He wasn’t in a happy mood, she knew. She hated that he had to worry over family he’d trusted. She wanted to pat his hand and tell him all would surely be fine in a day or two, but that seemed. . . presumptuous. And he might feel as if she were an encroaching female like all the others.
“After his illness, Mr. C couldn’t write well. And I was afraid if I told anyone how helpless he was, they’d put him in an institution. I couldn’t bear that. So it’s my own fault that no one looked into matters,” she admitted.
“Your loyalty and your frugality are to be admired. Whereas I left family in charge, men who owed me loyalty, and they have either frittered away an entire fortune or stolen it, leaving women and children helpless. I should put you in charge.” He crossed his arms and glared at the horizon.
He really was unhappy about going to the city. Lydia sighed. “Well, I had to send away servants who relied on their wages in order to protect a man who was presumably wealthy, so I’m not exactly admirable. We do what seems best at the time and learn the error of our ways. Are your sons relying on the estate you left behind?”
Max snorted inelegantly. “Let my family know I had sons and no wife? I set up separate funds for each of them in the countries where they were born. Lawyers look after them.” He smacked his forehead as she’d seen him do before. “Damn—what if those lawyers are as greedy as my family? I’ll have to write. . .”
“Just tell me what to write, and I’ll do it for you,” she finished for him. “I’m not sure how you write a lawyer and ask if he’s cheating though,” she said with a trace of humor.
“I’ll think about it. If I weren’t so perfectly wretched about these matters, I’d do it myself.” He slumped into gloom again.
“You cannot do everything,” she admonished. “You taught yourself engineering despite your inability to read. You have evidently made a fortune all on your own, without need of your father’s estate. You put people in charge you had every reason to trust. The harm is theirs, not yours.”
He shrugged. “Other men manage. But I suppose they stay in one place so they can oversee in person. I thought I could walk away and live on a desert island.”
“You could have been right here in the city and your uncle might still cheat you. You don’t possess your mother’s prescience. Do you have any Malcolm traits at all?” she asked, re-directing the topic to prevent him from beating up on himself more.
“Besides animal magnetism?” he asked with a chuckle. “Not that I’m aware. I’m pretty certain my ability to do calculus in my head is from the Ives’ side.”
“Animal magnetism—charming. Ladies are not animals. And if you’re such a magnet to women, why am I not in your lap right now? Perhaps your charm has worn off.” She primly crossed her gloved hands in her skirt.
He twined his fingers and stretched his arms in front of him, exposing the grand magnitude of the muscles beneath his tailored coat. The cart hit a rut and lurched, but he swayed and stayed upright as if he were a sailor at sea.
Lydia had to clutch the side to prevent falling into him.
Max noted the gesture with a quirked eyebrow. “You were almost in my lap just now,” he said with a naughty leer. “But I take your point. Other than age, I perceive few differences between any of the women who are drawn to me. The very old and very young mostly lack interest, but you don’t fall into that category. I’ve noticed some women, like Miss Trivedi, are so firmly attached to their men that they resist my magnetism. Do you have another man in your life that I don’t know about?”
“Hardly,” she said with a sniff. “Unless you count Mr. C, but he’s dead.”
“Then it must be reverse magnetism,” he decided, flashing her that smile that turned her insides out. “I’m very attracted to you. You have reversed my poles.”
Hot lava coursed through her middle. Lydia forced herself to look at the back of Laddie’s head. “That’s ridiculous. We’ll see how well that works once we’re in the city, and you’re surrounded by beautiful ladies.”
“I have no intention of being surrounded by anyone. We’ll go directly to Hugh Morgan’s office. He’s just recently moved from Phoebe’s lair to a proper building where no one will know us. The only other female likely to be around is Miss Trivedi, who is happily attached to Mr. Morgan and barely acknowledges my existence, as it should be. We can hope that by the time we arrive, he’ll have arranged to meet a judge and keep the courtroom clear, since it’s a private matter. And I’ll find a gentleman’s hotel for the evening.”
“And Mr. C’s solicitors will certainly have no women about. Perhaps, if all goes well there, you can take the train back to the castle, and I can stay in the city and do a little shopping.” Since it was hard to speculate more, Lydia chose to admire the landscape she had seen so rarely this past year. She drank in the fresh scent of heather, absorbed the sun’s heat, and noticed Max smelled of sandalwood today. She’d added it to that last batch of soap Marta had made. She clasped her hands tighter.
She would not, could not, be one of the ladies he despised so much.
Twelve
“I cannot summon witnesses to my existence in an hour,” Max protested, pacing Hugh Morgan’s unassuming office. He tried to maintain his normally unflappable demeanor, but the pressure had him roiling like a steam boiler. “It’s been nearly twenty years since I was in school. I can barely remember the names of fellow students and certainly don’t know where they reside. And if my mother’s family can’t testify because they’re not objective, I’d need my Ives relations, and they’re all in the south of England as far as I’m aware. Dare is the only one close. He really isn’t an Ives, just a relation by marriage, and if we ever crossed paths, I don’t recall it. My cousin George knows me, best, damn it.”
Estes, the portly barrister Hugh Morgan had hired, crossed his hands complacently over his belly. “Then we’ll present Mr. Morgan’s evidence that funds have been misappropriated, demand the investments be held by the court until you can produce witnesses, and threaten the miscreants with criminal action for fraud and theft. They’ll either have to admit that you are who you say you are or fight a long legal battle to regain control of their monies.”
“There’s enough evidence in those files?” Max asked. Morgan had explained the papers to him, but paper was just that to him—expendable fuel for fires.
“The judge won’t understand them,” the barrister said dismissively. “I have documents prepared that simply need his signature to freeze the funds. That means you can’t access them either, but it’s a delaying tactic. We need to be going.” Using the chair arms, Estes hauled himself up.
“What about Lydia?” Max inquired anxiously.
The librarian had been sitting quietly in a dark corner, listening. She had to be going mad with worry about her own problems, but she sat patiently through this meeting, absorbing it all, reading any document he handed to her so he knew he could trust what he was being told.
“Estes is a barrister,” Morgan reminded him. “Miss Wystan needs a solicitor. The meeting with the judge has been scheduled, so that takes precedence.” He turned to Lydia. “Miss Wystan, would you be comfortable speaking with the trust’s solicitors with Miss Trivedi in your company? If not, then do you think the meeting might wait until we find a suitable attorney to accompany you?”
Max wanted to crawl under a desk at her look of panic. He needed to be there for her.
But the truth was, his aid was rubbish. The whole reason he’d left the estate to his uncle and cousin was because he was useless in these matters and only made himself look like a fool. Lydia didn’t need a fool to accompany her.
He needed to hug her, to tell her everything would be all right, that he would sue the trustees into perdition the instant he had his hands on his money. . . But that did not help her now.
He felt like a total cad when he saw her accept that he could not help. This was the reason he could never be the man his father had been. He was only useful in uncivilized
areas that needed his crude abilities.
Lydia clenched her fingers in her lap and nodded at Morgan. “I would appreciate Miss Trivedi’s accompaniment, thank you, although I dislike taking her away from her tasks.”
Hugh Morgan almost managed a smile. “Miss Trivedi lives to take apart presumptuous gentlemen. Let us all hope your trustees are reasonable men or they’re likely to be left in shreds on the carpet.”
“Thank you, I think.” Lydia tentatively returned his smile. “Where will I find her?”
“She works here most afternoons, in the office next door. I warned her that you might need her help, so she is ready any time you are.”
Max stood up when Lydia did. He took her hand as she passed. “If it doesn’t go well today, we’ll have alternatives. Just remember—you are the Malcolm Librarian. It’s like being a duke, I think. Think of yourself as a duke and the lawyers as ignorant peasants. You can do it.”
Her bottom lip trembled slightly, until she bit it, squeezed his hand, and nearly broke his heart with her courage. “A duke, thank you. Or a duchess. I think I’d like being a duchess. I’ll see what I can do.”
She bravely left, leaving Max no choice but to grit his teeth and do the same. He tapped on his hat and held the door for the portly barrister. “Thanks, Morgan, and if I ever pry those funds loose, you’ll be the one I turn to for investing. You’ll be worth every farthing of your commission.”
The taciturn broker saluted with a finger to his brow and returned to work.
Max swallowed hard and set off to make an ass of himself. After which, he’d have to visit his mother. He wasn’t sure which was worse.
* * *
“It is best if you present yourself as a person of authority,” Keya Trivedi told Lydia as they entered a building not far from Mr. Morgan’s, off elegant Prince’s Street in the new part of town. The area was exceedingly respectable, and there were lovely shops nearby that Lydia wished to peruse.
She had never been a person of authority. Shopping and reading she understood, not managing. How did one handle the responsibility of an entire estate, especially when one was only pretending to be what she was not?
Mr. C had wielded a great deal of authority in his own quiet, hermit-like way. His journal had said he’d left her in charge. He must have had confidence in her, confidence she didn’t feel. Max had said she must be a duchess, however unqualified she might be. People more experienced in the world relied on her. She had to listen.
“Do I pretend you’re my servant?” Lydia asked doubtfully. “When you know everything and I know nothing?”
Keya flashed a brief, mischievous smile. “Let them think me a servant. Surprise can be advantageous. Of course, if they are broad-minded men willing to listen to a small, brown female, then we’ve lost the element of surprise, but we will still be far ahead. Just think of this as an informational meeting.”
“Informational, right.” Lydia straightened her rather broad shoulders, adjusted the lace mantle she wore for luck, and tried not to be intimidated by the soaring ceilings, gilded walls, and marble floors of the foyer they traversed. She started up the stairs. “I am a duchess, and you are an insignificant companion.”
Thinking like that did not come easily to a vicar’s daughter. Lydia automatically reached for the office door knob. Keya stopped her by touching her glove and opened the door for her.
Right. Duchesses had servants. Duchesses did not lift a hand to help themselves.
“Miss Lydia Wystan, the Malcolm Librarian, to see Misters Dobbs and Henry,” Keya announced to the startled clerk, while holding the door for Lydia to enter.
Head high, chin up, towering above Keya and the seated clerk, Lydia refrained from glancing about in curiosity but merely waited to be shown to the peons controlling her money. She tried not to laugh too hard at that whimsy—or weep in abject terror.
The clerk, a pallid, skinny man in spectacles, blinked in surprise. He rose to his short height and bowed uncertainly. “Miss Wystan, welcome. I. . . uh. . . if you’ll wait one moment. . .”
“We don’t have time to wait,” Lydia said in her best commanding voice, having no idea where the words came from except an overactive imagination. “Lead on and let us be done with the formalities. I need to return to the library posthaste.”
She started toward the corridor the clerk had glanced toward. He ran ahead to warn his employers.
“Most excellent,” Keya whispered with what sounded like laughter. “I had not thought about height as a factor in this battle. Let us hope the solicitors are very short men.”
Lydia bit her lip to hold back a terrified chuckle. “I fear that makes me a bully.”
As it happened, only one of the solicitors was short, the older one, Dobbs, if his name plate didn’t lie. Assuming the other suited gentleman was Henry, he wasn’t tall for a man, but he matched Lydia in height. They both rose at her entrance, looking vaguely cross, and bowed perfunctorily.
The office was all polished dark wood except for a window overlooking a park. Lydia longed to be outside walking through the green grass. Instead, she took the largest leather chair she could find and settled into it, wishing she’d thought to bring a parasol with a large point on it. She would buy one the instant she had her money reimbursed.
Keya hovered at her elbow, looking the part of apologetic servant in her drab brown gown.
Sitting down again, Henry, the younger man, located a file amid the confusion of books and papers scattered across both their desks. “You have brought the parish records showing Mr. Cadwallader’s death?” he asked in a voice that sounded as if he did not expect it.
Except Mr. Morgan and Keya had prepared her for this. With relief, Lydia nodded imperiously and Keya opened a leather carrying case. She silently produced the document.
Both men had to inspect it, as if they’d recognize the preacher’s signature.
Lydia was dying to ask questions, but she decided a duchess wouldn’t be bothered.
“And you have identification proving you are Miss Lydia Wystan?” the older man, Dobbs, asked suspiciously, looking over his gold-rimmed spectacles.
Again, she’d been warned. Lydia supposed it was good common sense and a sign that the solicitors were performing their duties. Keya opened the case again and handed over copies of Lydia’s own parish record of birth and a “to-whom-this-may-concern” letter from Mr. Morgan assuring the recipient that he knew both Mr. Cadwallader and Miss Wystan and verifying her identity.
Their delaying tactics failing, the solicitors harrumphed and took their time. Finally, the bespectacled Dobbs sat back and examined Lydia, perhaps to see if she might turn into a toad and hop away, she thought spitefully. She glared back, as surely a duchess would.
“Very well, Miss Wystan. Mr. Cadwallader has said you are an excellent assistant and capable of running his household. He wished to leave you in charge if you were still with him at the time of his demise.”
Lydia remained frozen. She wanted to make demands, but she didn’t like his tone. It sounded as if there might be a very large “But. . .” at the end of this speech.
“As it happens, we have had a most excellent offer for Mr. Cadwallader’s property that will remove the burden of the estate from your shoulders,” Mr. Henry continued with barely concealed eagerness, pushing a paper forward. “We have negotiated an excellent deal. You would be left with a sizable trust for your services and would no longer have to worry about a crumbling—”
Red rage roared through Lydia.
Normally cautious and implacable, she didn’t know how to control the fury boiling up. As if yanked by angry gods, she rose from the chair to tower over the men at their desks. “Over my dead body will I sell the library to that snake Crowley. I am the Librarian!” She roared this with all the vehemence she’d heard Mr. C employ, and for this moment, she actually believed it. Perhaps she channeled her former employer.
Dobbs and Henry scrambled to stand. “Miss Wystan, it is an honest offer from
a gentleman who can better. . .”
“Am I, or am I not, executor of the Malcolm Librarian’s trust?” she demanded in a voice she scarcely recognized as hers. Except she’d used it on Crowley and had made him go away. She’d make these termites go away too.
“Of course, of course, Miss Wystan,” Henry said nervously. “But you are a woman, you see, and a woman cannot. . .”
Lydia tried not to turn purple. Her sisters had called her an old cow who harmlessly munched her way through the field until all the grass was gone. But right now, she was a raging bull about to trample annoying vermin.
Duchess. She had to be a duchess, not a bull. She was the Malcolm Librarian. With what she hoped was a sufficiently evil smile, Lydia turned to Keya. “Maharani, would you care to explain what a woman can do?”
Keya grinned at the purely fictional title of princess, nodded obediently, and opened her case again. “I have with me orders to remove the Malcolm Librarian’s estate trust to the offices of Morgan, Blair, and Trivedi. These are copies, you understand. The originals will be filed with the court upon the word of the librarian, who is, as we understand it, executor of the librarian’s trust and currently represented by Malcolm Librarian Lydia Wystan.”
Fictional titles abounded today. She was no more a librarian than Miss Trivedi was a princess. But explaining that would undermine what very little authority she possessed, and the castle would end up in Crowley’s hands. That would never do.
The solicitors looked as if they’d swallowed toads. “I’ve never heard of the firm,” Dobbs muttered. “This is outrageous. Our office has handled the trust for a century. We are simply carrying out our duties by offering the best possible—”
“Your duties are to the librarian, sir,” Keya said without the fury Lydia would have spilled. “The librarian’s duties are to the library. The property you wish to sell is the library. If you fail to see the importance of a library to a librarian, then you fail to understand your duties.”
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