Mr Forster's Fortune (20 page)

‘I have just seen the announcement in the Chronicle,’ began Mr Withers,
respectfully, eyeing Lord Barnham with a fair degree of interest. ‘I beg your lordship’s leave to say that it was not entirely unexpected, albeit still extremely sorry, news to me.’

Lord Barnham inclined his head
and exchanged a swift glance with Mr Withers.

‘Your lordship is possibly wondering why I have taken the liberty of calling?’ hazarded the visitor.

Yes. His lordship admitted that he was.

‘Perhaps your lordship did not know that your lordship’s esteemed father – though he
had not deigned to engage my services for himself – had engaged me to administer the estate of his uncle, Mr Simon Forster, in the event that Mr Forster failed to survive? No, I can see that your lordship did not. Well, may I beg leave to inform your lordship that this is, in fact, the case and that I have therefore taken the very great liberty of delivering his will.’

Lord Barnham graciously agreeing to accept the document, Mr Withers then proceeded to open the leather bag which he had placed carefully
on the floor. He then fished about in it most dextrously for a second, and produced (somewhat in the manner of a conjurer producing a rabbit from a hat) a single sheet of paper from which he then begged his lordship’s leave to read out loud.

The paper said very little, but that little was sufficient to grant to
Thaddeus, the second Viscount Barnham and, in the event of his decease, his eldest son, Robert, the third viscount, all the goods which remained in his possession on his death – such goods being carefully enumerated as two suits of clothing (‘which you may dispose of immediately to the poor in the town if you will, Mr Withers’), one pewter tankard, engraved, and all the money then remaining in a bank account in Newbury, Berkshire, in which town, it so transpired, the gentleman appeared to have spent the majority of his time.

The unseasonably fine, warm weather had brought on the crocuses and daffodils so much that many were already challenging the authority of the calendar and gladdening the hearts of the populace of Surrey with their confident announcement of spring. But though Cecily could see their vibrant displays from the tall window of her very pretty chamber at
Ascot House she was finding them sadly incapable of gladdening her own particular heart at all. Indeed, everything she set her eyes upon – the blue skies, the exquisite scenery, even her new spring gowns – appeared to be suffering from this self same incapacity to rouse her from the peculiar state of feverish despondency and irritation that she had fallen into – a state with which both she and her aunt were finding it exceedingly difficult to cope. This state, she knew, had nothing to do with her surroundings and everything to do with someone else. It was all the fault of a certain young gentlemen who was then residing many miles from her but whose influence was surprisingly intense. She did not care that Robert was inconsistent. She did not care that he’d been most rude. She knew that he wasn’t a fortune hunter. How could he be, when he’d thought her wealth so small? And anyway, she was in love with him. How could she not be in love with him? She loved the odious scapegrace with a passion that would not abate. It was quite insufferable, quite insupportable - but it was also infuriatingly true.

One thing – and one thing alone – had served to ameliorate her uncharacteristic irritation
and lack of humour. Alfred was not at Ascot with them. Fortune taking pity on her in this respect at the least, he had been suddenly ordered away to deal with some public disorder amongst some weavers in the northern part of the country so she was able to go about her day-to-day business without the constant reproach of having him by her side. If she were grateful for anything, she was grateful for this. The thought of him sitting stiffly and uncomfortably beside her, of having to watch him biting his fingernails, of having to put up with the constant jingling of his coins, of having to listen to his excruciating reading - and having to pretend to listen as he droned on and on about uniforms, weaponry and marching here and there, for which no-one else (not even his doting mother) could really raise any enthusiasm whatsoever, would most surely have driven her to distraction.

She had maintained a somewhat sporadic correspondence with Miss Forster, from which she had learned of the sudden
sad deaths in her family. She had felt genuinely sorry for his lordship. She had felt a good deal of sympathy for the old gentleman in his lifetime. She could tell that he hadn’t been happy, that he had never quite known how to reach out to anyone he loved, and she quietly hoped that he had not had to suffer for too long. She had ensured that all the correct messages were sent back to Bath in response to the announcement, but other than a few comments intimating that the new young viscount was fully engaged in the business of his father’s estate she had since heard very little of any real interest at all – which was, did the new Lord Barnham appear as miserable and Friday faced as she was feeling and, if so, was any small part of it anything at all to do with her?

Mrs King
, having learned from her innocent eavesdropping that the union which she had so fondly been hoping for had been discussed again, and finally and entirely put to rest, had naturally felt insulted and mortified that Cecily had turned dear Alfred down. Indeed, she had felt so insulted that their journey home had proved a particularly silent affair, and so insulted that for a few days further she had felt quite unable to talk to her erstwhile hoped-for daughter-in-law at all. But Mrs King was nothing if not pragmatic, and, needing to talk to someone, and swiftly finding that Cecily was the only other creature in the house worth talking to, this novel inability to communicate was rather speedily overcome. Under normal circumstances Cecily would have found its replacement – a medley of reproachful looks and gentle hints – ‘If only we had stayed in Bath, my dear, we should have gone out every... It is no wonder that you are feeling a little cheerless, having insisted on coming home’, and ‘Would you not agree that the grounds are looking particularly ... – they are all Alfred’s doing, of course, he so clever at things like that – dear Mr King has no more interest in the grounds than... well, I know not what’ and, even more to the point, ‘The lady who comes to Ascot House as Alfred’s bride will want for no material comfort whatsoever, would you not agree, Lady Cecily?’ – somewhat more than mildly amusing. But these were by no means normal circumstances and she was not finding any of it amusing whatsoever. So she took to avoiding her aunt whenever it was possible to do so, choosing, instead, to take long walks in the annoyingly spring like countryside, to take no interest in the wonders of the newly-stocked Dorking shops, to play dismal tunes upon the magnificently toned family pianoforte, to play wrong notes on her miserably expensive guitar or to secrete herself in her chamber, embroidery in hand, whilst making hardly any progress with any of it at all.

Having finally extricated himself
and his sister from his mother’s tenacious grip by dint of parcelling her up the Lansdown Road to stay with her sister for a while, Lord Barnham was sitting in a small front chamber of ‘The George and Pelican’ in Newbury, morosely looking out onto a gradually darkening sky. Despite his earlier resolution of never travelling by public coach again he had finally been persuaded by his sister to do just that. With his mother in need of an expensive journey from Bath to Suffolk at the conclusion to her stay they had felt completely unable to grant themselves the privilege of – or, rather, the outlay required for - a private carriage of their own. They had, as a consequence, spent a most uncomfortable day of jolting, with his lordship and the long-suffering Moreton on the roof of the mailcoach, and the equally uncomfortable Miss Forster and her personal maid, Flynn, inside.

His morose appraisal of the outside scene had at first consisted of a somewhat aimless gaze at anyone and anything that had happened to
capture his attention. The gaze, indeed, was aimless, though his thoughts were very clear. They revolved around a number of incidents – namely, his few, much valued, discussions with his father immediately before his death, the similar discussions with his great-uncle, which had left him philosophising sadly about the senseless manner in which men insisted on ruining their own lives – and those of others – for the most despicable of motives, and the misery that this generated in return – and, more than either of these, though they were deeply felt indeed – more and deeper than either of these were his importunate thoughts of Cecily. He had ceased trying to dismiss her from his mind. He had tried many times to do so – even when he had been at his busiest, in the first few days after the deaths – and found that she simply would not go at all. He had found that his brain had insisted on constantly returning her to view – painting her picture, her face, her beautiful eyes turned smilingly towards him – and constantly beating himself half to death for having had the folly – the absolute inanity – of allowing her to slip quite away. How could he have been so foolish? He loved the girl. She had occupied his every thought for weeks. She was lively, witty, natural, beautiful, incredibly desirable – so desirable that she made him uncomfortable still – what better woman could a man ever hope to attract? And even worse – she was rich as well. Damn and blast it, she just happened to be rich as well! But even six thousand pounds would have done. He could have paid the mortgage on the estate, or even invested it in improvements to increase their income over time. The rental receipts at Brandrigg, though meagre and certainly nothing like what he could reasonably expect if he could only improve the land, would still have provided them with enough to live on. And now that he was responsible for his lands he could feel he was earning his keep. He would have retrenched, invested, done anything to enable them to marry. So even the figure that he’d thought that she owned would have been quite a tidy sum. And to find that she had more than thrice that figure. It would have set them up for life. His father had been adamant that she would accept him. His father had been convinced of her regard. But his heir was a lot less optimistic. He still held suspicions about her cousin, and he knew that he’d been most abominably rude. So he cursed his folly, he cursed his fate and he cursed all creation for frightening her away.

His appraisal of the street below had until then taken no definite form, but gradually he became aware of the buildings in the row facing him, and the trade that they were in. The building directly opposite was a bank
. He glanced idly at its sign. And then he looked at it again. He felt in his pocket and pulled a scrap of paper out of it. Yes, he had thought so. It was the very bank in which Simon Forster had apparently left his money. Lord Barnham looked across at it for a third time. It was probably not worth bothering about. It was patently obvious, from the parlous state in which his great-uncle had spent his final days, that he had scarcely two halfpennies to rub together. He screwed up the paper and tossed it on the bed. But just as he was staring at the sign again and throwing the paper aside, a soft knock upon his door heralded the arrival of his sister, who was partly responsible for their stay.

‘Any better, Rachel?’ asked his lordship, sympathetically. ‘You certainly look a little less – well, white
, I have to say.’

Miss Forster nodded
, pulling a little face.

‘Quite a bit, Robert, thank you – though I’m eternally glad that we decided to stop off here. I very much doubt that I’d have made it all the way to London without a break – and Flynn, I feel sure, would have resigned on the spot had we insisted on
going on!’

‘I know what you mean,’ he acknowledged, ruefully. ‘There are compensations
to travelling on the top – the air is fresher there, and the vistas are quite magnificent – Mr Cary’s guidebook quite came into its own in identifying where we were - but, there again, the rolling – if possible – felt even worse than I expect it did for you, and poor Morton was almost deafened by the trumpeting of the guard.’

‘Yes. I very much fear that we will have to invest in the post-chaise for mama when she returns to Brandrigg – unless
Tom and Aunt Springfield offer her a place in theirs. I daresay she’ll remain with them in Lansdown Road until the rental term ends – which I think will be in May. At least it will save you some of the expenses of keeping on Sydney Place.’

Lord Barnham smiled a little wryly and resumed his perusal of the street scene down below. His sister
moved over to join him at the window.

‘How long do you think you’ll need in Town, Robert?’ she continued, hesitating just a little. ‘After all, it’s not quite home, you know. I shall need a companion if it’s more than
a couple of days.’

Her brother looked up at her morosely. It was apparent that he had not thought of that.

‘What if I invite Lady Cecily?’ she suggested, innocently. ‘She would probably be pleased to be free of her cousin for a while.’

His lordship frowned.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked her, sharply.

‘Her cousin. She finds him tiresome. She would probably prefer a visit
up to Town.’

‘What makes you think that she finds him tiresome? She never gave that impression at all to me.’

Miss Forster smiled indulgently at her brother.

‘She told me so herself, mutton-head,’ she informed him. ‘And you only have to look at him to see why that might be. She introduced him at church one Sunday
. So stiff – so formal – so pompous. I’m sure that he’s a very good-hearted kind of man, but he’s really quite a bore.’