Veil of Honor

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  “Indeed,” Will said. He sipped as Vaughn drank and tried not to grimace. His stomach stirred, queasy. Yes, he had most certainly ruined the pleasure of drinking with his most recent over-indulgence…at least for now.

  He waited until Vaughn lowered his glass, then said, “Mother…” He couldn’t make himself say anything more.

  Vaughn raised a brow. “You refer to the walking stick?” His expression was steady.

  Will breathed out the cold fear that rose in his throat as he saw in his mind the way his mother had leaned on the cane. “Yes,” he made himself say.

  Vaughn nodded. “She never did properly recover her strength after the illness a few years ago. Now…” His throat worked. “She has declined a little more.”

  Will blinked. His father had not given him the reassurance he abruptly craved. He squeezed his fist tighter. “Is she…?” He couldn’t finish the thought.

  “No,” Vaughn said. Then he added with a light tone, “Not yet, at least. We must all come to it eventually. I have been blessed with your mother in my life longer than a man like me deserves. It seems I will cherish a few more years, yet.”

  Will sucked in a breath, trying to dispel the dark cloud that Vaughn had created. Yet. A few more years. Not “decades” or “years and years”. Only “a few more”…

  “You should move back to Kirkaldy,” Will said. “Both of you. Bridget and I can take care of Mother.”

  Vaughn shook his head. “No, Will. Elisa would be troubled by the cold and damp here. In Sussex, the days are warmer and the sun stronger. Kirkaldy is yours now.”

  Will lowered his glass. He could no longer even pretend to drink.

  Vaughn put his own glass aside. “Elizabeth is not the only reason we came here, Will.”

  The heavy look in Vaughn’s eyes sent a cold wave up Will’s spine. He waited.

  Vaughn sighed. “Your mother came home from Brighton last week, deeply distressed. She had been refused credit at two different stores and asked to settle her account at another.”

  The coldness spread through Will faster than a January wind.

  Vaughn’s gaze was relentless. “I handed the estates to you confident that you could handle them, Will. Was I wrong?”

  Will couldn’t speak. His throat constricted and his heart was thudding in his ears.

  “Are the invoices reaching you in a timely manner?” his father continued. “The postage system is efficient but it is not infallible and the Lord knows you have been moving about the country like a harried sheep dog these last few years…”

  Will wanted to leap upon the excuse his father held out to him. He wanted to nod and agree that the postage system had failed to deliver the bills he was expected to settle on their behalf. Only, he could not honestly claim that as the problem.

  Vaughn shook his head. “Do you understand the humiliation and embarrassment your mother suffered? She cried, Will. She cried in my arms, she was so mortified.”

  Will closed his eyes, his shame complete. Guilt was a foul substance in his mouth.

  It took strength he didn’t know he had to speak with close to a normal tone. “I will look into it. I will find out what has happened and rectify it.”

  Vaughn considered him for a long moment while Will’s gut crawled and his head throbbed. Then his father nodded. “Very well,” he said. “I expect we will not need to speak of this again, yes?”

  Will forced himself to say, “You will not,” as firmly as he could.

  Vaughn clapped his shoulder. “In that case, I will go upstairs. There is just time to wash and prepare for dinner. You still dine at seven, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  Vaughn nodded and left Will standing in the middle of the library, not sure that he had the strength to move. If he moved, everything might collapse in around him, his entire life revealed as the house of cards it really was.

  Chapter Ten

  Brooks took a firmer grip on the drawstrings, while Bridget braced herself against the end of the bed, the iron digging into her palms.

  Brooks hauled on the strings and the corset cinched in a little tighter.

  Bridget let out her breath, feeling the snugness of the corset around her waist and most especially in the bust.

  Brooks smiled grimly, her plain brown eyes sympathetic. “I’m afraid that’s the best I can do, my Lady. Perhaps in a few weeks’ time, with some walking and work, you might come back to close to your old waist size, although I suspect you’ll never have an eighteen-inch waist again.”

  Bridget looked down at the lines of the corset and sighed. “I suppose twenty inches will have to do. Can you let out the green satin before dinner?”

  “I can, my Lady, but they will be temporary stitches. You’ll have to have your things taken out properly by a seamstress.”

  “I’m sure Mrs. MacDonald knows a local lady we can trust,” Bridget told her. “This is all my fault. I wore a wrapper for two weeks and didn’t bother to check. Now we have guests and I have nothing to wear.”

  Brooks picked up the green satin. “I’ll see to it you can appear at the dinner table, my Lady.”

  “Thank you.”

  Brooks handed Bridget her lace wrapper as she left.

  Bridget sighed and tied the wrapper around her now-larger waist and settled on the stool in front of her dressing table to brush her hair out. She would have to take care of her own hair this evening. Brooks would be stitching right up to dinner time.

  She would write to Madame Therion tomorrow and arrange for new dresses. The local seamstress could adjust her old ones.

  When the bedroom door opened once more, Bridget looked up, startled. Brooks could not possibly have finished yet.

  It was Will.

  He shut the door slowly, his head down.

  Bridget turned on the stool, her heart thudding even though she could not guess why it should. “Will?”

  He didn’t move away from the door. His hand fell from the knob and hung by his side. It was as if he could not move any farther into the room, for the weight of the mystery that made his head bow.

  “Will, what is it? Has something happened?”

  He pushed his hand against his forehead, as if it ached. “I’m not even sure why I came here.”

  “Will…” He was frightening her, now.

  He let his hand drop. With wandering steps, he moved toward the bed. Before he reached it, he turned and moved back toward the door.

  Bridget put the hair brush back on the dresser and got to her feet. “Did your father say something that upset you, Will?” It was the only explanation. Will looked stricken.

  “Father gave me control of the estates, years ago…” Will said, his voice strained.

  Bridget shrugged. “Fathers do that frequently. Jack controlled his father’s estates for years until the divorce business. Cian has been running Innesford and the Irish estate for years and years.” She didn’t add anything more, although she did think of Ben, who had not just taken over his father’s affairs but had built the largest and most successful law partnership in Europe upon his father’s legacy.

  “Only I haven’t been running anything!” Will flared. He gripped the bedrail. His head was still down. He wouldn’t look at her.

  Bridget’s heart squeezed and hurried on. “What do you mean? You have an estate manager…I saw him once.” The little man with glasses and a timid appearance, his arms clutched about a monstrous briefcase.

  “I haven’t spoken to him properly in over a year.” Will’s head hung even lower. His breath came quickly.

  “A year!” She clamped her jaw tightly to stop from saying anything more and moved over to him so she could see his face. “What did your father say, Will?”

  He closed his eyes. “My mother…” He swallowed. “Accounts have gone unpaid long enough to be closed.”

  Bridget let out a rushed breath. That was very bad indeed. If a family became known for financial unreliability, it could bring them to ruin swifter than any other scand
al. A lord could be as poor as a dock worker and still hold his head up in society as long as he honored what debts he incurred.

  “Why haven’t the accounts been paid?” she asked, straining to keep any condemnation or concern out of her voice and sound merely curious.

  “I don’t know,” Will ground out.

  “Because you haven’t spoken to your manager,” she finished, putting it together. “He must be mishandling things gravely for them to come to this extreme. You must speak to him, Will. You must send for him and demand explanations as soon as possible. This can’t go on.”

  Will blanched. His face, normally a healthy, tanned color, turned gray.

  Bridget caught his arm. “Will! Why can you not speak to him? Why do you look that way?”

  He moved his head from side to side, his throat working. “I can’t see what he says.” He wheeled away from her, his back to her. Shame seemed to leech from him like a cloud.

  Bridget stared at his back, puzzled. “You can’t see?” He was one of the best shots in the country. Of course he could see…

  “Whenever he’s talking, he insists upon showing me pages and pages of reports and all sorts of damn nonsense.”

  “I don’t understand,” Bridget said truthfully.

  Will rounded on her, his face working. “I can’t see!” he cried. “The numbers keep moving about the damn page!” He staggered away, as if he had taken a heavy blow and bent over the bed, breathing hard. He was shaking.

  Bridget’s heart slammed against her chest. “You can’t see…” she breathed, as she put it together. “Oh, Will…how long have you not been able to see like that?”

  He threw up his head as if he was in agony. “Always.” And he slithered down to the floor beside the bed as if his shame had rendered him strengthless. He put his elbows on his knees and covered his face.

  Will, the superb outdoorsman, who never settled to anything serious. Not anything that involved books or writing, anyway. Will, who could out-shoot any man, out-drink everyone, who appeared to live a life of utter abandon, had been hiding this secret forever.

  Bridget recalled the off-hand comments Cian and the others made as they were growing up, about Will always being in trouble at school, his reports mediocre at best. He had been labeled a mischief-maker.

  Will, who everyone called a good friend, yet lamented because he never wrote to them. He visited, instead, surprising them with unheralded calls. His impulsiveness was a great part of his charm, they always said.

  Bridget sank down onto the rug beside him, her thoughts swirling. “Can you not see words, either, Will?”

  He groaned. Then, speaking into his hands, he said, “They swirl and move. If I concentrate hard enough, words stay still in the middle, long enough to read them. Just one at a time.”

  It had been enough for Will to skate through life, his secret safe.

  Bridget steeled herself against the wave of pity that wanted to form. Will would hate pity. He had hidden this from everyone because his pride was too strong.

  “What is the name of your estate manager, Will?” she asked, putting a crisp edge in her voice.

  Will drew in a breath and dropped his hands. He still did not look at her. “Stephenson,” he said roughly.

  “Send for him,” Bridget said. “You must investigate and find out what has happened. Tell him to be here as soon as the train will deliver him.”

  “What is the good of sending for him if I can’t read what he gives me?” Will demanded.

  “You can’t read the numbers,” Bridget said, “but I can.”

  * * * * *

  Bridget penned a note to Lilly in Northallerton at the same time Will sent a wire demanding Stephenson present himself as the soonest available moment, with his books and reports to hand. Bridget wrote the wording for the telegraph and handed it silently to Will, then he called for Bakersfield and handed the sheet to him and asked him to arrange for the telegraph office to send the wire to London.

  Bridget paid for express service for her letter to Lilly and by that afternoon, Lilly’s reply came by wire.

  TONIGHT’S SLEEPER, INVERNESS BY 6 AM. L.

  “Why bring Lilly into this?” Will demanded, still looking pale and exhausted, when Bridget read the wire to him.

  “Because she had been managing the books for Northallerton for years and someone must teach me how to do it. I have no intention of asking Mr. Stephenson to explain.”

  Will considered, then nodded. “I suppose, if another person must know, then I can stand Lilly knowing.”

  “I will tell Lilly only that I must take the books off your hands. She can draw her own conclusions. As she is managing the bookkeeping for Jasper because the estate is so complicated, I’m sure she will arrive at a similar reason for you.”

  Relief smoothed out the furrow in his brow. “Very well, then,” he said, sounding slightly happier.

  They returned to entertaining Will’s mother and father for the remainder of the day, until Vaughn and Elisa departed for the train station that evening, just after supper.

  Will sagged into his chair once they had gone. His eyes closed. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt so tired,” he said, his voice ragged.

  “Go and sleep, then,” Bridget told him. “You will need to be alert tomorrow.” A second wire had arrived that afternoon with the announcement that Stephenson would be on the same train as Lilly.

  Will tried to stir himself but collapsed back. “You may be right,” he muttered, then with superhuman effort, heaved himself out of the chair and trudged upstairs.

  When Bridget retired, later, she half-expected to find Will in her bed. It was empty.

  She ignored the touch of disappointment in her heart.

  * * * * *

  For the brief time Bridget had seen Mr. Stephenson waiting for Will, months ago, she had received the impression he was a timid man. After listening to his hesitant explanations and nervous shuffle through the piles of notebooks and journals he withdrew from his satchel, the impression remained in place.

  She listened silently from her chair in the corner of the library to the man’s excuses and long-winded narratives about foreign banks and unreliable currencies. Will’s family affairs stretched across Europe and into the Middle East. Gradually, a secondary sensation, merely a feeling, grew in her.

  The next time Stephenson handed Will a report, Bridget got to her feet and held out her hand. “May I, husband?” she asked.

  Will looked amused. “You’ll be bored silly, my dear. It’s nothing but numbers.”

  Bridget hid her smile. Will was acting out the role of the indulgent husband for Stephenson’s benefit.

  “I will risk boredom to see a demonstration of what you two are talking about.”

  Stephenson shrank back, which had the effect of pulling the sheet farther away from her hand. “It is quite tedious reading,” he told her, his voice trembling. “A lady has no need to bother herself with such mundane matters.”

  “I insist,” Bridget said, extending her hand.

  “I don’t think…” Stephenson began, pushing his glasses back up his nose.

  “Give her the report, Stephenson,” Will said. An iron note sounded in his voice.

  Stephenson swallowed and proffered the sheet.

  Bridget took it with a smile, turned the sheet around and scanned it. Stephenson’s hand was messy, the ink blotched in several places and the digits crammed together.

  It took her a moment to understand what she was looking at. When she did put it together, coldness set in her middle. She got to her feet. “Will, may I speak to you in private?”

  Will’s eyes narrowed.

  Stephenson rubbed the top of his head, disturbing the fine locks. “Is there a problem, Lady Bridget?”

  She gave him a cold stare and walked to the library door and stepped out and waited.

  When Will closed the door behind him and cocked his brow, she beckoned. “Not here,” she said quietly, for Stephenson might hear the
m through the door. She carried the sheet into the morning room.

  Lilly looked up from her knitting. “You are finished with the manager?”

  “Not quite,” Bridget told her.

  “Should I give you the room?” Lilly asked, as Will came in behind her.

  “No, you should hear this,” Bridget said. She turned to Will. “You must dismiss the man, Will.”

  “What?” he breathed.

  “Yes, and without references, too.”

  Lilly got to her feet. “What has he done?” she asked, hurrying over.

  Bridget held the bank reckoning out to her. “See for yourself. Dozens of withdrawals marked ‘miscellaneous’. One, perhaps two in a month could be withstood, but dozens…Will, he has been stealing you blind all these years, because he knew he could. That is why he didn’t want me to study the statement.”

  Will’s scowl rushed into place. “Stealing…” he said flatly.

  “What is more, he has become slovenly about properly managing the books because he knew you would not…did not have the time to examine them closely,” she amended.

  Lilly frowned over the sheet. Bridget had explained the situation to her before they had closeted themselves in the library with Mr. Stephenson. Now Lilly said, “The accounts with shopkeepers in Brighton…it is possible he made the withdrawals from the bank to match their accounts, then pocketed the money. The merchants certainly did not receive the settlements, so the money was delivered somewhere. Look at all these amounts, Will. They’re small, odd amounts, just as accounts with merchants would be.” She held the sheet out to Will.

  He glanced at it, then at Bridget. “You cannot manage the full extent of the family holdings without help, Bree. You heard the man. Carpet factories in Constantinople, a winery in Italy…it is too much.”

  “I think you are right, Will. It is too overwhelming,” Lilly said. “I am at my fullest extent managing Northallerton alone.”

  “But you agreed to teach me,” Bridget said, her heart sinking.

  “I can teach you everything I know,” Lilly said. “I would be glad to do it. However, you need someone with professional training to deal with the full range of business concerns. Someone you can trust, which is not Mr. Stephenson, apparently.”