Library

Chapter Seven

E veryone at Chaumbers was on edge, from the Countess on down to the lowliest scullery maid. Reginald tried to be patient with his mother’s sharpness, his sister’s tears, the burnt toast, and the watery coffee. He was patient. But, sitting down in the empty breakfast parlor, having scooped a pile of cold eggs and limp kippers onto his plate, he found a card at his place marked with his brother’s scrawled hand: Please come to the study at your earliest convenience, and even Reginald’s patience finally snapped.

The hell .

He choked down two mouthfuls, then pushed the plate aside and rose. He stomped to the study, flung open the door, and marched to the desk where his startled brother waited.

He dropped the card on Father’s desk.

“A summons, Jasper? Go to the devil. If this is how it will be—”

“What are you talking about?”

“This.” He gestured to his brother, seated in his father’s chair. “That!” He pointed to the card.

Jasper still looked bewildered. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“Then come ask me. Don’t leave me a damn card. You are not yet Iversley.”

Jasper picked up the card and tore it in two. He muttered an oath.

“A bit tetchy this morning, are we, Reg?” He sounded even more irritated than Reginald felt. “Did Cook forget to bake your rolls again?” He shifted in his chair. Father’s chair . “Sit down. Or don’t. I don’t give a damn.”

Reginald sat. His legs felt wobbly, and his chest was tight. Moreover, his eyes burned. The hell! Jasper turned his attention to a pile of papers on his desk— the desk, not his, but Father’s —and said nothing for a few moments.

Reginald steadied his breath. “I’m not prepared for any of this.”

“You think I am? Damn it, Reg. I’m going to need a little help. How would you prefer for me to ask for it? I’ve been up since before dawn. I don’t have time to lounge in the breakfast parlor until you put in an appearance. Would sending Finley or Peters for you have suited you better?”

No. Of course not. “I overreacted,” he admitted stiffly. He was not used to being the one owing an apology to either of his brothers.

Jasper sniffed. “Whatever you may think, I am not chomping at the bit to take the Earl’s place.”

“I know you’re not.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know.” He flicked his hand. “Maybe buy your own chair.”

Jasper stared at him a moment, then pursed his lips. “I’ll put it on my list of things to do.” He pulled his hand through his hair, mussing it, which brought a hitch to Reginald’s throat. His brother looked exhausted.

Reginald asked, “You haven’t heard from Crispin, have you?” They could really use Crispin.

“Not a word.”

“Well,” he sighed, “he’ll just show up. That’s his way.”

“He’d better show up soon.” His brother scowled and drummed his fingers on the arms of the chair, not absently but purposefully, as though his agitated motion could hurry Crispin along. Reginald couldn’t tell if Jasper simply wanted additional brotherly support, or if he was worried Crispin…would not make it home on time. He leaned forward and reached for Jasper’s fingers, laying his hand on them for a moment to stop the drumming.

“Do you think Father’s worsening?”

They had thought he would die. Those first few days, he woke only to murmur and groan. Mother and Olivia spoon-fed him pap. His valet took care of his other necessities until they hired a woman to tend to them. It had been…sad. So sad. But then, he seemed to revive. They were able to prop him up in bed. His nurse and valet were even able to move him into a chair by the window for half an hour at a time. And he could make himself understood, though he didn’t say much. They all took turns sitting with him. Jasper talked to him about the estate, asking a few questions, but nothing of importance. Reginald read to him—from the Bible. Reginald liked Scripture well enough; some of it was quite beautiful. But reading it like that, at his father’s bedside, made him feel the worst sort of fraud.

“No,” Jasper said. “He seems the same. Bad, but the same. He’s a tough old coot.”

Reginald nodded. “So. What did you ‘summon me’ for?”

When Jasper’s lips twitched in half a smile, Reginald knew his apology was accepted.

“I haven’t heard from Crispin, but I did get a letter from Benjamin. My letter took a long time to find him. He’d gone into the godforsaken interior somewhere. He said he would like the position if I haven’t already found someone. He has a few things to take care of but then will book passage on the next available ship.” He rubbed his jaw. “I don’t expect him here, honestly, until summer.”

“But you will hold the position for him?”

“He’s the right person for it. It doesn’t make sense to me to launch a search for a steward that may take until summer anyway. I don’t want to hire someone just to have someone. That causes more work in the end.”

“Yes. So Father has said.”

“Font of all wisdom.” He looked at his papers again. This time it was Jasper who appeared to be holding back tears. Reginald ignored that and kept talking so Jasper would not know that he saw.

“Well, things have been rolling in their ruts for months. I take it Father’s man of business has things in hand.”

“Oh, yes. I suppose. The servants are not leaving in droves. They must be getting paid. I don’t know that the rents are being collected.”

“I’m sure Wentworth is seeing to that.” Bradwell did have an assistant; he’d been ancient, after all.

“The thing is…” Jasper leaned back in the chair. The leather squeaked. Such a familiar sound, but it seemed to startle him. He straightened. “The thing is, I don’t want to present Benjamin with a slipshod set of books that haven’t been cracked open in ages. I took a peek. Loose receipts are stuffed between pages. The last entry was dated eight months ago.”

“God.”

“I know Benjamin can straighten it all out. It isn’t that I’m worried that he can’t. It’s simply that it’s an embarrassing start. It should not have gotten to this point.”

“No, of course not. But that isn’t your fault.”

“It isn’t and it is. Either way, it’s embarrassing to the family. Not that he’d carry tales. Or hold it over me.”

“No. I understand.” He did. Jasper was assuming his role. And Reginald was proud of him for it. It was not a role Reginald would have wanted for himself. “So what do you intend to do?”

“Ha. Well.” A little of the usual lightness slipped into his voice. “I intend to dump the whole mess on you, naturally.”

“ What ?” His voice rose with disbelief Of course, he wanted to help lessen Jasper’s burdens, but he knew nothing about bookkeeping.

“The most recent set of ledgers is on the table behind you. Peters has a basket of receipts and bills, some of which were probably paid but he has no proof of that, and, should there be any need, there are years and years of old ledgers in the barristers on the left side of the library.”

This was absurd! “I’m not an accountant!”

“You took a first in mathematics at Cambridge.”

“That’s entirely different. I’m not being lazy or difficult, Jasper, I—”

“Reg, you are brilliant. There is no denying it. I know it’s a tedious thing to ask of you, but you’ll figure it out.”

Reginald swallowed his protests. It was not that much to ask. And surely, he could figure it out. His own interests could wait. Should wait. “What if I uncover all your old gambling debts?” he asked.

Jasper laughed. Reginald realized he had not heard his brother laugh since leaving London.

“Then, as always, I will rely upon your discretion, little brother.”

He started to rise. “Will that be all?”

“No. One more thing.”

Reginald settled back with a sigh. “I hope you didn’t save the worst for last.”

“Maybe. Mother has invited a few houseguests. At my request.”

“Houseguests! Now? Are you mad?”

“I think it will help.”

Help? He was mad. “Jasper, we cannot have guests. They are burning toast in the kitchen. And oh! The Earl is bedridden, in case you’d forgotten.” His earlier fury returned. “Why would you do this to Mother?”

“The guests are the Duchess of Hovington, Lady Georgiana, and her cousin, Alexandra. Agnes. Something like that. Oh, God, my mind is going. I don’t forget names. I can’t .” He put his head in his hands, elbows on the desk. Then he ground out, “Alice. Miss Alice Fogbotham.”

Reginald swallowed. Jasper’s guests included the young lady he wished to court. His brother was no fool. He was not blind to the household circumstances. If he was nevertheless determined to pursue this course, despite the obstacles, he would need his family’s support.

“And you’re sure about Lady Georgiana?”

“I’m sure about her name.”

“But you are not rushing into something you’ll regret? Or that she’ll regret?”

“I don’t know, Reg,” he groaned. “Do you think Cupid shot me with an arrow? But people of our station marry one another all the time. It isn’t the end of the world. People speak well of her. They speak well of me. I’m sure we’ll manage to rub along just fine. They’ll be here in two days. Try to make yourself pleasant.”

*

Reginald balanced two rolls in one hand, picked up his steaming cup of coffee with the other, and set off for the library. Their guests would arrive sometime today. The funny thing was, it did help, inviting people. Cook had snapped back to form, and the kitchen staff seemed relieved to have her hounding them again. Mrs. Hardy, the head housekeeper, set the maid to dusting and sweeping and washing as if the house had been dirty, which of course it had not.

They had had two days of fine weather, so Jasper rode about Iversley, paying calls on the tenants. Reassuring them. By nature, people hated change. The Earl had been a good lord to his people, demanding but fair, generous but not gullible. Reginald would not call him kind, but he would never be cruel to those in his care. Jasper was more likable, certainly, but tenants did not necessarily want their earl to be likable. It was good for them to see that Lord Taverston was reliable and steady. And here.

Crispin had, reportedly, blown in with the wind sometime last night or early morning. Mother, who had been sitting up with Father, had seen him, but apart from the porter who opened the door, no one else had. It would be interesting to see how he took the news that the future countess was about to arrive to be courted in their presence. He hoped Crispin would make himself pleasant.

Reginald carried his breakfast into the library.

This should be his favorite room in the old house. Everyone probably assumed it was. But Reginald was particular about libraries and this one fell short. It was partly the architecture. It sat under the east end of the second-floor ballroom. So, back in the remote days when the Countess used to hold balls, if one happened to be a school-age boy home on holiday who wished to spend his unsupervised evening hours reading, one had to block out the sound of stomping feet and music.

Moreover, the shape of the room echoed that of the ballroom. Instead of being sensibly rectangular, with small, well-placed windows and great expanses of shelves, it was box-shaped with two…excrescences. Cubbyholes with bay windows. It made one wonder if the architect had ever seen a library before or understood how they were to be used. They were not even symmetrical excrescences, and so offended the eye. The smaller one held a tiny table with a painted-on chessboard. Two chairs were tucked beneath it. For show, he supposed. The “boys” had never been chess players.

The larger one contained a decent writing desk and a chair that could pivot back and forth. There must have been rhyme or reason for such a design, but it put Reginald in mind of a child’s rocking horse. The best thing about the “cubbies” was that each could be closed off with a heavy velvet curtain, hanging from rings on a rod attached to the ceiling. The ceiling, by the by, was too low for a library. One could reach the top bookshelf with the aid of a simple step stool.

And the less said about the books, the better. It should be enough to note that the bulk of the glass-enclosed shelves along the left wall contained old ledgers. And much of the shelving on the right contained Bibles and religious tracts.

Should one’s eyes happen upon a middle shelf on the right wall, where a gap between grandfather’s dusty histories had been partly filled, with no regard for order or good sense, by a few of Mother’s novels, one would find the newest additions to the family book collection: Woodhouse’s The Principles of Analytical Calculation , Maclaurin’s Fluxions , and, of course, Newton’s Principia . He’d thought himself clever in mathematics, taking a first, until he’d spent an evening in a Cambridge pub with a fellow named Babbage. It wasn’t the ale that had befuddled him. Now he’d consigned his mathematical schoolbooks to the Chaumbers’ library and recommitted himself to ancient Greek.

Reginald strode to the desk, set down his bread, and pulled shut the curtain. Two more hours, he would give it today. Then, after luncheon, he would permit himself to work on his translation until their guests arrived. Unless Crispin disturbed his plans.

He perched on the “rocking horse” and spread open the ledger. He had been approaching the task logically. Rather than diving straight in, he had first gone back to a ledger five years old, starting from the assumption that Bradwell had still been in his best form, and studied the man’s system. It was not difficult to get the sense of it. There was a repetitiveness to the entries, though not all expenses were recurring ones. Five years ago: that was the year that there should have been a rather large layout for Crispin’s commission, but of course, there wasn’t. He wondered if Father regretted that. If Crispin did. Well, that was their business. Neither was ever going to say.

When he felt he understood it well enough, he checked himself with another ledger from two years ago. The system was unchanged, as were many of the recurring expenditures. Only Bradwell’s handwriting differed. It had become shaky. That hurt to see.

He had then acquired Peters’ basket. He arranged all the scraps in chronological order and began entering them according to Bradwell’s system. Some were marked paid, and he took that at face value. He had decided to make two lists of the others. One would be those he was sure would have been attended to even if they were unmarked. The others, he had no idea. He intended to send the lists to Father’s man of business. If he didn’t know, Reginald hoped the bank would.

It would upset Jasper, not to mention Mother, to have creditors banging on the door the day after Father’s funeral—which wouldn’t happen for some time yet, God willing—fearing they would never see their money. If necessary, he would pay something twice and leave it for Benjamin to sort out.

He had retrieved a second set of books from Wentworth, whose sole job it was to ensure rents were collected. And they had been. Reginald spent the morning transferring recent numbers to the main ledger, since that was how it had always been done. He did note that two tenants were a month in arrears. He would have to question Wentworth about that. And a third tenant was four months behind. But that man’s name was circled, and the balance marked zero, with a note: Death of babe . He paused over that.

A policy of Father’s, no doubt. Did Jasper know about it? He must. But it was important that he did, so as to continue the tradition. Reginald sighed. So he would have to tell Jasper and have his head bitten off because, of course, Jasper would already know.

He shut the ledgers and set them aside. He stood, stretched his neck, flexed his fingers, then pulled open the curtain. It was later than he’d thought. Yet no one had fetched him for luncheon. He decided to stroll to the kitchen and see when it would be served. But when he exited the library, he heard voices echoing down the hall from the billiard room. His brothers. They were not arguing, but neither were they laughing.

For a moment, his feet would not move.

Crispin had been different, harsher, when they had last seen him, just after Father’s first fit. He had been granted only two months’ leave, though surely his commander would have given him more if he’d requested it. And, when he saw that Father was recovering, he appeared almost peeved to have been sent for at all. Although they knew his regiment had been on the Peninsula, and that things were not going particularly well there—that much the War Secretary could not keep quiet—that was all they knew. Crispin would not talk about what he had been doing. Yet it had seemed he would have rather been there than here.

Of course, Crispin was always more or less harsh. Except for brief spurts when he wasn’t. His letters to Reginald were always funny. And if one was to read a portion of his letters to Mother, it was as though a different man entirely was writing home.

Well, thank God he was back at any rate. They needed him.

Lud. He hoped Crispin had not heard about Annie and Plodgett. Reginald rubbed his jaw. He’d shaved this morning. One less thing for Crispin to poke him for. He was acceptably dressed: not as fashionably as Jasper, but not like a preacher either. He cocked an ear toward the billiard room to listen for the clink of balls bouncing off one another, but it didn’t seem they were playing.

Well. Onward . Reginald was the buffer between them, and so, naturally, he would be knocked about a bit. That was his role. At least they had given him one. He just hoped Crispin would look less cadaverous than he did the last time he was home.

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