Page 14 of Miss Harvey's Horribly Lovable Fiancé
Fifi nodded. "I will not deny I find him...enthralling."
"I understand. I do love Northington quite dearly," she confessed, whimsy in her words, but worry in her heart.
“A good way to begin a marriage."
"It is." Esme nodded, her gaze slipping around the room. "Provided both feel the same way."
Fifi tipped her head in question.
Esme rallied. "After tomorrow we will not need to speculate, will we?"
"Esme, if you are not certain of this, you can stop it."
"No. I can't. The settlements are signed. Papa has agreed. I am bound."
"Postpone it, then, until you are certain."
"Time will not cure the problem, Fee."
"Then don't do it."
"I must. The world will ridicule me if I run."
Run.A frightening word. A more frightful concept.
"Do you want to?" Fifi’s blue eyes widened in shock.
Esme could not stop her lips from trembling. "No, of course not. Wedding nerves, that's all. Silly me. We'll have our tea and speak of other things. Your appreciation of the earl of Charlton, for example. I see that goes along quite well.”
Chapter 4
He took the path to the village at a crisp pace. Driven to solve this problem and avoid an argument, Giles searched for Esme’s father among the crowd. When he spotted him, the viscount stood among revelers before the cozy-looking butter-colored stone inn. The man was laughing. As he usually was.
Giles inhaled.Buck up. He’s going to hate this discussion as much as I.
From the first round of negotiations, many provisions in the marriage settlement had commended him to Lord Courtland. First, Giles had demanded that there be two separate agreements. His father, of course, had to sign one, as conveyor of the ducal blessing to the marriage of his heir. Viscount Courtland would sign that as father of the bride. Then he himself would author a second agreement and ask Courtland to sign that also. Unlike many aristocrats who married, Giles possessed his own property and incomes. His father had no rights to convey them, because Giles had been adamant from the day he earned his first penny to separate any and all independent assets from that of the duchy of Brentford. Furthermore, Giles had kept secret the details of his independent wealth. It never was wise to tell his father how much he owned. Though Giles suspected his father had heard rumors of its size and sources.
Furthermore in these negotiations, Giles had seen to it that as a widow, Esme would have the best accommodations and funds. If Giles were to die before her and before his father the duke, then she was to own outright Giles’s small London townhouse in Queen’s Square. He’d purchased it three years ago, proud of himself for his foresight to keep ownership for himself. In addition, he gave her widow’s rights to administer the iron works he owned as well as control over the two cotton mills he owned in Manchester. Unusual, that. But she was quick-witted, plus good with math. Her father had praised her skills to Giles and revealed that his girl had regularly checked his steward’s books for correct numbers. Esme would guard Giles’s businesses as fiercely as she did her father’s.
The other elements Giles demanded his solicitor write into the marriage contract between the heir to a dukedom and the wealthy daughter of a viscount were not normal. They concerned regular transfer of property from one generation to another. They seemed ordinary, codified more in practice than written law. But Giles wanted it written and shown at least to their solicitors that he did not trust his father and would expect him to honor Esme her rights.
“I will brook no arguments about inclusion of these clauses,” he’d told his solicitor Samuel Chesters. “I count on you. If I could remain to attend the negotiations, I would. Duty in Paris calls me. I must leave and do not know when I’ll return. I caution you that my father’s solicitor Wendleton may try to delete them from it. He’ll cry lack of necessity. But leave these in.”
Chesters did not argue. He’d dealt with Wendleton on other matters and knew he was a rabid old fox.
What Giles wanted in the contracts were descriptions of income and homes. Properties in tail that the duke owned could be appropriated only by him. Certain rights and privileges came with those properties through generations. So should Giles die before Esme—and his father was gone to the devil before them both—she was to receive the Dower House on Northington Grange in York as her country residence. The townhouse in Mayfair would be hers, too, if any male issue of hers and Giles’s was not yet of age. To fund the maintenance of those houses, she would receive ten thousand per year from the Brentford estate income. Not an unusual sum and affordable, given his father’s mishandling of estate revenues. Giles insisted on them being recorded there.
The settlements that Viscount Courtland had placed on his daughter had been generous. Giles had seen straight away the viscount loved his girl to distraction and would endow her with as many worldly goods as he could. So her dowry or portion was outrageously handsome. Twenty-five thousand would be deposited in the family’s bank account the day after they signed the church registry as man and wife. Annually afterward, one thousand pounds was her jointure to be deposited to her name in Courtland’s bank and used as her own money. In addition, at Courtland’s death, his own holdings in his trading company would be sold to his junior partners. Esme would inherit her father’s portion of that sale and it would be upwards of two or three hundred thousand pounds. That latter amount Courtland had estimated. And though the viscount had not publicly spoken about his wealth and his daughter’s inheritance, many in town surmised the probability. That money Giles’s father—the old sod—would never be able to touch. Even if Giles died before him. The enormous inheritance rubbed the duke raw with envy.
Yet he had found another way to attack his son.
Giles held his title of Marquess of Northington as a courtesy and by tradition, no land had ever been attached to it. Thus from it, he had no income and no houses, farms or tenants. Eight years ago, his father had cut by half his income from the ducal purse. The amount was less than two thousand per year, a paltry sum. Yet the duke claimed he needed it all to pay his debts. That was not news. But it was a heinous blow to Giles’s youthful pride.
’Twas then Giles decided to earn his own money. He used his talents at diplomacy to take a position in the Foreign Office. Few knew and that secrecy aided him in his delicate work. He took rooms in the City, lived frugally and saved enough to buy major shares in the iron foundry and later to purchase rights to two small mills in Manchester.
He had a few other sources of income and he had built their value with hard work and wise choices. He owned three sizable freehold properties through his mother’s families. For the tenants on all, he had eased rents and where needed, he’d purchased carts, ploughs and horses. Everyone had profited. And when his father learned of any of it, he had put his hand out for a share.
The irony of it was, to keep the duke from his door and to some extent to keep his own name spotless, Giles had succumbed to demands and given his father small sums. The duke now thought he could expect it. With the advent of Giles’s marriage, the wealth of his bride a well-known fact, the man demanded more.
