“Per annum?” Celia was astonished.
“Per quarter, like usual.” Leavenworth pushed the ledger towards her.
There was a separate entry for household expenses, and for Bridget’s salary, and groceries for both above and below stairs. “I can afford new boots,” Celia said, still in disbelief.
“One hundred pairs of new boots, ma’am.” Leavenworth smiled. “I am not sure you have enough feet for all the boots you can afford.”
Celia laughed, then gasped. “But how—how does Mr. Alcott have this much money? Where does it come from?” Gothic visions of her husband as a spy were replaced by worse—her husband smuggling French lace, her husband with a false name so he could buy opium in Venice—
“Income from a country estate.” Leavenworth shrugged. “Fairly large and fairly well-run. Alcott has gone years spending almost nothing so he can reinvest the proceeds, and thus by the time he has expenses for a family, the interest has accumulated. It’s normal for men our age to—”
“He’s speculating?” She was out of the frying pan and into the coals, and Marianne would—
“Mrs. Alcott.” Leavenworth turned to face her, a prickle of concern between his brows. “He has a diverse assortment…aw, good heavens, you’re thinking of Mr. Thompson, aren’t you?”
Her voice had been more shrill than she thought.
“Anyone would.” Leavenworth sighed, and Celia looked back up. He did not seem upset, so she topped off their coffees. Acting as though it were perfectly normal to speak about finances with a woman, Leavenworth explained how stocks function and the role of investment in the English economy, entering into lively detail as he explained how he and Peter, together, had chosen companies in which to entrust their prize monies and the revenue from their estates, and then as Celia smiled and encouraged him, he rolled into stories about the two of them staying at the Leavenworth family home, and learning to sail, and a dozen other small, silly, joyful moments.
“So you know where we are going? You’ve been to this house?” It was nearly an hour later, the coffee pot was empty and the rain was clearing. Celia’s cheeks ached from laughing,and she had developed a clear picture of how these men worked together, how much they trusted each other.
“As a matter of fact… no.” Leavenworth rubbed a spot on the tablecloth. “I do not even know its name. I have not realized how little I know until I am trying to explain the situation to you.”
“Have you visited his family?”
Leavenworth stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. He closed the ledger and ran his finger down the spine.
“No, then? But it sounds as though his parents are still living. They are my own family now; do I even have brothers and sisters?” Celia’s voice caught.
Leavenworth sighed. “Very well. I’ll tell you what I know.”
Celia waited a moment, watching the tension in Leavenworth’s face. He was probably weighing what constituted disloyalty to his friend, balanced against the importance of family in his own life. Or perhaps trying to decide what would improve his friend’s marriage rather than ruin it.
“Both his parents are still alive. Alcott is estranged from his father, and he hasn’t been back home since he left for the army.”
“But that’s…years!” Celia couldn’t calculate the number; she didn’t know her own husband’s age, and she couldn’t imagine what could induce someone to not even visit their parents. She would cross a sea of fire and climb a glass mountain to see her mother or father just one more time.
“He’s three-and-thirty, joined up same year as me, so… eleven or twelve years. Numerous family.” Leavenworth was talking quickly, looking away from her distress. “He has a married sister, Eliza, who has four children, don’t know their names. Elinor is much younger, similar age to your Marianne. A brother Michael. He’s… I don’t know, actually. Perhaps he’s the eldest. There might be another brother. But I was friends with James.”
“Was?” Celia tensed. Oddly, she didn’t want to hear this; didn’t want Peter to have a tragedy like her own.
Leavenworth paused a long moment. “I was there,” he said, half under his breath. “It’s my story to tell if I wish. Intelligent and joyful fellow, James, but a fool for a dare. He always had to leap forward into life.”
“Like Peter?”
Leavenworth’s face was drawn. “Not at all like Peter. I’m not saying it well, I guess. Last May the twenty-second, past midnight, he took a bet to climb St Martin in the Fields. Scaffolding, you know.” He passed a hand over his face. “If our Alcott had been there, he would have talked him down. But a man can’t be following his little brother around every day, and James had to make the decisions for James. He fell.”
“I see.” Celia saw a great deal. She saw that Peter believed he should have saved his brother, like Celia thought she should have saved Clarence.
She saw a man so worn down in grief that he did not even acknowledge he was in mourning.
May the twenty-second. The week before, he had been asking Celia to dance and coming up with nonsense rhymes to make her laugh; by mid-June he had left for Bruxelles without informing her. Celia had thought that she was not charming enough to sustain his interest, but Peter had not been running from her, he had been running away from his guilt and his grief. Peter dealt with everything difficult by moving.
It was better than her father, responding to grief by becoming flat and still. Celia shook her head; she loved her father.
“Francis Burnett was there too.”
This startled Celia out of her reverie. “MyLord Francis?” She flushed; she hadn’t meant the possessive, and then she recalled their argument at the McCallisters’ party.
