“I see,” Letty said, smiling dutifully. “I doubt that I will ever impose on them to that degree, sir, but I do hope that Mrs. Linford will not object to my calling upon her. My desire to see this excellent property is growing by leaps and bounds.”
“She will welcome you with open arms,” he said. His gaze shifted toward the door, and he added in a heartier tone, “Ah, Fox, just set that tea tray down in front of Lady Letitia’s woman. Then you may take yourself off again. At least,” he said to Letty with a smile, “I presume that you do not desire to pour out, my lady.”
Grinning this time, Letty said, “We shall get on much better, Mr. Clifford, if you will cease to worry about what might offend me. I do not offend easily, I promise you. I like plain speaking and am prone to speaking quite plainly myself.”
“You are a most unusual young woman, if I may make so bold as to say so.”
“So I am told. Am I to understand, then, sir, that you have met Mrs. Linford?”
“Oh, yes, indeed. I took tea with her and her delightful sister, Miss Abigail Frome, shortly after Augustus Benthall’s man of affairs communicated the details of his patron’s will to me—such details, that is, as pertained to your father.”
“To me, in fact,” Letty reminded him.
“Yes, as it happens, my lady, but please understand that it never occurred to me that I would be dealing with anyone but his lordship. It simply is unheard of for young ladies to take an interest in such matters. I am an honest man, of course—”
“I do not doubt that, sir,” Letty said, taking care not to smile. “Neither Grandfather nor Papa would tolerate a solicitor whom they could not trust entirely.”
“I greatly admired your grandfather,” Mr. Clifford said, “and I am grateful to know that I continue to enjoy the present marquess’s confidence. But that does not make it less amazing that your father apparently trusts me to look after you, as well as his business affairs. He would not be wise to trust most men so far, you know, and I do not know that he is wise to entrust even me with something so precious.”
“Do you mean the house, sir?”
“Certainly not. I mean his trusting me with your innocence, my lady. That is an astonishing burden for any father to put in the hands of his solicitor.”
Letty’s lips twitched, but she had little trouble hiding her amusement. “You will learn as you get to know me better, sir, that my father is not shifting any burden to your shoulders. I am quite capable of managing my own affairs.”
“I have no doubt that you think you are, my lady, but—”
“I told him so, and I tell you so,” Letty said firmly. “He believed me, and you will come to believe me, too, I promise.”
“I am quite sure that I shall,” Clifford said with a smile.
“Excellent. What I need from you now is to know exactly how far my responsibility extends. I shall, as I said, want to visit Mrs. Linford and Miss Frome, and see my property. But Mr. Benthall’s will lacks detail, no doubt because he assumed that a landlord’s specific duties are clear in law and that my solicitor would just talk things over with his. But I want the plain facts, sir. What exactly am I responsible for, if you please?”
“Why, nothing at all, my lady. I thought I had made that clear.”
“You did no such thing. I must be responsible for something! One does not expect tenants to maintain the house they lease. Even I know that much.”
“No, no, of course one does not, but it is your father, not you, who is responsible for such details. You are not—and here I hope I may take advantage of your permission to speak plainly …”
“Yes, please do so.”
“Under law, you simply are not a legal entity, my lady. The plain fact is that our English courts regard an unmarried lady exactly the same way they regard a child, as a dependent person. That has nothing to do with individual justices or magistrates, I hasten to point out—only with the law. Under that law, your father bears all responsibility for matters pertaining to any property legally in your name. Nor will you bear responsibility when you marry, as I expect you will do very soon. A married lady is regarded as being one entity with her husband, and that entity—”
“—is the husband,” Letty said flatly. Taking the cup of tea that Miss Dibble offered her, she added, “I know all that, sir. English law is chock-full of such foolishness, and despite that, rather astonishingly, it generally does work. Nonetheless, I also know that such matters can be rearranged in a Chancery Court.”
“Indeed, they can,” he agreed. “Still, I know of no case, even in Chancery, where a young woman has assumed full control of her property before the age of twenty-five.”
“You say that you received a letter from my father, Mr. Clifford. Did he lead you to suppose that I should have to wait until I had attained such an age?”
Clifford grimaced but met her look directly. “No, my lady, he did not.”
“I thought not. Did he lead you to suppose that I might be a burden to you?”
“No, he told me to advise you as I thought best, but I must remind you, my lady, that Mr. Benthall left you no money to go with the house.”
“That, too, is true,” Letty said, setting down her teacup and reaching into the cunningly-contrived slot in her muff that made it unnecessary for her to carry a reticule. Withdrawing a letter, she arose and handed it to the solicitor. “I anticipated your reluctance, you see, so that letter remains unsealed for the present. As you will note, it is addressed to the director of Child’s Bank. Will you read it, please?”
He did so at once, and when he looked up, his eyes were wide with astonishment. “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” he exclaimed. “Your father must be—” He broke off, flushing deeply.
“As you clearly were about to say, sir,” Letty said smoothly, “my father must be fully confident of my ability. I promise you—as it was not necessary for me to promise him—that although he grants me full access to his London accounts, I shall not beggar him.”
“No, no, I am quite certain … That is to say, this is all very unusual, and I hope you will not hesitate to send for me if you have questions about anything, my lady. Your father clearly believes you possess an understanding superior to that of most young women, but he cannot realize how easily some unscrupulous person might take advantage of so inexperienced a … a young person of either gender.”
“That is precisely why I want you to describe my exact responsibilities, Mr. Clifford,” Letty said with a patience she did not feel. “I readily admit that I do not know all the laws, or even which ones specifically pertain to my house. I am not inexperienced in other matters, however, and I can assure you that I shall attend competently to anyone for whose welfare I am responsible.”
Angry chattering erupted in the outer office, and at almost the same moment, the door between the two chambers burst open and Mr. Fox said urgently, “I beg your pardon, sir! That is, I regret to say … Please, sir, there is a wild beast let loose and a young person chasing it. I can deal with most things, as you know, but monkeys in law offices is something I don’t, and won’t, hold with, sir.”
Mr. Clifford leapt to his feet. “Monkeys!”
Also rising, albeit with less haste, Letty said calmly, “Only one, sir. I am afraid he belongs to me.” Raising her voice, she said, “Come, Jeremiah. I am here.”
As the little monkey darted into the room and leapt to Letty’s arms, Jenifry Breton appeared in the doorway behind him and said ruefully, “I’m sorry, my lady. I attached his chain to his collar, but he unhooked himself, the little scamp. Then he got away, and when that man opened the front door, he just dashed inside.”
“Never mind now, Jen,” Letty said with a chuckle. “At least he did not get his hands on my pistol.” Noting Mr. Clifford’s scandalized expression, she said, “I was only teasing, sir.”
“It relieves my mind to hear that you don’t carry a pistol, my lady.”
“Oh, but I do carry one,” Letty said. “That is to say, I gen
erally keep it in my coach when we travel. My mother gave it to me,” she added demurely. “Jeremiah would never take it, though. I daresay the traffic frightened him, that’s all.”
“Indeed,” Mr. Clifford said dryly. “Well, I trust that the others for whom you are so quick to take responsibility will prove more manageable than he is.”
TWO
VISCOUNT RAVENTHORPE STRODE SWIFTLY up the Strand toward St. James’s. He had dismissed his carriage before entering the solicitor’s office, for he had not wanted to advertise his presence there either by leaving it standing at the curb or by having it go round and round the block. The Strand at Villiers Street was not a back slum by any means, but a nobleman’s carriage would nonetheless soon draw notice.
He was a tall man, over six feet. Thus his long stride would cover the distance between Clifford’s office and Brooks’s Club in good time. Despite his carefully expressionless demeanor, his thoughts were in such turmoil that at Charing Cross he nearly stepped into the path of a team pulling a heavy dray wagon.
An urchin’s cry of, “Hold up there, mister,” brought his head up just in time to avoid disaster. Tossing a sixpence to the delighted lad, Raventhorpe paused just long enough for the dray to pass before striding on again into Cockspur Lane and Pall Mall, his long coat flapping around his ankles as he went.
He wondered if Clifford would speak to anyone else about their meeting. Solicitors were by nature generally a closed-mouth set, but one could never be certain. Over the past months, he had learned that many rules fell by the wayside when the richest man in London drew notice. Grimacing, he decided that, had anyone told him a year earlier that wealth could be as much of a curse as a blessing, he would have laughed himself to fits.
Until recently, he rarely had spared a thought for the opinions of others. Even now he told himself that no one’s opinion mattered but his own. His life was orderly; and, aside from his duty to the young queen—agreed to before he had come into his vast inheritance—what he did or did not do concerned no one but himself. The difficulty was that he was finding it necessary to remind himself of that fact rather frequently of late.
Still, it irked him that Clifford now might think him so greedy that he could not bear even one of Augustus Benthall’s many possessions to go to someone else. He had carefully explained to the man that he was simply curious about the odd disposal of the Upper Brook Street house, and concerned about the welfare of his great-aunts, its two elderly tenants. However, his interest had apparently surprised Clifford. Indeed, the solicitor had seemed downright disbelieving. His bushy eyebrows had shot upward as he said, “I believe your man of affairs must have made the details plain to you long since, when he read you the will, my lord.”
“Not all the details,” Raventhorpe had retorted, feeling his temper stir. “I’ll grant you that the will made it clear enough that Augustus believed his aunts could remain in the house, but—”
“There can be no doubt of that, sir.”
“That ought to relieve my mind, I’m sure, but I do not know how you can be so certain when Augustus left the house away from the family.”
“The property was Mr. Benthall’s to bequeath as he pleased, however.”
“Yes, yes, I know it was, but surely you must understand my concern. We do not even know this person, this … this …”
“Lady Letitia Deverill has spent most of her life in France,” Clifford said, his tone icy enough to inform Raventhorpe that he had stepped over the mark. “Her father, the seventh Marquess of Jervaulx, has served our great country for many years in a diplomatic post there.”
Drawing breath, and smiling ruefully, Raventhorpe said instantly, “I beg pardon, sir, if I have given offense, but as I said, I am gravely concerned about the welfare of my elderly relations.”
“You might easily have left that concern to your solicitor’s attention, my lord,” Clifford said softly. His eyes had narrowed and grown steely, making him suddenly look far more formidable than he had only moments before. He said grimly, “The most likely motivation for this call of yours is simple, not to say vulgar, curiosity. I must presume,” he added before Raventhorpe had gathered his wits to retort, “that you already have taken up this matter with Benthall’s man.”
“I have, and he’s as mum as mincemeat,” Raventhorpe said. “I own, sir, that I did hope you could cast light on this business. Say what you will about my motives, for a man to leave an excellent property away from his own kith and kin, to a family whose politics not only conflict roundly with ours—”
“It certainly is a fine property,” Clifford interjected, silencing him.
The solicitor had said no more than that, but although the steely look had softened, Raventhorpe was certain that Clifford still disbelieved the purity of his motives. In truth, he was not so sure of their purity himself, which stirred his temper now as much as his failure to glean any useful information from Clifford did.
Having by that point accurately taken the solicitor’s measure, he had left without asking anything more about Lady Letitia or her family. That she was the sole daughter of the Marquess of Jervaulx he knew from Augustus Benthall’s will, but he did not think he had ever met her. In all likelihood, she and her noble parents had attended the young queen’s coronation the previous May, and it was likely that he and she had attended many of the same festivities at the time. It was even possible that he had stood up with her for a dance at one coronation ball or another. To be sure, such an instance would have required a proper introduction, but he met so many chits during any given Season that he had long ceased to take much notice of them unless they were diamonds of the first water or noteworthy heiresses.
The last thought brought a slight smile to his lips. He no longer needed to look for an heiress to undo the damage done over the years to his family estates. He could marry now where he chose, but he could see no reason to change his mind about Miss Susan Devon-Poole. Tall, blond, with a generally stately manner, and charmingly compliant, she would—as he had suspected nearly a year ago, shortly before the coronation—make him an excellent wife. Her respectable fortune, once a significant enhancement, now paled in comparison to his; but its existence would make her feel worthy of him. She would have to stop saying “my goodness me” every time she opened her mouth, but he would soon cure her of that.
That Miss Devon-Poole might reject him did not occur to him, for the notion was so absurd that it had not occurred to him even before he had inherited Augustus Benthall’s vast fortune. Even then he had known his worth. The heir to the earldom of Sellafield, despite its wasted estates, had been quite eligible enough to attract her. She certainly would not reject him now that he was the wealthiest man in London.
He wondered if she suspected his interest. Though he had taken care not to exhibit it, not wanting to raise false hopes before he had quite decided, he suspected that she did. He knew that she had sent young Fothering to the rightabout, but that showed only that the chit had sense as well as beauty. Fothering would not suit her at all. With his fluttering attention to her, the scrawny fop always gave one the impression of a hummingbird attempting to drink nectar from an alabaster statue.
The walk from Villiers Street took him no more than twenty minutes. When he passed into St. James’s Street, away from the traffic of Pall Mall, quiet closed around him until, as he passed Pickering’s Court, a rattle of horseshoes and wheels on the cobblestones behind him broke the momentary stillness. A heavy town carriage soon drew abreast of him and a familiar voice shouted his name.
Turning, he saw that the carriage’s lone passenger, a fashionable young man with wavy dark hair tumbling in wings over his forehead, had let down the window to lean out. Waving his beaver hat, he shouted at the man on the box, “Pull up, damn you! I want to get out.”
The coachman complied, and Sir Halifax Quigley—known to his familiars as Puck—descended gracefully to the pavement.
Raventhorpe watched with amusement as his friend, who had been behaving like
a rowdy schoolboy moments before, transformed himself into a young man about town the moment both highly polished shoes touched the cobbles.
Quigley wore a well-cut bottle-green coat, cream-colored smallclothes, a fashionably ruffled white shirt, and a well-starched cravat. As he moved toward the flagway, he restored his hat to his head and tucked a walking stick under his arm in order to straighten his coatsleeves and smooth his pale yellow gloves. He was shorter than Raventhorpe by a head, and built on slender, more graceful lines. “I hope you’re going to Brooks’s,” he said as they met on the flagway.
“Where else?”
“Now, if that ain’t just like you, Justin. Where else indeed? I haven’t seen you in weeks, but here you are, walking along the street like a commoner, and you ask, ‘where else?’ Where’s your carriage, my dear fellow?”
“At home by now, I expect. How are you, Puck?”
“Sound as a whistle, but don’t think you can divert me that easily. Not when I’ve dismissed my carriage and condescended to walk with you.”
“You needn’t have done so.”
“What was I to have done, then? Stand waiting on Brooks’s stoop till you arrived? If you say that you’d have got into the carriage if I’d invited you to ride less than a block, I’ll tell you to your head that I don’t believe it.”
“Then I won’t say any such thing. I like that coat.”
“Yes, so do I. You ain’t just coming from Sellafield House at this hour.”
Amanda Scott - [Dangerous 04] Page 2
