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Finn reached for the whiskey bottle again. Ashley intercepted it and moved it out of his brother’s reach. “Drinking any more will be a waste, because you’ll not remember the taste of it when you wake up.”
Ashley stood and called for Wilkins. The man appeared within moments. “Let’s find a room for Lord Phineas and help him to it, shall we?” he asked of the butler.
Wilkins nodded his head and called for footmen to assist. “If I may be so bold, Your Grace, the rest of London should know what a good man you can be,” Wilkins said.
“I prefer to let them think the worst.” Ashley sighed. “They’ve no expectations of me that way.”
Ashley returned to his study and began to open his correspondence. Despite his sordid past, he was a bit too well connected to be ousted completely from society. For the first two or three years following his wife’s death, he’d been avoided as though he had a communicable disease, as though the propensity to murder was contagious.
Then the few friends he had, namely his brother Finn, Matthew Lanford, and Jonathon Roberts, whom he’d met at Eton many years before, had rallied around him and forced him to resume his place in the House of Lords and step back into society. They all believed him innocent of any wrongdoing. It was unfortunate that they were all incorrect.
The clip of quickly moving slippers in the corridor made him groan and hang his head. Within seconds, the Duchess of Robinsworth flung open his door and burst inside his sanctuary, without even the good graces to knock.
“Mother,” was his only response as he looked down at the note before him. “What brings you to my home?”
“You really should replace that butler,” she scolded.
“And why should I do that?” he asked as he closed his ledger. She obviously had a purpose for visiting. And would most likely get to it as soon as she got over whatever slight Wilkins had given her. He would curse the man, but the butler seemed to be one of the only people who could keep his mother in line.
“He’s impertinent. And rude.”
Said the pot about the kettle.
“He blocked my entrance to the old library. The one in the west wing. He stood right there in the doorwa
y and refused to let me pass. Of all the nerve.” She harrumphed and dropped into a chair.
That wing of the old house had been closed for longer than Ashley could remember. Since before his father had died when he was a boy. “And what purpose did you have for visiting the west wing, Mother?” he asked as he poured himself a liberal dose of the whiskey Finn had left behind.
“It’s awfully early to be drinking, dear,” she scolded.
“It’s awfully early for you to be visiting, Mother,” he returned. His mother never rose from bed before the luncheon hour. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping off the excesses of the night’s activities?”
“I wouldn’t call them excesses,” she mumbled.
He fished a note from the pile of correspondence Wilkins had given him. “You do not find one thousand pounds to be an excess?” he questioned.
“Give me that.” She held out her hand and leveled him with a stare that would have made him quake in his boots when he was younger. With her icy glare and pinched brows, she could freeze him in his tracks when he was a boy, but no longer.
“I think not,” he returned. Then he took a deep breath and dove directly into the issue at hand. “I believe it’s time for you to move back to the Hall, Mother.” He would hate having her underfoot, but he couldn’t keep an eye on her if she wasn’t at hand.
She pulled back and turned up her nose. “I’ll do no such thing. My town house is perfectly acceptable.”
“You mean my town house,” he clarified.
“It’s mine in theory,” she huffed as she sank primly onto a chair across from him.
“The amount of money you’re losing at the gaming tables is tremendous,” he said as he withdrew more notes from his drawer. They arrived nearly every day. From people his mother had gambled with and lost. They all knew she wasn’t good for the debts. Yet they played with her anyway because the Duke of Robinsworth never left a debt unpaid. His presence in their drawing rooms might not be valued. But his purse certainly was.
“I’ll take those,” she said again.
“Why, Mother? You cannot begin to pay them.”
Her face fell. “I do not know why you feel you have to be so cruel,” she said as her eyes welled up with tears.
“I do not understand why you gamble with money you don’t have.” He tapped the cards on the table. Then he made a clucking sound with his tongue. “But I’m prepared to pay them in full.”
“As you must, Robin,” she said quietly, using his childhood nickname.
