Page 42 of A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets (The Lord Julian Mysteries #10)
Chapter Eighteen
The room still felt crowded, with awkward truths and the lies used to hide them rather than human presences.
“Perhaps I should be going.” Carstairs abandoned his post by the window and made for the door.
“I’d rather you stayed,” I said. “Your observations about the state of Pleasant View put me on to the secret driving this whole mess. I was too busy searching for the gold and for Miss Hannah to follow the money, as the saying goes. You had your eye on the more relevant target.”
“His lordship speaks in riddles,” Lady Standish muttered. “I know not who that fellow is, but he has no right to become a party to difficult family conversations.”
“Mama, don’t be ridiculous. That is Mr. Bryson Carstairs. I’ve introduced you often enough in the churchyard. His papa is Lord Dunsford, of the Hampshire Carstairs family. Our Mr. Carstairs served honorably with the Rifles, as you well know.”
“The Rifles?” Strother said. “I had no idea, but I suppose that’s why you could demolish all those windows.”
A tipsy dowager with passing experience of a fowling piece could have blasted out those windows, though Carstairs had fired not birdshot, but single bullets angled to bury themselves in the cottage floor.
“I still see no reason for further discussion,” the viscountess rejoined. “In fact, I have had quite enough of present company. Hannah, if you are determined to accept the addresses of this, this…”
“Hush.” I spoke on behalf of every soldier ever denigrated for his injuries and on behalf of my own dwindling patience.
“Your ladyship may leave when you have made your apologies, and when Miss Hannah and the captain have decided what is to be done with your son. He schemed against his own sister and against you, madam. Strother wanted that gold, and not so he could catch up on repairs to the tenant cottages. He’s been the profligate man-about-Town, no credit to his patrimony, and a frankly traitorous sibling. ”
“I wouldn’t have put Han out,” Strother said. “I simply wanted my debts cleared and a few amenities restored to Pleasant View.”
“Amenities,” Hannah said, “like fancy hunters who need vast quantities of grain daily while the Corn Laws price that same grain beyond a poor family’s means.
A new phaeton when our vehicles are perfectly serviceable.
Autumn in Paris. Memberships in clubs far too smart for a viscount’s impecunious heir.
Even Papa despaired of you, Strothie. You don’t just build castles in the air, you dwell in them. ”
“Hannah! When Papa cocks up his toes, I shall be the viscount. You disrespect me at your peril.”
I heard again Hannah’s sentence on Sylvester Downing— grow up . For Sylvester, I held a modicum of hope that he might eventually gain his parole. Strother was proving beyond all aid.
“Strother, what made you conceive of this scheme in the first place?” I asked. “Sylvester was after the Irish gold, and I must assume that’s why he befriended you, but you took matters far past a sham courtship.”
Strother examined the decanters on the sideboard. “Downing wasn’t entirely shamming. He initially came calling to have a look around the estate—he’d heard me bemoaning the fact that the gold had gone missing—but then he met Han, and his eyes took on a determined gleam.”
“Determined on matrimony?” MacNamara asked.
“Marriage to Han, and I think she might have allowed it,” Strother said, “but then you were always limping about in the churchyard, dropping some witty quote, and willing to argue with Han. She loves to argue. Mama says it’s unnatural for a lady to be so contentious.”
The viscountess would be shocked to meet my sisters, then. “Then you and Downing began discussing your mutual disappointments in life and came up with this scheme to steal the gold, ruin your sister, and bring scandal down on your parents. How clever of you.”
I chose the word to wound and apparently hit my target.
Strother rounded on me, an empty crystal decanter in his hand.
“You try being the family dullard, Caldicott, your sole value that you are born male. I endured Mama parading me about before the local squires’ daughters as if I were some prize bull calf.
All the fellows in Town expect me to stay bang up to the minute with fashion and gossip.
I am begrudged even the occasional wager beyond what passes for the pittance referred to as my allowance. It’s not to be tolerated. Mama agrees.”
“Your mother,” I said, not even glancing at the potentially lethal weapon in Strother’s hand, “has chosen to foster her own bitterness rather than rejoice in her many blessings. She set you against your sister, encouraged your petulance, and must take some blame for goading you into selfish stupidities.”
Strother’s air of seething resentment eased. “Mama is a penance, can’t argue there. I love her dearly—no offense, Mama—but she does wear on a fellow’s nerves.”
Strother clearly liked the idea that he’d been the victim of his mother’s harping. “Your mother encouraged Sylvester Downing’s interest in Hannah.”
Hannah stirred on the couch. “Mama all but saw us compromised on two occasions, which is what got my back up in the first place.
Years of telling me I could not expect to marry well, of ensuring I was nigh cloistered here at Pleasant View.
One glib Irishman comes down from Town with Strother, and I am to be crimping my hair and wearing too much perfume and putting new trim on all my bonnets.
“I’ve had other suitors,” she went on, “most of them good, solid fellows, but only Downing passed muster with Mama.”
And Hannah herself had not yet figured out the why of it. “Explain to your daughter the real reason you wanted to see her sent across the Irish Sea and immured in the countryside for all the rest of her days.”
The viscountess tried her signature glower on me, which was beyond tiresome.
“My lady, you are wasting the time of a number of people who have better things to do than humor your pouts and airs. Explain that you took exception to your daughter’s literary ventures and sought any way in the world to bring them to an end.”
Hannah was clearly surprised and Strother befuddled beyond his usual slouching attempts at reason. Carstairs appeared amused, while the captain was back to smiling fatuously.
Hyperia and Lady Ophelia were beaming at me, a pleasant change from Lady Standish’s ungracious treatment.
The viscountess, for the first time, appeared bewildered. “Must we discuss this?”
“Oh, we must,” MacNamara said. “Hannah Stadler’s ability with a pen will see the crown shamed into moderating its excesses and repealing those wretched Corn Laws. She is fearless and articulate on any number of subjects.”
Hannah considered her intended quizzically. “James, you knew?”
“Why else do you think I had the fishing cottage kitted out as a writer’s hideaway? I’m certainly not going to hike all that way to read what I can perfectly well enjoy in the comfort of my own hammock.”
“You knew I was… secreting myself in your fishing cottage by the hour?”
“I knew, and I took great encouragement from the fact that you enjoyed the little study I’d fashioned for you. You made yourself quite at home there, and I delighted in thinking of you, gazing out across the pond, fire in your eyes while you vanquished the dragons of injustice and hypocrisy.”
I felt compelled to register an objection for the record. “You might have said something to me, MacNamara.” Had the captain been honest about the destination of Hannah’s perambulations, I might sooner have seen the pattern that drove the whole contretemps.
“Not until I was dozing on your hammock,” I went on, “watching the stars turn in their inevitable paths, did it occur to me that your fishing cottage lay at the center of the maze.”
“I had suspicions only, my lord. Suspicions a gentleman would not air without the lady’s permission. How did you light upon the truth?”
Spare me from true love in full blush. “The cottage bears no scent of pipe smoke and has no hassock or footstool. No ash trays anywhere. Clearly, you were not spending much time there, but somebody else was. An abacus, ciphering, a goodly supply of fresh paper untouched by spring’s pervasive damp… and the pamphlets.”
“The wretched, wretched pamphlets,” the viscountess snarled.
“The pamphlets that will see my daughter arrested for sedition. The day those ravings are attributed to you, Hannah, your brother’s creditors will be down upon us like vultures flocking to carrion.
Polite society will titter behind their hands at Lord and Lady Standish’s bad fortune, and poor Strother will never be able to marry well. ”
Hence the viscountess’s willingness to dwell almost exclusively in the country. Cheaper, of course, also safer . Much, much safer to rule in obscurity than to face the eventual scorn of Mayfair.
“I gather Miss Stadler’s quotes gave her away?” Lady Ophelia asked. “I do like that one about whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors Him.”
“You read her shameless drivel?” Lady Standish spat while the captain murmured about Proverbs, Chapter 14.
“Her shameless drivel is the delight of my better-read female acquaintances,” Lady Ophelia retorted. “Really, Cora, you should get out more. Eve’s Advocate is quite respected in both literary and charitable circles.”
Strother looked utterly befuddled and a bit downcast.
“You went to Town to meet with your publishers,” MacNamara said, stroking Hannah’s knuckles. “You used the proceeds of your writing to fund the libraries and to keep Pleasant View in good trim.”
“Also to assist Strother,” Hannah said, “but only enough to keep him from going under. Papa and I agree that Strother is in need of management, and a healthy fear of the sponging houses is a useful tool in that regard.”