Page 17 of Unmasked by the Marquess
“No, I didn’t think I needed—” Gilbert shook his head. “Never mind. I wanted to see you. I have a question and could use your advice.”
Alistair prayed that it did not involve a pregnant opera dancer or an investment scheme. He sat in a chair. “Go ahead,” he prompted.
Gilbert squared his shoulders and set his jaw, looking like a man about to send his horse over a wall he knew to be too high. “How much money would I need to marry? I have four thousand pounds.”
“You can’t marry on that,” Alistair said immediately. Too immediately, perhaps, because his brother looked like he had been slapped.
“No, of course not. What I mean is, how much would a girl need to have for me to be able to keep her comfortably?”
“Six thousand.” He had run over these figures many times. “You could live respectably but only in the country.”
Gilbert swallowed. “But what if I used my four thousand pounds to buy a small property—”
“No.” Alistair held up his hand to stop his brother. “It’s not safe.” Did the man not read the papers? “Crop prices—”
“But wouldn’t a good-sized farm provide enough income to keep myself and a wife?”
“And what of your children? What is to become of them? I hardly need to remind you that our own father is an example of what happens when a man fails to provide for his children. That’s why we’re having this conversation in the first place. By all rights, you ought to have money of your own.” And not a paltry four thousand pounds, either. “But father squandered your inheritance.”
“I’m not sure about that.” Gilbert shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “A lot of that money he spent went to the care and keeping of the Allenby girls, and they’re his children too.”
Alistair had no response to make to such nonsense. The entire point, as far as he cared, was that one ought not to have children one could not provide for. He tried a different tack. “If you took up that living in Kent, you’d have the rectory and a comfortable income. If you kept your four thousand pounds safely invested, that would, in due course, provide for your children.”
This was precisely what he told himself whenever he considered Gilbert’s future—that with the living and the investment, there would be just enough for Gilbert to have a respectable, comfortable future, and he was not going to countenance his brother’s throwing that away.
Gilbert nervously picked at the seam of his gloves. Today’s visit, Alistair realized, had not been about a hypothetical question. He knew he ought to ask if Gilbert was all right, if he needed any immediate assistance—advice or a bit of money or even an excuse to leave town for a fortnight. But he couldn’t bring himself to say the words. If he opened his mouth, what would come out would be a litany of criticisms—against their father, against young men who would not take holy orders and settle in new-built Kent rectories, against all the moving pieces of the universe that did not comport themselves in an orderly and proper manner.
So he sat silently, until finally Gilbert gave up and left.
The clock chimed, and then after a while it chimed again, and Alistair still sat alone in his library.
“I don’t think it’s as disastrous as you do, Charity.” Louisa was calmly sewing a flounce onto the hem of a walking dress. “He came to Fenshawe once, maybe twice, and Robbie was only a child. Your coloring is similar enough to Robbie’s for nobody to remark on a difference.”
Charity paced back and forth in the cramped drawing room. “Buthelooks like Robbie. How can that be? I don’t recall your father looking much like either of you. It was so unsettling, Louisa.” It was like seeing a ghost, an especially cruel sort of spirit, showing her what Robbie might have looked like if he had been allowed to grow old.
Louisa glanced up, a moment of concern flickering across her perfect brow. “I can see that it would be. I hope I don’t have to meet him.”
So did Charity. She hoped neither of them had to meet him again. But they would. Of that she was certain. A man didn’t go out of his way to find relations and then not follow up on the connection. He likely thought he was being kind by renewing the relationship. “I felt like a thief. Fenshawe ought to be his. That’s thousands of pounds that should have gone to him, and instead—” She stopped herself when she saw Louisa’s frown deepen. They had undertaken this entire charade to secure Louisa’s future, and Charity didn’t want her to feel responsible, especially since the girl hadn’t even been sixteen when they had come up with this scheme. But all the same, they could both swing for it if it came to that.
“I thought he never went to London,” Charity said with a renewed sense of panic. “I thought he stayed in Dorset.”
“That’s what Aunt Agatha told us.” Louisa resumed her sewing, calmly smoothing the fabric into identical gathers.
Aunt Agatha. What a fool Charity had been not to find out for herself if the old woman’s memory was correct. “Perhaps we ought to leave. We could go to Bath after all,” she suggested.
“No!” Louisa cried, dropping her needle.
“All right, all right,” Charity said, falling to her knees to find the needle. “I only suggested it because you had seemed keen on the notion a few weeks ago.”
“Yes, but that was before...”
“Ah! Here it is.” Charity held up the needle. “Before what?”
“Before the season started,” Louisa said, squinting to rethread her needle. There was a note of desperation in her voice. “We’re so enjoying ourselves, are we not?”
They were, not that it mattered a jot how delightful it all was if ultimately they were to be exposed, tried, impoverished—
“I think I’ll go for a walk,” Charity said.
