This Wicked Gift (Carhart 0.5)

He spoke as if William had not worked for him these three years. As if instead of names, his employees were possessed of empty pages, and the marquess could fill those bleak tablets with any syllables he found convenient.

“Come into the back office,” the marquess said calmly. “And do bring the books you’ve worked on for the last two years.”

An invitation to the back office was as good as a death sentence. It felt like an eternity that William stood, fixed in space. But what good would it to do to scream or shout? If he went quietly, Mr. Dunning might help him find another position when he was sacked.

How ironic, that he’d divested himself so unthinkingly of those ten pounds, when he might find them of such immediate use. No—not ironic. It was the opposite of ironic.

Perhaps it was appropriate that he’d been singled out. He wasn’t fit for polite society, after all. Not after what he’d done to Lavinia. How could he ever make it up to her? Maybe this, finally, was the censure he’d been expecting all morning. He’d accept whatever came his way as his just due.

Once inside the back office, the marquess picked one of the books at random. He thumbed through it slowly, his fat fingers pausing every so often, before moving onward. William stared past him. The room’s furnishings could well have been as old as the marquess. The wallpaper had long gone brown, and dry curls of paper at the edge of the baseboard were working their way off the wall.

Finally the lord lifted his head. “You seem to do good work,” the old Lord Blakely said. Said by anyone else, it would be a compliment. But William’s employer twisted the sentence in his mouth, giving a slight emphasis to the word seem. By the ugly glint in his eye, William knew he was adding his own caveat: I am not fooled by your apparent competence.

“Tell me,” the marquess continued. “On September 16, 1821, you entered three transactions related to the home-farm in Kent. I’d like a few specifics.”

Fifteen months ago. The man focused on transactions made fifteen bloody months ago? How could William possibly recall the details of a transaction more than a year in age? One did not keep books so that one could browbeat the person who entered a transaction.

One didn’t unless one happened to be the Marquess of Blakely.

“It is the first transaction, for two pounds six, that I—”

The door opened quietly behind them, interrupting his speech.

The old marquess looked up. His fists clenched on the account book, and his eyes widened. He drew himself up, undoubtedly to castigate the fool who had the temerity to interrupt this ritual sacrifice. William drew his breath in, thinking he’d won a reprieve. If he had, the intruder would undoubtedly take on William’s punishment. Whoever it was walked forward, steady, heavy footsteps crossing the room. A mixture of shame and relief flooded William. Perhaps he might keep his position—but it was a sorry man who hoped his carcass would be saved because a shark choked on another fish first. It was an even sorrier man who hoped so, knowing that of all the fellows in the office, he was most deserving of punishment.

But instead of one of William’s fellow clerks or the estate manager, the young man who came abreast of William’s chair was the one person the old marquess could not sack.

It was his eldest grandson. William had seen the man only once, and at a distance. But he’d been accounting for the details of the man’s funds for three years. Gareth Carhart. Viscount Wyndleton, for now. The man was a few years younger than William. He had attended Harrow, then Cambridge. He had a substantial fortune, received a comfortable allowance from his grandfather, and he would inherit the marquessate. William almost felt as if he knew the fellow. He was certain he held the young, privileged lord in dislike.

The young viscount might have had a hundred servants available to do his bidding. But incongruously, the man was carrying his own valise. He set this luggage on the ground and placed his hands gently on his grandfather’s desk.

No thumping, no shouting, no untoward drama of any sort. Had William not been a mere foot away, he would not even have detected the rigid tension in the muscles on the backs of his hands.

“Thank you very much.” The viscount’s words were quiet—not unemotional, William realized, but so suffused with emotion that only that flat, invariant tone could contain his disdain. “I appreciate your telling the carriage drivers not to take me to Hampshire. I applaud your decision to bribe—how many was it? It must have been every owner of a private conveyance in London, so that they would not take me, either. But it took real genius on your part to outright purchase the Hampshire coach lines in their entirety, five days before Christmas.”

“Well.” The old Lord Blakely preened and examined his nails. Of course, the man did not find anything so uncouth as dirt near his fingers, but he nonetheless brushed away an imagined speck. “How lovely of you to admit my intelligence. Now do you believe that I was serious when I told you that if you did not give up your foolish scientific pursuits, you would not see that woman?”

William might have drowned in the sea of their exchanged sarcasm. Neither man seemed to care that he was in the room. He was invisible—a servant, a hired man. He might have been etched on the curling wallpaper, for all the attention that they paid him.

The young viscount lifted his chin. “That woman,” he said carefully, “is my mother.”

William felt a twinge of satisfaction. He ought not to have reveled in the other man’s pain, but it was delicious to know that even money could not buy freedom.

“I’m leaving,” Lord Wyndleton continued.

“No, you are not. What you are doing is throwing a tantrum, like a child demanding a boiled sweet. It is long past time that you gave up that natural philosophy nonsense and learned to manage an estate like a lord.”

“I can read a damned account book.”

“Yes, but can you manage seventeen separate properties? Can you keep a host of useless and unmotivated servitors bent to their tasks?”

The young viscount’s gaze cut briefly toward William. William felt himself analyzed, cataloged—and then, just as swiftly, dismissed, an obstacle as irrelevant and underwhelming as a dead black beetle lying in the middle of a thoroughfare.

“How difficult can it be?”

“Bill Blight, why don’t you explain to my grandson what I had planned for you?”

“You were, I believe, going to look through my work until you found an error. My lord.” And then you were going to turn me off.

“Bli

ght, tell him what I really intended.”

William pressed his lips together. “You were going to sack me to induce terror in your staff.”

That sort of sentence—bald and unforgiving—ought to have gotten him tossed out on his ear.

Instead, the marquess smiled. “Precisely so. Wyndleton, how do you suppose I managed to thwart your ill-fated flight this morning? I assure you, I did not need to bribe every driver in London. I keep my staff in line—and that means they do as I say, what I say, no matter the cost.”

The young viscount’s nostrils flared.

“You think you can be a marquess? Like that?” The marquess snapped his fingers. “Get your valise. Spend these two days with me—do as I say—and you’ll start to learn how it’s done. Someday you might even get to thwart me. Or you would, if you had the money to do it.”

Still Lord Wyndleton did not move. He stood next to William, his arms rigid, his fingers curving into the desk like claws.

“Come along,” the marquess said. “I shouldn’t have to spoon-feed you these lessons. If you’ll listen to me, I’ll have the carriage take you over late Christmas Eve.” The old man stood up and walked to the door. He didn’t look back.

After all, William thought bitterly, what else could mere mortals do but jump to perform his bidding? The thought almost put him in charity with the man standing nearby. The viscount slowly straightened.

“What I don’t understand,” William said quietly, “is why you don’t buy your own carriage.”

Lord Wyndleton turned to him. This close, William could see the golden brown of his eyes—predator’s eyes, or at least, a predator in training. Like any wolf cub caught in a trap, he snapped in anger at anything that came near.

“He’s holding the purse strings, you idiot.” He straightened and wiped his hands on his sleeves. “My grandfather is sacking you, yes?”

“He’ll get around to it.”

Gareth Carhart, Viscount Wyndleton, picked up the valise. He nodded sharply. “Excellent,” he said, and then he walked out of the room.