Gen held the pages in the air. “This is easily refutable. We have submitted Lord Severn’s passport records, showing that even though he was away at the boarding school that his grandfather and guardian chose for him to attend, he returned to the UK often and for months at a time. Lord Severn did not reside with Christopher and their uncle during these visits but with his grandfather or, after his grandfather’s death, at Spencer House to care for the estate. Even during Lord Severn’s studies as a teenager, he diligently cared for Spencer House. He knows its history down to the pillars and foundation. He can expound upon the art collection at length, as he did when he gave guided tours when he was home for the summers when the National Trust opened the manor house to the public. Christopher has never shown interest in the legacy of the Earldom of Severn nor in the rich history of Spencer House.”
“My client has a deep and abiding interest in the earldom!” Orval interrupted her.
“All right.” Gen smiled at the other attorney. “Let’s have a quiz.”
Orval Ainsley leapt to his feet. “You can’t mean—”
“I assure you, I mean that we should have a quiz. I’ll ask your client and mine questions about Spencer House and the history of the earldom. Let’s see who knows their history.”
Orval turned pink under his ginger walrus mustache. “This is preposterous! No court would allow—”
“This is not a court,” Gen reminded him. “This is a committee meeting in the House of Lords, and as such, it is more concerned with what is right rather than what is legal. Quite honestly, if we were merely debating legal points, the legal and settled will of our clients’ parents was settled decades ago. You really shouldn’t have a leg to stand on. The only reason that this case has gotten this far is the horrid gossip and slander that your client has often repeated and probably started.”
At the head table, Baroness Honeycutt was watching the two of them argue with an amused smile.
Lady Josceline Bazalgette had raised one eyebrow so far that it nearly met her blond hair.
Gen argued, “You’ve said that my client is uninterested in the earldom for anything but spending its wealth. Let’s see who’s more interested in the earldom and Spencer House.”
“But my client, a solid middle-class citizen, did not have the advantage of being a guide at Spencer House during the summer holidays!” Orval protested.
“Christopher could have been a docent at Spencer House if he had wanted to. He lived less than ten miles away. His uncle and guardian had been grooming him to wrest the earldom away from his older brother most of his life, as his uncle was unable to do from his older brother, our clients’ father.” Gen dropped her voice into her throat and said with her best Texas accent, “Come on, Mr. Ainsley. Let’s have ourselves a quiz show.”
“You’ll ask questions you know your client can answer,” Ainsley accused her.
“Fine,” Gen said. “You ask them the first question.”
“My Lady,” Ainsley appealed to Baroness Honeycutt. “M’learned friend is making a mockery of the court with these circus antics.”
Baroness Honeycutt had been watching both of them, her lips pursed to suppress a smile. “As defense counsel has stated, this is not a court. I wish I had the leeway to demand a quiz show when I am on the bench. Mr. Ainsley, I believe that Ms. Ward—I mean, Countess Severn—has allowed you the first question. Proceed.”
Orval threw his hands in the air, exasperated. “I will appeal your decision.”
Lady Josceline Bazalgette spoke up, “There is no court to appeal to, Mr. Ainsley. Ask a question or concede the point that Lord Severn has superior knowledge of the earldom because he does indeed take a personal interest in its history.”
“As you wish.” Orval turned to Christopher, who was sitting at the table, his washed-out gray eyes wide. The attorney asked Christoper, “What color is Spencer House?”
Gen rolled her eyes at the softball question.
Christopher’s shoulders slumped, visibly relieved. “It’s gray.”
Gen turned to Arthur. “Lord Severn, what year—”
“It’s not gray,” Arthur said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. His biceps and shoulders strained the fabric of his suit jacket. “Spencer House is red.”
A gasp whooshed around the committee room, a horrified breath that echoed from the barristers in the gallery behind Gen and through the committee.
Everyone must have seen that BBC episode about Spencer House. The huge gray house even loomed in the introduction to other episodes about other estates.
Orval Ainsley waved his arms. “Put up the picture of Spencer House again! Show everyone what color it is!”
On the screen over on the side of the room, the picture of the imposing, wintry manor house reflected gray light on everyone’s face.
Orval rounded on Arthur. “What color is Spencer House, Lord Severn?”
“It’s red,” Arthur told him.
“What color is the house in the picture, Lord Severn?”
Arthur glanced at the screen. “Red.”
Orval Ainsley’s face sure flushed pink. “It is not red, Lord Severn. Are you drunk right now? Are you inebriated before this illustrious committee?”
Baroness Honeycutt and Lady Josceline Bazalgette looked at each other, their eyes wary.
Gen stepped in. “That’s quite enough, Mr. Ainsley. You can’t treat people like that. It’s not British. Lord Severn, can you explain why you think Spencer House is red?”
Arthur looked up at her, his silvery eyes amused. “The gray veneer is an optical illusion. Spencer House was built of Tudor red brick by Lord Charles Spencer during the Tudor dynasty. It is a red house.”
“But it looks gray,” she said, lobbing him an easy base hit.
Arthur knocked it out of the proverbial park. “In the 1780s, a preacher named Capability Brown told the royal court that a manor house built of red brick ‘would set the whole valley around it into a fever,’ so my ancestors spent fifty thousand pounds—fifty thousand 1780s’ pounds, not current valuation, which would be millions of pounds today—to cover the outside of the house with one hundred six thousand thin, gray ceramic tiles called ‘mathematical tiles,’ which are overlapped like shingles. The mathematical tiles are affixed to the house with iron nails, which damaged the red brick underneath. The iron nails rust through, and many tiles fall off every year. Repairing the veneer is a major expense, often more than thirty thousand pounds per year, and is usually carried out in April before the house is opened to the public for the summer, as per the National Trust.”
“So it’s a red house,” Gen clarified.
“Spencer House is built of red brick, and it is red,” Arthur assured her.
“Thank you, Lord Severn.” She turned to Orval Ainsley. “So do I get to ask the next question, or do you concede the point?”
Orval stared at his client.
Christopher shook his head slowly, unwilling to continue the quiz show.
Orval turned to her. “We concede that Lord Severn has some knowledge of Spencer House.”
“Ah, ah, ah.” Gen wagged her finger at him. “Superior knowledge of the history of the earldom and Spencer House, or I’ll ask about the history of the art collection.”
Christoper was wagging his head no at his barrister, his pale eyes startled and huge.
Orval pled to Baroness Honeycutt and the committee, “My lady, such a quiz show makes a mockery of—”
Lady Josceline Bazalgette spoke up, “I took a first in art history at Oxford. I’ll keep score.”
Orval snarled at Gen and Arthur, “Conceded.”
Gen rolled right on. “Splendid. With that settled, let’s move on to the accusation that my client is,” she consulted her page for the exact quote and checked that Ruckus was indeed still sitting motionless on the other side of the desk, “as the claimant stated, ‘a spendthrift ne’er-do-well decimating the estate on cocaine, wine, women, debauchery, and depravi
ty.’ Is that your quote, Mr. Christopher Finch-Hatten?”
Hey, they weren’t in a real courtroom. Gen wondered just what she could really get away with.
Christopher fidgeted in his seat.
“I remind you that you are under the same oath as in a courtroom,” she said.
Christopher mumbled, “I might have said something like that.”
“Exactly like that in an interview for the Doctors Without Borders website that was published on July fifteenth of last year. Correct, Mr. Finch-Hatten?”
Christopher nodded, his medium brown hair flapping.
“Furthermore, upon reading that article, two-thirds of it is devoted to impugning your brother rather than describing your own work, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t count the words,” he mumbled.
“I did. It’s a tad over two-thirds of the article that you spent ranting about your brother, but I rounded for ease of discussion. You’ve been obsessed with this unfair inheritance your whole life, haven’t you? Ever since you found out that you, like your uncle, were a ‘spare’ born in case something happened to Arthur.”
Orval leapt to his feet again. “I object.”
Christopher said, “Arthur has wasted the earldom’s resources and wealth his whole life, from that overpriced boarding school in Switzerland—”
“That your grandfather, the previous Lord Severn, preferred for his heir’s education,” Gen interjected.
“—to his ridiculous cars and that private jet and the way he hemorrhages money at a different charity event every day of the week. He’s destroying it!”
“To this end,” Gen said to the committee, “I submit the financial records for Spencer House and the earldom. We have a late addendum to these. To begin the story, when I first reviewed these records, I could not reconcile the books.”
“He was embezzling, wasn’t he?” Orval shouted.
Gen frowned at the other lawyer. “You can’t embezzle from your own funds. They are Lord Severn’s to do with as he pleases.”
“No, the National Trust funds! Those are entirely for the maintenance of Spencer House,” Orval said.
Gen waved her hand at him, indicating he was being silly. “Oh, heavens, no. The National Trust funds are barely sufficient for the maintenance of the mathematical tiles and the roof. All that money has been accounted for and has been spent, ethically, on upkeep for the manor house. No, I mean that even with the National Trust’s funds, Spencer House is a gaping maw that swallows money like a black hole swallowing a sun.”
Christopher looked up at Gen, startled.
Arthur was watching her, his arms crossed.
“Every time a throw pillow has a rip in it, it must be restored, not merely mended. I mean, the house is over six hundred years old, it was built in—” Gen motioned at Arthur for the answer.
Arthur said, “The oldest wing was first occupied in 1505.”
She continued, “Can you imagine the upkeep? Six hundred-year-old plaster. A hundred and six thousand mathematical tiles that are all over two hundred years old. When a light switch needs replacing, a historian and a curator have to oversee the electrician. It’s a money pit.”
Christopher visibly broke out in a sweat.
“You have to pour money into it from other sources, and speaking of other sources, there were two sources of income that were not from the estate that I could not account for during discovery. One of the sources involved large transfers of money—”
“That was from Arthur Finch-Hatten’s treasonous activities, wasn’t it?” Orval shouted. “Those dictators and terrorists paid him to do things for them. Maybe for information. Maybe murder.”
“Oh, we’re going to have to discuss that slander of yours, Mr. Ainsley, but we’ll discuss it in court. I’m just glad we have transcription here. First, there were no treasonous activities, but we will come to that in a moment. This money was being transferred from Lord Severn’s private holdings, a sole and separate legacy left to him by his mother. Mr. Christopher Finch-Hatten was bequeathed the same amount when the legal wills were settled decades ago,” she emphasized that hard, “but Christopher has frittered his legacy away on various luxury goods that he bought to show off to his friends because he’s the son of an earl. Though Mr. Christopher Finch-Hatten spent all of his inheritance from his mother, Lord Severn invested his and has been using the proceeds to support the earldom of Severn and for incidentals. The earldom does not produce enough revenue to support itself.”
Christopher rose out of his chair slightly. “Of course, it does. There are lands, rents, tenants, and invested capital. The earldom supports itself unless Arthur has foolishly spent too much of the principal well.”
Gen looked down. “Lord Severn, would you care to respond? I remind you that you are under oath.”
Arthur stood. His square jaw bulged at the corners where he was clenching it. “The earldom has never been able to support itself. As I have looked over the accounts that run through the last few decades, it became obvious to me that our mother and grandmother saved the earldom with their dowries and inheritances. The earldom has not been solvent since the early 1900s.”
Gen asked him, “Is the earldom financially independent now?”
“I have funneled over two hundred million pounds into the earldom’s accounts from my mother’s legacy and the investments that proceeded from it.”
More gasping from the committee and the gallery behind them.
Gen said, “But this money was your mother’s inheritance to you. Why would you use this sole and separate property—” she was totally hammering that point home, “—to shore up the finances of the insolvent earldom?”
“I am the Earl of Severn. I’ve given my whole life to Britain. I’ve spent every cent I could to maintain Spencer House and to support the earldom.”
Gen continued her totally rehearsed line of questioning. “But how about the private plane, the weekends in Paris and elsewhere in Europe, the lavish vacations, and the ostentatious giving at charitable events?”
“I don’t think you understand how much money the earldom requires,” Arthur said. “There are household staff and maintenance workers, specialty craftsmen and gardeners, craftsmen and restoration specialists, and so many more. All the money I spend annually on frivolous things amounts to less than two weeks’ upkeep for Spencer House and its holdings.”
“Plus you have other sources of income,” Gen said. “There were other means of support for your luxurious lifestyle.”
“Gen,” Arthur said, a warning rumble in his tone.
Gen said, “Arthur, let me do my job.”
“Red,” he said.
She lowered her voice and whispered to him, “You don’t have to do that. I will respect your hard limits. You have to trust me. Remember? In this, here, you have to trust me.”
His silvery eyes watched her warily, as if he were trying to discern something from just staring at her. Finally, he said, “In this, I am yours.”
Gen spun back to the committee. “All right, then! I need all the observers out of the room. Everyone except me, Lord Severn, and the members of the committee need to leave right now.”
The committee members bobbled in their seats. Lady Josceline Bazalgette and Baroness Honeycutt glanced at each other again.
Over on one arm of the square table, Lord Derek Humphreys, Earl of Coatham in the County of Cleveland, frowned and shook his head. His blond curls bobbed with each head shake. He said, his words just a little slurred, “I don’t see why we should interrupt our proceedings for such theatrics.”
Lady Dorothy Hart, Countess of Ashill in the County of Somerset and Lord Andrew Butterfield, the Earl of Newcastle-under-Lyme in the County of Staffordshire, flanked Lord Coatham. The mature woman and older man both harrumphed at Lord Coatham’s words.
Lady Hart said, her thin voice raised over all the rumbling, “I should like to hear what counsel has to say in private. Some of these proceedings can be quite intimate, and I wo
uldn’t want to have to say something embarrassing in public about a member of this august committee.”
Gen almost chuckled, considering what Arthur had told her about Lady Hart after he had thrown Lord Coatham, or Lord Asshole, out of that dinner at Spencer House.
Lord Butterfield said, “I should also prefer to hear any sensitive testimony in private.”
Lady Hart and Lord Butterfield nodded at each other over Lord Asshole’s head.
Baroness Honeycutt proclaimed, “The room will clear except for the claimant, the defendant, counsel, and the committee. Everyone, out!”
A Delicate Intelligence Operation
FOOTSTEPS rumbled the House of Lords committee room as the observers filed out. Their grumbling and lumbering echoed on the antique plaster and high ceilings in the Palace of Westminster.
Gen glanced up as they left the room.
Some of the senior barristers scowled at her. They didn’t like being excluded.
Octavia Hawkes winked at Gen as she nearly stumbled down the steps.
Lee and Rose looked up at her, and she shrugged at them. They settled down harder in their chairs, unmoving. Looked like they were staying.
James Knightly sneered at her as he stomped out. His eyebrows had a tight gather between them, and his nose was lifted on both sides like he had sniffed skunk.
Gen took James’s jerk expression to mean that she was doing a pretty good job. She straightened the lapels on the pearl gray jacket over her borrowed dress and turned back to the committee.
All of the committee members—Lords Butterfield and Coatham and Ladies Bazalgette and Hart from the dinner at Spencer House, Baroness Honeycutt and Lords Fane and Caine and Sumner from the Parisian wedding, plus the other lords and ladies whom they hadn’t schmoozed—leaned forward and rested their arms on the table that surrounded Gen and Arthur on three sides.
The door to the hallway clicked closed.
Baroness Honeycutt told Gen, “Proceed.”
Gen’s mouth turned so dry that her tongue stuck to her molars. She sipped from the water glass at her table.
Hard Liquor: Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #2 Page 30
