Page 11 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #1)

‘The land is in poor heart,’ Markham said. ‘And it’s not efficiently farmed. It could bear more, if improvements were undertaken.’

‘I put a scheme before his lordship four years since,’ Adeane said, ‘for marling and drainage, but nothing happened.’

‘And there is a long backlog of repairs. Some of the cottages are in poor order. All of them need improving. Roads crumbling, ditches blocked. Overgrown hedges,’ said Markham.

‘There’s a lot of modern ideas that ought to be brought in,’ said Adeane. ‘Better breeding stock, f’rinstance. Not just getting your cow in calf with any old animal that’s got balls – begging your pardon, my lord. But start improving your livestock and you improve your yields.’

‘But you can’t expect the tenants to pay for prize bulls,’ said Markham. ‘The estate would have to put up the capital to start with, and the estate’s got no money. Rents are too low.’

‘Can’t the rents be increased?’ Giles asked.

The two men gave each other a brief look of exasperation. Hadn’t he understood ?

‘Rents depend on production. Raise production, you can raise the rent. The tenants couldn’t bear any increase now. You’d end up taking the leases back in hand, and be worse off.’

Giles frowned. ‘You’re saying you can’t raise the rents without improving the properties first? You can’t make more money without spending more?’

‘That’s it, in essence,’ said Markham.

‘But there’s no money to invest,’ Giles said.

So he went back to Moresby. ‘Where has all the money gone?’

It was a problem with a long history, Moresby explained.

An estate made money, yes, but a lot of it had to be ploughed back in.

Also, repairs need to be done promptly, because dilapidation is a growing expense.

Fix a tile now, or the whole roof later.

‘Things have been let slide,’ he concluded delicately. It wasn’t for him to point a finger.

‘But there must have been income. I ask again – where did it all go?’

Maintaining the house and the family was an expensive business, Moresby told him. And, he added reluctantly, the previous earl had been extravagant.

‘My father ?’ Giles said in surprise. He had always assumed, as far as he had ever thought about it, that his father spent his time hunting, shooting and fishing – particularly the former.

In the hunting season he went out three or four times a week, and Giles had hunted often enough to know that after a day following hounds one had no energy for anything but dozing by the fire in stockinged feet.

Now he learned that his father had had another life, a Town life.

There were his club subscriptions and expenses – several clubs, gambling clubs among them.

His father had paid up all right, pay and play was his creed, but those clubs would not survive if the members were not losers overall.

There were tradesmen’s bills – tailors, hatters, bootmakers: his father had dressed surprisingly expensively. Giles had not taken him for a dandy.

There were several London properties, not bringing in income, but on which rent was being paid out, plus a house in Bloomsbury and a flat in St John’s Wood on which the estate paid the leases. ‘What for?’ Giles asked, and Moresby said he didn’t know, implying it was not his business to ask.

And his father had been a large spender of cash.

Giles wondered how he could have got through so much.

The usual things – theatres, restaurants, taxis, cigars – could hardly account for it.

Vogel was careful to make no comment when he allowed Giles to glimpse, among the other bills, accounts for women’s clothing and jewellery.

Had there been, Giles asked himself, with a cold sense of shock, women ?

It is always difficult to see one’s own parents as sexual beings, but – and here Giles glanced at the portrait in the alcove beside the fire – his father had been a very good-looking man in his youth.

Perhaps – and a man of twenty-six might well find this a struggle to accept – a man of fifty-two could still be attractive to women.

But surely one should not give in to temptation.

It was pointless speculation. The question now was, what must he do? What could he do?

‘Retrenchment, my lord,’ said Moresby. ‘My father urged it on your father, and had it been undertaken ten years ago, you might have inherited a very different estate. The longer it’s put off the harder it becomes.

I don’t conceal from you that it will be a long and painful road.

But the alternative would be bankruptcy. ’

‘Couldn’t we sell something?’ Giles asked.

‘I’m afraid the valuable paintings have already been sold,’ said Moresby. ‘And the antique silver.’

‘Isn’t there some family jewellery?’

‘I don’t know how much it would fetch, but we could look into it if …’

‘If?’

‘Her ladyship – your mother – as the person most closely affected—’

‘She’d be more affected if we’re forced into bankruptcy,’ Giles said.

‘Very well, my lord. But I doubt the jewellery could do more than tide us over.’

‘That’s something, at any rate. What about selling some of the land?’

‘Mortgaged.’

Giles stared at nothing for a moment, gathering himself. ‘Retrenchment, then,’ he said. His father’s London life, he determined grimly, should be dismantled. ‘Cancel all memberships and subscriptions. Get rid of the rented properties. Sell the leases – I suppose they’ll bring in something?’

‘Yes, my lord. But do you wish me to look into—’

‘I wish you to cut out London entirely,’ Giles interrupted angrily. ‘Enough has been wasted there. I won’t waste any more. It’s Ashmore that matters. Whatever he was spending in Town, it stops at once. If anyone from the Castle wants to go to London they can stay with my aunt or my grandmother.’

‘Very well, my lord.’

‘And retrenchment at home. I’m sure there must be a lot of waste.’

‘I would advise against wholesale reductions – it would spread unwelcome gossip, and as I said before, confidence is everything.

Luckily, if I might put it like that, your bereavement means you will not be entertaining for some months, which allows you to exercise a certain austerity without attracting notice.

‘Indeed,’ said Giles, drily.

‘And the stables are a large expense. You might usefully cut down there.’

Moresby enumerated: his late lordship kept six hunters, with two youngsters being brought on.

Aside from them there were her ladyship’s and the young ladies’ horses, six carriage horses, two road horses, four grooms’ horses, and two ponies – in all, twenty-five head eating their heads off.

To care for them there were seven grooms and four boys, in addition to Giddins, Archer and Josh Brandom, and two coachmen.

‘I can sell the hunters,’ Giles said. ‘Even if I were to be hunting this season – which obviously I’m not – they wouldn’t suit me.’

‘Then you should sell them now, my lord, with some of the season still to go. You’d get a better price.’

‘I’ll see it done. What else?’ Moresby was shuffling papers, evidence of embarrassment, or a reluctance to go on. ‘Out with it, man. I think I’m past shocking now.’

Moresby looked up. ‘Nothing shocking, I assure you, my lord. Perhaps – delicate.’

‘Oh, Lord, what now?’

‘Your mother’s jointure,’ Moresby said. ‘If it is asked for, it must be paid, and the only way I can see for such a sum to be procured is through a loan. Reluctant as I am to suggest taking on more interest payments—’

‘ If it is asked for?’ Giles queried.

‘The jointure, as you know, is for the maintenance and comfort of the relict. But if her ladyship remained at the Castle with all her present comforts, she would not immediately need it. The issue might be passed over for a few valuable months, or even years.’

Giles was faintly amused, though in a sour way. ‘You mean, if I send her to the Dower House, I’ll have to pay up, but if I let her stay here, she might forget about it?’

Moresby winced at the plain speaking. ‘In essence—’

‘Does she know?’ Giles interrupted.

‘Know, my lord?’

‘How things are.’

‘I really cannot say, my lord. It is entirely up to you how much you reveal to her, but if she doesn’t know … The fewer people who know, the better.’

But if his mother wanted her jointure, he would have to borrow, and put the estate deeper into debt.

And what about his sisters? There had never been any money set aside for their dowries – presumably his father had thought he would cross that bridge when he came to it – but they were Giles’s responsibility now. He would have to do something.

‘I feel like a rabbit in a snare,’ he said. ‘It’s a miserable mess, and there seems no way out but years of austerity or more reckless borrowing – or both.’

Moresby paused for a moment before saying hesitantly, ‘There is one other way out, my lord. It may not be a solution that appeals to you, but it has a long – and, may I say, respectable – precedent.’

‘Tell me,’ said Giles.