“And as for Northington?” This last element was the most critical with Fifi. She wished no ill feelings between them because she loved the same man as her cousin. “Oh, Fee, I want you to know that I never flirted with him or continued our relationship because I knew you favored him."
"That's good for your sake and his." Fifi said that with an equanimity that eased Esme’s worries.
"Mama did tell me that you cared for him and she wondered if you would be angry at my betrothal to him. I hope you're not."
"No, Esme, I'm not. Truly."
"Did you care for him?" She caught her breath, fearful that was so.
"It turns out that I did not." She had a secretive smile. “You are not the only one who needs to correct the errors of her ways."
"Thank you for this. I hope now you and I can truly be friends."
"Friends and cousins. A good combination," Fifi said.
"Will you take tea?" Esme asked, smiling broadly in relief.
"I will."
Esme clasped her hands with delight. "With good pastries and cakes?"
"You know me well!"
Esme rose to ring the bell.
As she returned to her seat, Fifi said, “Will you tell me how you met Northington?"
"It's a short tale," Esme sat down, tickled to reveal such tidbits with Fee.
"How so?"
She had to admit her fascination with him to someone. Why not her cousin whose acceptance she’d always wanted? Sharing secrets seemed a good way to begin. “I loved him the instant I put eyes on him. Can you imagine?"
Fifi sighed. “I can, Esme. Indeed, I can."
“Is it that way for you with Charlton?"
Fifi nodded. "I will not deny I find him...enthralling."
"I understand. I do love Northington quite dearly," she confessed, whimsy in her words, but worry in her heart.
“A good way to begin a marriage."
"It is." Esme nodded, her gaze slipping around the room. "Provided both feel the same way."
Fifi tipped her head in question.
Esme rallied. "After tomorrow we will not need to speculate, will we?"
"Esme, if you are not certain of this, you can stop it."
"No. I can't. The settlements are signed. Papa has agreed. I am bound."
"Postpone it, then, until you are certain."
"Time will not cure the problem, Fee."
"Then don't do it."
"I must. The world will ridicule me if I run."
Run. A frightening word. A more frightful concept.
"Do you want to?" Fifi’s blue eyes widened in shock.
Esme could not stop her lips from trembling. "No, of course not. Wedding nerves, that's all. Silly me. We'll have our tea and speak of other things. Your appreciation of the earl of Charlton, for example. I see that goes along quite well.”
Chapter 4
He took the path to the village at a crisp pace. Driven to solve this problem and avoid an argument, Giles searched for Esme’s father among the crowd. When he spotted him, the viscount stood among revelers before the cozy-looking butter-colored stone inn. The man was laughing. As he usually was.
Giles inhaled. Buck up. He’s going to hate this discussion as much as I.
From the first round of negotiations, many provisions in the marriage settlement had commended him to Lord Courtland. First, Giles had demanded that there be two separate agreements. His father, of course, had to sign one, as conveyor of the ducal blessing to the marriage of his heir. Viscount Courtland would sign that as father of the bride. Then he himself would author a second agreement and ask Courtland to sign that also. Unlike many aristocrats who married, Giles possessed his own property and incomes. His father had no rights to convey them, because Giles had been adamant from the day he earned his first penny to separate any and all independent assets from that of the duchy of Brentford. Furthermore, Giles had kept secret the details of his independent wealth. It never was wise to tell his father how much he owned. Though Giles suspected his father had heard rumors of its size and sources.
Furthermore in these negotiations, Giles had seen to it that as a widow, Esme would have the best accommodations and funds. If Giles were to die before her and before his father the duke, then she was to own outright Giles’s small London townhouse in Queen’s Square. He’d purchased it three years ago, proud of himself for his foresight to keep ownership for himself. In addition, he gave her widow’s rights to administer the iron works he owned as well as control over the two cotton mills he owned in Manchester. Unusual, that. But she was quick-witted, plus good with math. Her father had praised her skills to Giles and revealed that his girl had regularly checked his steward’s books for correct numbers. Esme would guard Giles’s businesses as fiercely as she did her father’s.
The other elements Giles demanded his solicitor write into the marriage contract between the heir to a dukedom and the wealthy daughter of a viscount were not normal. They concerned regular transfer of property from one generation to another. They seemed ordinary, codified more in practice than written law. But Giles wanted it written and shown at least to their solicitors that he did not trust his father and would expect him to honor Esme her rights.
“I will brook no arguments about inclusion of these clauses,” he’d told his solicitor Samuel Chesters. “I count on you. If I could remain to attend the negotiations, I would. Duty in Paris calls me. I must leave and do not know when I’ll return. I caution you that my father’s solicitor Wendleton may try to delete them from it. He’ll cry lack of necessity. But leave these in.”
Chesters did not argue. He’d dealt with Wendleton on other matters and knew he was a rabid old fox.
What Giles wanted in the contracts were descriptions of income and homes. Properties in tail that the duke owned could be appropriated only by him. Certain rights and privileges came with those properties through generations. So should Giles die before Esme—and his father was gone to the devil before them both—she was to receive the Dower House on Northington Grange in York as her country residence. The townhouse in Mayfair would be hers, too, if any male issue of hers and Giles’s was not yet of age. To fund the maintenance of those houses, she would receive ten thousand per year from the Brentford estate income. Not an unusual sum and affordable, given his father’s mishandling of estate revenues. Giles insisted on them being recorded there.
The settlements that Viscount Courtland had placed on his daughter had been generous. Giles had seen straight away the viscount loved his girl to distraction and would endow her with as many worldly goods as he could. So her dowry or portion was outrageously handsome. Twenty-five thousand would be deposited in the family’s bank account the day after they signed the church registry as man and wife. Annually afterward, one thousand pounds was her jointure to be deposited to her name in Courtland’s bank and used as her own money. In addition, at Courtland’s death, his own holdings in his trading company would be sold to his junior partners. Esme would inherit her father’s portion of that sale and it would be upwards of two or three hundred thousand pounds. That latter amount Courtland had estimated. And though the viscount had not publicly spoken about his wealth and his daughter’s inheritance, many in town surmised the probability. That money Giles’s father—the old sod—would never be able to touch. Even if Giles died before him. The enormous inheritance rubbed the duke raw with envy.
Yet he had found another way to attack his son.
Giles held his title of Marquess of Northington as a courtesy and by tradition, no land had ever been attached to it. Thus from it, he had no income and no houses, farms or tenants. Eight years ago, his father had cut by half his income from the ducal purse. The amount was less than two thousand per year, a paltry sum. Yet the duke claimed he needed it all to pay his debts. That was not news. But it was a heinous blow to Giles’s youthful pride.
’Twas then Giles decided to earn his own money. He used his talents at diplomacy to take a position in the Foreign Office. Few
knew and that secrecy aided him in his delicate work. He took rooms in the City, lived frugally and saved enough to buy major shares in the iron foundry and later to purchase rights to two small mills in Manchester.
He had a few other sources of income and he had built their value with hard work and wise choices. He owned three sizable freehold properties through his mother’s families. For the tenants on all, he had eased rents and where needed, he’d purchased carts, ploughs and horses. Everyone had profited. And when his father learned of any of it, he had put his hand out for a share.
The irony of it was, to keep the duke from his door and to some extent to keep his own name spotless, Giles had succumbed to demands and given his father small sums. The duke now thought he could expect it. With the advent of Giles’s marriage, the wealth of his bride a well-known fact, the man demanded more.
His requirements were outrageous. If Giles agreed to them, he had no doubt that his father would never cease his demands. Bankruptcy, ever a threat under his father’s rule, would stalk his own door. He could not permit that to happen. Not after all his own hard work and now, not with Esme in his life.
“My lord Northington!”
Courtland hailed him from afar, striding toward him with a grin and outstretched hands. This short stocky fellow was the epitome of what every father should be. Gregarious, prudent, affectionate, even generous with money. Esme Caroline Harvey came to Giles as one of the wealthiest brides in the United Kingdom. In fact, Giles predicted that the Prince Regent—should he learn the amount—would soon invite himself into Giles’s parlor for tea and a loan.
“Welcome! Welcome!” Courtland was ebullient. “You are in time to witness the May Pole dance.”
“Thank you, sir.” He allowed the man his pats on the back and shook his hand. The villagers let up a shout at some hilarity in the lanes. Dancing to drums and pipes was the order of the day. “I’m pleased to have arrived in time for it. And I do offer my apologies for not appearing sooner.”
Courtland leaned closer, the better to hear him in the din. “None are required, sir. We know you have much business to conduct.”
Statements like that always made him clutch. What did people really know? If indeed they knew his business with the Foreign Office and the Prime Minister, then it would be no secret at all. And much would be lost.
Giles inhaled and shuffled that idea off to the far reaches of logic.
“Do come with me, sir. I’ve had my man save us a spot before the May Pole dance. Funny stuff. Last year a few of our ladies got tangled in the ribbons. Not happy, they weren’t. Hope for none of that this year, eh?”
“Yes, good.”
“You saw our Esme?”
“I did. As I arrived.”
“Good, good.” Courtland led him past a few mummers whose rainbow-hued hose had fallen to their ankles. The men stumbled about to cries of delight from the children. “Lady Courtland worried that you’d find it amiss that she came here and did not wait for you.”
“That is my fault, sir. I should have written once more to say that I’d arrive this morning. I owe your wife an apology for such lateness.”
“Whatever it was, I’m sure it was necessary.”
“It was. Very.” They took up a spot where fewer people stood in earshot. “I must speak with you, sir. I am disturbed at the final outcome of the settlements. I did not know of my father’s reluctance to sign.”
“I don’t like it.” Courtland’s posture grew stiff. “Not at all. I have given notice to my solicitor that he has failed me miserably.”
Giles struggled to hide his fury at his father. “Sir, your man is not to fault here. Spare him. It is not an excuse but I was away. Called to Paris.”
Courtland stared at him. “I had word of that. I do not criticize you for doing your duty to us all.”
“Thank you. But had I been in London I would have had my finger on the issues. I do now. I met with my father last night.”
“He will not sign,” the Viscount concluded. He was known as a shrewd businessman and while Giles had not seen this demeanor in him heretofore, he recognized full flush the resolve that boded ill for this conversation and for his marriage. Courtland arched a golden brown brow, suspicious. “And any alternatives?”
“I gave him an ultimatum.”
“Did it work?”
“I will know by this evening.” Chesters’ promised to ride until his horse frothed to get him word in time to go to the altar. He trusted his man to get here.
Courtland scowled. “And if your father does not agree and sign the damn thing, do you expect me to give away my daughter without any assurances for her future? To see her deprived of her due and shamed if she is widowed, left with babies? I say, sir, that is not what I envisioned for my sweet girl.”
“It is not what I want either.”
Courtland clasped his hands together. “Esme has a strong will.”
If he implied that she could live well on few funds, Giles did not want his father to connive his way into the monies that were hers by rights. Strong willed or not, Esme might not be able to fight the manipulations of his father and the wily devils in the English courts. “Strong or not, she should not have to fight. And I do not want her to have to fight for what is her inheritance.”
Courtland nodded. “Good of you. But without signed contracts, it is no assurance. You realize my other alternative is to forbid the marriage?”
“I do,” he said with terror rending his heart in two.
“But Esme will not recover.”
Nor will I. “I do love her, Lord Courtland.”
That melted the ice in the man. By a little. “As do I, my boy.”
His own father had never addressed him with such endearment.
And even though Courtland apologized for the informality, he was adamant. “I must know she will live not only in love but also in the style to which I have worked all my life to ensure is hers. She cares not for your titles. And neither do I. Your lands? Well, those that are yours prosper. Those that your father administers are judged to need a prudent hand. I will not leave her unprotected to the ill winds of fortune if she were to lose you, sir.”
“I do what I can to change my father’s approval of the settlement.”
“He must accept,” Courtland declared, his brown eyes harsh with despair. “Or I am left to advise my girl to fail to appear at the altar.”
His words hit Giles like a hammer blow. All his life he had suffered outrage, loss and embarrassment because of his father. Giles had lived his life quietly building his own reputation. He was proud of what he’d accomplished. But after all that, to lose the woman he loved because of his father’s perfidy would gut him. “I understand.”
Courtland stared at him. “Yet, sir, few marriages are meant in heaven. This is one.”
“I agree.”
“Would that we could write that in the contracts, Northington.”
“Before you advise Esme, you will wait for my father’s response to my ultimatum?”
Courtland considered him for a very long time, his brown eyes wet with love for his daughter. “For her, I will. Excuse me now, please, my lord. I must see to my wife.”
With a trepidation he’d not experienced in years, Giles watched him go. Helplessness was a condition he’d felt as a child at the irrational behavior of his father. The emotion was not welcome and Giles had worked his entire life to eradicate it. But now…
If Brentford does not accept my offer, what am I to do?
He wanted Esme with a desire he’d never felt for any other woman. If he could not take her as his wife with all honors due her, then he would not wed her and give her less.
Even at that, the ton would declare that their break was her fault. That she had dishonored herself with some other man. That for it, he had repudiated her.
He could not allow her to pay such a price for his father’s sins.
Frustrated, Giles folded his arms and let the revelers dance around him.
What was all his money worth if he could not buy his own happiness? What had he worked for? What had he saved for?
To provide a good living for himself, despite his father’s depravity, he’d worked diligently. Long before he’d met Miss Esme Harvey, Giles had the satisfaction of accumulating income that his sire could never touch. He had given some to him, largely to keep him away. But to give him more?
No! Not when Giles had Esme within reach. Not when he wanted to shower her with chocolate to kiss from her lips and translucent silk that he could slide from her delicious body.
And why should he give in to his father?
The man had projected no noble persona in any year of his life. While he gambled, drank and ignored his duties as governor of his domains, he had also ignored his wife. He’d cheated Giles’s mother of honor by dallying in the most expensive and notorious whore houses in London. Yet at the same time, he raked and scraped on the money spent in the house. So negligent was he, Giles had once overheard a man say that Brentford was so muddle-headed he could be on his deathbed and would not spend a penny to buy his own coffin, but throw it to his latest vice.
Would that he were to crawl to his deathbed tonight and I wouldn’t have a problem come the morrow, now would I?
Silently, he cursed.
But the taste of that was sour to him. What irony this tale was. He’d spent years working with French emigres in England and lately in France too since many aristocrats had returned to claim their lands and titles under the restored Bourbons. His mission with all of them had been to coddle and nurture them, gentle them to the concept that revanche was pointless. That punishing those who had led their families to Madame Guillotine and pillaged their homes and land was a fruitless exercise in pride. He could not teach forgiveness if he had none himself.
Ha. His problem was more than that the sins against him and his honor continued. They were not buried in some unmarked grave but done to him now in his most deserving hour.
How was he to live with such a sire who would do that to his only son?
Miss Harvey's Horribly Lovable Fiancé: Four Weddings and a Frolic Page 4
