To anyone observing the two big men, the Duke of Roxton and Jonathon Strang were enjoying a leisurely stroll along the wide black and white checkerboard tiled terrace, conversing on impersonal topics, as gentlemen, host and guest in particular, are want to do after a long, satisfying dinner: Horses, hunting, dogs, farming, nothing too political, certainly nothing religious and definitely nothing to do with money. They smiled and chatted, the Duke took snuff while Jonathon puffed on a cheroot, both taking in the majestic sweep of landscaped acres, wide meandering artificial lake, and beyond, fertile farming land; every blade of grass, sod of earth, animal, plant, tree, building, road and person belonging to the Duke as far as the eye could see.
But when they returned to stand opposite the French windows near the overhanging honeysuckle, the conversation took on a decidedly serious tone and turned to a topic uppermost in the minds of both gentlemen. Roxton kept his back to the Gallery and was looking out on all that he owned, palms flat on the marble balustrade.
“My steward tells me that a thorough search of the archives has uncovered four survey maps of the estate. The first survey was made when Good Queen Bess granted the land to the first duke; two surveys were made in the fourth Duke’s lifetime, just before his marriage to Lady Elisabeth Strang-Leven, your ancestress, and another done five years before his death. The fourth map was commissioned by my father around the time of my birth and thus need not concern you. A preliminary perusal of the boundary lines on the maps completed in my Great-Grandfather’s time would suggest there is a case to answer.” Roxton looked at Jonathon. “Of course I am not a surveyor nor am I a lawyer, and the expertise of both are required before I would be prepared to make a formal declaration.”
“And what sort of declaration did you have in mind, your Grace?”
“To the effect that upon his marriage to Elisabeth Strang-Leven, the fourth Duke of Roxton subsumed into the dowry the inheritance of the Lady Elisabeth’s younger brother and the Duke’s ward, Edmund Strang-Leven.”
“Illegally subsumed, your Grace.”
“Negligently.”
“Wrongfully. I won’t settle for less.”
Roxton turned and leaned his buttocks against the balustrade and took snuff, an eyebrow raised at his guest. “I beg your pardon,” he said with icy politeness, “but you cannot know that the Duke intentionally misappropriated Edmund Strang-Leven’s estate. In all likelihood it was a surveying error that saw the Strang-Leven land mistakenly flooded to make way for the Duke’s lake. What appeared to be an estate boundary line of a mere quarter inch on a document was in fact most of a neighboring estate, and once these lands were flooded there was no going back. That is not an illegality but a simple miscalculation.”
Jonathon exhaled smoke into the air and let out a bark of laughter.
“Simple miscalculation? There’s nothing simple about it! I’ll grant you may have been able to persuade me to swallow such a fairytale, if that was the only piece of his inheritance Edmund lost to your illustrious ancestor. I have no doubt it sits much better on your straight shoulders to accept as true that a misplaced quill stroke made by a negligent surveyor’s apprentice put the boundary west, rather than east, of the coordinates written in his master’s little leather bound notebook. That the Duke returned from the city one day, none the wiser to the mistake, to find the ornamental lake he had commissioned twice its size. And—”
The Duke blinked in amazement to be addressed so bluntly. And when Jonathon Strang cut him off mid-sentence was so affronted he momentarily lost the facility of speech.
“Mr. Strang, if you will allow me to—”
“Just a minute, your Grace,” Jonathon demanded. “You must allow me to do justice to your ancestor’s fairytale. So the Duke returns to his estate and to his shock and horror his head surveyor fronts his master cap in hand with profuse apologies that due to a surveying error not only was the designated land carved out and flooded but three quarters of the arable land from the neighboring estate was also flooded. And due to this miscalculation, the neighbor's Elizabethan manor house sits perfectly placed on the shores of the new lake, in a bend that affords it seclusion and privacy from this grand pile of stone, and with a charming aspect of an island; well it is charming now, planted out with gardenias, wild roses, and the willows grown up. And the waterfall is truly delightful, hiding as it does a bacchanalian grotto painted with frescos that would give a eunuch a hard on. Miscalculation? On Saint Geoffrey’s Day belike!”
“Are you daring to call me a liar, sir?”
“Liar? If I thought you were lying to me, your Grace, I’d call you a liar to your face,” Jonathon said reasonably and smiled to himself when the nobleman’s jaw unclenched. “What I do think is that you have convinced yourself the fourth duke was a better man than he truly was. And that’s only reasonable wishful thinking. Every man, other than your career criminal, wants to believe the blood that runs in his veins comes from decent stock.” He looked the nobleman up and down and fixed on his green eyes, so like his mother’s that he had to suppress a smile. “My sources tell me you’re a very decent fellow, a bit stolid, but my guess is you don’t suffer fools and are rightly reticent amongst anyone who is not of your close circle of friends; which is as it should be for a young man who wears a ducal coronet. I can’t abide catchfarts and kiss-mine-arse fellows; men not fit for the contents of a pikdan. And just like you I don’t suffer fools and foolish tales. So don’t try and bamboozle me with some tale told you by a fawning lackey that your ancestor flooded Edmund Strang-Leven’s lands by accident, because that’s a great pile of fartleberries!”
“Do you always run on at the mouth?”
Jonathon was momentarily taken aback and then let out such a great bark of laughter that it not only startled the Duke into shying away, but also captured the attention of those sitting with the Duchess about the tea trolley.
“That’s just what your mother said to me! And with that same blaze of anger in her eyes too!”
“Leave the Dowager Duchess out of this!” Roxton hissed, points of color in his clean-shaven cheeks, and was instantly annoyed for letting down his guard.
The laughter extinguished from Jonathon’s dark eyes. He tapped ash from his cheroot over the balustrade. “There is nothing I wish for more than to leave her out of this but, you and I know, that is impossible.”
Roxton lifted his chin, an action Jonathon also found reminiscent of Antonia, and took a breath before saying bluntly, “You can’t have the dower house; I don’t care how valid your claims, how many lawyers you employ, and whether you are in the right.” He met Jonathon’s implacable stare with one of his own. “My father left her that house and it is hers, right or wrong.”
“She can have it... for her lifetime. But I’ll have the deeds signed over now. You know it’s the right thing to do.”
The Duke’s hands balled into fists on the balustrade, an action that did not go unnoticed by his guest. “That is not going to happen.”
“It’s a very generous offer. Your family has had the use of my family’s property for nigh on a hundred years and what I get back is but a third of the estate. Granted your father rebuilt what was falling into decay of Crecy Hall and the pavilion is a charming addition, so I’ll take the restoration as compensation and rule the line under that and not require any additional monetary reimbursement. Do you want to shake on it like gentlemen or do you require lawyers, ink and a congenial sip of claret over the documents to seal the bargain?”
“What I require is for you to understand that Crecy Hall is non-negotiable.”
Jonathon took a leisurely draw on his cheroot as he surveyed the Duke. Twenty years conducting business on the subcontinent had taught him a great deal about human nature and how to read his fellows. And he knew that to conduct meaningful business one needed a cool heart and a rational mind and that if a man allowed emotion to be involved no amount of reasoning, cool or otherwise, would see a successful fulfillment of the transaction. Such dealings
required patience and time; Jonathon had both in abundance. Besides which, as far as Crecy Hall was concerned he need not involve the Duke at all. To have the deeds signed over required the signature of the mother, not the son. So he let drop the Elizabethan manor house saying with a raise of one eyebrow,
“And what of Hanover Square, your Grace? You cannot excuse away your ancestor’s sale of such prime London real estate, land that did not belong to him but to Edmund Strang-Leven, by blaming a surveyor’s miscalculation.”
The Duke gave a huff of embarrassment. “I was not about to do anything of the kind. Nor will I defend the indefensible. What my Great-Grandfather did in that respect was unpardonable.”
Such a candid admission surprised Jonathon. He admired the nobleman’s honestly if not his obstinacy, and was well aware what prompted the latter and that his propensity for the former stemmed from the same source: Antonia, Dowager Duchess of Roxton. It was a refreshing change from his usual contact with members of the aristocracy, most of whom were so bloated with self-consequence and self-delusion as to their God-given place atop the writhing mass of humanity that Jonathon was certain a prod of a finger would see them pop.
“Why are you here, Strang?” the Duke asked, snapping shut the enameled lid of his gold snuffbox. “And don’t insult my intelligence that you came hot foot from the sub-continent to restore a lost inheritance. My lawyers tell me there is a pile of correspondence between your grandfather and my great-grandfather dating back to the first decade of this century, and yet not one member of your family, until you, had ever bothered to stake a claim to Edmund Strang-Leven’s legacy. And you are not in need of funds. You’ve returned with enough wealth to build your own marble palace if that was your desire, and that’s not counting the income from sugar plantations and considerable real estate in the states of New York and South Carolina. And let’s leave your daughter’s need to find a titled mate out of the equation. That’s just a ruse best swallowed by gullible matrons and hopeful younger sons.”
“And yet you wish to insult my intelligence by claiming you don’t know? Come on, your Grace! Play fair!” Jonathon said with a shake of his shoulder length hair. “If you know my worth then your sources certainly ferreted out what compelled me to leave the country of my birth where I had hoped to live out the rest of my days in perfect contentment. Claiming the Strang-Leven inheritance while I wait for a relative who is a stranger to me to drop off this mortal coil and leave me what I don’t want in the least, allows me to tidy up unfinished family business; I am not asking for more than I am owed, but I am willing to take less, if the settlement is agreeable.” He allowed himself to smile. “So in that spirit, and not because it makes good business sense, I propose you sign over the Hanover Square mansion. I need a town residence and it is perfectly situated for my future needs. But as to the rest,” he added with a wave, as if shooing away a bumblebee, “I don’t need the blunt or the headache of lawyers bothering me about trifles. What would it amount to anyway? Ten, twenty, maybe thirty thousand?” He shrugged. “Keep it.” Adding with a laugh, “You’ll be needing it for your ever-expanding nursery which will soon number a cricket team!”
The Duke found no amusement in Jonathon’s overconfident humor. He stood up off the terrace balustrade, ignored the generosity in the merchant’s offer and said disdainfully. “The Hanover residence was given to the Dowager Duchess for her lifetime. I can’t sign it over to you.”
Jonathon too stood straight and faced the seething nobleman. He pulled a face. “Is that so? And here am I making you a perfectly reasonable, and most would suggest a very generous, offer to close this deal as expeditiously as possible.”
“Deal? This is not a deal. It is an eviction. Is evicting a widow from her own home generous and reasonable to you?”
“Is it reasonable to you?”
Roxton baulked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Unlike Crecy Hall, which does require her signature to the deed of title, you don’t need her signature or her permission to transfer the deed of title of the Hanover Square mansion to me. You need not involve her at all. So what’s your sticking point?”
“I won’t go behind her back and sell out from under her the town residence she shared with my father all of their married life. If she found out it would... it would...” Roxton threw up a hand. “I don’t know what it would do to her!”
“But you’ve done this sort of thing before,” Jonathon shot back bluntly, turning his head to blow smoke into the air. “So why is it different this time?” he asked. “Paris or London. French or English. Both houses were her homes. The Hôtel on the Rue Saint-Honoré must be full of just as many memories as the one in Hanover Square. I would hazard a guess, the Hôtel means a great deal more to her because she’s French to the ends of her pretty toes, and it was the boyhood home of your father and his sister. And yet you sold it out from under her, and to people she will most certainly consider far beneath Monseigneur’s French nobility.” He shrugged. “Your excuse for keeping the Hanover Square mansion is rather lame then, isn’t it, your Grace? Perhaps I’ve misjudged you. You’re obdurate for its own sake and sold the Parisian mansion with no regard for your mother’s feelings?”
“You cold-hearted bastard,” the Duke hissed through his teeth.
Jonathon laughed. “I hardly deserve such an appellation when I’m going out of my way to make this righting of wrongs as painless as possible for you, and for her.”
“I don’t know what grubby means you employed to ferret out my family’s business but I’ll meet you before I’ll allow you to upset her!”
Jonathon’s eyebrows shot up. “A duel, your Grace?” He smiled crookedly and shook his head. “That’s not how I do business. Facts, paperwork and lawyers are my forté, not dawn, seconds and swords. The merchant in me is too level headed to indulge in such heated and nonsensical actions. I think the gentleman in you agrees.” He extinguished the cheroot on the leather sole of his shoe and dropped the remaining half of the hand-rolled cigarillo into the slim silver caddy he carried in a frockcoat pocket. “By the by, if it’s grubby you want, then look to your relatives. One cup of coffee after dinner and I was given the facts without the need to ask. I don’t know how she discovered what you are so keen to keep from your mother, but Charlotte Strathsay is champing at the bit to fill her little ear with the news. That woman deserves her moniker the viper in velvet.”
At that revelation the Duke reddened and was genuinely contrite. “Ah. Then I apologize for my hasty accusation.”
“It can’t be easy being head of a ducal house,” Jonathon said with real sympathy. “All those relatives and retainers and hangers-on to keep managed within the family fold. At least in business, if an employee is treacherous you can dismiss him without a second thought or the threat of repercussion for upsetting another employee by your actions.”
“I wouldn’t wish it on anyone,” Roxton stated candidly with a self-deprecating smile that not only surprised Jonathon but put him more in charity with the nobleman; as did the genuine warmth that came into the deep voice at mention of his children. “Frederick is very excited to have you as his oarsman for tomorrow’s boat race.”
“Is he? Let’s hope I can live up to his enthusiasm! Do you mind?”
“That you are his oarsman? Not at all. It was very good of you to offer.”
“More a case of being pushed into it. I can’t take the credit.”
“Frederick tells me his grandmother put you up to it. That I do mind.”
“Why should you? It was a capital idea.”
“I mind that you visited Crecy Hall without permission and imposed yourself, uninvited and unchaperoned on the Dowager Duchess.”
“Imposed? I wouldn’t call having a cup of coffee in her pretty little pavilion an imposition. I rather think she enjoyed the company.”
“Or was too polite to turn you away?”
“Oh no, she tried to do that. But I’d rowed such a long way to see her that in the end good ma
nners won out and we settled down to a nice cup of coffee and some seedy cake with Fred—with the swans,” Jonathon said, trying to correct his slip of the tongue.
The Duke’s smile was thin. “Don’t fret. You didn’t give away my son’s truancy. Nothing, and I mean nothing, happens on this estate without me finding out about it, whether I want to know or not; another unwanted perquisite of being head of a ducal house. Listen, Strang,” he said in an altogether different voice, a frowning glance at the snuffbox in his hand, “it’s difficult for me to tell you this, and I am only taking you into my confidence because I see you are a man that is not easily dissuaded from an action once his mind is made up, and that you won’t abide a simple no without an explanation attached...” After a moment of internal struggle, the Duke continued, saying flatly, “The Dowager Duchess is not a well woman. That may come as a surprise to you, a complete stranger, seeing her with her grandchildren or chatting with her neighbors throughout dinner. Indeed she even favored you with a dance last evening. But to those who know her well—and I am telling you this in the strictest of confidences—grave fears are held for-for her—safety. I want you to understand how it is. And because that’s why I want—no, I order you to stay away from her.”
Jonathon’s eyebrows snapped over his long fine nose. He glanced through the French windows and caught the object of their discussion watching them, and by the way she quickly turned her head, had been watching them for sometime.
“She tried to take her own life? I don’t believe it!”
“My parents were excessively attached. Despite the great gulf in their ages, they were devoted to one another. I don’t think my mother ever comprehended the gravity of my father’s illness; that he was, in truth, dying. And so when it happened... Her grieving is excessive and morbid and it has made her—fragile. On the second anniversary of his passing, her state of mind was such that had Sir Titus not been in attendance, he is of the opinion she would have succeeded.” The Duke frowned. “Why do you say you don’t believe it?”
Autumn Duchess: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series) Page 13