Then he saw, all of it. He leaned against the door frame.
Don’t tell me the poor child’s breeding already.
“God forgive me,” he breathed. “Oh, Esme, what have I done?”
Children. If God is generous…
He closed his eyes against the shattering grief. He’d been away from her not even three days and he was lost, sick with loneliness, but that was nothing to this. He’d no one else to blame. He’d shaped and carved this day for himself these past ten years. Now at last, when he’d learned to love, when he wanted to love and look after one brave, beautiful girl and give her children they might love and care for together…now the Devil laughed and demanded payment. Now Lord Edenmont understood that fire and brimstone were not wanted, nor even death. Hell was regret.
It was tomorrow.
And Varian pressed his face to his arm and wept.
The room Lady Brentmor called “the counting house” was originally the master’s study. All the world knew her late husband, however, had never been master of anything. His wife was the brains behind the Brentmor fortune. It was she who’d hauled her spouse up from a middling tradesman to a titled man of property.
Immediately upon his death, all pretense of his mastery was abandoned. The dowager banished his cozy masculine bric-a-brac to the attics, painted the walls a brooding maroon, and lined them with stern shelves for her massive ledgers. The furniture at present comprised a few exceedingly hard chairs and the large desk behind which she sat, intimidating bankers, brokers, and lawyers alike while she singlehandedly ruled her formidable financial empire.
It was to this room she took her grandchildren four days after Lord Edenmont’s departure and less than ten minutes after Percival’s arrival.
Percival and Esme sat upon two rocklike chairs watching Lady Brentmor peruse the letter Percival’s tutor had delivered along with the boy.
“An explosion.” She looked up from the closely written sheets. “Who do you think you are—Guy Fawkes?”
“No, Grandmother,” Percival answered meekly.
“Blew up the hen coop, he says. I suppose it’s too much to hope the hens weren’t in it?”
“I’m afraid they were.”
“That’ll cost me. Lud, you always cost me.”
“They were sick, Grandmama.” Percival’s green eyes flashed with indignation. “One of the boys told me that’s why we were forever getting chicken soup. They weren’t laying hens, I promise you. I never saw an egg all the weeks I was there. But there was a good deal of soup, with the most disagreeable odor.”
“I’ll be damned if I’ll pay for diseased fowls.” She gave him a piercing look. “Are you sure they were sick?”
“Oh, yes, Grandmama.” Percival’s face brightened. “I dissected one, and I’ve got the intestines in a jar. I can fetch it for you if you’d like to examine it yourself.”
“No, thank you.” Her gaze grew sharper still. “I’d like to know what’s to be done with you. Your pa told me you was to be shipped to that school in Bombay the instant you kicked up one of your larks.”
Esme reached for her cousin’s hand and glared at her grandmother. “You will do no such thing,” she said. “If the fowls were sick, then it is the schoolmaster who should be sent to Bombay. To poison little boys with diseased animals—Y’Allah, they should be poisoned themselves.”
“I didn’t ask you, did I?” Lady Brentmor snapped. “And none of that heathen talk, if you please.”
“ ‘Y’Allah’ only means ‘dear God,’ Grandmama,” Percival pointed out.
“Then why don’t she say what she means?”
“I said it plain enough.” Esme met her grandmother’s stare fearlessly. “You shall not send him away. God knows such a course is monstrously unjust, even if you do not. But you wish to frighten him—as though the boy has not suffered enough.”
“I know what he’s ‘suffered’ and what he’s done. And I aim to make it clear there’ll be no more of it. I won’t have children poking their noses in their elders’ affairs.”
A small box lay upon the desk to her right. She opened the box, took out the object that lay within, and placed it on the desk. It was a chess piece. A queen, to be precise.
“Oh, dear,” said Percival.
“I collect you know what it is,” the dowager said to Esme.
“I have seen chess pieces before. The game is not unknown in my country.” Esme did not so much as glance at Percival.
“Never mind trying to protect him. It don’t take a prophet to work this matter out.” Lady Brentmor bent a black look upon her grandson. “You hid your bag of rocks in your room that day you come with your pa, which was a fool thing to do. Don’t you know we always turn your things inside out? You’re forever leaving corpses behind. Last time it was a reptile. The time before, a rodent. You was told time and again not to dissect your creatures in the house, but you never listen.”
“Yes, Grandmama, I’m dreadfully sorry.”
“Never mind sorry. I know what you done. You stole this chess piece. You guessed your pa would offer a reward, didn’t you? And you used that to lure Edenmont to Albania. Very clever, Percival. Now your cousin’s wed to the blackguard, and it’s all your fault.”
“Varian is not a blackguard!” Esme cried. “And nothing is my cousin’s fault. He brought Varian to me, and for that I am grateful, and shall be so, all my days.”
“You ain’t half started your days, my gel. I daresay there’ll come a time not too far ahead when you’ll eat them words, and they won’t go down so easy, either. Left without so much as a fare-thee-well, didn’t he?”
“He left a note. A very kind note. You understand nothing about him.”
“I know a bad bargain when I see one, and I know more about him than I want.” Her eyes narrowed to slits, the dowager leaned forward. “He’s been in money scrapes since he was eighteen years old, and his father was forever digging him out. By the time Edenmont came into the title, he’d already pissed away half the family fortune. It took him less than five years to run through the rest.”
“Varian is extravagant. I know that,” Esme said. She didn’t want to hear more.
“He let his estate go to pieces,” Lady Brentmor went on. “He made paupers of his two brothers. In a few years he destroyed what it took generations to build. Thanks to his softhearted pa, he’d never had to face the consequences, and so he never learned to think of ‘em. Never thought of anybody but himself. So he goes to the Devil—which is fair enough—only it ain’t fair he takes his kin with him.”
Esme’s head jerked back as though her grandmother had slapped her. She’d simply thought of Varian as a penniless pleasure lover. Flawed, yes, deeply flawed. She loved him, but she wasn’t blind. She hadn’t thought, however, of the damage he’d done. Unintentionally—but that only showed his thoughtlessness. This was his great crime in her grandmother’s eyes: Varian was not simply a libertine and wastrel, but a destructive man. This was why she’d taken Esme in—to protect her from him.
The dowager was watching her. Esme straightened her posture but said nothing. She didn’t know what to say.
“I suppose you think I was too hard on him, just like you think I was too hard on your pa. Percival thinks so, too, don’t you, Master Ignoramus?”
“Well…y-yes…rather…that is—”
“Because you don’t know a blessed thing. Because you’re both ignorant babies.” She fixed her scowl on Esme. “The path Edenmont took was the same I’d seen your father starting on. Lots of men go that way, and take their families with ‘em. I could have fixed your father’s mess easy enough, and I can fix Edenmont’s—though that’s a good deal worse. But I won’t do for him what I wouldn’t do for my own son. I won’t lift a finger, not when it’ll only help him make paupers of us all.”
“But, Grandmama,” Percival began.
“He got himself in, now let him dig himself out,” Lady Brentmor said grimly. “If he cares as much for Esme as he claims?
??and if he’s got any self-respect—he’ll try at least.” As she tamed back to Esme, her stern countenance softened a fraction. “But I must tell you fair and straight I don’t think he’s got it in him. Best face it now, I say.”
“You mean he is not coming back,” Esme said. She folded her hands. “I am not amazed. There is no welcome for him here, and he cannot take me with him. I am only a burden. I can do nothing for him.”
She met her grandmother’s gaze. “I understand your reasons, Grandmother. Still, he saved my life, more than once. He is not evil. He has tried to be kind to me, in his way. He even warned me against him, many times. I shall not try to change your mind, but I ask you to reflect upon these things. And pray for him, if nothing else.”
Percival, who’d been fidgeting upon the unforgiving chair through this exchange, darted his grandmother an anxious glance. “But, Grandmama, you must give her the dowry.”
“Don’t tell me what I must. I don’t take orders from ignorant children.”
Esme sighed. “Oh, cousin. Do not vex our grandmother. I understand that she does what she believes is best. There will be nothing for Varian.” She started to rise.
“But there is. Mama left you the chess set, for your dowry. It’s worth a great deal. Five thousand, at least. Twice that, if you find the right buyer.”
“Five thousand?” Esme repeated. “My dowry?”
Her grandmother stiffened. “You mean to say you didn’t know?”
“I’m sorry,” Percival said to Esme. “But I was afraid to tell you, in case Papa—”
The old woman swore at the room at large, then sank back wearily in her chair. “Devil take me for a fool. Talk myself hoarse—and all the while you’d no idea. Now we’re in for it, and it’s all my own curst fault.”