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“Milord,” Cambertson rasped. “What an honor it is to receive you.”
“The honor is mine,” Lancaster replied in absolute falsehood. Though Cambertson’s curly hair was still black, it had thinned, and the rest of him had aged considerably. Deep pouches drooped beneath his eyes and his wide, stocky shoulders were hunched as if a great weight hung from them. Still, Lancaster walked swiftly forward to shake the man’s hand, all jovial good humor as always.
Cambertson’s fingers gripped too tight, reminding Lancaster of a drowning man grasping at safety, or perhaps it was the desperation in his eyes that gave that impression.
“Please, sit. Ewing!” he suddenly roared. “Tea!” The words echoed away, leaving them in dim silence.
Lancaster glanced around, wondering if he’d fallen into some strange midday dream, but his surroundings appeared real enough. “Mr. Cambertson,” he said, “I want to offer my sincere condolences to you and to Mrs. Cambertson. I was shocked at the news about Miss Merrithorpe. I can’t imagine how difficult this time must be for both of you.”
“Mm. The missus has run off to her sister’s home. Not sure when she’ll be back.”
“I see.”
He drew a hand over his face, scraping over the black stubble. “Difficult,” he said, as if he were pondering a question. “Yes, it’s been difficult.”
“I’m truly sorry. She was a lovely girl. She’s remembered fondly in my household and will be earnestly missed.” Poor Mrs. Pell had been so distraught this morning she’d barely spoken a word.
But Cambertson was shaking his head. “Lovely,” he repeated. “Lovely enough, I suppose. But in the end, it seems Cynthia was a selfish girl with no concern but her own silly desires. Do you know what she’s done to this family?”
“I…” Lancaster couldn’t begin to think of an appropriate response. He could only stare in shock as Cambertson’s face turned from gray to pink and then fully-enraged red.
“She has ruined us. She had the chance to pull her family back from the brink of disaster and instead she indulged her stupid girlish fears and threw herself from a cliff!”
“She…What?” Lancaster surged forward in his seat, banging a knee against Cambertson’s desk. “She…She threw herself from a cliff?”
“Yes! As if she were the heroine of some maudlin novel. One of your cliffs, as a matter of fact. What a waste.”
“But I thought…” He’d thought she’d died from a fever, or perhaps an accident, but to take her own life? What the hell had happened to the stubborn young girl he’d once known? The room wavered around him. Lancaster blinked hard. “Why?” he finally managed to force out.
Cambertson gave a curt shake of his head. “She had some missish fears about the man she was meant to marry.”
“But…” He couldn’t think what to say, didn’t even know what to think.
The old butler shuffled in, offering a reprieve from the conversation, but Cambertson continued on.
“This family is in dire straits, and well she knew it. But still she carried on as if she were the toast of London. ‘I won’t marry him and you cannot force me,’” he mimicked in a crude parody of a girl’s voice. “We have nothing, Lord Lancaster. Nothing but Ewing here, who could drop dead at any moment—” The butler grunted an agreement. “And a deaf and dumb chambermaid whom no one else will employ. I could not even afford to keep my horses. Do you know what it’s like to ride to church in a mule cart? And yet she thinks she should be allowed to moon about, waiting to fall in love with some young man whose family likely wouldn’t have her anyway. The infuriating folly of youth.”
“I don’t understand,” Lancaster managed to say. Nothing intelligent but at least it was a full sentence. I don’t understand. Except that he was beginning to understand. His gut was telling him that he understood quite well. He met her stepfather’s eyes. “You were selling her off for money.”
Cambertson leaned forward, planting his elbows on the desk. “I arranged an advantageous marriage to a titled gentleman of considerable means. She had no reason to object. She certainly had no reason to become hysterical. The truth is simple. Cynthia did not like being told what to do, and so she deliberately ruined everything.”
“By ending her own life.”
“Yes.”
Lancaster couldn’t look at him anymore, so he glanced away, taking in the darkened room littered with papers and empty glasses, everything covered with dust. “And I thought you were in mourning,” he muttered in disgust.
“I am in mourning. We are ruined. And of course I did not wish her dead. Of course not.”
Unable to stop himself, Lancaster shot him a look of utter scorn.
“Ha!” The man’s laugh didn’t hold a hint of amusement. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a simple ‘mister,’ Lord Lancaster. Life is not so easy for men who aren’t born into such important status. She had a duty to her family and she refused to uphold it. So I am unhappy that she is dead, but I cannot find it in my heart to rend my garments and gnash my teeth. I am too occupied trying to find some other way to devise an income. Our sheep were hit hard with foot rot last year.”
A duty to her family. Yes, Lancaster understood quite clearly. But one detail nagged at his mind, and he finally pinned down the problem. “What kind of a titled gentleman can offer an ‘advantageous marriage’ but finds himself paying for the privilege?”
The man leaned back and crossed his arms. “There were certain circumstances…”
Lancaster narrowed his eyes and watched Cambertson’s chin jut out in defiance.
