Page 165 of A Debt Inherited

Inheritance

The evil that men do lives after them

—William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

The Next Earl

Glenbride Castle, Michaelmas 1812

The library had the same long windows that looked upon the same black line of firs. The same portraits stared down from the panelling, Ashby faces in lace, armour, velvet, and judicial wigs, each generation preserved in oil and certainty. On the table below them lay the family tree, weighted at its corners by silver candlesticks.

Mr Armitage set his spectacles lower upon his nose and drew one finger along the inked descent.

“Alexander Ashby, sixth Earl of Ashby,” he said. “Deceased.”

Mr Ballantyne, the factor, stood opposite him with his hands clasped behind his back. “So it was entered.”

“His son and heir, Lord Julian Ashby. Predeceased him. No surviving legitimate issue.”

“Yes.”

“Failing Lord Julian’s line, the succession passed to Hugh Ashby, brother to the sixth Earl. Seventh Earl of Ashby. Deceased.”

Ballantyne’s mouth tightened. “And after him?”

“His son, Hugh Alexander Ashby, acknowledged in every instrument that mattered. Eighth Earl. Deceased at Lammas. No surviving legitimate issue.”

Armitage turned the paper. A second sheet lay beneath it, older, creased at the folds, its ink browned by age.

“The limitation and the tailzie run together closely enough for our present misery. Heirs-male of the body, failing that, heirs-male collateral through the Ashby blood.”

“The direct male lines are spent, then?” Ballantyne asked.

“Failed, extinct, or barred.” Armitage paused, then touched a small mark near the margin. “Except here.”

Ballantyne leant closer.

“Lady Marjorie Ashby,” Armitage said.

“Married Major Robert Kerr.”

“Widowed. One son: Alexander Kerr.”

Ballantyne’s mouth tightened. “Kerr.”

“The same.”

“That cannot stand. He was Kerr by name.”

“Names do not alter blood.” Armitage’s voice remained even. “Nor does poverty. Nor neglect. Nor inconvenience.”

The factor looked towards the portraits, as though one of them might object with authority.

Armitage continued. “Lady Marjorie was daughter of the sixth Earl. Her son was excluded while Lord Julian’s line and Hugh Ashby’s line remained before him. They remain no longer.”

“Then this Alexander Kerr—”

“Is the next male of the Ashby blood.”