by Juliana Gray
The dark banks of the river blurred past, the trees of Barnes, and then he was home, Boathouse Row, a few miserable lanterns shining out from the odd window. Rowers were early risers, but he was the earliest. The docks were still quiet. In an hour, the sun would be up, the boats would be out. He would be eating breakfast in Cadogan Square. Thomas would be there, sitting next to him at the table, brimming with fresh air and exuberance.
Thomas.
He aimed for shore, relaxing his pace, allowing the boat to glide smoothly to the side. The moon had gone, the sun was not yet risen. He could hardly make out the shape of the boathouses to his left, the lights of Putney Bridge to his back. The boat bumped gently at the landing. He steadied the oars and unlaced his feet from the stirrups. From his exhausted body came a sated hum, that familiar fleeting sense of self-satisfaction. How long would it last today? As long as breakfast, surely. Breakfast with sharp young Thomas. He smiled and stepped into the cold water.
“Hatherfield!”
His fingers froze around the side of the boat.
“Hatherfield, I say! Hurry up with that nonsense.”
The voice was hard and short with impatience, a voice accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed.
Hatherfield squared his shoulders.
“One moment, Father.”
“I must speak with you immediately, Hatherfield.”
“I’ve got to take the boat in first, Father.”
A muttered curse, and the bang of a carriage window shoved back into place.
Hatherfield unshipped the blades and laid them on the dock, and then he grasped the edges of the shell and lifted it over his head in a single smooth heave.
“Hurry it up, then!”
Hatherfield carried the boat into the dank cavern of the boathouse and laid it carefully on its horse. He went back to the dock and brought the oars in, and then he found a wool jumper from his cubbyhole and pulled it over his head. His cotton-clad body, wringing with sweat, was already beginning to feel the cold in the air.
“For God’s sake,” said the Duke of Southam, “I don’t understand why you persist in this hobby of yours.”
Hatherfield placed his hands on the edge of the carriage door. “Was there something you wished to tell me, Father?”
“Come inside the carriage.”
“I’m not dressed.”
“You can dress at home.”
“My home is the Albert Hall Mansions now, Father. My own rooms, you know. The old bachelor establishment.”
The duke’s fist crashed against the doorframe. “Climb in, for God’s sake. I shall catch a chill in a moment.”
Two men walked past, heading into the boathouse. Chittering and Monmouth-Farraday, going out in their usual pair, casting him a look of friendly and barely disguised curiosity. As if to say, Trouble, old chap?
Hatherfield shrugged. “I’ve got to send my own driver off.”
He went behind the boathouse and informed his driver that he would be making his own way home, and then he returned to his father’s carriage and climbed inside. It lurched forward instantly, clattering over the cobbles and up the approach to Putney Bridge.
“By damn, you smell like a stable,” said Southam, holding a handkerchief to his nose.
“I meant to bathe and change first.” Hatherfield kept his voice civil. He folded his arms across his chest.
Southam let out a put-upon sigh and cracked open the carriage window. “I suppose I can bear it until we reach home.”
Hatherfield looked out the opposite window, where the feeble London dawn spread promisingly beyond the rooftops. They had just crested the middle of the bridge span, and the Thames glittered and shifted in the growing light, already filling with boats. Inside the carriage, the air was cold and humid, filled with the smell of Southam’s peppermint hair oil and Hatherfield’s own hard-earned sweat.
He plucked at a stray thread of wool on his sleeve. “I gather you had something important to tell me?”
“Yes.” The duke hesitated, and all at once Hatherfield was conscious of an uneasiness lying beneath his father’s stern voice, his air of arrogant command. “It has to do with your duty, Hatherfield. Your duty as the heir to this storied title, this dukedom that has passed down through eight generations without interruption . . .”
“Ah. The duchess has been gambling again, has she?”
“You will not speak of your mother with disrespect.”
“She’s not my mother, sir.” The word mother tasted like poison in his mouth.
“She has cared for you since you were ten years old, Hatherfield. She’s the only mother you have.”
Hatherfield said nothing.
“In any case, and as you know, the income from our various estates has been falling every year, as rents decline . . .”
“And your expenses continue to climb, and you refuse to do anything to modernize the estates, or to invest in anything that gives off the slightest whiff of a profitable enterprise . . .”
“That will be enough. You will have ample opportunity to ruin the dukedom when your mother and I are dead. For the present, you have a duty to preserve the honor of your name, the privileges you have the immense good fortune to inherit, by whatever means in your power.”
“Father,” said Hatherfield wearily, “for the last time. You know I’ve invested every penny of the trust in the Hammersmith project. I’m living on nearly nothing as it is.”
“You have fifty thousand pounds, Hatherfield! The entirety of your mother’s dowry, compounding interest for nearly twenty years.”
“I invested it all, the instant I came into the money, as you know. The project’s only half finished. I can’t sell at this point, and I can’t pull any money out.” He had made bloody well certain of that, in fact, knowing his father’s skill at extortion. Such as the one he was attempting right now.
The duke harrumphed. “There is another option, of course. Eminently easy. Efficient. Gentlemanly, not like this damned row of houses you’re building in Hammersmith.”
Oh, for God’s sake.
“Father, I am not going to marry Charlotte Harlowe.”
“Two hundred thousand pounds, Hatherfield!” The duke’s voice burst within the interior of the carriage.
“It might as well be two hundred million. I won’t marry her.”
“For God’s sake! She’s beautiful, she’s clever, she’s charming. She quite plainly adores you, God knows why. Your damned looks, I suppose. Who the devil will you marry, if not her?”
“Whom I please, Father. But not her.”
“Why the devil not?”
“Because I don’t love her. Because I have the settled conviction that we should make each other miserable.”
“Because you wish to disgrace your family,” said Southam, in a bitter voice. “You wish to have your revenge on us, for all our imagined crimes, by watching the title fall into ruin, the houses sold, the estates broken up . . .”
“Nonsense. No doubt I shall find an agreeable heiress to marry at some point. Or perhaps I’ll amaze you with the success of my houses in Hammersmith, and I shall have the blunt to bail you out myself, from time to time. You have only to wait. Perhaps retrench an inch or two, in the meantime. Perhaps even do the unthinkable, sir, and focus your capable mind on marshaling the immense resources of the dukedom to more profitable use. Instead of the simple and rather base expedient of putting your only son out to stud.”
The duke picked up his cane and jammed it into the floor of the carriage. His voice shook with passion. “That is the point, damn it all! We have no resources! You have no inheritance, Hatherfield. An empty title, mortgaged to the limit. There is nothing, nothing!”
“Oh, come, sir. Nothing? You are the Duke of Southam.”
The carriage staggered to a stop. A delivery wagon, probably. Hatherfield looked out the window, where the shops of the King’s Road sat quiet and shuttered, waiting for the mid-morning tide of commerce to rise.
T
he duke spoke quietly. “Our mortgage obligations currently exceed our rent-roll by approximately eleven thousand pounds per annum. When the next payment comes due, we have not enough cash on hand to meet it.”
“Are there no more banks willing to take on your overdraft?”
“I will not suffer the indignity of being refused credit.”
“Father, you’ve got to face facts. Agricultural incomes have been plummeting for years. Decades. If the dukedom is to survive, you’ve got to sell up and invest the proceeds elsewhere. Do as I’ve done with Mother’s money.”
A dry laugh. “Invest what proceeds? If I sold every acre, it wouldn’t cover the mortgages upon the property.”
“The duchess’s dowry?”
“Spent. The rest went to the girls’ marriage settlements.”
Hatherfield swore.
“I’ve done my best, Hatherfield. There’s simply nothing else to be done.”
“There was,” said Hatherfield, “but you refused to do it when you had the chance.”
The carriage started forward again. The rattle of the wheels filled the air between them, the muted cacophony of horseshoes on pavement. A distant shout, a high peal of feminine laughter through the glass of the window. The familiar chorus of London, making the human silence bearable.
Southam said quietly, “I have in my pocket a note of hand from Mr. Nathaniel Wright, requesting payment of a debt of honor incurred this past Friday, in the amount of forty-two thousand pounds, on or before the next quarter day.”
“Forty-two thousand pounds?”
“Mr. Wright has kindly rounded off a hundred and sixty-eight pounds from the sum.”
Hatherfield allowed himself a moment to catch his stunned breath. Forty-two thousand pounds. “Nathaniel Wright. That chap in the City, isn’t it?”
“He is the owner of a considerable investment firm.”
Hatherfield could almost hear the curl of his father’s lip as he said the words investment firm. He stretched out his legs and examined the tips of his worn shoes. “Your debt of honor, sir? Or your wife’s?”
“That, my boy, is none of your business. The point is that we shall be ruined by Christmas. Publicly disgraced, turned out of our house, and you will have only yourself to blame, Hatherfield.”
“Me, sir?”
“When all of these problems, all of them, might be solved by a simple matter, a very straightforward alliance of the sort that built the very fortune on which your inheritance was founded. My God, Hatherfield! It’s not as if I’m asking you to commit a crime! Marry a beautiful girl, get a child or two on her, and carry on as you like! Where is the hardship? You needn’t even see her, except in bed and at dinner, from time to time.”
“What an alluring picture you paint.”
“Two hundred thousand pounds, Hatherfield!” The duke was breathless. He stamped his cane again, just as the carriage whirled around the corner of Sloane Square.
“Damn it, Father.” Hatherfield put his hands to his temples. How did the man do it? Beat like this against his conscience, against his sense of honor: beat and beat, until Hatherfield could no longer tell what was right and what was wrong. His duty as a son; his duty as a human being. In the close air of the carriage, cold and dense with Southam’s desperation, everything twisted and stuck together.
Marry Lady Charlotte. Could he do it, if he had to? Marriage. A wife in his bed, Lady Charlotte between his clean white sheets, expecting his nightly arrival. Was the prospect really so dreadful?
For an instant, the image of young Thomas’s sea blue eyes flashed in his head. Her face, hair loose, lines softened, lying against a pillow. His breath caught in his chest.
“Can you not put him off until the houses are finished, Father? You can have half the profit. All of it, if you need it.” He’d have to start all over again, damn it all, but at least he wouldn’t have this ball of guilt lodged in his stomach. This dangling prospect of Lady Charlotte.
The duke’s cane struck the floor of the carriage. “Next summer, you mean! As if that would help!”
“It’s all I have for you. Investments take time and effort, unlike gambling.”
“At least say you’ll think on it, Hatherfield.” The duke’s voice was unrecognizable: low and edgy, as if it might crack at any moment. “Think on it, my boy. My own son. For God’s sake. You could save us all. Two unblemished centuries of dukes, the pillars of Great Britain, on whom thousands depend for their livelihoods. Do you really want to be the one who destroyed it all?”
Hatherfield didn’t reply. The monumental white facades of Eaton Square passed by, behind their black iron fences and scanty November gardens. The carriage turned down Belgrave Place, and still he didn’t speak, couldn’t speak; he forced down the boiling rage with a heavy iron lid, until the carriage rolled to a stop before the magnificent double-fronted house of the Duke of Southam.
“Why do you put up with it?” he said quietly. “Why do you put up with her?”
The duke’s voice snapped out as it always had, back to usual. “You will speak of Her Grace with respect, or not at all.”
The carriage door swung open. Southam lifted himself from the seat. “You’re not staying?”
“No. I’ll take the carriage to my own lodging, if you don’t mind.”
“Your mother will not be pleased.”
“Do present her with my compliments and deepest regrets.”
The door slammed shut. The carriage moved off.
Hatherfield slumped back in his seat and watched London slide by. His dash of morning joy had proved short-lived, after all.
Stefanie drummed her fingernails along the edge of the leather briefcase on her lap. “You don’t think there’s anything the matter, do you?”
Sir John Worthington lifted his head from contemplation of a packet of densely written papers. A morning shadow slipped across his face from the carriage window. “I beg your pardon?”
“Lord Hatherfield. He wasn’t at breakfast.”
“Oh, one never knows when to expect him. He knows my door is open, whenever he should need it.” Sir John’s face turned back to his papers. How he could study them in this jouncing vehicle, lurching about the London traffic, wheeling heedlessly about the corners, Stefanie couldn’t imagine.
Of course there was nothing to worry about. She’d just been expecting him, that was all. Had risen at half six, despite having gone to bed only five hours earlier. Had dressed herself and brushed her hair carefully with the help of a mirror. She had made sure her collar was clean and straight, she had pinched her cheeks for that irresistible rosy glow, she had rubbed her lips furiously together. For what earthly reason? Did she really want the Marquess of Hatherfield to admire the beauty of Mr. Stephen Thomas?
Well, yes. Yes, she did.
Illogical, wrongheaded, muddled, and dangerous in the extreme. But there it was.
And when she had bounded down the stairs and entered the breakfast room and seen only Sir John and a cross-faced Lady Charlotte, she had felt a huge tide of disappointment well up inside her. No smiling, broad-shouldered Hatherfield, the potent antidote to Lady Charlotte’s venom. He had left her at Sir John’s door last night with a That’s that, then, Thomas, pleasant dreams, and an intimate smile that had hovered in her obediently pleasant dreams all night. Yes, all night. All night she’d kept company with the memory of Hatherfield’s smile, all night she’d looked forward to seeing that smile again at the breakfast table. She’d simply assumed it would be there.
“I see,” she said now, and Sir John made no sign that he’d heard her, no sign that she existed in this carriage with him. She fingered the fastening on her briefcase and looked out the window. They were jolting up the Strand, nearly there. Her paper lay on Sir John’s desk. She couldn’t even remember what it contained now; the last few pages had been composed in an exhausted blur.
Probably it was horrible. Probably he would read it in dismay. In horror. In—worst of all—amusement. She would be told
to leave, to clear her desk, to clear her Spartan room on the third floor of the Worthington town house in Cadogan Square, and what would she do then? Make her way back to Olympia? Confess her failure? What then?
Oh, that Stefanie. Flighty, mischievous Stefanie, always getting herself in trouble, one scrape after another, and then charming her way out of it.
Only this time, there was no charming anyone. She wasn’t a princess anymore, dispensing favors and charm, forgiven for all her faults. She was nobody. She was less than nobody, a fugitive, breaking the laws of Great Britain simply by wearing the clothes on her back. On Sir John’s generosity, she was entirely dependent. And she had failed him.
The last of the morning’s sweet exhilaration vanished into the London fog.
The carriage stopped. The door opened. Sir John climbed down without a glance at her and disappeared through the entrance of his chambers.
Stefanie dragged herself in his wake, carrying his heavy briefcase like the lowliest lackey, like the clerk she was. “I’ll take that,” said Mr. Turner, appearing out of nowhere with his threadbare black arms outstretched.
“And good morning to you, Mr. Turner.”
“You may go to your desk, Mr. Thomas. There are a number of letters there awaiting transcription into clean copies.” Mr. Turner gave her a triumphant look and headed off to Sir John’s office, bearing the briefcase.
Stefanie turned to the desk in question and felt the room stir as four pairs of curious eyes dropped immediately away. Her desk, which she’d left less than eight hours before. On this chair, she had sat and composed her case summary. On that chair, the Marquess of Hatherfield had sprawled his magnificent body and smiled at her. Had devoted an entire evening to ensuring she was fed and safe.
Well, that was something, wasn’t it? She could take that memory with her.
Stefanie trudged down the aisle to her desk and squared the legs of the chair in an exact perpendicular relationship to the worn wooden surface. She inhaled the familiar smell of last night, that particular combination of leather and paper and wood, and her heart ached. A few forgotten bread crumbs lay in one corner. She lifted her hand to brush them to the floor and stopped herself. Hers or Hatherfield’s?