Page 36 of My Own True Duchess
“Mrs. Haviland is an estimable lady,” Anselm said. “When I stopped browsing the debutantes and heiresses, I realized that Mayfair is full of treasures blooming in deserted windows. I did wonder if her cousin-in-law the viscount would ever tend to her situation.”
Kettering and Sycamore were standing nose to nose, pointing and shouting. Anselm, who had four younger siblings, watched impassively. “Sycamore still hasn’t learned to control his temper.”
“Kettering hasn’t learned to control his mouth. Let Casriel sort them out. They’re his family. What do you mean about the viscount and Mrs. Haviland?”
Anselm clearly wanted to intervene in the gentlemen’s spat, and he’d do it without offending anybody, or he’d offend both parties equally, which was the better choice in present company.
Jonathan, by contrast, wanted answers. “Let’s visit the heirs, shall we?” He would not like to see Theo married to this negligent viscount cousin by marriage. She’d know she was a wife chosen out of expedience or duty, immured among the flocks of Hampshire far from her friends.
Far from Jonathan.
“I like this arrangement of paintings,” Anselm said. “The parents beam across the room at their offspring, the offspring beam back.”
“I set up the portraits so that no direct sunlight strikes any painting. Uncle paid a fortune to have the artwork restored, and I don’t want my grandson having to do likewise with my own image. Tell me about the viscount.”
Anselm sauntered over to one of the earls of Trenagle, a bewigged and powdered old gent with a spectacular hooked nose and a merry smile. He’d not become duke until he’d been in his fifties, and he’d spent the first half-century of his life setting a bad example for his younger siblings. His diary averaged two scandals per page, and Jonathan’s father had spoken of him fondly.
“You are beginning to think like a duke if your grandson is on your mind,” Anselm said. “I account myself amazed.”
“Those of mean intelligence enjoy nigh constant amazement. Stop stalling, Anselm, for we’re both about to be put on the same team as Kettering and Sycamore.”
“I’ll take Kettering. You can nanny Sycamore. He’s frequenting The Coventry, isn’t he?”
Anselm never referred openly to Jonathan’s ownership of the club, so even a passing allusion was unusual.
“I might have seen him there. He does not wager excessively. He mostly watches.” As Jonathan had sat in the shadows at too many clubs and watched his father fritter away his fortune and respectability, night after night.
“And he doubtless flirts, and he’s as good-looking as any other Dorning. Did you ever wish you had the courtesy title?”
“Not once, for then my father would have been the duke, and the title dragged irreparably into penury and disgrace. I suspect Mrs. Haviland’s cousin has acted disgracefully, but you are making me threaten violence to your person before you tell me the details.”
Anselm took a leisurely sip of his drink. In the center of the room, Casriel was pacing off the distance from the pins.
“I’m ensuring we have privacy,” Anselm muttered, “because one does not speak ill of the dead. Archimedes Haviland died in debt.”
“He was an heir living on his expectations. They are notoriously prone to dying in debt.” Jonathan’s father certainly had.
“He was a worthless, philandering bounder too good-looking for sense, and he did not know how to quit on a losing hand.”
The philandering part made Jonathan want to smash his drink against the earl’s portrait. Quimbey had kindly put Papa’s portrait in a small, unused parlor, for that image would have made a better target.
“You’re saying he died deeply in debt.”
“Scandalously in debt. The viscount paid the trades and the contractual debts by liquidating the trust that had supported Haviland in life.”
“What fool wrote marriage settlements that liquidated a sum doubtless intended for Haviland’s widow and offspring?”
Jonathan tugged his guest by the sleeve to the portrait of Jonathan himself. The solemn youth in the frame stood beside a bust of Euclid, as if anybody knew what that worthy had looked like. No faithful dog gazed up at the lad, no sagacious cat curled on his desk. Euclid’s proof of the Pythagorean theorem had been sketched into the desk blotter. Behind the unsmiling youth, the room held a neat arrangement of oddities—a six-tiered abacus, a carpenter’s square, a telescope, a beaker full of marbles.
Jonathan had loved sitting for that portrait, surrounded by his allies. The painting struck him as sad now, a boy in a mathematical laboratory rather than a playroom.
“I made some inquiries,” Anselm said, “because I was one of Haviland’s creditors, and the situation struck me as irregular. The wording of the will had been lax. After all of Haviland’s just debts had been paid, the remainder of the fund set aside to maintain the family was to pass to the widow.”
Jonathan recalled the empty candleholders, the worn carpet in Mrs. Haviland’s best parlor. “There was no remainder.”
“Not a farthing, and it gets worse.”
Teams were lining up behind the pitch line, and Sycamore Dorning was going about topping up drinks as if he were the host, or at least the host’s best friend.
