Page 77 of Never a Duke
When had that happened, and did managing a bank make Ned happy?
“In a banker,” Walden said, “a lack of greed is a strength. A greedy man is owned by his venal ambitions. Shall I buy Woodruff off for you?”
Ned swirled his drink. “Buy him off?”
Such delicacy. “Determine his price, arrange the settlements, and get him out of your way. Make a wedding present to you of some estate or other. That sort of thing.” Jane had been agitating for Ned to have some acres of his own for years. Every other Wentworth did, ergo, Ned should have an income-producing property too.
“I am”—Ned peered at his brandy—“touched at the offer, but as regards my courtship of Rosalind, I doubt that Woodruff has a price. Part of his outrage toward me was apparently genuine aristocratic shock.”
A diffident Ned was an unusual sight. Ned could be considerate, discreet, and even diplomatic, but he was a stranger to shyness.
“Why the hell would the prospect of you paying addresses to Lady Rosalind outrage anybody?”
“Woodruff said he knew who I was, Walden. He made allusions to Newgate, and he sits on at least one committee that oversees the prisons. I had the sense he’d read every official document attached to my criminal past and was prepared to see them all published in theMorning Gazette.”
Walden had never asked Ned about his childhood. What Walden knew was bad enough: a brother hanged at too young an age, theft undertaken simply to keep body and soul together…and then Newgate and the possibly lethal prospect of transportation.
“Woodruff cannot have read any documents relating to your past,” Walden said. “I haven’t read those documents. Nobody has.”
“Why not?” Ned finished his drink and ambled back to the sideboard with his empty glass. “I would certainly like to know what the constables and magistrates had to say about me.”
“Jane asked that I arrange to have those documents destroyed, Ned. I left Newgate on good terms with the warden and at least one of the guards, so no record of your incarceration exists. Not yours, Davies’s, or any of the ladies who left that place with us. I thought Jane would have told you this. She was insistent.”
“No record?”
“None. Not in the magistrate’s office, not in parish records, not at the prison. In any case, you weren’t using the Wentworth name at the time, so connecting those misdeeds to Lady Rosalind’s suitor would be impossible.”
Ned moved toward the door, pausing before leaving. “So Woodruff was bluffing? Making empty threats regarding my past?”
“He had to be.”
“Interesting.”
Ned left the office and Walden took the seat behind his desk, though he was fairly itching to discuss the whole exchange with his duchess.
Chapter Fourteen
“You know the girl who arrived last night,” Catherine said, keeping her voice down.
Francine shuffled the deck and passed Catherine half the cards. Lately, all the women had taken to speaking quietly, and Hiram barely said a word.
“I think I recognize her,” Francine replied. “She looks like a lady’s companion I’ve exchanged a few words with. She’s lost weight if that’s the case.”
Calliope Henderson had lost more than weight. When Francine had passed the time with her at the milliner’s or glovemaker’s, Miss Henderson had been friendly, inordinately so given that a companion ranked above a lady’s maid.
Miss Henderson had claimed that her cheerful disposition was part of why she’d been hired, and that the last thing a widow needed around her were long faces. Calliope wasn’t cheerful now. She hadn’t so much as spoken since Hiram had ushered her into the parlor last night. She’d sat reading or—more likely—simply staring at a book.
At breakfast, she’d barely eaten. She’d sipped at the weak tea and nibbled her toast, gazing at nothing in particular.
“Who knows where they were keeping her before,” Catherine said. “That dress hasn’t seen an iron or a washtub in a fortnight at least. Poor thing has probably been ill-used.”
That Catherine could allude so calmly to rape chilled Francine as the thin blankets and leering guards had not.
“If we’re to be shipped off to brothels, I wish they’d get around to shipping us.”
“Set out your cards, Francine,” Catherine said. “We’ll learn soon enough what they plan to do with us.”
Francine made herself begin placing the cards one by one facedown on the table. “How soon? Has Hiram told you something?”
