Wild Lily (Those Notorious Americans Book 1)(22)

“I must change. I hope this will not turn into one of your lectures about the foibles of your ancestors.” Her snipe at him was an old one, centered on the poor traits he’d inherited from his forebears. Like ridiculing his wife.

“Have no time for the recitation, do you, pet?” He turned to face the fire, but the sneer was one Julian heard. Had heard for most of his life.

The duchess was not to be intimidated. “No, none. These meetings of yours are tedious, Seton. I fear you are becoming infirm in your mind.”

His father spun on his heel. At sixty-two, the man might be portly, he might have a shock of silver hair, but he had the black eye of a warlock and the disposition of one, given bait. At that, Julian’s mother was quite expert. “I am not so infirm, as you put it, girlie, as you are at forgetting my orders.”

His mother tsked, rapping her fan softly against her open palm. “You cannot incite me, George. Do be quick.”

“We’re in the shitter!”

She gasped. Her fan fluttered upward to her throat. “There is no need for vulgarity.”

“Oh, there is need.” He strode forward to face her and bend low, his nose nearly touching her own. His nostrils flared. “An urgent one.”

Elanna swallowed.

Julian inhaled, girding for the storm.

“Do you go to Lady Tottingham’s this evening, by any odd chance?” His father was luring his mother with bitter words. “Do you?”

His mother turned her face to one side, her fan to her cheek, separating her from her husband’s breath. “You’ve been drinking.”

“Of course, I have!” he bellowed. “I have cause. Just cause. You, my dear gel, give me cause.”

She shot to her feet.

“Sit down.”

“I will not listen—”

“Oh, you will, madam. In fact, you will do a great deal more than that.”

She stared at him, her body swaying to and fro.

Julian hoped to God she’d sit soon or they’d be here all damn night.

She regained her chair.

Elanna closed her eyes.

Julian let out a breath.

“Now, then. Affairs at Broadmore are in turmoil. Wilson has taken to his bed.” Their bailiff for the estate had always been sickly, getting worse each year. “He’s got a bad case of pleurisy.”

“Or nerves,” his mother added under her breath.

His father quelled her with fury in his black gaze. He dug a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped his mouth. “Most— Most ungracious of you.”

She rolled her shoulders.

Julian shook his head. She and Wilson had never gotten on.

Broadmore in West Sussex was the original land grant estate from the Crown to the first Duke of Seton two centuries ago. Fifteen-thousand acres of prime land yielded the bulk of the crops that fed the two-hundred plus tenants and the coffers of the ducal family. Until the past few years. With poor weather, little investment in new plows and wagons, the lack of cash to purchase seed, the tenants who faithfully farmed the land were growing poorer. Unable to pay their rents in full. The skills of his father’s bailiff there, Robert Wilson, were of little use. If the land did not yield, the tenants could not sell their grain or fatten their animals. They not only could not pay their rents, they sickened.

“Wilson is the best man in all Sussex. I don’t doubt he’s worn himself to the bone and I don’t begrudge him a rest.” This graciousness, this compliment was a new phenomenon his father had begun to exhibit as the profitability of their estate had diminished.

“He needs no rest, but replacement,” his mother said.

“Absolutely not,” his father disagreed. “Wilson insisted to rise from his bed and rallied to show me the estate books. We tallied the rents to date. Also balanced the sales of the grain against the expense of the seed for this spring.”

Julian folded his hands, knowing what was coming. He’d known each year for the past three. Each spring the estate books had not balanced. Each spring, the Duchy of Seton sank deeper into the mire caused by the combination of abundant, cheap American grain imports and terrible weather. Rain, ice, snow had flooded their fields at Broadmore since last October and to a lesser extent at their smaller estate, his own, of Willowreach in Kent.

“We have enough money to run this house for two months. Pay the servants and the annual taxes. Then we must either sell it or let the house to any rich American who wants a fancy residence for his chicks.”

“No,” his mother said beneath her breath. “This is not so.”

“Not? So?” Quentin George Makefield Ash, the seventh duke, barked in laughter. Then he advanced on his wife of thirty-six years with fire in his eyes. “Who are you, madam, to nay say me? I told you over and over these past few years. Now we are well and truly cooked as a Christmas goose. At Christmas, I told you that you must no longer visit your seamstress. You must do with last year’s hats. I would not pay your marks. And worse…”

She lifted her face to stare at him, her mouth pinched, her skin drained of color.

“I refused to pay any of your chits to cover your debts at cards.”

“They are not much.”

He gave a sharp laugh. “They are not paid, either.”

“But, but… George, you must. I cannot continue—”