Page 12 of Miss Determined
Goddard and Jeanette had been estranged for a time, and both were by nature respectful of the other’s privacy. A fine quality, until a sibling got into a spot of bother, which they both had.
“Dorning, I am tired. Not exhausted, but longing for bed, where my darling Ann is doubtless snoring like a stevedore. Such is my besottedness that I long to snore in harmony with her, so please stop attempting to be delicate—though I do find the spectacle entertaining—and convey your concerns directly.”
Sycamore stacked the ledgers in a tidy pile before Goddard could do it.
“My dearest Jeanette says the Tavistock marquessate ought to be in good financial health. In Trevor’s minority, she supervised the solicitors and bankers like I used to mind the last piece of cake at my mother’s soirées. Jeanette made the investment decisions, checked the figures, and met with old Smithers quarterly. About the time Tavistock left for France, Smithers retired, Purvis stepped in, and Jeanette had no excuse for further meddling once she’d married me. Jerome’s papa was Trevor’s nominal guardian, and he was off to the Continent, too, there to shortly expire.”
Goddard took to twiddling the pencil between his fingers. How could such a tough old boot of a man be so unselfconsciously dexterous?
“Not good, when nobody’s on hand to do regular inspections,” he said. “Discipline grows lax. Squabbling breaks out in the ranks. Officers are tempted to fraternize.”
“Is that your way of saying the solicitors bear watching?”
Goddard flipped the pencil into the air, caught it, and set it atop the ledgers. “That is my way of saying you should go out to Richmond and ensure that your estate is in readiness for planting.” He rose, stretched, and donned the jacket he’d draped over the back of his chair.
What the devil is this obsession with Richmond?“I don’t want to go anywhere. The estate runs like a top, and we don’t plant much corn when we’re so busy with the market gardens.”
“I am away to snore in harmony with my wife,” Goddard said, “and you are away to explain your concerns to Jeanette, whatever those concerns might be. I fail to see how a young, handsome, well-mannered marquess canbea problem, but you were ever one for digging dungeons in Spain.”
“Jeanette calls it a gift for strategic thinking. Consider Tavistock’s situation, Goddard.”
“For the record, young, unattached, handsome in a lordly way, fluent in maybe six languages, wealthy by the standards of most. Oh, and sporting a lofty title. A very sad state of affairs.”
“Not that part.” Sycamore rose and donned his own jacket. “The part about when Tavistock first went off to France. Jeanette made certain he grasped the marquessate’s financial realities. The title was solvent and even comfortable. Jeanette saw to it. Away Tavistock goes, the old guard retires, Purvis leaps into the affray, and Jeanette can no longer guard Tavistock’s flank.”
“Don’t dabble in military analogies, Dorning. Stick to horticulture and sweets.”
Sycamore instead stuck to facts. “Jeanette put a lot of Tavistock’s ready cash in five-year bonds, a lot in the cent-per-cents.”
Goddard yawned behind his hand. “Low-risk investments, I grant you, but agriculture isn’t the gold mine it used to be. It’s not even a silver mine, what with rents falling and the wool market shot to hell without hundreds of thousands of military uniforms to make.”
“The marquessate was in good health, and now, barely five years later, it’s in sad straits. If you were the solicitors presiding over this disaster in progress, how would you behave?”
Goddard pulled a pair of gloves from a pocket and stared hard at the roulette wheel on the next table. “I would be very, very certain my client knew that trouble was brewing and that the client took responsibility for heading it off. I’d want all my direction from him in writing, and I would not move a penny without being able to document that the decision was his and his alone.”
Goddard, in other words, would protect his own flank. “Precisely, like getting all orders from headquarters in writing so nobody is court-martialed for a superior’s bad judgment. Tavistock was sent reports, little more than tally sheets, some of them no more than annually. He’s a marquess, not some lowly baronet, and he was bound to come home sooner or later.”
Goddard slapped his gloves against a muscular thigh. “You are saying the solicitors have behaved with gross negligence.”
The man was tired, so Sycamore marshaled his patience. “It’s worse than that. The solicitors are either unfit for their duties—after meeting Jeanette’s exacting standards for years—or they have reason to believe that Tavistock’s eventual ire at their incompetence will haveno consequences. Tavistock, beneath all that handsome charm, is shrewd. He’s had to be, and he’ll be a peer of considerable consequence once he bestirs himself to vote his seat. He has connections all over the Continent thanks to you and all over Debrett’s thanks to me.”
“But,” Goddard said, turning that gimlet gaze on Sycamore, “the solicitors have been fiddling while Rome burns. They ought to have been catching every other packet to Calais to warn Tavistock of impending disaster. We should get Kettering’s perspective on this. Tavistock is in the middle of a money problem, and nobody knows money matters as Kettering does.”
Nobody meddled in money matters as gleefully as Worth Kettering, who had the great good fortune to be married to the former Jacaranda Dorning.
“Before we haul out that artillery, we should consult the ladies, and then I might take a notion to jaunt out to Berkshire.”
“What the hell is in Berkshire?”
“Tavistock felt compelled to start his royal progress in that direction, which is an odd way to begin a campaign as a fortune hunter, wouldn’t you say?”
“Beyond odd. Give my love to Jeanette and send regular dispatches if you expect to live to a ripe old age.”
“You aren’t tempted to come with me?”
Goddard pulled on his gloves. “I’ll be more useful here, picking up the latest gossip and floating a few innuendos. I might send a few dispatches myself.”
Sycamore waved him on his way. Perhaps Jeanette would know what sort of dispatches her brother would send. Sycamore hadn’t a clue.
