“I think I might write to Mr. Sizemore at that,” Mina said, closing the ledger she was attempting to decipher. “I can make neither heads nor tails of these figures. Perhaps he can do so.”
Cousin Dorcas picked up her needles again, now that the uncertain but bound to be uncomfortable future was not quite as imminent. Carriages and packing and inns—why, all that was enough to give anyone palpitations.
“I thought you had the accounts all in order, dear,” Dorcas said once she had her yarns and bobbins spinning and whirling.
“So did I, but there is a sum taken from every quarter, it appears, going back for years. The unspecified withdrawals started long before I took over the bookkeeping, as far back as I have researched, in fact. I would like to resolve the matter before Roderick or his agent takes over, lest they find some impropriety in my accounts.”
Dorcas clucked her tongue. “There would be no accounts to speak of without your dowry.”
“Yes, but Lord Sparrowdale always found the monies he needed for this expense, whatever it was. The amount kept increasing over the years, but at odd intervals. I cannot help but wonder what the money is for. It is not an outlandish amount, merely considerable, since he let his tailor and his vintner go unpaid.”
“Gambling debts.” Dorcas was positive. “Sparrowdale’s and that son of his.”
“No, for my father paid them all off at the time of the marriage.” Malachy Caldwell had had to pay a great deal more than he’d first intended, since what he was trading, his daughter, had become soiled goods. The earl’s outstanding vowels were redeemed, the family portraits and heirloom jewelry reclaimed from the moneylenders, the mortgages on the London town house and Sparrows Nest satisfied.
“Hmpf. That did not stop either of them from wagering away every shilling they could.”
“Yes, but those new debts were all itemized in the ledgers.” Sparrowdale had kept decent records, so no one could charge him twice. “This has to be something else.”
“Perhaps he was buying contraband. You know how Lord Sparrowdale enjoyed his spirits.”
Those bills from the wine merchants proved it. The earl had no need for more. “Every quarter? I doubt it.”
Dorcas looked around to make sure none of the servants could overhear. “Perhaps he was keeping one of those women.”
Mina had to smile. There was not a soul or a servant for miles who did not know of Lord Sparrowdale’s lechery. “She was a very expensive bit of baggage, in that case. And why would the sums increase twice in the last five years?”
“Perhaps he had more than one mistress,” her cousin whispered. “A harem of harlots he kept in furs and diamonds.”
“Lord Sparrowdale?” Mina asked with a laugh. She could not picture her late, unlamented lord parting with sixpence, not when he could have wagered it on a race or a mill or a cockfight. Besides, he’d been paying for years. Sparrowdale was no Prinny, loyally bearing affection for an aging mistress. Mina doubted he cared for anything but his own pleasure, and that could have been bought for a great deal less than the missing monies.
“Gentlemen do have their . . . needs, you know.” Dorcas was nearly blushing at the direction her thoughts were taking.
Not Sparrowdale, not in the past few years. Mina knew that to her certain knowledge, although she would swallow the pages of the dusty ledger she held before admitting such to her spinster cousin. Sparrowdale’s . . . potency had withered, yet the withdrawals had continued. Mina could not imagine him continuing to pay for services not rendered, yet he had written bank drafts for the unspecified expenses until he was too incapacitated to hold a pen, at which point Mina had taken over the accounts. Sparrowdale never ordered her to send money to anyone, or to make deposits into another account. It was all very strange.
“Do you think—” Dorcas began, only to pause. “That is, Lord Sparrowdale was not everything a person could wish, if that is not speaking too ill of the dead. And his son was certainly no saint, caught with weighted dice. Could the earl have been paying blackmail to someone?”
“That was my first surmise,” Mina admitted. “But why should the fee jump twice since I have known him?”
“Prices of everything have gone up, dear. Why, the cost of silk is nigh double what it used to be.”
“I do not think extortion works that way. Moreover, Sparrowdale was not one to hide his vices.” Indeed, he wore them on his pockmarked face. “What could he have done that was so terrible he was willing to pay for it all those years?”
Dorcas shivered. “I cannot imagine.” Quite to the contrary, Cousin Dorcas had a well-exercised imagination. “Perhaps he murdered an older brother to gain the succession and a servant saw him commit the foul deed. Or he could have been selling state secrets to the French and had to buy his way out of hanging. Or he might have written incriminating letters. That’s what blackmail is usually about, in the novels, you know.” She finally ran out of speculations. “But to think of us living under his roof while he . . . while he did whatever it was he did, is dreadful. You do not suppose anyone can accuse us of complicity in his crimes, do you?”
“We do not know there were any crimes, silly, and the payments start at least fifteen years ago. No one can find us guilty of anything, except curiosity.”
“But what if the blackmailer comes after us, for the money he is owed?” One of the yarn bobbins dropped to the floor.
Mina got up to retrieve the tiny spool. “Now that is foolish beyond permission, Cousin. You might as well start worrying lest Sparrowdale’s ghost starts walking the halls to haunt us.”
“Oh, my, perhaps we ought to remove to the dower house after all.”
Mina could have bitten her tongue. Now she’d be up half the night reassuring her cousin that the earl’s specter was not lurking in the corridors. No, it was his son who used to do that. “I’ll write to Mr. Sizemore. Perhaps he knows something of the matter, although he has not been employed by the earl all that long. Sparrowdale might have confided in him when they rewrote the earl’s will after the viscount’s death.”
“That’s all right, then,” Dorcas said, her needles resuming their clicking. “Mr. Sizemore will know what to do.”
“But Mr. Sizemore is an honest man. He might not have knowledge of whatever nefarious dealings Sparrowdale had.”
Mina returned to her desk and opened the ledger again. She had marked her place with a scrap of paper cut out of one of Cousin Dorcas’s London journals. The small advertisement had a simple black border around it. Discreet inquiries made, was all it said, along with a name, Lowell Merrison, and care of the newspaper’s address.
Chapter Three
Mr. Sizemore was not much help, although the box of candied violets did take Cousin Dorcas’s mind off bogeys and blackmailers. As for relocating, the bewigged and beefy solicitor did not approve of ladies going jaunting off by themselves without masculine escort. London with no father, uncle, brother, or husband was no place for gently reared females of whatever age or circumstance, he believed, no matter how many menservants they employed.
“Forgive me, my lady,” he told Mina over tea and poppyseed cake, “but for all your years of marriage, your business acumen, and estate-management experience, you are still a green girl when it comes to opportunists and importunists. Who would make sure your name was not bandied around the clubs by the rakish element?”
Mina recalled the gossip the last time she went to London. Sparrowdale had not protected her from being grist for the rumor mills.
“Who would keep the fortune hunters from your door?” Mr. Sizemore went on.
Her father had welcomed one with open arms.
“An unscrupulous scoundrel might even try to steal what was not offered, with no one to gainsay him.” Mr. Sizemore was trying to be euphemistically polite.
Her stepson had not been as courteous, euphemistically or otherwise, groping at her with his father cupshot beside him. Mina thought London could have no worse dangers for her.
The solicitor did. Heiresses were in danger of being kidnapped or compromised, robbed or ruined. No, Lady Sparrowdale and Miss Albright should stay right here in Berkshire, he told them, under the protection of the current Earl of Sparrowdale. Roderick Sparr seemed a vast improvement over the previous titleholder, if the countess could forgive her well-meaning solicitor’s frankness. He was neither a wastrel nor a womanizer. The new earl, in fact, having put his past behind him, now seemed more interested in restoring the family name than in dragging it through more mud and muck. He would keep rumor and disreputable suitors at bay, especially since he vied for the hand of a priggish duke’s proper daughter.
The idea of leaving her fate to her nephew-by-marriage left Mina cold. She pulled her black shawl more closely around her shoulders, despite the fire in the hearth. She did not want to be subject to any man’s authority, not to protect her reputation or her riches. Freedom was too new to Mina for her to relinquish it so readily. London was looking more appealing.
As for the missing bank funds, the thickset solicitor was even less helpful.
“No, his lordship never disclosed such transactions to me, nor did he make any unusual stipulations in his latest will, beyond the pensions for his valet and the London butler. My unfortunately deceased partner had handled the Sparrowdale accounts before that. We never discussed such matters, of course. Client confidentiality, you know.” He accepted the fresh cup of tea Mina poured out for him while he deliberated on the cash withdrawals. “Why, Lord Sparrowdale must have been donating to charity,” he finally suggested. “I myself contribute anonymously to several worthy causes.”
Mina almost spilled her own tea, and Cousin Dorcas choked on a slice of cake.
“Charity? Lord Sparrowdale?” Mina asked after patting her cousin’s back. “I’d swear that was the first time I have heard the two mentioned in the same sentence. Why, the only man less charitable than the earl was my own father, who believed the poor deserved their misery for not working hard enough. He’d risen above his own humble beginnings by the sweat of his own labors, he said many times, and saw no reason others should not do the same. Give a man a free meal, my father was used to saying, and he would only ask for dessert.”
Mr. Sizemore drew his hand back from reaching for a second piece of cake, wondering if he’d be invited to dine with the ladies after all.
Mina went on: “The earl was almost worse, except he never had funds to contribute. No, the only tithing Lord Sparrowdale did was to the cents-per-centers, to pay his gambling debts. My cousin and I have been wondering if the withdrawals were for something immoral or illegal.”
“There, you see. Just what I meant,” Mr. Sizemore said, deciding to take the piece of cake in case it had to last until he reached an inn for supper. “You should not have to be fretting over such havey-cavey vexations. The new earl can deal with the situation. In fact, by rights he inherited Lord Sparrowdale’s dirty linen, if such it is, along with the title and the properties. You may rest assured that, with his new goal of respectability, the earl’s nephew will handle the matter expeditiously.”
“Yes, I have been thinking of writing to Roderick about the funds, to see if he knows aught of the situation. I was simply curious in the meantime. It amounts to a substantial sum of money over the years.”
Sizemore pulled at his straining waistcoat when he heard the figure Mina had calculated. “Yes, I can see where that total might have piqued your interest and your suspicions, but I doubt if we shall ever know the truth of the matter. Dead men keep their secrets, don’t you know.”
“Then you agree this reeks of hugger-mugger?”
The solicitor gave up on his girth and reached for yet another slice of cake. “If it were anything aboveboard, we would have heard by now. A legitimate debt or annuity payment gone missing would have drawn a query well before two quarters had passed. Usually the claimants creep out from under their rocks before the departed is underground. Honest ones come first, with their unpaid bills in hand, hoping the estate or the family will make good on a gaming debt or a merchant’s invoice. The Captain Sharps come later, hoping to cheat unsuspecting widows or grieving children out of their inheritances with fake claims on the loved one’s fortune. I’ve had merchants waving outstanding bills with fresh ink, and females with outstanding bellies claiming the deceased as father. I’ve seen forged gambling chits galore, and a few long-lost relatives seeking their share of the bequests. If any such come to you, my lady, especially at this late date, refer them to me. I’ll send them off with a flea in their ear, you may be certain.”
“Has anyone like that approached you about Lord Sparrowdale’s estate?” Mina wanted to know. “Anyone who might have been receiving money in the past?”
Mr. Sizemore thought a moment while he chewed. “I believe my clerk mentioned chasing off some ragtag boy who said he was the earl’s son. As if the Sparrowdale succession could sprout a new limb at this date. The lad must take us all for fools.”
“I do not suppose you got his name, did you?"’
“What, a street urchin taking a holiday from begging or picking pockets? The boy should be glad my clerk did not have him arrested. Get his name, indeed.”
The boy’s name was Peregrine Radway, and he arrived at Sparrows Nest the following week, but before he did, a letter arrived at Merrison House, Mersford Square, Mayfair, London. The letter was included in a package of mail recently delivered from the newspaper office. The paper was of high quality, the script was neat, the style was polite—and it piqued the interest of the Honorable Lord Lowell Merrison, second son of the Duke of Mersford, as nothing had in ages.
“Mother, what do you know of a Minerva, Lady Sparrowdale?” Lord Lowell asked the handsome woman who sat across the breakfast table from him, sorting through her own pile of invitations, announcements, and correspondence.
The dowager Duchess of Mersford put down her lorgnette and perked up her ears. “I know she is now a wealthy widow, Lolly. Are you interested in her?”
The hope in his mother’s voice brought a frown to Lord Lowell’s brow. “In a professional capacity only, Mother. I have never met the woman.”
“Botheration.” Her Grace went back to the letter from her sister in York, holding the looking glass first one way, then the other. “I cannot make out your aunt Agatha’s handwriting, as usual. Either her husband is suffering from the gout, or he is acting like an old goat.”
“Likely both, knowing Uncle Edgar. Do you wish to borrow my spectacles to find out?”
“Heavens no. It is enough that I have three grandchildren—not that I am not wishful for more, of course—but I absolutely refuse to don spectacles.”
Lord Lowell replaced his own glasses with a sigh.
Hearing that sound, Her Grace hurried to say, “Not that you are not handsome in yours, Lolly. Very dignified, don’t you know. But on a lady of my years, they are a concession to decrepitude, not a mark of distinction.”
“You will never grow old, Mother,” her son dutifully replied. “And if you do, you will never look it.”
“Dear, dear boy. You always know the right thing to say, don’t you? No wonder the young ladies are always asking if you are attending this party or that balloon ascension. I swear half the invitations I receive have your name on them too. In fact, I doubt I would be asked to half these come-out balls if I did not have such an eligible bachelor in residence. I only wish you would—”
“Lady Sparrowdale, Mother?” the duchess’s son interrupted, knowing full well what lecture would follow if he did not redirect his mother’s thoughts. Once the word “grandchildren” was mentioned, she was like a filly at the races, champing at the bit.
“Faugh. If your interest in the countess concerns your business, go find what you want to know. You style yourself a private investigator, do you not? Go investigate.”
Lowell sighed again. He had been doing that a lot recently, it seemed. “We have been over this ground before, Mother. There is nothing untoward a
bout my line of work.”
“It is work, which you have no need to do. You have a neat competence from your father.”
“Which barely covers my cattle and my clothes.” He looked down at his striped silk waistcoat, admiring the soft grays and blues. “I refuse to live at my brother’s expense. Bad enough that I live like a princeling in his house.”
“Your brother can afford to keep any number of relations in comfort, and heaven knows this barracks of a place could house King Henry and all eight of his wives.”
“I still dislike the idea of being my brother’s pensioner.” Lowell would have taken rooms at the Albany, well within his budget, ages ago, if not for his mother’s pleas.
“You are not thinking of moving out again, are you, dear?” she asked now, ready with her handkerchief to dab at damp eyes, if tears became necessary. She would never get the gudgeon wed, she feared, if he set up housekeeping in a bachelor fastness. “What would I do without you, with your brother and That Woman spending so much time in the country? Why, I would fall into a decline, I am sure, alone in this vast pile by myself.”
“Nonsense. You would fill Merrison House with even more of your card parties and musicales. And That Woman is your daughter-in-law Margaret, who would spend more time in London, I daresay, if you were not forever telling her how to raise her children.”
Her Grace sniffed. “I did a good enough job on you and your brothers and sister, if I say so myself. Speaking of jobs”—the duchess could turn from an uncomfortable subject as easily as Lowell could—“a gentleman, even one with a mere courtesy title, is not expected to dirty his hands with such unsavory work as you pursue. The law, the church, the military, even politics, which is unsavory enough—those are acceptable careers for the son of a duke. Not dabbling in criminal mischief or foolishness like redeeming Lady Carstair’s family diamonds from that ivory-tuner.”
Lady Sparrow Page 2