Page 4 of A Deal with the Rebellious Marquess
‘They can’t keep saying these things about me! There’s been articles up north and now there’s one in theLondon Tribune.’ Orion abused the table with another swat of the newspaper, slouched into the chair and conveniently ignored the question.
‘Conveniently ignoring’ was a coping strategy his brother had cultivated as a boy and honed to perfection as an adult. The only other thing Orion cultivated with such care was his appearance—always immaculately groomed and expensively turned out, even, Jasper noted wryly, in the midst of his latest crisis. This morning, Orion wore a grass-green silk waistcoat, a sky-blue silk cravat and a bottle-green jacket of superfine, his jaw clean shaven, his champagne-blond hair—Orion’s term for a hue that was not quite gold or brown—neatly trimmed.
Jasper always felt a bit rough around the edges compared to his brother. His own hair was decidedly longer, a collection of unruly nut-brown waves that tangled easily no matter the amount of pomade his valet applied. He was too busy to think about clothes. He left that to his tailor and valet. Between them, they hadn’t failed him yet.
Jasper breathed in through his nose and gave a long exhale, preparing to jump into the impending fray. ‘What is it this time? Did the society column not care for your latest waistcoat? Or is it money trouble again?’ Perhaps a gaming debt that had lingered too long for repayment. It wouldn’t be the first time. He hoped that was all it was. He hoped it wasn’t worse—a wronged earl’s daughter caught kissing Orion in a garden at a ball, perhaps—because Orion would make a terrible husband. He loved his brother, but that didn’t mean he wished Orion on an unsuspecting wife.
‘Brother, you have to make them stop. It’s gone too far. It never should have been allowed to start.’
Jasper did not care for the accusatory tone with which the last part was said. Nor did he like the feeling that he’d entered in the middle of a play and didn’t understand the plot. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘I am going to need more detail than that, starting with who “they” are in this little drama and whatisthe drama?’ Because it was always drama with Orion. Mountains from mole hills were his speciality, usually because they’d been ignored too long before they reached Jasper’s attention.
Orion shoved the paper the length of the table. ‘“They” are theLondon Tribune, theLeeds Messenger, theSheffield Tribune, theBristol Intelligencerand a host of smaller papers from here to York.’ Orion’s chagrin seemed genuine for once and, for a moment, Jasper sensed something else beneath it—authentic concern? Perhaps a sincere sense of worry? But it was gone as quickly as it came. Still, he thought, the observation was worth filing away.
Jasper reached for his glasses and picked up the paper, his brow furrowing as he read the half-page article, which was quite a bit of space devoted to an issue that was over a year old and one that had been settled. ‘This is about the dam accident in Holmfirth last February.’ More specifically, it was about the enquiry that had occurred afterwards. Orion had been on the Board of Commissioners for the Holmfirth Dam project, a position Jasper had arranged in the hopes of giving Orion a sense of purpose and direction when Orion had finished a brief, disappointing stint in the military with the engineering corps.
He looked up at Orion. ‘What does this have to do with you? The verdict was clear: there was no one person or organisation that was accountable for the accident.’ The dam had been a tragedy of collective errors, to be sure, and a travesty of bureaucratic nonsense.
‘Someone is attempting to reopen the investigation,’ Orion groused, reaching for the silver coffee pot and pouring a cup before pulling out a flask to enliven the brew. Jasper frowned. It was barely half past eight. A bit early, in his opinion, to be ‘enlivening’ beverages.
‘Let them search. They are not bound to get far. The law won’t retry a case without new evidence and there was no conviction last time due to there being no one or no grouptobring to trial.’ Jasper failed to see what the worry was.
‘But that’s the point. Someoneislooking for a person to pin it all on and that person isme!’ Orion blurted out with dramatic angst. ‘The newspaper articles have namedmein a manner that suggests I am the someone who should be held accountable and whoever is doing it is using the papers to whip up support. You must put a stop to it,’ he insisted.
‘You want me to use my title to suppress the press?’ Jasper surmised bluntly. And whenorif that failed, Orion would want him to use his title to suppress the individual citizen behind it. Did Orion even see the irony in that, given his voting record in Parliament regarding lowering the stamp tax on newspapers and abolishing the excise tax on printing paper? He championed free press. He didn’t censor it.
Orion leaned forward in earnest. ‘I want you to use your title to suppress slander, Brother. Someone is trying to ruin me.’ It was said with all the aplomb of a Drury Lane thespian—he was givingquitethe performance.
Jasper nodded. Orionwasnamed specifically. That alone required his attention. The family name must be protected from unrighteous scandal. But he also knew that with Orion there was always a nugget of truth involved and many other types of nuggets, too. There was likely more to this than what Orion was letting on. He just had to figure out what that more was. Regardless, the situation would have to be handled delicately.
Ifthe press was indeed slandering Orion, it would indirectly be akin to slandering the marquessate, which Jasper would not tolerate. His father had taught that lesson well and often. The Marquess must protect the family. Of course, that assumed that was indeed happening. Cases wereneverblack and white with Orion. He would not let his brother be wronged, but neither would Jasper risk the marquessate’s good name by using it to undermine a free press, one of the life bloods of an evolving society, a view that often made him unpopular in the House of Lords. It was a view he’d fought for on more than one occasion because ideas—scientific, philosophical, or otherwise—were critical if a society were to modernise and advance, something the reclusive and often eccentric Marquessate of Meltham had long believed in. It was a legacy he was more than happy to keep alive.
He sighed. This was going to be tricky indeed. ‘I’ll look into it right away. Get me a list of all the papers that ran articles about you.’ He was already mentally reorganising his morning to move this to the top of his task list as a thousand questions clamoured for his attention, mercilessly drowning out the quiet.
Chapter Two
If the British system of primogeniture had not so mercilessly designated that Jasper Bexley be a marquess’s heir simply on the merit of his birth and sex, he would have, by his own choice, been a scientist, a participant in a field of discovery that was rooted in logic and careful, reliable methodology that sought predictability. The scientist’s life was a quiet, orderly life of logical experimentation that led to logical outcomes, where everything had explanations and reasons.
Since his first encounter with Francis Bacon’s treatise,Novum Organum, which he’d ponderously and determinedly waded through in its original Latin at eighteen, the year his father had inexplicably taken ill, the Baconian Method had become the lens through which Jasper processed and understood the world—logical reasoning through classifications instead of syllogisms, and most of all the discovery of truth, of knowledge through an organised process that began with questioning and observation.
Bacon had appealed to him at a time in his life when he’d been desperate for answers. His father, a generally hardy and robust man, had taken ill with pneumonia and had never recovered despite four years of trying. Both the illness and the lack of recovery had seemed random and inexplicable occurrences to Jasper.
How was it that a healthy man like his father could be cut down still in his prime? He’d sought answers and reasons in his craving to rationalise the tragedy playing out before him. His father dead at the age of fifty-four. The title and the responsibility of leading the family his at the young age of twenty-two. Since then, Bacon had become a tool to guide him through managing the title and a tool for managing his life so that he might use the order of logic as a shield against the chaos and pain of emotion.
That tool was serving him well today. Questions were a scientist’s stock in trade and there were plenty to ask at present. Jasper dedicated his morning to doing that asking: why was someone seeking to reopen a decisive, thorough investigation? Who might that someone be? Why was his brother the target? Why was his brother worried about being the target if the previous investigation had turned up nothing directed at him? What was different this time?
Questions led to research. To create answers, one had to gather information—objectiveinformation. He could not resolve the situation if he didn’t understand thewholesituation. Too many people, Orion included, saw the world astheywere, not as it factually was. Truth, by its very definition, couldnotbe subjective. It must remain inviolable.
As long as one asked the right questions, that truth was not so hard to come by and, by the late afternoon, Jasper had discovered two interesting pieces of information. First, all the papers were owned by the Griffiths News Syndicate. Second—and this was where it got interesting—thewomanin charge of the syndicate was Fleur Griffiths, who’d lost her husband in the flood. A woman. A widow. Certain conclusions could be drawn.
Jasper drummed his fingers on the surface of his desk as he imagined the scenario the information provided: a grieving widow with a news organisation at her disposal and a proverbial axe to grind. Motive didn’t get more obvious than that. She’d lost her husband. She would have been disappointed with a verdict that didn’t assign clear blame. Clear blame would have given her closure and the explanation she was no doubt looking for: why had this random, freak accident claimed her husband’s life? Without that explanation, her grief remained unassuaged, unable to rest.
He knew those feelings. They were the feelings he’d had when his father had died. He’d taken comfort in his Francis Bacon, searching for that understanding. She was out looking for vengeance and wielding her presses to do it. Perhaps she hoped if she could find a culprit, it would appease her grief, close her wounds. No. Strike that last part. He was extrapolating now about a woman he had never even seen. He would need to rectify that.
One had to be careful not to infer too much. After all, he didn’t know anythingfactualabout Mrs Griffiths’s character, another reason why it was necessary to encounter her. His scenario upon which the ‘obvious motive’ was based assumed she grieved, which was based on another assumption—that all women grieved. Mrs Griffiths was a woman, therefore she grieved. Wasn’t this the very concern of syllogistic reasoning that Bacon had railed against? One must test each step in that dangerous ladder.
He strode to the sideboard against the wall and poured an afternoon brandy, testing those logical rungs in his mind. Perhaps she did not miss her husband? Perhaps she was glad to be free of him, free of matrimony? Especially when she now had a fortune and empire at her disposal. He knew there were such women in the world who aspired to be more than wives and mothers. Perhaps she was one of them? But that brought another set of assumptions to test.Didshe have a fortune? An empire? Perhaps there were others controlling it? Perhaps she was nothing more than a figurehead? Perhaps someone was controlling her?
By the time his secretary, a tall, slim, serious, dark-haired fellow, appeared for further instruction, two items had become clear. First, Mrs Griffiths was a person of interest to him and he needed to confirm she was the person responsible for these articles both up north and in London. Second, to move along his understanding of the situation he needed to knowher. A good critical thinker tested not only the content of the argument being made, but the source who made the argument. He could not answer his remaining questions or form a viable hypothesis without that. To know her required meeting her, but not as the Marquess of Meltham. She would never receive Meltham and even if by some miracle she did, she’d be on her guard, wanting to protect herself.
