Page 4 of A Lady Igniting Wicked Passions
“Crabbed age and youth cannot live together,it would seem,” Blakehill said, ruefully.
“I would rather entreat thy company to see the wonders of the world abroad, than living dully sluggardized at home,” Aaron riposted without hesitation.
“And were I to invest all my time and money into restoring this house I could never afford to go more than ten paces from it, lest I wear out my boot leather without the coin to replace them.”
They passed through another door, climbing some steps with depressions worn in the middle of the stone, then through another door. Beyond was a corridor of wood panels, with windows looking out over a courtyard in which a tall, birch tree grew.
Around it flower beds had run wild and were filled with enthusiastic shrubs reaching for the giant that rose in their midst. Assorted rooftops and chimneys rose beyond the quadrangle in an apparently random assortment.
It gave the impression of being parts of different buildings, thrown into the air and joined together however they landed.
Aaron navigated the passages, hallways, and rooms with the ease of one raised in the maze, so comfortable with it that he didn’t even see it as a maze any longer. Blakehill, who had spent his own, earlier childhood, in these halls, walked with equal ease after his late brother’s only son. Presently, they reached a room with a vaulted stone ceiling and tall windows of stained glass.
Red and green light spilled across mismatched furniture, and bookcases filled to bursting. A wooden platform stood at one end of the room, reached by steps to one side and with curtains mounted on a rail in front of it. To all intents and purposes, a stage. Choosing a winged armchair with a faded, brocade upholstery, Aaron clapped his hands imperiously.
A slender man with close-cropped dark hair had been standing at attention beside a table bearing a large, silver jug and two glass tankards. He poured a measure of dark, almost ruby red liquid from the jug into each tankard and then carried them to the two gentlemen on a silver tray.
“Thank you, Mitchell. That will be all. We’ll help ourselves from this point. Summon us when luncheon is ready,” Blakehill said, dragging a chair from beside a table to sit opposite his nephew.
Aaron arched an eyebrow as he took a deep draught of the beer he had been given.
“Ordering my servants around for me, Uncle?”
“Victor’s privilege, Ashenwood,” Blakehill said, with a dismissive wave. “I think we should discuss the business that brings me here. You have stalled for long enough, young man.”
He took his own long swallow of his own, then belched loudly before sitting back. Aaron stared pensively into his own glass then glanced to the table from which his uncle had taken a chair.
Unlike the Shakespearean texts, Jacobean poetry and assorted plays that were strewn over the rest of the library, that table was covered in ledgers and books of account. Blakehill followed his eyes, looking over the thick books containing columns of numbers and lists of assets. He nodded slowly.
“Your work for the past week.”
“The past month, Uncle. I have worked at little else to find a solution to our problems.”
“Problems caused by me. I am…”
“If you say you are sorry one more time… Just once!” Aaron said, sitting forward and holding up a finger in emphasis. “How tedious is a guilty conscience.”
Blakehill frowned. “The Scottish Play?”
Aaron shook his head. “Webster.”
“I was never fond of him. Too bloody.”
“Besides which, I refuse to accept that your actions alone have brought us to this situation. I chose to invest with you. You chose where that investment should go and we both lost when the gamble did not pay off. I did not divulge to you the precarious state my father left me in financially.”
“You should have. I would never have asked for the loan if I knew,” Blakehill said.
“We are going over old ground, Uncle,” Aaron protested. “But I have found the solution. I believe. I just wanted to pretend, for a little while, that I had not. That none of my problems existed. Forgive me, Uncle.”
Blakehill grunted, draining the remains of his porter, and rising to stomp across the room for another. Aaron drained his own glass and put it down on a table beside his chair, hard enough to crack it. He glowered, waiting for his uncle to return to his chair.
“Let’s hear it. How do we avoid bankrupting one of England’s oldest families.”
Aaron sighed. “I have recently concluded negotiations to marry. The match comes with a handsome dowry as well as profitable estates. It should clear our debts and leave us a profit into the bargain.”
He spoke with the air of a man describing his planned route to the gallows. Blakehill sat forward, a grin breaking across his marred face.
“Well, well, well! Nephew! You put quite the fear into me there! Marriage? I did not think it a solution you would ever consider. Well, who is it?”
