly.”
Alistair looked at his cousin for a long moment. Arthur did not look away. There was no challenge in his gaze, only a steady patience that Alistair found both admirable and irritating.
“What is your point, Arthur?”
“I am not certain I have one.” Arthur folded his hands in his lap. “Only that the Ainsworth family and the Cavendish family have not been on cordial terms for generations. Your mother will not be pleased if you show Miss Ainsworth particular attention.”
“My mother is never pleased.”
“She was pleased when you refused Lady Honoria Pemberton’s invitation last season. She said it showed discernment.”
“That was not discernment. Lady Honoria has the conversational range of a haddock.”
Arthur’s mouth twitched. It was the closest he came to smiling. “Even so. I merely suggest that if you are pursuing the identity of the Brighton Observer, and if your pursuit leads you in a direction that intersects with the Ainsworth family, you may wish to proceed with a degree of—”
“Care. Yes. You have mentioned.”
“I mention it again because I do not think you heard me the first time.”
Alistair opened his mouth to reply, but the sound of footsteps in the corridor stopped him. Heavy footsteps. Deliberate. The footsteps of a woman who wished her approach to be registered before she arrived.
Lady Beatrice Cavendish entered the study without knocking.
She was dressed for the morning in a gown of deep burgundy, her hair arranged with the architectural precision that Alistair had never seen disrupted by wind, weather, or emotion.
Her eyes swept the room, catalogued Arthur’s presence with a flicker of something that might have been approval or its opposite, and settled on her son.
“Alistair. I require a word.”
Arthur rose immediately. “I was just leaving.”
“You were not,” Lady Beatrice said. “But you may.”
Arthur made his escape with the speed of a man who had learned to read the weather in Lady Beatrice’s voice. The door clicked shut behind him, and Alistair was alone with his mother.
She did not sit. She stood before his desk with the bearing of a general surveying a battlefield, and Alistair felt, as he always felt in her presence, the peculiar compression of being reduced to a younger, smaller version of himself.
“The florist has confirmed the arrangements for the ball,” she said. “I have instructed them to use white roses and hothouse lilies. The effect will be restrained but elegant.”
“I am sure it will be magnificent.”
“Do not be flippant.” She adjusted the cuff of her sleeve. “This ball is important. It is the first the family has hosted in Brighton since your father’s death, and it will be observed. Every detail will be observed.”
“I am aware.”
“Are you?” Her gaze sharpened. “I wonder. You have been distracted these past days. Parsons tells me you have been spending your evenings in this study rather than attending the social engagements to which we have been invited.”
“Parsons talks too much.”
“Parsons talks exactly as much as I require.” Lady Beatrice paused. “I also understand that you spoke at some length with Miss Sophia Ainsworth at the Hargraves’ reception. And that you encountered her again on the Marine Parade.”
Alistair kept his face still. “Brighton is a small town. Encounters happen.”
“Encounters do not happen. Encounters are arranged, or they are permitted. Which was this?”
“Neither. It was an accident. She was walking. I was walking. The Marine Parade is a public thoroughfare.”
His mother studied him for a moment. Then she moved to the window and stood with her back to him, silhouetted against the pale morning light.
“The Ainsworth family is not our concern. The feud between your great-grandfather and old Mr. Ainsworth was a matter of principle, and principle does not expire with the passage of years.”