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‘I did it for the best,’ Madelyn said, fighting for composure as the truth sank in. Jack only cared about the land and the money. He had not grown fond of her, let alone come to feel anything stronger. ‘My father never settled accounts until he had to and I did not want to leave tradespeople and shopkeepers out of pocket. I believed he was a rich man, that the loans and mortgages were just his way of making money go further.’
‘I imagine he was a rich man until he started to restore that confounded castle,’ Jack said, pacing. ‘When I first saw it I wondered at the cost of repairing the walls and that great expanse of roof to such a high standard. It should have made me suspicious, but I trusted you. There is a saying that if something is too good to be true then it probably is. I should have thought of that.’
‘You are very angry,’ she said, but he silenced her with a wave of his hand.
‘There is no need to worry, Madelyn. I will not shout at you because I remember that you fear that and I am not my father. I will not take out my anger on my family.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Such as it is.’
He turned on his heel, went through into his own chamber, and Madelyn heard him speaking to someone. Then the key turned in the lock.
Jack is shutting me out of his room, she thought, dazed. Closing the door between us.
She felt like weeping, but her eyes were dry and tears had never done any good before. She wanted to run to him, plead with him to understand that it was her ignorance and desire to do the right thing that had caused this, not spite or some kind of ploy to take what she wanted at his expense. But Jack thought she had lied and deceived him, that he could not trust her, and that must have struck at every one of the half-healed wounds left by his upbringing and his situation.
* * *
Dinner was an ordeal. Jack behaved as though nothing was wrong between them. Madelyn wondered whether Mr Lyminge and Mr Paulson noticed anything, but Jack had always been formal and reserved in his manner towards her in their presence, so she thought not. She did her best to appear normal but it was clear that the two men were worried about what they had found, were aware that there must be a strain between husband and wife.
She rose after the dessert course, leaving a dish of almond custard and fruit untouched. ‘Goodnight, gentlemen. I will not join you for tea later—I have a slight headache.’
As the footman closed the door behind her she turned and walked along to the study, waited until she heard the man close the door to the staff area behind him, then slipped out and tiptoed into the small breakfast room that adjoined the dining room. There was a connecting door and she put her ear to the panel. She could hear almost everything.
‘...could see the books relating to Castle Beaupierre...have a better idea...course,’ Mr Paulson was saying.
‘The agreements...separate.’ Jack sounded weary, as though they had chewed over this before, again and again.
‘There is no reason...that anything is amiss, other than Lansing taking Lady Dersington’s instructions...vigorously.’ That was Douglas Lyminge.
‘Bloody fool, should have consulted.’ That was clear enough. So were the grunts of agreement from the other two men.
Madelyn tiptoed away and went to her bedchamber, surprising Harper who was tidying up. ‘I will undress, take down my hair and put on my robe. I have a headache.’
‘Yes, my lady.’ Harper, who had the tact to keep silent, moved soft-footed around the room, putting away Madelyn’s clothes, finding her nightgown and wrapper and then, as she sat at the dressing table, unpinning her hair and brushing it out.
Madelyn took off her earrings and her bracelet, caught the necklace as Harper unfastened it and sat with the glittering gems in her cupped hands. She had worn the diamonds that evening, some instinct making her choose the most modern, least controversial of her jewellery as though that might somehow please Jack.
I could sell these, she thought.
They were a bequest from her mother, not something that her father had bought. She sat up straighter, seized with an idea. Surely she must own other things of value that were not covered by the trust. Certainly there were odds and ends of jewellery, some silver that had come from her mother’s family that her father had locked away because it was eighteenth century in date and he disliked the Baroque style.
What else had been squirreled away in the attic and store rooms deemed unworthy of her father’s vision for the castle?
The diamonds pooled on the dressing table and Madelyn almost rose to run downstairs and tell Jack that they had a source of ready money. Then she sank back. He would not react well, she realised. It would hurt his pride to think she had been scratching around trying to find things to sell. It would need some thought about how to manage it in a way he would accept.
‘Lock these away, please, Harper, and then I will not need you again this evening.’
Depressed again, Madelyn paced restlessly about the room. Perhaps Jack would forgive her. He was a civilised man, a gentleman. He would not hold a grudge, she thought. Possibly he would not even mention it to her again, but simply withdraw into himself and deal with all the business of the estate without talking to her about it.
That was the kind of marriage she had been expecting, but now, now that she knew that she loved him, suspected that he had been growing to love her, it felt like a tragedy. Eventually, she climbed into bed, blew out the candle and tried to sleep.
* * *
She must have dropped off eventually. Madelyn lay in the dark, eyes open, and wondered what had woken her. She felt puzzled, she realised, as though she had been dreaming about some complexity, some riddle. Wide awake now, she sat up against the pillows and tried to recall. Mr Lansing...that had been it. Mr Lansing in her dream had been in his room surrounded by teeter
ing piles of ledgers, his hair stuck full of quills.
‘It is very complex, you understand...very complex...’
But it wasn’t. Or it should not have been. Madelyn reached for the striker and lit the candle. Lansing was hiding something. He had been uneasy, shifty almost. There was something wrong—and he had held on to the books, not sent them to Paulson and Mr Lyminge because he had said they related only to the lands and property in trust.
