Page 7 of Nothing Compares to the Duke
“She’s concerned about you,” Nick added in a gentler tone. “We all are.”
Rhys looked up. He deserved whatever disappointment his longtime friend felt for his irresponsibility. But Tremayne lowered his head and stared at the carpet. He couldn’t look Rhys in the eyes.
“There’s more. Don’t spare me. Just say it.”
Iverson crossed his arms and rocked back on his heels. “You recall Mr. Carthorpe?”
“Yes, of course.” Rhys didn’t have Tremayne’s aptitude for numbers or Iverson’s shrewd head for business matters, but his memory rarely failed him. “The horseless carriage chap.”
Rhys recalled him as young and fidgety, but the man’s invention was an exciting prospect and every member of the Duke’s Den had been eager to invest.
“Don’t tell me he’s run off with our money.”
Nick cleared his throat and then rubbed a hand along the edge of his jaw. It was a tic Rhys had observed many times in the Den. The gesture was the same he used when he was loath to tell an inventor that none of them wished to invest in his or her device.
“Out with it,” Rhys barked, too exhausted for delicacy.
“Carthorpe did not receive our full investment,” Iverson told him in a firm voice. Then he paused and cleared his throat. Rhys could virtually see whatever else he wished to say lodged in the man’s throat.
Iverson dipped his head and flicked back his suit coat to place a hand on each hip. When he finally looked up, his eyes were filled with what Rhys thought looked a great deal like regret.
“Your bank reported that the amount you promised could not be fulfilled.”
“That’s not possible,” Rhys scoffed. The air rushed out of him in another bluster of denial.
The claim was absurd.
He wasn’t in daily contact with his banker and had no real notion of the balance in each of his accounts, but that was precisely the point. His funds on hand had always been so healthy that he’d never worried about paying an invoice or offering his money to an inventor in the hopes of getting a generous return.
“Your bank hasn’t contacted you about this matter?” Tremayne asked.
“Not that I’m aware of.” Rhys stared at Nick but in his mind’s eye he saw the stack of unopened letters he nudged aside every time he sat at the desk in his study. “The posthaspiled up in the last few weeks.” Letters, invitations, and notes of condolences had arrived in a flurry after his father’s death. He’d struggled through reading a couple before allowing them to accumulate.
“Avoiding your post? Forgetting the commencement of your sister’s studies. Unaware of your finances.” Iverson’s usually calm voice ebbed toward concern. “Is something amiss, Claremont?”
Every damned thing, apparently.
“How could it be?” Rhys forced a rusty chuckle and shrugged his shoulders, wishing he could dislodge the tightness that had taken root there. “I’ve inherited a dukedom.”
“And yet you remain here in London,” Iverson pointed out unhelpfully. “Have you returned to Essex at all since your father’s funeral?”
Mention of the funeral made Rhys long for another finger of whiskey, but Iverson stood like an enormous red-haired oak tree blocking his path to the cart.
The funeral had been as bleak as any event Rhys had ever attended. The duke had isolated himself in his later years and those who’d come to see him laid to rest had done so out of duty rather than affection. Guilt weighed heavy on Rhys. He too had been among the dutiful, rather than those who’d felt any warmthtoward the old man. Only Meg had cried genuine tears for their father.
It hadn’t always been that way. Once upon a time, Rhys had looked up to Tarquin, Duke of Claremont. Idolized him. He recalled the duke’s visits to the nursery, the occasional encouraging pat on the head, and how his father often gifted books for Rhys to read.
That was where it had all gone wrong. As soon as his struggles with learning became evident, his father lost interest. A duke’s son who couldn’t read properly? Unthinkable.
“Enderley was a shambles when I inherited,” Nick admitted in a tone that was far more sympathetic than pitying. “What is the state of Edgecombe?”
Rhys hated admitting that he hardly knew. Without his mother and sister to brighten its halls, the old estate had all the charm of a mausoleum. He’d stayed in a guest room the single time he’d visited and departed as soon as he was able.
But thinking back to his conversation with the estate’s staff, Rhys was beginning to form a theory. “There were debts attached to the estate.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair before looking at each of his friends in turn. Fortunate, he may be, but he knew his faults. Even admitted them once in a while. To himself, if no one else. He had a tendency toward irresponsibility and a refusal to be anything but the feckless nobleman others expected him to be, which left very little room for anything he truly wished to be.
Disappointing the friends who’d stood by him whenothers in polite society called him a ne’er-do-well and a cad? That was a fresh low.
“I directed the steward to contact my bank and see to any financial obligations my father had yet to meet.”
