Elizabeth Mansfield (5 page)

“But, as it turned out, sir,” Miss Penicuick offered, “the overage in the cash box was a much more definitive proof than an extra guinea in her reticule would have been.”

“That may be,” Oliver Chivers granted, “but if Cassie ’ad not been championed by that very kind stranger, I dread to think what might’ve become of ’er. How could she’ve faced the people in the store? How would she’ve made ’er way ’ome? The very thought of what she might’ve ’ad to endure makes me shudder.”

“Yes, you’re quite right there,” Miss Penicuick agreed. “Thank the lord for Captain Rossiter’s presence. I shall remember him tonight in my prayers.”

“Rossiter?” Mr. Chivers’ eyes, behind their spectacles, blinked in astonishment. “Are you speakin’ of Robert Rossiter, the Viscount Kittridge? Was ’e the officer who championed ye?”

“Why, Papa?” Cassie asked, her face coloring. “Are you acquainted with him?”

“No, not personally. But Delbert Jennings, who ’andled the financial affairs for the old viscount, is a good friend of mine. ’E’s often spoken of the young man. Says ’e’s a very good sort.”

“He was certainly a ‘good sort’ to me today,” Cassie murmured.

“Yes. It’s too bad such a fine fellow ’ad a father as profligate as the old viscount. Now poor Rossiter’ll find ’isself puntin’ on tick. ’Asn’t been left a feather to fly with, Jennings says.”

Cassie stiffened in sudden attention. “What do you mean, Papa? Are you saying that the captain is in a bad way financially?”

“As bad as can be. ’Is father’s gamblin’ debts left ’im badly dipped. All the estates are mortgaged to the ’ilt. An’ the poor fellow ain’t yet been told. Far away, fightin’ in the war with Nappy all these years, ’e don’t know anythin’ of the financial maneuverings that took place be’ind ’is back. Jennings says that when ’e learns the full extent of ’is indebtedness ’e’ll be knocked off ’is pins.”

Cassie stared at her father for a moment, a little cry escaping from her throat. The sound caught his attention. He peered at his daughter curiously through the thick lenses of his spectacles. “Ye seem unduly affected, Cassie. I thought financial affairs didn’t ’old no interest for ye.”

A blush suffused her face again. “I only … it’s just that he was so very kind to me,” she said. “I’m sorry to learn that so kind a gentleman will be so badly hurt.”

Oliver Chivers didn’t miss the flush on his daughter’s cheeks. “
Liked
the fellow, eh, Cass?” he asked bluntly.

Cassie dropped her eyes, unable to reply. Miss Penicuick took it upon herself to answer for the girl. “How could she help but like him after his gallantry today?”

Cassie lifted her head. “Isn’t there anything you can do for him, Papa?”

“Do for ’im? What can I do? I ’ave nothing to do with the Rossiters’ finances.”

“But couldn’t you speak to—what was the name of the viscount’s man of business? Jennings?—to Mr. Jennings? Make some suggestions, perhaps?”

“Really, Cassie, ye can sometimes be a complete green’ead. Don’t ye know anythin’ of the proprieties of business? I couldn’t make suggestions to Jennings about the finances of one of ’is clients. That would imply that I believed myself to be more competent to ’andle the affair then ’e’d be. Besides, with all the viscount’s properties encumbered, there ain’t nothin’ I
could
suggest that would get the fellow out of ’is fix, short of—” He stopped speaking abruptly, his mouth open and his eyes staring out at nothing, as if a dazzling idea had struck him with a clunk.

Cassie leaned forward eagerly. “Short of what, papa?”

Mr. Chivers blinked, his eyes focusing slowly on his daughter’s face. Perhaps he
could
make a suggestion to Jennings about the viscount’s finances. It was an off chance, an endeavor with a very low probability of success, but it just might work. He’d never before known Cassie to show so great an interest in a young man. If his suggestion were taken, it could benefit not only his lordship but Cassie as well. It was certainly worth a whack. He would put out a feeler and see what he could see.

“What
is
it, Papa?” Cassie asked, bursting with curiosity. “Why are you looking at me so strangely?”

“It’s nothin’, my love, nothin’,” her father muttered, pulling his eyes from her and looking down at the dessert. “Eat yer blasted bla’mange.”

Chapter Five

Sometimes it is hard to recognize the moment when one’s life falls to pieces. Robert Rossiter, Viscount Kittridge, however, could give you the date, hour and minute when it happened to him.

His lordship was no fool. Although no one in his family—not his dithery mother, his young brother Gavin, nor his recently widowed sister, Lady Yarrow—had given him the slightest clue that anything was wrong with the family finances, it took no more than two days of civilian life for him to suspect that he was in trouble. But on the third day, an encounter with a wine merchant (who’d awaited him on the doorstep of the family town house in Portman Square and who’d asked point-blank for payment of a long-overdue bill for champagne) led him to seek out his father’s man of business without further delay.

What he learned from Mr. Jennings sent him reeling. The news struck him like a blow to the stomach, knocking out his breath and causing him to fall back into the chair on the edge of which he’d been nervously perched. Mr. Jennings offered him a drink of brandy, which he downed without hesitation. “As bad as that?” he asked when he’d recovered his voice.

Mr. Jennings nodded. “I’m afraid so, my lord. I had warned your father repeatedly, during the last five years of his life, that this day of reckoning would come and that it might be his son—you, my lord—who’d have to face the consequences of a situation not of your making. But the gambling fever had too tight a hold on him. He didn’t seem able to stop, even at the end when the pain of his illness was almost unendurable. Every day, rain or shine, in spite of his growing weakness, he had his man carry him to his club and seat him at the gaming table.” He shook his head in dismal recollection.

Lord Kittridge shut his eyes. “That’s not the man I remember,” he muttered unhappily. “You’ve not painted a picture of a father of whom a son can feel proud.”

“Nevertheless he loved you, my boy, as much as he could love anyone. I think one of the things that drove him on was the futile hope that he might make a killing and thus spare you some of this.”

“Yes, the prayer of every man who ever rolled dice:
One killing, dear God, one killing, and I shall give up the game forever
.”

Delbert Jennings sighed. “Too true, my lord, unfortunately too true. A terrible disease, gaming. Your father is not the first, nor will he be the last to succumb to it.” Sighing again, he gently pushed a folder across his desk toward the viscount. “I’ve worked out a plan of divestiture, which I’ve been waiting to go over with you—”

Lord Kittridge held up a restraining hand. “Not now, Jennings. I don’t think I could make sense of anything right now. Let me go. I’ll come back tomorrow, I promise. Tomorrow. Then we’ll see what we can salvage from this fiasco.”

“Yes, of course, my lord. I quite understand,” the man of business said as both men rose. “But it need not be tomorrow. Take a few days to let the news sink in. Shall we say Monday?”

The day agreed on, Mr. Jennings led the viscount to the door, where they paused and shook hands. “Try not to fall into the dismals, my lord,” the older man counselled. “Other men, many more than you dream, have managed to survive such blows as this.”

Lord Kittridge emerged from Jennings’ offices, his head in a whirl. It was hard for him to comprehend fully the extent of the disaster his father had left behind. But one thing was devastatingly clear: The future he’d imagined for himself was shattered. He knew that he was not the only soldier to return from the wars to find things at home devastatingly changed, but the knowledge that others had been struck with similar blows was not particularly comforting. No matter how often one hears that misery loves company, there are some miseries that can’t be eased by the mere awareness that others have suffered a similar catastrophe.

He began to walk down the street, the cold wind buffeting his face. He couldn’t help noticing that, although it was early afternoon, the day was as dark as twilight. The sky was a stormy grey, and the air had a bite that promised snow. He raised the collar of his greatcoat, thinking that the grim weather was deucedly appropriate to his mood. He didn’t quite know where he was going. He knew only that he didn’t want to go home. Facing his family would require more strength than he could now summon up. He turned up one street and down another until more than an hour had passed, but he still was not able to calm his inner perturbation.

But the wind nipped at his ears and his fingers tingled with the cold, so at last he hailed a hack and gave the address of the Fenton Hotel, where his friend Sandy was putting up. Sir Philip Sanford—Sandy to his friends—had been his comrade-in-arms through all his years of military service. Lord Kittridge had never had a better friend. Sandy was too short of stature and too moon-faced to be taken seriously as a military hero, but Kittridge knew that a braver, kinder, more loyal soldier never lived. There was hardly a time that Sandy would not show a cheerful face. No matter how grave the battle situation might seem, Sandy always had an optimistic outlook. He was the most warm-hearted fellow in the world, and his broad-cheeked face was the only one Lord Kittridge wanted to see in this dark hour.

Besides, a visit with Sandy would bring back the feeling of being in military service. War was certainly as “grim-visaged” as Shakespeare said it was, but being a soldier had much to recommend it. Civilian life was messy and confusing. What Kittridge missed most at this moment was the clean, brave, unencumbered feeling he’d had as Robert Rossiter, cavalry officer. And that was something only Sandy would understand.

When Sandy’s man admitted him to the sitting room of the rented suite on the Fenton’s third floor, he found his friend lounging in a wing chair near the fire, his stockinged feet propped up on the hearth. Sandy looked up from the newspaper he’d been reading, peered at his friend for one long, silent moment and jumped to his feet. “Good God, man, what’s amiss? You look as if you’ve lost your best friend, but that can’t be, for here I am, quite alive and hale.”

Rossiter acknowledged the quip with a mirthless imitation of a smile. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said, throwing his greatcoat over a chair. “On top of the news I learned today, losing my best friend would be more than I could bear.”

“Then what is it?” Sandy asked, his usually cheerful face clouding with the realization that his friend had suffered a severe blow. “Whatever it is, Robbie, old fellow, it can’t be as bad as the look on your face.”

Lord Kittridge turned to the fire and held out his hands to warm them. “I’ve just learned that I’m rolled up, that’s all.”

“Rolled up? How can that be? We’ve been back less than a week!” He pushed his friend into a chair and went to pour a couple of brandies. “How much blunt can you possibly have run through in so few days? What have you been up to, man?”

“Not I. My father. He performed the almost unbelievable feat of squandering the entire estate. The Suffolk property, Highlands—that’s the family estate in Lincolnshire, you know—the London house,
everything.” And, taking the drink Sandy offered him, he began to relate the whole story.

At strategic moments during the recital of the details, Sandy refilled Kittridge’s glass, but even after the tale was fully told and the bottle stood empty on the floor beside their chairs, his lordship felt no effect from the drink. His spirit was so depressed that it seemed to leave no room for the brandy to do its work. “What am I to do, Sandy?” he asked miserably.

“Don’t know, old fellow,” Sandy admitted, taking the last swig left in his glass. “Haven’t the foggiest. Finance is not a subject I’ve studied. But I know you, Robbie Rossiter. I’ve seen you lead a division across a ravine while three enemy regiments shot at us, and you, cool as ice, never hesitated or flinched. I’ve seen you land on your feet after your horse was shot from under you. I’ve seen you cut a piece of shrapnel from my thigh with the aplomb of a surgeon. I’ve seen you calm a brigade of terrified dragoons while a typhoon whistled round us like Armageddon. If anyone can come through a crisis, it’s you.”

“Those crises were easy. I’d take any or all of them in place of this one. This one has me terrified. What will my mother say when I tell her we must sell the London house? How will I keep Gavin in school? And my sister will need help, too.”

“Eunice?” Sandy’s round face reddened, and he dropped his eyes from his friend’s face. “Is something wrong with her?”

Kittridge was too absorbed in his own problems to notice Sandy’s blush. “Her husband—you remember him, don’t you? Henry Yarrow? He was at Eton with us when we were in our first year and he was in the upper fourth. Well, he died unexpectedly a few months ago—”

“Yes, I’d heard that,” Sandy mumbled.

“His estate went to a distant cousin, because Eunice’s babies are both girls. The heir is obligated, I believe, to supply her with some sort of allowance, but I shall have to provide housing for her and her children on top of the rest.”

“That
is
too bad.” Sandy fixed his eyes on his glass. “Is your sister still in mourning?” he asked with studied casualness.

“Half-mourning, I believe. Why?”

Sandy hesitated. “Never mind,” he said. “It’s not important.”

Kittridge, who ordinarily would have exerted himself to draw out from Sandy what was on his mind, could not now concentrate on the matter. The thought of all his responsibilities—obligations which he had no idea how to discharge—was too overwhelming. He put his hand to his head and shut his eyes. “God! What am I to do?”

Sandy, unable to think of an optimistic answer, shook his head. Then he remembered that there
was
a bright side, a name the mere mention of which had always brought a light to Robbie’s eyes. But it was a name that his friend seemed to have avoided all afternoon. “I say, old man, isn’t there one person you’ve forgotten to speak of? Why haven’t you mentioned Elinor?”