Sherbourne’s smile was cool. “You’d travel out to Wales to see the mine?”
Brantford would travel out to Wales to do some shooting, pay a call on His Grace of Haverford, and avoid several tedious weeks of card parties while Veronica bought out the milliners’ shops.
“Seems prudent to have a look at where my money’s going,” Brantford said. “This is your first mining venture, while I’ve seen many. I understand Haverford has tried to hamper the operation with quaint notions of lavish housing and exorbitant wages for the workers. We’ll soon enlighten His Grace about how business is done.”
Sherbourne set a silver standish on Brantford’s side of the desk. “We will do no such thing, unless you sign those contracts now. I leave for Wales immediately after my wedding, and work on the housing at the mine started last month. We’ll sink the main shaft before St. Andrew’s Day.”
Brantford chose a quill from the three in the standish. He wasn’t about to give himself a headache reading two more pages of heretofores and however-exceptings. A difference of opinion on a business matter was settled amicably or not at all. Only fools or those already afflicted with scandal resorted to the courts.
“A moment,” Sherbourne said as Brantford dipped the pen. “We need witnesses.”
Good God. “As you please, Sherbourne, but I draw the line at allowing you to count my teeth.”
A butler and clerk appended their signatures as witnesses, then departed without a word.
“Thus do we become partners,” Brantford said, extending a hand. “Shall I take my copies with me?”
Sherbourne shook hands—briefly. “Your copies will be delivered when I have a bank draft from you. When we both have signed copies, and only then, I’ll deposit your bank draft, as described on the last page of the agreement. Until the consideration has been exchanged, we have no enforceable bargain under the law.”
“You do like to belabor the details, don’t you?” Sherbourne would be a terror with subcontractors and subordinates. Papa-in-law might have a much fatter purse if he’d found somebody with Sherbourne’s blunt sensibilities to manage his affairs.
“Applicable law is never a detail.” Sherbourne held the door. “I look forward to showing you the works soon. When can I expect your bank draft?”
“My business partner is a barbarian,” Brantford marveled, as his host escorted him down the main staircase. “One doesn’t mention money directly, Sherbourne. You’ll have the mine producing before Christmas if you’re always so fixed on your objectives.”
“We’re not partners yet.” Sherbourne passed Brantford his hat and walking stick.
But they soon would be, and Brantford had a good feeling about that. Sherbourne wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, to ask the rude questions upon which the whole transaction hinged. Mining ventures weren’t for the faint of heart—Brantford avoided touring his more than once a year, if he could help it, and he never went below the surface—but they could be wonderfully profitable.
“I’ll have my man bring around the funds tomorrow,” Brantford said.
He waited a moment for Sherbourne to pontificate about the hazards of entrusting a man of business with an actual bank draft, but Mr. Sherbourne only held the door open, like a footman, or one of the large fellows hired to eject unruly persons from taverns.
“Best wishes on your upcoming nuptials, Sherbourne, and safe journey to Wales. May your union be both happy and fruitful.”
Brantford trotted down the steps, entirely in charity with life. He was paying a call on a comely mistress, he’d just secured a significant interest in a new mine, and his business partner had a Midas touch.
Brantford did wish his own union could be fruitful though, not that he’d given up hope. As for the happy part, who needed a happy marriage when life was otherwise humming along to such a cheerful tune?
* * *
Charlotte had tried counting turnpikes, posting inns, cows, even trees. She’d read, she’d played solitary card games, she’d penned a trio of letters from a nonexistent deceased husband—Mr. Wesley Cowper this time—until the rocking of the coach gave her a headache.
The journey to Wales was taking forever.
Sherbourne left her to the joys of his traveling coach, a monstrosity of a vehicle pulled by teams of gigantic horses. The size of the conveyance meant speed was sacrificed to comfort, and the state of the king’s highway ensured comfort was a lost cause.
Charlotte’s constant companion was worry, about the wedding night, about marriage to a man she didn’t know well, about Maggie’s contention that Sherbourne could become financially overextended.
Charlotte worried about the unknown unfortunates in London whom she might have helped, and she resolved to continue offering aid wherever it was needed in Wales. Somehow, she’d send out her bank notes to the Mrs. Wesleys, and find a way to broach the matter with Sherbourne when the time was right.
Though the time might not be right for years.
The route was somewhat familiar, because Charlotte had visited Wales frequently as a child, and because she’d attended a house party at Haverford Castle only a few months earlier. A cold, sleety rain began to fall as they prepared to leave the final inn before reaching their destination.
That Charlotte should bring bad weather with her to her new home was appropriate, for her mood was less than sunny.
The coach door opened without warning.
“Might I join you?” Sherbourne stood outside, waiting for Charlotte’s permission to enter his own conveyance.
“You’ll catch your death loitering in a downpour. Get in here this instant.”
He climbed in, rocking the vehicle and bringing with him the scents of wet wool, horse, and leather.
“Sit with me,” Charlotte said, when he hesitated to choose a bench. “We’ll share a lap robe.”
They were married. They could share everything, in theory. At the inns, they’d taken meals together in private dining rooms, then retired to separate quarters. Sherbourne had been a conscientious escort, but he’d offered little conversation and less companionship.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
Charlotte was swathed in a velvet-lined cloak, and the inn had supplied hot bricks for the coach’s floor, and yet, the damp had crept into her bones.
“A trifle chilly,” she said. “A result of inactivity and fatigue no doubt. Strange beds, however commodious, don’t offer the best sleep.”
Sherbourne withdrew a wool blanket from under the opposite bench and spread it over their knees. Without warning his arm came around Charlotte’s shoulders.
“I could sleep for a week,” he groused. “Every time I make the journey to London, I vow it will be my last.”
“You ride for miles without tiring.” Hour after hour, he had ridden before the coach, changing horses when the coachman swapped teams.
“At twenty, I rode for miles without tiring. Now I merely want to be home. I’ve sent word ahead to your sister, though if she’s on hand to welcome us, that means Haverford will be about as well.”
He tugged at Charlotte’s shoulder, urging her against his side. She complied, though such proximity to an adult male was novel.
Also warm. “You invited Elizabeth and her duke to your home?”
Sherbourne stuffed his riding gloves into a pocket of his greatcoat and tucked the blanket more closely around Charlotte’s legs.
“To our home. Our wedding was small, and any fuss your family can make to excuse their absence at the ceremony ought to be encouraged.”
Charlotte refused to lament the nature of her wedding. No St. George’s at Hanover Square for her, no assembling all of the cousins or reading of the banns. She’d spoken her vows in the Moreland formal parlor, with Aunt, Uncle, Westhaven and his countess, and Maggie and her earl in attendance.
Everybody else was off domesticating or gestating in the country, and Mama and Papa had been visiting family in Scotland.
“Mama sent an express,” Charl
otte said. “She’ll visit Elizabeth and me at Christmas.”
“I look forward to meeting her and your father.”
No, Sherbourne clearly did not, and Charlotte had her doubts that Mama would have visited at all, but for Elizabeth duchessing nearby in nothing less than a genuine crenelated castle.
“Mama will lecture your ear off in Welsh,” Charlotte said. “I love to hear her speak in her native tongue, love the music of her scolds. Papa barely gets along in Welsh, but he insisted his offspring be proficient.”
“My servants all speak English and Welsh both. You may address them as you please.”
Our servants. Sherbourne was warm and solid, and a good deal more pleasant to lean against than the coach squabs. But what to talk about? What to talk about for the next half century?
“Would you like to have friends pay us a visit, Charlotte?”
“No, thank you. I’m sure we’ll have a steady parade of family over the years. They’ll want to look in on us, and Elizabeth is right next door. Mama loves her homeland, and traveling here by sea isn’t that difficult for those closer to the coast.”
The coach hit a spectacular pothole, tossing Charlotte nearly into her husband’s lap.
“I assure you, Sherbourne Hall is appointed as elegantly as any Mayfair mansion,” he said. “You needn’t worry that your friends will pity you for your domicile.”
Charlotte unlooped his arm from her shoulders. “Your home was once a ducal dower house, from what I understand. Of course it will be commodious.” In his way, Sherbourne was trying. Charlotte’s conscience compelled her to extend an olive branch. “The fact is, I can think of nobody to invite.”
The dratted coach chose then to sway around a curve, all but shoving Charlotte against her husband.
“Not a single soul?” Sherbourne asked. “No friends from finishing school, ladies who made their come out with you, former governesses, that sort of thing?”
Charlotte had wondered similarly about her husband: Who were his friends? “Most of the women I made my come out with have long since married and started families. Finishing school was years ago, and I have a wealth of sisters and cousins. One young lady who was like a sister to me has gone to her reward.”
Saying the words hurt. Charlotte thought often of Fern Porter, but she almost never spoke of her.
“A good friend?” Sherbourne asked.
Outside the rain pounded down, and the countryside went by in a dreary brown blur. Autumn was more advanced here, not a benevolent easing of summer’s heat, but a harbinger of winter’s dark and cold.
“She was a best friend,” Charlotte said softly. “Fern and I were inseparable from the first day we met at the age of eleven. We shared a room at school, we shared hopes and fears, and got into such mischief. When we had to separate over holidays, we’d write to each other daily. I had hoped she’d marry one of my cousins, though she was a mere minister’s daughter.”
Sherbourne’s arm had found its way around Charlotte’s shoulders again. Maybe husbands and wives traveled like this, all snuggled up and informal despite the potholes.
“Fern became enamored of a handsome bounder after we finished school,” Charlotte went on. “She couldn’t afford London seasons, but her family scraped together some means, and we sewed her dresses ourselves. When she came to town, she went everywhere with me. Then I realized she’d stopped joining me on many of our outings.”
“She was smitten?”
Sherbourne’s tone was indulgent, the mature male making a tolerant allowance for the follies of young women. Charlotte could leave him to his ignorance, but Fern’s memory deserved honesty.
“She was smitten, then she was ruined, then she was dead.”
Sherbourne took Charlotte’s hand. “I’m sorry. I hope she did not take her own life.”
This was the hardest part, the part that still had the power to make Charlotte’s throat ache. “She had a child, a little boy. She wrote to me, said she was happy despite all because she loved that child more than life. She did not recover from her lying in. The child’s father—a lord’s son—never acknowledged her letters, never so much as apologized for her ruin.”
Charlotte braced herself for a platitude, which she would somehow manage to endure without tossing Sherbourne from the coach.
These things happen.
A cautionary tale.
Where was the girl’s family when she was going so badly astray?
Such a pity.
And the one she dreaded most: You were her friend. Why couldn’t you talk sense into her?
Why did nobody ever talk sense into the man who caused such tragedies? Why wasn’t he at least deprived of the ability to wreck another young woman’s life and leave another child to be raised in poverty and disgrace?
“Who was the father?” Sherbourne asked.
“I don’t know. I have a likeness of him that Fern sent me to save for the child lest her family destroy it, but I have no idea of his name. He frequented Mayfair ballrooms, so he had means as well as family connections. He also had a fiancée with fat settlements, though he didn’t bother to tell Fern that until it was too late. If I ever find out who he is, I won’t answer for the consequences.”
Sherbourne propped a boot on the opposite bench. “If you do find out, I might be able to ruin him. I’m part owner of a bank that holds many mortgages for the Mayfair set, and I have some influence in Parliament. If his family is titled, so much the better. We can make an example of him and ensure all and sundry know why his debts are being called in.”
Charlotte ought to scold her husband for putting his boot on the opposite bench, but she was too stunned by his response.
“You would take the part of my late friend against a lord’s son?”
Sherbourne kissed her knuckles. “With pleasure. What foolish young people get up to when chaperones are lax is not my business, but there’s a child involved. If it were your child, the father would have been held responsible, and probably forced to marry you, regardless of a fiancée or breach of promise suit. The mother was relatively poor, and thus the bounder suffered no consequences. He probably knew that as he was charming his way under her skirts.”
“Thank you,” Charlotte said, subsiding against him.
Sherbourne’s motivations were his own—he was apparently critical of a class system based on arbitrary ancestry rather than merit—but he shared Charlotte’s sense of outrage. If, some fine day, she found out who had destroyed Fern’s good name, Sherbourne would make a thorough job of that man’s downfall.
A lovely wedding present, did Sherbourne but know it. The loveliest.
Chapter Seven
“Leave the ladies alone,” Haverford said. “They have much to discuss, and you owe me a drink.”
His Grace had been Sherbourne’s neighbor since birth. Their parents and grandparents had been at outs, and thus he and Haverford had been raised to nod curtly at each other in the churchyard—and then only if the vicar was watching.
“Did I, or did I not recently enter into the state of holy matrimony?” Sherbourne countered. “As such, does it not fall to you to offer me a drink, Your Grace?”
Sherbourne felt entitled to grouse, for Haverford and his duchess had deprived the new bride of the honor of being carried over the threshold by her husband. As soon as the horses had halted, the duchess had flown down the steps of Sherbourne Hall and enveloped Sherbourne in a hug, while Haverford had stood smirking on the terrace. Then Her Grace had swept Charlotte into an equally indecorous embrace and bustled her into the house.
The senior staff had been lined up in the foyer, ready to greet their new lady, and Sherbourne had been relegated to making introductions rather than grand gestures.
“I’ll overlook your poor hospitality,” Haverford said, pouring two glasses of brandy, “because you are road weary and a traveling coach is nowhere to spend a honeymoon. What were you thinking, whisking the lady from town like that?” He passed Sherbourne a glass, then ra
ised his own. “To wedded bliss.”
Sherbourne drank to that. “I was thinking to escape London before I went mad.”
“You wanted to see how the mine is progressing.” An accusation, from Haverford, who was skeptical of all industries not mentioned approvingly in the Old Testament.
Sherbourne had wanted to get Charlotte home before autumn turned to winter. “The lady’s family specifically asked that we wed by special license. If they couldn’t be bothered to gather for the nuptials, then why linger in town?”
Haverford tossed another square of peat onto the fire in the library’s hearth. “Did you perhaps anticipate the vows? I’m told that’s something of a Windham tradition.”
“That is none of Your Grace’s bloody business, but no, we did not anticipate our vows. I’ll thank you to stop wasting my peat.”
“Said the man who’s mad to dig a coal mine, and we’re family now.” Haverford was smirking again. “Your business is my business.”
Haverford used the cast iron poker to fuss with the fire, and Sherbourne wrestled an urge to toss the duke into the corridor. Haverford was a healthy specimen, dark-haired, tall, and fit, but Sherbourne was an expert on the proper use of the element of surprise.
“I come home,” Sherbourne said, “my new bride at my side, and then she’s not at my side. She’s disappeared to do God knows what with a sister she’s had nearly three decades to gossip and conspire with. They saw each other at your own wedding, mere weeks ago, and when I asked Her Grace to oversee a bit of tidying up here at Sherbourne Hall, I did not expect her to kidnap my bride on my very doorstep.”
Haverford put down the poker and lounged against the mantel as if he owned the house, the grounds, its fixtures, outbuildings, and livestock. “Been going short of sleep have you? Tending conscientiously to your marital duties?”
“I have escorted my lady wife more than one hundred fifty miles along the king’s highway in less than favorable weather. You will please collect your wife and don’t allow her back on this property for a week. Perpetual absence on your part would be a singularly insightful wedding gift.”
A Rogue of Her Own Page 9
