Page 62 of Miss Determined
His lordship appeared a moment later, attired in the finest Bond Street plumage and gracing the air with some delicate Parisian scent. He hadn’t nipped up from Surrey to see his tailors, then. He was in Town to call upon some ladybird. Fast work, even for a robust young peer.
“My lord.” Purvis rose and bowed, affecting the stiffness of a man who’d been sitting for too long. “An unexpected pleasure.”
“I do apologize for the lack of notice, but the matter is urgent.”
With Tavistock’s kind, a missing handkerchief was urgent. “I am here to serve you, sir. Shall we discuss this urgent matter over a spot of tea?”
“No, thank you. Jones, if you’d excuse us and close the door behind you?”
Jones sent Purvis an apologetic look, bowed, and withdrew, and Purvis’s resentment edged a little closer to rage.
“Jones is my most trusted amanuensis, my lord. He is fast, accurate, and discreet.”
“No doubt he is a paragon among clerks, but I thought my news ought best be delivered to you alone, and then you can decide with whom to share it. Jerome Vincent is dead. My cousin, my friend, and my traveling companion expired after a fall from a horse. Taken much too soon, though I’m told he did not suffer. I have notified his sisters by post. I am his heir, and his factor in Bordeaux has been in communication with me.”
“The man was a pauper.” Purvis ought not to have said that, but lack of means had been young Vincent’s most salient feature. A bon vivant who would have been a wastrel if he’d had anything to waste.
In his case, a fall from a horse might well be a euphemism for dueling or worse. How… interesting.
“I admit that Jerome was occasionally in want of funds,” Tavistock said. “You are concerned that I might well have inherited his debts. An understandable worry. My cousin, for all his many fine qualities, was not always prudent with his finances. I have alerted you to the situation so you will be prepared if his creditors apply directly to you rather than to me.”
Purvis’s mood took a turn for the better. “The creditors with a sense of your station will do exactly that, my lord. You cannot be bothered with invoices for boot black and beer.”
“Ishouldnot be, of course, but on the Continent, protocol is often sacrificed to commercial exigencies.”
Purvis gestured to the chairs by the hearth. “How long since Mr. Vincent went to his celestial reward?”
Tavistock settled into a wing chair. “A month, give or take. The post across the Channel is slow and unreliable.”
Purvis took the second seat, though he did not like having his back to the door. “Mr. Vincent’s sad demise changes your situation, my lord. If I might be blunt, you have no heir. Your sainted father would be unhinged in such circumstances, meaning no disrespect. He took his responsibility to the succession most seriously.”
An understatement of a magnitude the present marquess could not possibly appreciate.
“And here I am,” Tavistock said, “dutifully presenting myself in Town for the express purpose of finding a bride and compelled to observe several weeks of mourning. If I were in the running for an heiress, I’d find myself beginning well behind the starting line.”
The day abruptly bloomed with possibilities. “You have it backward, my lord. The matchmakers are hobbled, but Smithers and Purvis can discreetly advance your cause. Have you made the acquaintance of Miss Hecate Brompton?”
The lordly nose wrinkled. “The name is familiar. One doesn’t come across many Hecates. Goddess of magic and spells, if I recall correctly.”
“Goddess of inherited wealth in this case, and a very agreeable lady. She does not suffer fools, and she will understand the benefits of a mutually advantageous match. I believe you and she would get on splendidly.”
Tavistock rose, and he was even taller than his reprobate of a father had been. “I won’t be getting on with the ladies at all until I’ve done my bit for Jerome’s memory. One violates mourning protocols at one’s peril.”
Purvis got to his feet, though he could not let Tavistock jaunt off quite yet. “Your cousin has been dead the requisite month, my lord. Mourn him in your heart all you please, but he of all people would understand why you must attend to your social obligations.”
“The four weeks of mourning are required of me nonetheless, Purvis, and there’s one other matter that has been nagging at me. I will in no wise have time to visit my properties in Yorkshire and can’t see why I should have to make the effort. Please arrange to sell them on whatever terms are necessary to liquidate the mortgages. I cannot abide being obligated to a lot of nosy bankers.”
The acorn had fallen directly at the base of the tree. “I’d advise against selling those estates now, sir. The tenants will make a poor job of planting and haying, knowing they might well be turned out by harvest. Agricultural properties are put on the market in autumn and change hands on the first of the year. Much cleaner that way.”
That was mostly bunk, of course. The leaseholds would convey with the property, and for the tenants, nothing would change until the leases expired or were renewed. To most tenants, the identity of the landowner mattered far less than the terms of the rental agreement.
More to the point, the Yorkshire tenants paid two hundred pounds per annum apiece over the amount Lord Tavistock believed himself to be owed. Negotiations to sell the properties might reveal that slight discrepancy in his lordship’s ledgers.
Tavistock swiped a biscuit from the tray. “Shall I engage a factor in York to see to the transactions, Purvis? York is hard farming, and the wool market has died. I don’t see it reviving when every yeoman from America to Australia can raise his own sheep.”
He crunched the biscuit into oblivion, and Purvis debated strategy. The Brompton fortune, or a tidy slice thereof, hung in the balance. For now, Purvis would be patient.
“I have excellent connections in York,” he said. “We will begin readying the properties for sale, if you’re sure that’s what you want. A house in good trim makes a better impression on a prospective buyer, particularly if he has a wife and family and most especially if his mama is on hand. If comparable properties are for sale in the area, we will want to consider price carefully.”
