How to Master Your Marquis (8 page)

November 1889

T
he Thames lay gray and greasy around him, encased by fog. Hatherfield concentrated on the solid feel of the blades in his hands, the slick slide of his seat on the rails, the rhythm of his legs as he pushed
off
 . . . and
off
 . . . and
off
 . . . and
off
 . . .

A steady rhythm, a hard and powerful rhythm. Rhythm was the key. Let the rhythm do the work. You could go on forever if you had the right beat in your legs and arms.

Sometimes, he thought he might just do that. Go on forever. Down the Thames, out the estuary, and into the North Sea.

Hatherfield had acquired an instinctive feel for the traffic of the Thames by now, such as it was at this dark and early hour. A lantern shone at the bow of his boat; he knew by the movement of the water when another boat was approaching. A glance over his shoulder, a minute adjustment of the oars, a pair of shouted
halloos
exchanged as his wooden shell slid by.

In truth, he preferred rowing farther upstream, at Windsor or Henley; on the Cherwell at Oxford, where he had learned the sport. But December was drawing closer, and the chance of ice was too great outside the busy metropolis, and besides, he would have to pay for lodgings. London it was, with its searing yellow fog and multitude of barges and boats. At least the chaps at the boathouse were a pleasant sort, a few friends from school days, all understanding one another in this love for the water, for the exhilaration of a boat gliding like a rocket up the river, for that moment when the pain in your lungs and chest and muscles disappeared and you were simply part of the boat, a flawless machine, not even human, invincible. Emptied of thought, emptied of sin and stain. Washed clean by the wind of your own draft.

Yes. That.

The shadow of Hammersmith Bridge passed overhead, black against the charcoal sky. Hatherfield gathered himself for the final stretch, the last long yards. His limbs sang. He felt the thud of his heart in his chest, the pull of his breath in his lungs, the stretch and flex of his mighty tendons. The happy symphony of his body, every instrument in tune, despite the late and broken rest of the night before, looking after young Thomas. He had expected to wake up this morning tired and reluctant, regretting those lost hours of sleep, but instead he’d felt . . . well, good. A bit of Christmas morning, the way Christmas morning had felt when he was very young. A pair of mischievous eyes seemed to be smiling upon him as he rose from his bed, as he changed into the exercise clothes his valet had laid out for him, as he drank his glass of water.

Her voice, deep and mock-contrite, making him smile into the black early morning:
I was cheeky.

The dark banks of the river blurred past, the trees of Barnes, and then he was home, Boathouse Row, a few miserable lanterns shining out from the odd window. Rowers were early risers, but he was the earliest. The docks were still quiet. In an hour, the sun would be up, the boats would be out. He would be eating breakfast in Cadogan Square. Thomas would be there, sitting next to him at the table, brimming with fresh air and exuberance.

Thomas.

He aimed for shore, relaxing his pace, allowing the boat to glide smoothly to the side. The moon had gone, the sun was not yet risen. He could hardly make out the shape of the boathouses to his left, the lights of Putney Bridge to his back. The boat bumped gently at the landing. He steadied the oars and unlaced his feet from the stirrups. From his exhausted body came a sated hum, that familiar fleeting sense of self-satisfaction. How long would it last today? As long as breakfast, surely. Breakfast with sharp young Thomas. He smiled and stepped into the cold water.

“Hatherfield!”

His fingers froze around the side of the boat.

“Hatherfield, I say! Hurry up with that nonsense.”

The voice was hard and short with impatience, a voice accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed.

Hatherfield squared his shoulders.

“One moment, Father.”

“I must speak with you immediately, Hatherfield.”

“I’ve got to take the boat in first, Father.”

A muttered curse, and the bang of a carriage window shoved back into place.

Hatherfield unshipped the blades and laid them on the dock, and then he grasped the edges of the shell and lifted it over his head in a single smooth heave.

“Hurry it up, then!”

Hatherfield carried the boat into the dank cavern of the boathouse and laid it carefully on its horse. He went back to the dock and brought the oars in, and then he found a wool jumper from his cubbyhole and pulled it over his head. His cotton-clad body, wringing with sweat, was already beginning to feel the cold in the air.

“For God’s sake,” said the Duke of Southam, “I don’t understand why you persist in this hobby of yours.”

Hatherfield placed his hands on the edge of the carriage door. “Was there something you wished to tell me, Father?”

“Come inside the carriage.”

“I’m not dressed.”

“You can dress at home.”

“My home is the Albert Hall Mansions now, Father. My own rooms, you know. The old bachelor establishment.”

The duke’s fist crashed against the doorframe. “Climb in, for God’s sake. I shall catch a chill in a moment.”

Two men walked past, heading into the boathouse. Chittering and Monmouth-Farraday, going out in their usual pair, casting him a look of friendly and barely disguised curiosity. As if to say,
Trouble, old chap?

Hatherfield shrugged. “I’ve got to send my own driver off.”

He went behind the boathouse and informed his driver that he would be making his own way home, and then he returned to his father’s carriage and climbed inside. It lurched forward instantly, clattering over the cobbles and up the approach to Putney Bridge.

“By damn, you smell like a stable,” said Southam, holding a handkerchief to his nose.

“I meant to bathe and change first.” Hatherfield kept his voice civil. He folded his arms across his chest.

Southam let out a put-upon sigh and cracked open the carriage window. “I suppose I can bear it until we reach home.”

Hatherfield looked out the opposite window, where the feeble London dawn spread promisingly beyond the rooftops. They had just crested the middle of the bridge span, and the Thames glittered and shifted in the growing light, already filling with boats. Inside the carriage, the air was cold and humid, filled with the smell of Southam’s peppermint hair oil and Hatherfield’s own hard-earned sweat.

He plucked at a stray thread of wool on his sleeve. “I gather you had something important to tell me?”

“Yes.” The duke hesitated, and all at once Hatherfield was conscious of an uneasiness lying beneath his father’s stern voice, his air of arrogant command. “It has to do with your duty, Hatherfield. Your duty as the heir to this storied title, this dukedom that has passed down through eight generations without interruption . . .”

“Ah. The duchess has been gambling again, has she?”

“You will not speak of your mother with disrespect.”

“She’s not my mother, sir.” The word
mother
tasted like poison in his mouth.

“She has cared for you since you were ten years old, Hatherfield. She’s the only mother you have.”

Hatherfield said nothing.

“In any case, and as you know, the income from our various estates has been falling every year, as rents decline . . .”

“And your expenses continue to climb, and you refuse to do anything to modernize the estates, or to invest in anything that gives off the slightest whiff of a profitable enterprise . . .”

“That will be enough. You will have ample opportunity to ruin the dukedom when your mother and I are dead. For the present, you have a duty to preserve the honor of your name, the privileges you have the immense good fortune to inherit, by whatever means in your power.”

“Father,” said Hatherfield wearily, “for the last time. You know I’ve invested every penny of the trust in the Hammersmith project. I’m living on nearly nothing as it is.”

“You have fifty thousand pounds, Hatherfield! The entirety of your mother’s dowry, compounding interest for nearly twenty years.”

“I invested it all, the instant I came into the money, as you know. The project’s only half finished. I can’t sell at this point, and I can’t pull any money out.” He had made bloody well certain of that, in fact, knowing his father’s skill at extortion. Such as the one he was attempting right now.

The duke harrumphed. “There is another option, of course. Eminently easy. Efficient. Gentlemanly, not like this damned row of houses you’re building in Hammersmith.”

Oh, for God’s sake.

“Father, I am not going to marry Charlotte Harlowe.”

“Two hundred thousand pounds, Hatherfield!” The duke’s voice burst within the interior of the carriage.

“It might as well be two hundred million. I won’t marry her.”

“For God’s sake! She’s beautiful, she’s clever, she’s charming. She quite plainly adores you, God knows why. Your damned looks, I suppose. Who the devil
will
you marry, if not her?”

“Whom I please, Father. But not her.”

“Why the devil not?”

“Because I don’t love her. Because I have the settled conviction that we should make each other miserable.”

“Because you wish to disgrace your family,” said Southam, in a bitter voice. “You wish to have your revenge on us, for all our imagined crimes, by watching the title fall into ruin, the houses sold, the estates broken up . . .”

“Nonsense. No doubt I shall find an agreeable heiress to marry at some point. Or perhaps I’ll amaze you with the success of my houses in Hammersmith, and I shall have the blunt to bail you out myself, from time to time. You have only to wait. Perhaps retrench an inch or two, in the meantime. Perhaps even do the unthinkable, sir, and focus your capable mind on marshaling the immense resources of the dukedom to more profitable use. Instead of the simple and rather base expedient of putting your only son out to stud.”

The duke picked up his cane and jammed it into the floor of the carriage. His voice shook with passion. “That is the point, damn it all! We have no resources! You have no inheritance, Hatherfield. An empty title, mortgaged to the limit. There is nothing, nothing!”

“Oh, come, sir. Nothing? You are the Duke of Southam.”

The carriage staggered to a stop. A delivery wagon, probably. Hatherfield looked out the window, where the shops of the King’s Road sat quiet and shuttered, waiting for the mid-morning tide of commerce to rise.

The duke spoke quietly. “Our mortgage obligations currently exceed our rent-roll by approximately eleven thousand pounds per annum. When the next payment comes due, we have not enough cash on hand to meet it.”

“Are there no more banks willing to take on your overdraft?”

“I will not suffer the indignity of being refused credit.”

“Father, you’ve got to face facts. Agricultural incomes have been plummeting for years. Decades. If the dukedom is to survive, you’ve got to sell up and invest the proceeds elsewhere. Do as I’ve done with Mother’s money.”

A dry laugh. “Invest what proceeds? If I sold every acre, it wouldn’t cover the mortgages upon the property.”

“The duchess’s dowry?”

“Spent. The rest went to the girls’ marriage settlements.”

Hatherfield swore.

“I’ve done my best, Hatherfield. There’s simply nothing else to be done.”

“There was,” said Hatherfield, “but you refused to do it when you had the chance.”

The carriage started forward again. The rattle of the wheels filled the air between them, the muted cacophony of horseshoes on pavement. A distant shout, a high peal of feminine laughter through the glass of the window. The familiar chorus of London, making the human silence bearable.

Southam said quietly, “I have in my pocket a note of hand from Mr. Nathaniel Wright, requesting payment of a debt of honor incurred this past Friday, in the amount of forty-two thousand pounds, on or before the next quarter day.”

“Forty-two thousand pounds?”

“Mr. Wright has kindly rounded off a hundred and sixty-eight pounds from the sum.”

Hatherfield allowed himself a moment to catch his stunned breath. Forty-two thousand pounds. “Nathaniel Wright. That chap in the City, isn’t it?”

“He is the owner of a considerable investment firm.”

Hatherfield could almost hear the curl of his father’s lip as he said the words
investment firm
. He stretched out his legs and examined the tips of his worn shoes. “
Your
debt of honor, sir? Or your wife’s?”

“That, my boy, is none of your business. The point is that we shall be ruined by Christmas. Publicly disgraced, turned out of our house, and you will have only yourself to blame, Hatherfield.”

“Me, sir?”

“When all of these problems,
all
of them, might be solved by a simple matter, a very straightforward alliance of the sort that built the very fortune on which your inheritance was founded. My God, Hatherfield! It’s not as if I’m asking you to commit a crime! Marry a beautiful girl, get a child or two on her, and carry on as you like! Where is the hardship? You needn’t even see her, except in bed and at dinner, from time to time.”

“What an alluring picture you paint.”

“Two hundred thousand pounds, Hatherfield!” The duke was breathless. He stamped his cane again, just as the carriage whirled around the corner of Sloane Square.

“Damn it, Father.” Hatherfield put his hands to his temples. How did the man do it? Beat like this against his conscience, against his sense of honor: beat and beat, until Hatherfield could no longer tell what was right and what was wrong. His duty as a son; his duty as a human being. In the close air of the carriage, cold and dense with Southam’s desperation, everything twisted and stuck together.

Marry Lady Charlotte. Could he do it, if he had to? Marriage. A wife in his bed, Lady Charlotte between his clean white sheets, expecting his nightly arrival. Was the prospect really so dreadful?