Page 33 of A Deal with the Rebellious Marquess
Jasper shaved and dressed slowly, methodically: grey summer trousers, crisp white shirt, a white waistcoat embroidered with blue forget-me-nots, a grey jacket and neatly tied cravat. The morning rituals helped to restore his equilibrium. Today had to be taken one step at a time even as he kept the larger circumstance in mind.
He took the stairs, recalling how he’d carried her up them just hours before. He found her in the library, breakfast and coffee beside her writing implements, her auburn head bent as she worked, the morning sun catching the highlights of her hair, picking out the rare gold hidden within the red flame. She was ready for the day in a sage-green skirt and a thin, plain white linen blouse trimmed in tiny loops of cotton lace. A matching green bolero-cut jacket lay on the chair beside her with gloves and a straw hat. She was ready to leave on a moment’s notice.
‘Good morning, Fleur. You’re up early.’ He entered the room as if he hadn’t noticed her jacket and gloves or that she’d left his bed in a manner highly uncustomary of the morning routine they’d established. He dropped a kiss on her cheek as he passed her chair on the way to the coffee urn. ‘Did you finish your article?’
‘I did. Would you like to read it before I send it in?’ She smiled. ‘I hope you don’t mind that I asked for breakfast to be served up here?’
‘You may have breakfast anywhere you like, my dear. Rosefields is at your disposal.’ He sat down with his coffee and a roll. ‘I’ll read your article this afternoon when we get back from the bank.’ He arched his brow. ‘You let me oversleep. I should have been up long before now.’
‘You were tired.’ She looked up briefly from organising her papers.
‘For good reason,’ he teased, but she didn’t flirt back.
‘I don’t want to rush you, but I’d like to be at the bank when it opens.’ She fixed him with a straightforward stare. He understood that boldness better now. The bolder she was, the more worried she was. That was how Fleur Griffiths operated. The boldness was real, but it was also a shield.
He set down his coffee cup to meet her eyes without distraction. ‘I’ll have the coach ready. We’ll go as soon as I’m done eating.’ The battle was about to be joined.
Chapter Eighteen
The Huddersfield Banking Company was an inauspicious building on Cloth Hall Street, austere and plain fronted with the exception of the tooled double door and its two large discs for knobs. To Fleur, the unexceptional mood of the building seemed at odds with the import of what would happen within its walls this morning. Justice would be satisfied. Her quest fulfilled. By evening she’d be home in London. All of this would be behind her.
She should be pleased. Her tenacity had paid off. Amid struggle and grief, she’d continued to fight. She ought to be proud of herself. But all she could feel as Jasper held the door for her was trepidation. Somehow her quest had become less just, less right.
‘My lord, it is good to see you again. How may we be of service?’ A neatly groomed man Jasper’s age, dressed in a banker’s plain dark suit hurried forward, recognising the Marquess of Meltham on sight.
‘Mr Sikes, I need to go over the family accounts, particularly my brother’s, from 1846,’ Jasper said smoothly, recognising the man in turn.
Fleur’s sense of trepidation tightened in a knot in her stomach, her coffee and roll churning. She did not like relying on Jasper for access to information that would betray him. But she could not have hoped to have access to these accounts without him. On her own, she would have had to go through legal channels, made petitions and a fuss to look at anyone’s financial records, let alone the relative of a peer. But Jasper had made it easy for her. And private. She shouldn’t forget that. This was not a decision entirely without benefit for him.
‘Mrs Griffiths.’ Jasper turned to her with a formal tone. ‘May I introduce Mr Sikes? He’s a valued assistant manager at the bank. He’s handled the Meltham account since I inherited. One might say we’ve come up the ranks together. I have no doubt one day he’ll make managing director.’ He smiled warmly at Sikes. ‘Mr Sikes, this is Mrs Griffiths, the head of the Griffiths News Syndicate. She is my guest today.’
Mr Sikes shook her hand. ‘It is a pleasure to assist you and to meet you in person. I am sorry about your husband. Allow me to offer belated condolences. One of your papers published an editorial of mine a couple years back about the importance of extending access to banks to the working classes for the purpose of creating savings accounts.’
He cleared his throat. ‘I think of all the money people lost in Holmfirth when the dam burst, actual coin that was never recovered, all because money was kept in their homes instead of in a bank. I think, too, how much comfort it would have offered families to know that even in the wake of destruction they had the security of a modest savings to help them start again.’
Fleur managed a smile, knowing the man meant well and that he couldn’t possibly know what was at stake today: truth, justice and a lonely heart that had only just now come back to life. ‘Thank you for your kind words and thoughts. I am glad our paper was able to be an outlet for your cause.’ Inside, she was sinking, her resolve wavering. She didn’t want Lord Orion Bexley’s perfidy revealed in front of this man who clearly held Jasper in great esteem. She’d not started this quest to shame the Marquess of Meltham or to ruin a family that was respected in the local eye.
Sikes led them to a small room off the lobby of the bank, which was as austere as the exterior, and left them to fetch the account books. Jasper laughed when she commented on the excess of plainness. ‘The board felt the bank would inspire more confidence with local clients if it was less ostentatious. The bank was formed after the panic in 1828. My father was one of the first to invest in it. He admired its mission to focus on local business and to focus on local growth. I was happy to continue banking here when I inherited. I should tell you that the Holmes River Reservoir Commission did much of its banking here.’
‘Yes,’ Fleur said quietly. She’d noted the bank in Captain Moody’s report and in her own documents. There’d been a two-thousand-pound loan the bank had made to the commission for repairs. She drew a deep breath, guilt eating into her. She had to say something before Mr Sikes came back. Her conscience demanded it. ‘Jasper, I am sorry.’ It was hard to say what she was sorry for. There was so much that required her penitence. She wasn’t sorry for the whole situation, certainly. For instance, she was not sorry to have been in his bed, to have had him as a lover. But she was sorry to repay those moments with trouble and scandal. ‘I didn’t mean it to be like this.’
Jasper held her gaze, his topaz eyes steady. She was feeling penitent. He knew what she wanted to hear, but he wouldn’t give her absolution. ‘You knew it could be like this, Fleur. You knew this was a risk.’ Then he added, ‘As did I. Still, I think it is better we face what is in those accounts as friends rather than foes.’ He hoped that was the case. This morning had been difficult on them both. They were in the belly of the beast now, forced to face the truth, forced to face their feelings and somehow reconcile them both in a way that didn’t leave them broken.
Mr Sikes came back with the records. ‘These are the accounts. Let me know if you need anything else,’ he offered before leaving them.
Jasper immediately set aside the family accounts, which he’d only requested to divert the bank’s attention from his brother. ‘This one is Orion’s account book,’ Jasper said solemnly, opening the ledger. He was aware of Fleur coming to stand beside him, positioning herself to read over his shoulder. He appreciated that she was letting him take the lead on combing through the ledger. He bounced his knee surreptitiously under the table, hoping they found nothing.
There were the usual deposits, the quarterly allowance from the estate, the payments made to tailors, club memberships and other young man’s pursuits. He winced at one large payment made to a club off St. James’s. There was another further down, and another.
‘Is that excessive?’ Fleur asked, pointing to the recurring entries.
‘Yes. Gaming hells are the vice of many young men.’ Jasper grimaced. ‘This was seven years ago. Orion had some trouble at a gaming hell.’ In customary Orion fashion, his brother had played over his head in an attempt to recoup his losses. When that had failed, Orion had tried to handle the debt on his own, but his allowance was not large enough.
‘Who are these people? Brown and Whitaker?’ Fleur leaned closer, the scent of her perfume intensifying with its nearness. Jasper swallowed, not against desire, but embarrassment on his brother’s behalf. He did not want another to see Orion like this. Orion was his brother, a fun-loving, caring, often short-sighted young man who was still looking for his place in the world. He was not what these numbers suggested. Jasper hadn’t even told his mother about it.
‘Those are some gentlemen who will make short-term loans at high interest rates to other gentlemen who find themselves short on cash.’ Instead of turning to him and asking him for help, Orion had taken a loan from Brown and Whitaker in Cheapside. ‘It was the beginning of a snowball of debt that got larger each month until I found out the hard way.’ He paused, remembering that horrible night. ‘Orion was found in an alley, badly beaten.’ Brown and Whitaker had taken their pound in flesh when coin had not been produced in a timely manner.
Fleur’s hand squeezed his shoulder. ‘How awful.’
