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Marchmont wanted to seek Lexham’s advice, but that seemed like passing off responsibility.
He wanted to seek Zoe’s advice, but that would be cheating, too.
He sent Osgood and Zoe out of the study.
He paced. He stared into the fire the way Lexham always did, hoping to find the answers there, as Lexham so often seemed to do. The coals produced only the usual glow and heat, smoke and ashes. They offered no solutions.
Finally he returned to the writing table, where he’d laid out the various pieces of evidence. He looked at Harrison’s records. He looked at Osgood’s. He skimmed the diaries. He traced the expenditures. Osgood’s accounts included a great many wagers. The totals the duke had lost must easily match, if not surpass, the servants’ pilfering, outrageous as it was.
Marchmont didn’t care about money. Or he hadn’t, until today. Yesterday Zoe had spoken of his “family,” and he knew she wasn’t referring to the mad aunt and indigent relations he supported, fully or partially.
She referred to the children he and she hoped to have.
Suppose they had eight, as Lexham had done. Or more. King George and Queen Charlotte had produced fifteen children. The fourth Duke of Richmond had fourteen. Worcester’s father, the sixth Duke of Beaufort, had ten.
Marchmont’s eldest son would inherit everything. But the duke must pay to care for and educate them all. He must find places for the younger males and pay for the girls’ come-outs and weddings and the wardrobes that went with these. He must provide dowries as well.
He didn’t care about money. A gentleman didn’t.
But a gentleman was honor bound to care for his family, and a family needed money. A duke’s family needed pots of it. He had pots of money, so much that ten years’ steady and zealous thieving had not attracted anybody’s attention.
He continued scanning Osgood’s neat entries: some thousands to found an Infirmary for Diseases of the Eye. A subscription to a Samaritan fund. A contribution to a society for the deaf and dumb, another for the indigent blind. He gave money for the relief of wounded soldiers and sailors. He contributed to funds for widows and orphans. He gave to churches and hospitals and asylums.
He’d presided over any number of dinners devoted to one charity or another. To him these were social obligations, more or less like appearing at court. Most of his friends attended. Such an event was merely another dinner, where one must endure too many speeches.
At least he hadn’t spent all his money stupidly or selfishly. The wretches below, locked in Harrison’s room, had not, after all, stolen more than he’d given away or squandered unthinkingly.
Marchmont thought of the money thrown away on great dinners for his friends, where he’d drunk prodigious quantities, and spouted Shakespeare, as he was wont to do when three sheets in the wind.
I can see you’re rapidly approaching the point where you start quoting Shakespeare and falling into the fire, Adderwood had said at the dinner where Marchmont had become so stupidly jealous of his friends’ interest in Zoe.
Though he wasn’t drunk at present, Shakespeare wandered into his mind:
The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown…
He rang, and a footman came.
Which one was this? There were so many of them. Perhaps it was time to start learning who these people were.
“What’s your name?” said Marchmont.
“Thomas, Your Grace.”
“Thomas, I shall want my cook, butler, and valet brought to this room. But first ask the duchess if she would be so good as to return here.”
Thomas went out.
When the trio entered, Marchmont had taken his place behind the handsome French desk a previous Duke of Marchmont had acquired during the time of Louis XV.
Zoe sat by the fire, her hands folded in her lap.
“You must be here,” he’d told her. “They all need to understand that you and I are united in this.”
“If you cut off their heads, I’ll watch, if I must,” she said. “But I’ll throw up afterwards.”
“I’m not going to cut off their heads. This is England, not Egypt. And certainly not France.”
He’d made a joke of it because that was what he always did. Whatever else he changed, he refused to become too boringly serious.
He hadn’t told her what he did mean to do, and she hadn’t asked.
No one had any idea what he meant to do.
During the time locked up in Harrison’s room, the larcenous trio must have realized they were headed for the gallows. Dove, who’d previously spent most of his time proclaiming his ignorance of all wrong-doing, looked pale. Cook, who’d been truculently unforthcoming, was looking worried. Hoare’s eyes were red with weeping, and he trembled.
“I’ve decided to let you determine your fate,” said Marchmont.
They all looked at one another, then up, though not enough to meet his gaze directly.
“You may continue to assert your innocence,” he continued. “In that case, I shall turn you over to the authorities with the evidence we’ve amassed and let a judge and jury decide the matter. If they find you innocent, you’ll go free. If they find you guilty, you’ll be transported or hanged.” He paused to let this sink in.
The miscreants looked at one another, then at the floor. But not at him.
“The alternative is to admit what you’ve done and give us the names of all your confederates, both in this house and outside of it,” Marchmont went on. “In that case, you’ll be spared criminal proceedings. You will not be spared punishment, however.”
Another pause.
He was aware of Zoe watching him in that intent way she had, as though she’d peer into his soul. Good luck, he thought. He might have one, but he doubted she’d find in it anything worth the trouble of examining.
“You’ll perform ten years’ penance,” he went on. “You will do this in London, where we can keep an eye on you. Each of you will toil for ten years in one of the charitable enterprises I support. You will receive no pay but your room and board and whatever clothing is necessary to perform your duties. Should the enterprise come to an end or the establishment burn down, as often happens, you’ll be assigned another situation. You’ll do penance for a full ten years. Not a day more or less.”
He looked hard at each of them in turn. “That is how long you worked for me and abused my trust. For the allotted time, you’ll do, to the best of your abilities, the work required of you. At the end of this time, if your performance merits it, you’ll receive a letter of commendation bearing my signature.” One last pause. “If you break the terms of our agreement, I shall leave you to the official system of justice.”
The three servants decided against testing the mercy of the English judicial system and accepted the duke’s brand of justice.
This left Marchmont two extremely tedious tasks: First, he must make arrangements for the trio’s dispersal among appropriate charitable establishments. Second, he must fill five crucial positions in the household.
“Here’s responsibility with a vengeance,” he told Zoe after the three were led out of the room. “We’ve no one to supervise the lower servants, no one to prepare the next meal, and most important, no one to dress me.”
“I shall dress you,” said Zoe.
“Do you know a day coat from an evening one?” he said.
“No,” she said.
“Do you know whether a waistcoat for day ought to be embroidered or plain?”
“No.”
“Have you any idea where to find my stockings?”
“No.”
“Come here,” he said. She went to him, and he wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on the top of her head. “Y
ou are the silliest duchess there ever was.”
“I know where you keep your membrum virile,” she said against his coat.
“You don’t need to know that, so long as I do,” he said.
“Then find it,” she said, “and let us go to bed and make love and sort these matters out afterwards, when we’re happier and calmer.”
“Make love?” he said. “You want to make love now, while the house is tumbling down about our ears?”
“The house is not falling down,” she said. “We merely need servants. But you’ve been so brave and clever and wise and frighteningly ducal today that I’m on fire with lust. If you don’t wish to go up to bed, then throw those papers and books on the floor and ravish me on the desk.”
There was not another woman like her in all the world, he thought.
“Very well, if it pleases Your Grace,” he said.
“I think it will.”
He pushed everything off the desk.
“Perhaps you should lock the door,” she said.
