A Rogue of Her Own (Windham Brides #4)(70)
“Some bantling second cousin in Scotland. I’d rather see the estate revert to the crown than fall into the hands of a barbarian.”
Two of Elizabeth’s sisters had married Scotsmen. “I can’t promise that Sherbourne will be amenable to your suggestions. He’s developing this colliery in part to provide employment beyond what’s available on the valley’s smallholdings and tenant farms. Excessive profit isn’t his aim.”
Which had surprised Haverford, and it apparently surprised Brantford.
“Excessive profit is a contradiction in terms. I’ll sort him out easily enough, Your Grace. If he ever wants to attract another titled investor, he’ll see reason. About that bath?”
“Right,” Haverford said. “Your bath, a tray of viands, somebody to see to your wardrobe and lay out your evening clothes. Anything else?”
“Coal on the bedroom hearth. Peat has its charm, but not while a man is trying to sleep.” Brantford started for the door. “I’m partial to French wines, if you were wondering what to send along with the tray. I prefer the reds, as long as they aren’t too dry.”
“Our staff will be happy to oblige.”
Brantford took himself off, while Haverford recited the earl’s list of required amenities to the first footman.
“Mind you don’t let the maids near him,” Haverford said. “He’s our guest, but Her Grace will skewer him with a rusty sword if he disrespects any member of her household.”
Not, of course, that food and wine in abundance, a hot bath on demand, footmen stepping and fetching in all directions, and a hearth kept blazing was coddling his lordship.
Haverford used the footmen’s staircase to join the duchess in the ducal apartment and found his wife awake, though beneath the covers with a book.
“I’d hate him,” Haverford said, “except I pity the man.”
“Brantford?”
“Of course, Brantford. You thought I meant Sherbourne?”
“Come to bed,” Elizabeth said. “Our guest has put you out of sorts.”
“He’s put me in a quandary.” Haverford did not need to be invited to bed twice. He peeled out of his clothes—all of them—and climbed in beside his wife. “Brantford is greedy, which is probably to be expected, but he’s also in want of an heir. He refers to Sherbourne as having a Midas touch, and yet the legend of Midas seems to apply to the earl.”
“Midas turned his daughter to gold, didn’t he?”
“And realized too late that all the coin and consequence in the world mean nothing without somebody to love. I could have been Brantford.” He’d made the last admission quickly, before self-consciousness could snatch the words back.
Elizabeth wrapped herself along his side. “You could never be Brantford, else you would have sunk a mine ten years ago and ignored all the agricultural interests in the valley. You would never have married me, either. You would have married some giggling heiress who left you to molder away with your books. Sherbourne will deal easily with Brantford.”
“If Sherbourne fails to impress Brantford, the earl will try to withdraw his money.” Why did the scent of Elizabeth, the simple feel of her body, soothe Haverford when nothing else could?
“Can Brantford renege like that? Lucas Sherbourne strikes me as a man who’d tidy up all the legalities before coin changed hands.”
Haverford pulled the covers over his wife’s shoulders. “Doubtless Sherbourne has dotted i’s and crossed t’s in triplicate, but Brantford will slander Sherbourne in the clubs if Sherbourne doesn’t give the money back, or manage the project according to Brantford’s rules. That will be the end of Sherbourne’s ventures with titled investors.”
Sherbourne, for reasons Haverford only dimly grasped, wanted to move among titles as an equal.
“Then you and Radnor and various Windhams will simply unslander him,” Elizabeth said. “Brantford is a minor northern earl with airs above his station. Sherbourne is ours now, and we protect our own.”
“Spoken like a duchess.” Also like a Windham and a St. David. “Is it very rude for a host and hostess to be late for dinner?”
“I haven’t yet told the kitchen when dinner is to be served.”
“Nor will you be telling them for at least another hour.”
“Spoken like a duke,” Elizabeth said, drawing her leg over his thighs. “Like a very wise duke.”
*
“He’s here.” Sherbourne might have been speaking of Old Scratch, so grim was his tone.
“Lord Brantford has arrived?” Charlotte asked.
They were in the library after a quiet supper. Rain pelted the windows in icy torrents and darkness had fallen hours ago. While her husband had clicked away at an abacus and penciled figures on sheets of foolscap, Charlotte had read Mr. William Sharp’s treatise on coal mining, which was more interesting than any edition of La Belle Assemblée.
Mining was an endeavor made possible by tons of mathematics as well as tons of ore. Without a quantity of careful calculations, the whole business was little more than digging in the dirt while relentlessly praying to remain alive. To construct a tunnel that would not collapse, flood, subside, or lack for ventilation was a puzzle of numbers, and until those numbers came right, lives were in peril.