Page 60 of Miss Determined
Kettering finished his biscuit and dusted his hands over the tray. “Shall I send somebody to York? You have two properties up there, if I recall correctly?”
“I’ll sell those,” Trevor said. “I’m fairly certain Purvis took out mortgages on them during my minority, or reborrowed against a mortgage my father had all but paid off, all without telling me a thing until recently. I want nothing to do with mortgages and the bankers who profit from them.”
Kettering munched his biscuit. “I can make quiet inquiries of the tenants. They might not be as disdainful of the bankers as you are. The current tenants are the logical buyers.”
Trevor chose a third sandwich. Plain fare was preferable to the delicacies Cook was determined to serve him at his town house, no matter how many hints he passed along to the housekeeper, no matter how many of the delicacies were returned to the kitchen to be devoured by the footmen.
“Bankers in the general case are likely above reproach. My bankers apparently can’t tell my signature from that of a forgery.”
Kettering sat back, making the chair creak. “Purvis likely started out clerking for his father. He would have learned at an early age how to skillfully wield a pen. If you spend your formative years learning how to reproduce perfect copperplate, you also acquire the ability to replicate signatures. My clerks explained this to me in the most delicate terms.”
“Forgery is a hanging felony.”
“But the client’s signature is not always easily obtained, and in some legal offices, signingfora client is regarded as acceptable, with the client’s permission in writing and provided one doesn’t make a habit of it.”
“Purvis has apparently made a regular fortune from appropriating my signature. When Purvis isn’t putting my name on mortgage documents, he’s raising rents at my imaginary direction. My priority now is to disentangle myself from him and his schemes.”
Kettering crossed his legs at the knee, a posture acceptable on the Continent, but considered too informal for Mayfair’s drawing rooms.
“You are riding a tiger,” he said. “I’ve given the matter some thought, and your situation confounds even me.”
“Purvis has stolen from me and from my tenants. He has misrepresented me, abused his office, likely forged my signature, and… I can’t prove any of this, can I? If he can forge my signature, he could forge a note from me approving his various schemes. A few words, my name, my seal—which he doubtless has had since my father’s day—and his crimes become invisible.”
“It’s worse than that,” Kettering said. “If you bring down the law on him, he will let it be known in polite circles that you are sadly pockets to let. The pathetic bankrupt peer, pointing fingers at everybody but himself to hide his disgrace.”
“I’m not bankrupt.” Jeanette had put as much of Trevor’s funds as she could into the cent-per-cents, and Trevor had insisted that those funds be left to slowly and safely accrue interest.
“Tavistock,” Kettering said gently, “one need notbebankrupt for whispers of pending insolvency to soon render one a bankrupt. If you are rumored to be in dun territory, the trades demand payment in full rather than wait for a December reckoning. The banks accelerate the mortgages based on justifiable insecurities. The vowels all come due, and Purvis has seen to it that rents are not paid to you directly. They are paid to his offices, and thus you haven’t even pin money.”
The DeWitt ladies had been managing with very little in the way of pin money. Trevor had sent three notes by special messenger out to Twidboro Hall and hadn’t received a single reply. Young ladies typically did not correspond with bachelors of short acquaintance, but Amaryllis was Trevor’s intended, and her silence ate at him.
When he wasn’t dwelling on that unhappy development, he was instead focused on his finances.
“If I reveal Purvis’s scheming, but bring no criminal charges, then he’s ruined, too, isn’t he?”
“Without doubt. Rich but ruined. Not a bad compromise in the opinion of many.”
Trevor rose and took the place behind Kettering’s fussy desk. The chair was at least comfortable. “But if I ruin Purvis, then his clerks, his son, his other clients, all suffer as well. Then too, he will doubtless turn the tide of gossip against me. I was gullible, careless, and easily duped, or he’d never have been able to pull off his schemes.”
Kettering rose and took himself to a wing chair. “You were young, trusting, and without champions. You did nothing wrong.”
“And yet,” Trevor said, “Purvis has me in a corner. If I accuse him in a court of law, then I cause a great scandal that reveals me to be a fool too lazy to mind his own ledgers. If I confront Purvis without involving the authorities, he quietly ensures that I become the bankrupt he’s nearly made me. Either way, the scandal lands on me. I can be ruined for either stupidity or insolvency, or—if Purvis is feeling lively—both.”
More to the point, Amaryllis was expecting a proposal from a properly set-up marquess, not some titled, destitute bumbler. She had no use for fortune hunters, she’d made that clear. Trevor hadn’t any use for them either.
“Purvis won’t want to kill the goose laying all the golden eggs,” Kettering said. “He had to know you’d catch on to him sooner or later. Until a few years ago, your finances were in the hands of old Smithers. He was a plodder, but honest within the limits of his clientele. Some stray comment from Jeanette, a casual encounter with a tenant… Sooner or later, you’d start asking questions.”
“You do not reproach me for frolicking on the Continent?”
“You weren’t frolicking. Fournier and I are cordial, and he was much impressed with you. A problem five years in the making might be five years in the untangling, but even Purvis has to eventually retire. The whole scheme falls apart when he’s no longer in practice.”
“Wait him out?” Amaryllis would never support such a passive course. “With my luck, he’ll live to enjoy a spry and well-heeled five score years.”
Kettering’s air of savoir faire faltered. “I honestly don’t know what you should do, Tavistock. Your finances can eventually be brought right. The properties are solvent, and you are no wastrel. Your good name, though, once stained by scandal, will never shine quite as brightly. Mayfair has a deuced long memory. Your grandchildren will pay the price if you are rumored to be bankrupt.”
“What if I should sell the properties, one by one, and shut down Purvis’s game by inches?”
“That… might… work.”
