“Mother. I didn’t expect to be here as long as I have, and I suspect my secretary has been effectively clipping her financial wings. She sent word to prepare her usual suite along with a list of food to prepare, lace-trimmed bedding to air, and demands that her daughter wait on her. She comes in easy stages, thank God, so she won’t arrive until the day after tomorrow.” He looked up at her under lowered eyelids. “Your concerns about Higgins are the least of it. She expects the children to be confined to the nursery except for a formal visit following her afternoon tea.”
“At which point, she will berate them for their shortcomings. Does she still invite you to stand in front of her after tea so she can point out your failings?” Lucy snapped her mouth shut, and her cheeks heated. “I’m sorry, David. It isn’t my place—”
He waved her protest away. “Breakfast,” he said ruefully. “She attacks over breakfast now I’m grown.” The bleak shadows in his eyes tore at Lucy’s heart.
She wondered fleetingly why he didn’t send the old bat away or find her a charming manor in Scotland. The Orkneys perhaps… But he couldn’t manage the expense. She thought of her own mother, gone these many years. Perhaps any mother is better than none.
Emma joined them in the hall, having seen her brood off.
“How is Mr. Benson today?” the earl asked.
“Well. Why don’t you look in on him? I’ll join you after I have a word with Agnes.”
Lucy led him to the sick room. If Robert Benson felt uncomfortable to have an earl visit him while bundled up in bed, he showed no sign. The old gentleman’s perfect manners could put even an earl at ease.
Besides, he’s known David since boyhood. Lucy hung back while the men had a few words.
“Your job is to get well, Mr. Benson. You can be certain we will get to the bottom of what happened to you.” The earl stood to leave.
“I have no fear of that, your lordship. My Robbie will take care of it.”
David stiffened but didn’t argue the point. He nodded politely and took his leave. As they reached the hall, he glowered at Lucy. “His beloved Robbie leaves Spangler to me. The returning hero should do his own damned dirty work.”
He didn’t apologize for his language, a lapse so uncharacteristic that Lucy could only wonder the antipathy between them. “Sir Robert is a managing sort. I’ll grant you that.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Dusk wreathed the sky in darkening ribbons of color the following day before Eli trooped back to the Willow, sober and weary.
Rob had fretted over his agreement to leave the confrontation to Eli and Clarion all day. Looking at his brother, he regretted it even more. “Come sit in the office.” He motioned to Clara. “Ale for both of us.”
Eli dropped his valise next to a chair by the window, put an elbow on the little round table next to it, and rested his head in his hand. Rob reached for the ale from Clara. He addressed Eli over his shoulder. “Dinner?”
“Please. I haven’t eaten since morning.” The barmaid scurried off to the kitchen.
“I expected you hours ago.” Rob set a pint in front of Eli and lifted his own.
“Things went sideways.” Eli drank deep while Rob waited for him to go on. “First of all, you needn’t have worried about Clarion. By the time Spangler dragged in late, the earl’s temper had come to a fine boil. He outright accused the man. Showed him the sawn pieces of bridge. Asked the question six different ways. Cajoled, badgered, and damn well almost bribed the sod. I even started to pity the fool.”
“And the result?”
“Predictable. Denied it. Expressed outrage at the accusation, at the perpetrator, at the disrespect. No matter how Clarion asked, he had an answer.”
Clara returned with ale, meat pasties, and baked potatoes, momentarily disrupting Eli’s report.
“Clarion should have jailed him.” Rob’s words brought a startled glance from Clara, who finished her work and disappeared into the corridor.
“No evidence, Robbie. None. Remember that. Besides—” Eli paused to get his brother’s attention, holding up a fork that had speared a potato. “Spangler sounded convincing. By the end, even I was tempted to believe him.”
Rob let out a string of curses, but Eli ignored them. “His final argument was that he meant to buy the place. Why would he damage property he expected—not hoped, expected—would be his one day.”
“He admitted it?”
Eli shrugged and washed down another bite of pasty. “He’d run out of ways to claim innocence. He thought it might deflect blame.”
“What did Clarion say to that?”
“He said he wasn’t aware you had agreed to sell it—small stretch of truth—and that Miss Whitaker still lived there. You won’t like this next part.”
At Lucy’s name, Rob dropped his fork and looked at his brother directly. His chin came up. “What?”
“Spangler told Clarion—in that oily way of his—that Miss Whitaker didn’t have anything to worry about.”
“She damned well doesn’t, and Spangler has nothing to say about it.”
“Right. Clarion almost tossed him out after that, but that’s when things got really interesting.”
Rob leaned forward. “More? Tell me he nailed the old fox.”
Eli ate quietly for a few moments before continuing. “I went up to Caulfield Hall early to go over the original will. I brought my copy of the thing, and we put them side by side. Robbie, the original looked like it had been drawn up in a tavern, not an office.”
Eli’s disgust riveted Rob’s attention. Eli shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It appears to be legal enough, and at first glance, the text matched the fair copy Spangler holds. Pen scratches marred it in some places, as if someone wanted to cross things out and changed his mind. The bottom half looked like someone spilled drink on it, and the earl’s signature wobbled and ran uphill.”
“Not his signature?” Rob’s thoughts raced.
“No, the signature and his seal were proper. Clarion confirmed it. ‘That’s father in his cups,’ he said. When I asked if we could assume Spangler got him drunk, Clarion laughed.”
“I gather that was the man’s normal state. It wouldn’t have taken effort on Spangler’s part.”
Eli nodded. “Clarion said more or less the same thing. The bigger issue lies in the details. Clarion didn’t like it—he hates that will—but I went through it line by line, and then I called him over to double-check.”
Rob frowned into his ale. “Willowbrook isn’t mine. It was added in illegally.”
“No, no. Nothing so big or obvious. All of the properties lined up. The smaller cash bequests are off.”
“Off?”
“In every case, the amounts in Spangler’s so-called fair copy were different. Eight pounds in the will might appear as eighty in the original. In one case, fifty-seven appeared as seventy-five. Any one of them could be put off as a copying error, except every cash bequest was higher in the original than the copy, no other errors appeared, and a good solicitor does not make copying errors.”
“The weasel skimmed money from the bequests.” Rob made an impatient gesture. “We already knew he’s taking from what Lucy sends the Willowbrook account. How does—”
“Skimming, yes, just as he does with Lucy’s accounting. I confronted him. He denied it. ‘Copying errors’ as I predicted.”
“But how does any of this get us closer to proving he caused the accident?”
“Hear me out. That’s when Clarion took over. The Caulfield family papers are kept in their strongroom. The will had its own box that had been sealed with a wax lozenge with the date it was put there. The date on the box and the date on the signature matched. The earl may have been well to go, but he was sober enough to have it stored securely. Are you with me so far?”
Rob frowned irritably, but he nodded.
“First, Clarion demanded to know how many copies he made. Spangler sputtered and wriggled but eventually admitted to two, including the one in
his office. Clarion twisted him up with questions—I suspect our young earl might be a terror in Lords—so that when he demanded Spangler tell him how he made the false copies before he brought the final to the earl to sign, Spangler admitted the original had the amounts the earl requested. He claimed he tried to save the estate money.”
Rob continued to listen with deep interest.
“When Clarion told the weasel that he would check the earldom accounts to make sure the full amount had been forwarded to the heirs, Spangler almost lost his last meal. Clarion outright accused him of fraud and threatened to hold him until the next assizes.”
“Fraud.” Rob lost all patience with all legal technicalities. “All Clarion managed to pin on him is fraud?”
“Think on it a bit. He can hold him. He can watch him. He now has a club to—”
“Is Spangler locked up?”
Eli sank back. “No. Spangler again claimed errors. When Clarion demanded to know which copy was the final one intended for signature, he had no answer. It doesn’t matter. The earl signed what he did. Spangler promised to make good on all the original numbers.”
Rob snorted. “Games,” he spat.
“Clarion asked me to make a fair copy of the original will, one Clarion himself will add his certification to. I’m to send a list of discrepancies to both the earl and Spangler, and Spangler is to report on his efforts to locate the recipients.”
Rob let loose a string of soldier’s curses that left Eli ashen. His brother’s wide eyes and panicked expression finally calmed Rob down. “It isn’t your fault. The sums of money are nothing—or close to nothing. Petty cash for the earl’s estate. Spangler almost killed your father, Eli, and he should pay for that. Clarion—”
“Clarion now has him under his thumb. He bought us time, Robbie. Time to prove Spangler is behind the sabotage.”
“In the meantime, Lucy is in danger.”
Eli peered at his brother shrewdly. “I thought you set a guard.”
“Miss Whitaker and all of Willowbrook,” Rob amended, not meeting his brother’s eyes, “are in danger as long as Spangler can spin his plots.”
“I’m not so sure the weasel is capable of plotting, Robbie. Thievery yes, plotting, no. He isn’t clever enough. We may have been giving him too much credit.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Rob removed his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He rarely needed the blasted things but, after two days of reviewing the books for The Willow and the Rose, deciphering handwriting on messages from Morgan who had found an estate agent he believed they could trust, and Eli’s steady stream of reports, his eyes had begun to swim.
Morgan had trotted off to London carrying Rob’s errands and a message to Rockford, but there had been no response from that quarter. Rob took up inn management. After a few days, even washing dishes behind the bar sounded preferable to keeping the ledgers.
I should hire Lucy to manage the books. The thought of her perched in the Willow’s office brought a smile to his lips. He wondered what she would make of the steady stream of “loans” to the people of Ashmead in need, loans that never seemed to be paid back, at least not in cash that could be accounted for. Just that morning, Johnston, the miller, delivered flour and refused payment. “Owe it to Mr. Benson, don’t I?” was all he said. Rob found no paper for any such agreement.
Still, Da managed to keep the inn above water. Just. With Eli busy elsewhere, he carried the weight of it alone. Emma and Ellis helped a bit, but Corbin’s livery didn’t run itself, and they had young ones to care for. The twinge of guilt for years away felt as uncomfortable as it did unfamiliar. He could change that. From London, he could at least check in regularly. He could hire someone to assist.
Rob slammed the ledger closed. As soon as the midday rush slowed and they finished servicing the mail, he expected a quiet moment. He wanted to confront the earl and demand that Clarion, as magistrate, act against Spangler but knew the earl had been correct in his insistence they had no real evidence that the doltish solicitor had weakened the bridge himself or even that he had hired Aaron Miller.
Eli remained in Nottingham, keeping watch on Spangler, reviewing the bank accounts with Clarion’s authority, and trying not to lose his own clients.
No, he would not vent his frustrations on Clarion. Better he should pop in at Willowbrook and check on Da and what was, after all, his estate. He should check on the men he had ordered to stand watch.
And Lucy. He should check on Lucy. The thought brightened him considerably.
An hour later, Rob watched the mail lumber its way along the coaching road and whistled a jaunty tune on his way toward the stables, only to see a massive traveling coach rumble into the innyard. His first hope that it was Morgan returned with reinforcements, was quickly dashed. The coach’s former elegance had been marred by age and wear, in spite of efforts to appear consequential—banners flew, and footmen in extravagant livery stood up behind. The crest on the side, trumpets and rampant bear proclaiming the importance of the earls of Clarion declared its owner.
Bile rose in Rob’s throat. With the earl at Caulfield Hall, the carriage could carry only one passenger. When the liveried servants leapt to the ground, opened the door, and let down steps, a woman stepped out, dressed in the height of fashion, and rouged and powdered in a vain attempt to disguise age. Just as he feared.
I should have left an hour ago, Rob thought, feeling ill, looking for a quick way out of sight, and finding none.
“You!” The woman eyed him from boots to hair as if he were some species of insect. She knew him, of course; she recognized him as soon as she stepped out. She raised her chin and fixed her glare on his face. “Secure a private parlor. Quickly, if you please. And see to our horses. One has come up lame.”
Rob clamped his jaw shut and glanced over at a wide-eyed Alfred. “Have Clara open a private room for the dowager countess before you see to the horses. Luckily the traffic has thinned.” He strode to the stables without looking back.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Lucy leaned over Mr. Benson, holding him up so he could sip his lemon water. She felt Rob’s presence as a prickle on the back of her neck even before he said, “Where is Emma?”
“Your sister comes mornings and leaves to see to her children and to prepare dinner after noon. She’ll be back before dark.” She craned her neck to see him loom over her and was rewarded with one of his fierce frowns.
“You should have sent for help. We’ll get another maid for you.”
“I tried to tell her so, Robbie. She has naught but Johnny Thatcher to see to my needs that are not fit for a lady’s help. She does the fetching and carrying, though, and I’m not her job.”
Lucy thought the patient’s voice sounded stronger today. She hoped it wasn’t wishful thinking. “Agnes and Cilla—”
“Stubborn woman,” the old man growled. A twinkle softened his words.
“We’ll send another woman to help.” Sir Robert spoke as if it were a settled matter and her objections of no account. He sat on the edge of the bed so close that Lucy could feel the heat from his body where she sat on the bedside chair. She started to rise and murmur her excuses to leave them alone.
“Stay.” He reached for her but pulled his hand back, as if belatedly aware how improper it would be to grab her arm. “I, ah…” He glanced down at his father. “I came to check on the state of our patient. You, at least, will give me an honest answer.”
A snort from the bed made Lucy smile. She reached over and pulled up the covers to tuck them around the gentleman’s chin. “You told Emma you could walk just fine and would be back at the Willow by the end of the week.” He seemed unimpressed with her attempt to treat him to her sternest expression. She turned to Sir Robert. “He’s bright as a new penny and eating well.”
“See. I’m fine.”
“But he’s weak as a kitten and can’t stand without two people to assist.”
Sir Robert frowned down at his father. �
�Do we need to tie him to the bed to keep him from mischief?”
“Not yet,” she said, eyes narrowing at Mr. Benson’s face. He had that look… “Do I need to call Johnny up to assist you?”
“Not with Robbie here.”
“Can you manage?” she asked Sir Robert.
“I spent twelve years in the field. I’ve seen men in any possible condition. I can manage.”
Lucy showed him where they stored the chamber pot and scooted out the door, happy to seek her sanctuary in the estate office. She no sooner sat down than Cilla appeared in one of her nervous fidgets. “Strangers coming!”
“Cilla, you’ve been told to knock. And how to greet visitors. You take their card, put them in the drawing room, and announce them quietly.”
“But, Miss Whitaker. ’Tisn’t none of the Bensons nor the earl. Not even that Spangler person.” The thought of Spangler sent a shiver through the girl. “There’s four of ’em, all on horseback. Do they mean to attack us?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Men on horseback could mean anything.
Cilla followed Lucy to the front to peer out the window and make moaning noises over Lucy’s shoulder. “They look fearsome.”
Lucy’s heart sped up. There had been too many strange imposters, not to mention that surveyor Sir Robert most certainly did not hire. These men—dressed for travel, with saddle bags behind, and carrying obvious weapons—looked like mercenaries. She took a deep breath. A closer study reassured her. Brynn Morgan dismounted at the base of the steps.
She kept her gaze at the window. “Cilla, go ask Sir Robert to join me in the drawing room. Tell him his friends have arrived.”
He wasted no time. She invited the group in and offered refreshments—politely refused—just as he entered. The men all scrambled to their feet and turned his way.
“Well met. Thank you for getting here quickly. We have an injured man upstairs, and a lady—” His hesitation gratified Lucy. The oaf is about to tell them I’m a helpless ninny. She glared back at him.
The Wayward Son Page 15
