How to Ruin a Reputation (Rakes Beyond Redemption)

by Bronwyn Scott

  A devastating thought occurred to him: the will.

  The date had been much later than November. Marsbury had the original, but Ashe had a copy of it for his records. Ashe dug in the desk drawer. ‘Here, look at this.’ He spread the papers out for Alex and Genevra to see. ‘Father’s signature is barely legible here, it’s hardly more than a scribbled line.’

  They found other receipts, all signed with his father’s name in legible, impossible precision, but no sign of any monies having been sent to Dr Lawrence.

  Ashe drafted letters to the buyers, politely asking to verify the amounts paid for their items, but their answers weren’t mandatory. The big question still remained unanswered: why would someone deliberately bankrupt the estate? Especially if that someone was Henry and had hopes of taking it over.

  *

  Ashe pushed back from the desk well into the afternoon. He’d come back to one thought time and time again throughout the morning. ‘I think it’s time to consider the possibility that Henry isn’t operating alone.’

  Alex looked thoughtful. ‘Who?’

  Ashe shrugged. ‘I don’t know and I don’t know why. But they could be the ones who paid Dr Lawrence, which is why we have no record.’

  ‘We also have to consider more than the receipts,’ Genevra put in. ‘These receipts are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Household items were being sold, but that alone wouldn’t bankrupt a healthy estate. Whatever has been done here, has been going on for a few years. This doesn’t explain where the usual income went from rents and crops.’

  Ashe nodded in agreement. What they’d done today was merely pick the low hanging fruit. It was a start, but there was so much more they didn’t have. They didn’t even have Henry’s name on a document to prove he’d been skimming money from the sales. If he’d actually sold the items for the recorded prices, then he was guilty of nothing except bad judgement in the eyes of the law.

  Ashe rose. ‘We’re done for the day. Keep thinking of anything you might recall.’

  He needed some time alone. It was still raining outside. A walk was out of the question, so he headed to the music room and took refuge in his piano. Today had been more emotional than he’d expected. He’d not thought looking over receipts and bills would affect him so strongly. But he’d been wrong. Seeing his father’s signature on the will again, and hearing Genevra mention how his faculties had failed him, were potent reminders of mortality. If a man like his father could deteriorate, so could they all.

  Ashe ran his hands over the keys, letting physical memory take over as he played so his thoughts could wander. He’d come to grips with his father’s death that night at the mausoleum, but he’d not come to terms with the dying. He was starting to realise they were two different things.

  He felt a presence rustle behind him, soft hands at his shoulders and the smell of lemongrass.

  ‘He was alone. Both of his sons had left him.’ Ashe spoke his thoughts out loud.

  ‘Not entirely alone.’ Genevra spoke quietly. ‘He had his sister and his wife’s sisters with him.’

  ‘And you,’ Ashe said.

  ‘And me.’ She was humble, but his father must have come to care for her a great deal. He’d pinned his estate’s hopes on her and his father had not been misguided in that. Ashe had seldom known his father to make mistakes, as hard as that was to admit growing up. His father had been right about practically everything. His father had not been wrong now choosing Genevra, not just for Bedevere, but for him.

  ‘Thank you for letting Alex and I help today.’ She moved away from him and he turned to follow her progress to the window.

  ‘Was it bad at the end?’ Ashe went to join her at the window. This was the conversation she’d wanted to have in the conservatory that first night, but he’d not been ready for it.

  ‘He’d been failing for months.’ Genevra sighed and leaned back against him.

  ‘His doctor said he’d had a series of strokes over the past three years. Each one left him a bit more debilitated. He’d recover a little and there would be good days, but in the end it was just too much. He couldn’t walk, couldn’t write, speech was difficult.’

  ‘I cannot imagine him that way.’

  ‘Then don’t. Keep him in your mind the way you remember him most.’

  ‘I remember the last day I saw him. It was in this room. My bags were packed for Italy and the carriage was ready, even though we’d fought over my going.

  Father wouldn’t have his son leaving in an old gig, disagreement or not.’ Ashe caught himself smiling at the remembrance. His father had been duly proud of his station in life and had encouraged his sons to never forget what they’d been born to.

  ‘He walked into the room and I thought, “Oh, no, here we go again.” But all he said was, “Don’t let yourself become less than you are.” At the time, I only saw his words as another way of voicing his disapproval over what I intended to do.’

  ‘What was that?’ Genevra’s body was warm and comforting against him and he tightened his grip about her waist. He’d not talked of this with anyone for years but it felt right talking with her now. He wanted to tell her.

  ‘I wanted to be a pianist. I wanted to study in Vienna, I wanted to go to Italy and study piano-making. I wanted to make the grandest pianos of them all.’ Ashe shook his head, remembering the numerous quarrels he’d had with his father over it. ‘But that wasn’t a dignified calling for a son of my father. The son of an earl, heir or not, did not put himself on stage performing, or dirty his hands in any form of carpentry. I’d been raised my whole life to understand that I would seek my career outside Bedevere. Bedevere was for Alex. But there were limits to what that career was supposed to be. Pianos weren’t on the list. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see myself in the military or behind a pulpit, God forbid.’

  Genevra laughed softly with him. ‘I don’t know, you might have been a very popular vicar to say the least. The pews would have been full of women every Sunday. You might have done the Church of England a great service.

  ‘But, you went anyway?’ Genevra sobered and prompted him to return to the story.

  ‘Yes, there were four of us that set off together on our Grand Tour. We went to Vienna first and took rooms on the Lanterngasse. I studied privately with a master there, but I was young and cocky and too talented for my own good.

  Suffice it to say, there were those who were jealous. One night, not long after I’d played at Schonbrunn, I found myself set upon by common street thugs after a performance. They’d been paid, of course, by those who thought I was rising too quickly. It only took a sharp shard of glass to put paid to any future career hopes.’

  Even now, years later, he could feel the pain of the slice that had ended his career, recalled the helplessness he’d felt in that alley, outnumbered five to one.

  Genevra was caressing his hand, turning it over before he could stop her.

  ‘Is this it?’ Her index finger traced the thin white line bisecting his palm. ‘I’d never noticed it before. It healed well,’ Genevra murmured.

  ‘Thanks to a woman in Venice. We left Vienna immediately, but infection had set in and I took ill with a fever as we travelled. We got as far as Venice when we decided we needed professional help. She saved me.’ Ashe winced. That part of the story was probably not suitable for a wife’s ears. Genevra didn’t want to hear about Signora de Luca. His friends had gone on after a while to other parts of Italy, but he’d stayed a long time with her, trying to piece together the remnants of his dream.

  To her generous credit, Genevra did not pause on the mention of the good signora. ‘Does it pain you? I think it must. I’ve noticed you flexing your hand on occasion. I thought nothing of it until now.’

  ‘Only if it’s overworked. I learned I couldn’t build pianos, though.’

  ‘What would you have built?’ Genevra asked.

  Ashe chuckled. ‘I haven’t thought of that for ages. I was going to build pianos with eight full octaves that t
hundered in a concert hall.’ He sighed. ‘It was too much strain every day. I also couldn’t train or study with my former intensity. It was over. So, after a while, I rejoined my friends in Italy and I came back to England.’

  ‘But not to Bedevere?’

  ‘No.’ This was the hard part of the story. He’d been too ashamed of his failure, too ashamed of the way he’d left to face his father. ‘A twenty-three-year-old man’s pride is a terrible obstacle, Neva.’ It was also an obstacle that had grown more insurmountable as the years passed. He’d seen his brother occasionally when Alex had come up to town. But he’d not seen his father again.

  ‘Your father would have forgiven you.’

  ‘For leaving? Perhaps.’ But for the rest? For deserting Bedevere, for deserting him? For becoming less than what he was? Ashe wasn’t so sure. He wasn’t certain he deserved it anyway.

  He placed a kiss on the long column of Genevra’s neck. ‘I’ve never told anyone that story before. Not even Alex.’

  She turned in his embrace to wrap her arms about his neck. ‘I’m glad I’m the first,’ she said, taking his mouth in a soft kiss, his body rousing at her touch.

  ‘Do you know what else I’ve never done?’ Ashe whispered.

  ‘I can’t imagine.’ Her grey eyes were alight with teasing mischief. She boldly reached for him, finding the core of him and tracing its length through his trousers until he groaned.

  ‘Careful, Neva, or I won’t last until I get you to the piano.’ His need was consuming him now as he lifted her to the piano. He needed to bury himself inside her, needed to feel her legs wrapped tightly around him. Her money had saved Bedevere, but she could save him.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ‘It has been a month and you’ve done nothing!’ Henry’s anger made him brave as the cartel sat at the long reading table adorning Marcus Trent’s library.

  ‘You are impatient, Bennington,’ Trent scolded. ‘How much bad luck do you think the Bedevere family can withstand before people start to question the reason for it?’

  ‘The longer we wait, the better the chance becomes Bedevere will get a look at those ledgers and figure out something is wrong,’ Henry argued. ‘We already know he’s started.’ Thanks to Genevra’s hiring flurry it had been relatively easy to place a man in the household who could monitor any interesting activity at Bedevere. He’d reported last week that Ashe had been combing the books and letters had gone out to names Henry recognised as purchasers of some of the goods he’d sold.

  ‘If he’s only looking at receipts, Henry, there’s little to worry about. All he’ll discover is your very poor sense of business.’ Marcus waved away Henry’s concerns.

  Henry nodded, debating whether or not he dared to interrupt again. He’d sold the goods initially to continue breaking Bedevere. He’d not cared what price he got for them. It was all part of the plan to make the estate desperate, so desperate that whoever was in charge would welcome the opportunity to turn the parklands into a coal mine. But there was more to find in the ledgers if Ashe kept digging and Henry could not let it go unaccounted.

  ‘If I might mention the other?’ Henry began delicately. ‘There’s also the money “lost” on the “bad investments”.’ It wouldn’t take Ashe long to start sniffing down that path. Most of the Bedevere funds had been drained that way. He’d signed Alex’s name to most of them, most notably the Forsyth deal. The Forsyth deal had been real enough, but the other bad investments hadn’t existed. They’d been fronts for Trent’s cartel. The Bedevere coffers were now being used to fund the mining effort in part.

  ‘Your name isn’t on any of the deals,’ Marcus said glibly. ‘It’s the young earl’s name.’

  ‘Signed by me,’ Henry protested. ‘Now that Alex is home—’ The danger of discovery rose exponentially, but he didn’t get to say that. Cunningham broke in.

  ‘Now that the earl is home he can’t be controlled by us any more. Dr Lawrence can’t simply sedate him when he gets too assertive.’ Cunningham glared.

  That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t his fault Ashe had brought Alex home. Henry tried a different argument. ‘We all have money tied up in this venture. The longer we drag it out, the longer we delay our profits. A month ago we’d agreed to take decisive action and we’ve done nothing.’ A few heads nodded.

  ‘All right, here’s what I propose.’ Marcus Trent rubbed his hands together and began to plan. ‘We will try to buy him with his own money.’

  *

  ‘There are two gentlemen downstairs who wish to see you, sir,’ Gardener announced in quiet tones.

  Ashe looked up reluctantly from his game of chess with Alex. ‘Do they have an appointment?’ He didn’t recall anything being scheduled on his calendar. ‘Did they say what they wanted?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Gardener answered.

  ‘Are they really gentleman, Gardener, or are you merely being polite?’ Ashe gave a wry smile.

  ‘They are businessmen, sir,’ Gardener said without a trace of condescension, but the implication was there all the same. They weren’t gentlemen and they were calling without a letter of introduction or an appointment. It was all very curious and out of the ordinary.

  ‘I’d best go down and see them.’ Ashe stood up, reaching for the jacket he’d discarded earlier. ‘We’ll finish when I get back. Don’t touch anything, Alex. I know exactly where all my pieces are.’

  ‘Maybe I should go with you.’ Alex rose, too, but Ashe halted him.

  ‘That’s not necessary.’

  Alex sat with a smile. ‘It’s probably not. Nobody wants to do business with a crazy man.’ He laughed it off, but the remark stung Ashe.

  ‘It’s not that. I was thinking of your safety. I didn’t like the idea of you and I in a close room together with strangers.’ Strangers who had no appointment.

  ‘And the doctors say I’m paranoid,’ Alex joked. ‘It is possible, Ashe, that Henry has given up and is happy to remain on his farm. It’s been a month and no news of anything nefarious.’

  Ashe finished adjusting his jacket. ‘I reserve the right to be sceptical on that account, Brother. Gardener, give me five minutes in the estate office and then show them up.’

  *

  Gardener had been right. The two visitors weren’t gentlemen, although they tried very hard to be in their tailored clothes. But they lacked the accents that marked the upper class and that certain air of aristocratic hauteur. By the look of them, they were wealthy and that was the extent of their recommendation.

  ‘Mr Bedevere, thank you for seeing us,’ the larger, dark-haired man effused.

  ‘I’m Marcus Trent and this is my associate Arthur Ellingson.’

  Ellingson shot an eager look at the decanters lining the sideboard, but Ashe didn’t take the hint. He’d offer them a seat and a few moments of his time, but that was all. ‘Sirs, I haven’t much time this afternoon so I’d appreciate it if we could get straight to your business,’ Ashe said in aloof but polite tones.

  ‘You might be in less of a hurry after you hear what we have to say.’ The one called Marcus chuckled. Ashe fixed him with a cold stare.

  ‘It just so happens we know there is a significant deposit of coal on Bedevere land, a deposit, if mined correctly, that could keep the pockets of future earls lined for generations. We’d like to buy the rights to mine here for a significant fee of twenty thousand pounds and an offer of fifteen per cent of the profits once mining begins. It’s a very generous offer.’

  ‘I am sure it would be if I wanted to turn my estate into a mine.’ Ashe’s tone was glacial. ‘But I assure you, I do not, never mind the fact that I have no idea how you’ve come by such information.’

  Ellingson jumped in. ‘I have charts, sir. You needn’t worry about the authenticity of the information.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m worried about.’ Ashe stood. ‘Good day, gentlemen.’

  ‘Don’t be so hasty.’ Trent met his gaze with a steely stare of his own. ‘You’d hate to regret passing on thi
s opportunity.’

  ‘Is that a threat, Mr Trent?’ Ashe did not mistake the intention of his words.

  ‘Let’s just say you can contact me if you change your mind.’

  Or have it changed for him. Ashe understood this type of man all too well. ‘I won’t.’ He called for Gardener to show the men out. He didn’t want these two so-called businessmen lurking on Bedevere land any longer than needed.

  *

  ‘Where’s Mrs Bedevere, Gardener? Is she home yet?’ She’d gone down to the village to help a mother with a new baby.

  ‘She hasn’t returned yet, sir.’

  ‘Send her to me at once,’ Ashe said tersely. He’d breathe easier when she was home, safe. The pieces were starting to come together. It was supposition only, but what if Henry knew about the coal? It gave him a motive to see Bedevere penniless. A penniless estate would be tempted to take the offer and, if Henry were in charge of the estate, he’d take that offer. Twenty thousand pounds was a small fortune in exchange for simply walking away from Bedevere not to mention the eventual fifteen per cent. It would be a comfortable allowance.

  That was where he was different than Henry. Henry saw only the profit. Ashe saw the legacy of preserving the estate. Even if it hadn’t been for Genevra’s money, Ashe knew he would not be tempted. Staffordshire was full of industry and mining and he knew well the sight of ugly industrialism. Staffordshire was also full of rural beauty. Not all of the county had been industrialised yet and he far preferred it to a factory landscape.

  The door to his office opened and Genevra breezed in, her hair in slight disarray from her hat, her cheeks pink from her drive. ‘You’ll be glad to know they’re all doing well—’ Then she stopped suddenly, her exuberance fading. ‘What is it, Ashe?’

  ‘There’s a cartel that wants the rights to mine Bedevere for coal.’

  ‘Henry?’ Genevra sat down quietly.