Hawk was blunt. “Is Slade planning more building here?”
His father twitched, then looked away. “Why?”
Guilt, for sure.
But then the squire looked back, arrogance in place. “What business is it of yours? I still rule here, boy.”
Eleven years in the army teaches self-control. A number of those years spent working close to the Duke of Wellington perfects it. “It is my inheritance, sir,” Hawk said, “and thus my business. What is Slade planning, and why are you permitting it?”
“How should I know what that man intends?”
“ ‘That man’? You had him to dinner two nights ago.”
“A politeness to a neighbor.” He didn’t look away again, but Hawk had questioned more skillful deceivers than his father, and he could see the lie behind it.
“I was told that there were men here who sounded like surveyors studying the area along the river and that they later spoke to Slade. What interest could Slade have down here? There is no available land.”
His father glared at him, then snapped, “Brandy!”
Fellows rushed to obey, protesting all the while that brandy was not allowed. The squire took a mouthful and said, “Very well. You might as well know. Slade’s planning to tear down this place, and the cottages too, and build himself a grand riverside villa.”
Hawk almost laughed. “That’s absurd.”
Into the silence, he added, “He does not have the power to do that.”
Doubt and fear stirred. His father, for all his faults, was not a fool, nor had his illness turned him mad. “
What have you done?”
The squire took a sip of brandy, managing to look down his long, straight nose, even in the chair. It was posing, though. Hawk could see that. “I have gained a peerage for us.”
“From Slade?” Hawk couldn’t remember ever feeling so at a loss.
“Of course not. You are supposed to be clever, George. Use your wits! It is a title from my own family.
Viscount Deveril.” He rolled it off his tongue. “It was thought to be extinct when the late Lord Deveril died last year, but I proved my descent from the original viscount.”
“My congratulations,” Hawk said with complete indifference, but then his notoriously infallible memory threw up facts. “Deveril! By God, Father, the name’s a byword for all that is evil. Why the devil would you want a title like that?”
The squire reddened. “It’s a viscountcy, you dolt. I’ll take my place in Parliament! Attend court.”
“There is no court anymore. The king is mad.”
Like his father?
The squire shrugged. “I am reverting to my rightful family name as well, of course. I am now John Gaspard, soon to be Viscount Deveril.”
“Are you also leaving here?” Hawk asked. He kept his tone flat, but it was hard. Unlikely sunshine was breaking in. My God, was all he wanted about to drop into his hands?
But then he remembered Slade.
“What has Slade to do with this? You can’t—” Words actually failed him for a moment. “You aren’t allowed to sell the estate, Father.”
“Of course I have not sold it,” his father declared haughtily. After a moment, however, he added, “It is merely pledged.”
Hawk put out a hand to the back of a nearby chair to steady himself. He knew every word of the besotted marriage settlement that had given his father power here. His father could use the estate to raise money.
It wasn’t an outrageous provision, since the administrator of an estate might have need to raise money for improvements or to cover a disastrous season. His grandfather had been sensible enough to have it worded so that Hawkinville could not be staked in gambling, or used to pay off gaming debts. Not that that had ever been an issue. His father’s flaws did not include gambling.
“Pledged against loans?” he asked.
“Precisely.”
“I must admit, sir, that I am at a loss as to how you have sunk into debt. The estate is not rich, but it has always provided for the family adequately.”
“It is quite simple, my boy,” said his father almost jovially. It was a mask. “I needed money to gain the title! Research. Lawyers. You know how it is.”
“Yes, I know how it is. So you borrowed from Slade. But surely if you have the title, you have property that comes with it to pay him off.”
“That was my plan.” The squire’s face pinched. “Deveril—rot his black heart—willed most of his worth away.”
“It wasn’t entailed?”
“Only the estate.”
“Well—”
“Which seems unproductive.”
Hawk took a breath. “Let me get this clear. You have mortgaged this estate to Josiah Slade to get money to claim one that is valueless.”
“It’s a title! My family’s title. I would have paid more.”
“Borrowed more, you mean. How much?”
Over the first shock now, Hawk was beginning to arrange facts and make calculations. He had some money of his own. He could borrow elsewhere to pay off Slade.
“Twenty thousand pounds.”
It was like being hit by a pistol ball. “Twenty thousand pounds? No one could possibly spend that much to claim a title.”
The Hawkinville estate brought in only a few thousand a year.
“I have been pursuing Deveril’s money as well, of course.”
“Even so. Your lawyers would have to have been eating gold quills for breakfast.”
“Investments,” the squire muttered.
“Investments? In what?”
“All kinds of things. Slade does well off them. There was a foreigner here a while back—Celestin. He’d made a fortune at it. Then Slade turned up with some good ideas…”
Maria’s dead husband, who had led Van’s father to ruin this way. But Slade—Slade was the active villain here.
“So Slade lent you money and then lent you more to invest to earn it back?”
Twenty thousand pounds.
An impossible sum, and throttling Slade would not fix the disaster.
Hawk forced his mind to look for any possibility.
“How much did Deveril leave that was willed elsewhere?”
“Close to a hundred thousand. You see why I had to have it!”
“I see why we have to have it now. What reason do you have for thinking you can overturn the will?”
“Because it gave everything to a scheming chit he planned to marry, by a handwritten will that was certainly false.”
“Then why don’t you have the money?”
The squire knocked back his brandy and held the glass out to be refilled. “Because the poxy chit has all the Deveril money to pay for lawyers, that’s why! And some plaguey high-flying supporters. Her guardian’s the Duke of Belcraven, no less. The Marchioness of Arden, wife to the duke’s heir, stands her friend. I wouldn’t be surprised if the little whore has the damned Regent in her pocket.”
“It would have to be a very large pocket,” Hawk remarked, his mind whirling on many levels.
Twenty thousand pounds. It couldn’t be borrowed, even from friends. Especially from friends. Even if they could raise it, it would take Hawkinville a generation to pay it off, and only by squeezing the tenants hard.
His father laughed at his comment. “I have to say, you’re taking this better than I expected, George.”
Hawk looked at his father. “I am taking this extremely badly, sir. I despise you for your folly and self-indulgence. Did you ever give a thought to the welfare of your people here?”
“They are not my people!”
“You’ve been pleased enough to call them such for over a quarter century. Families have lived in those cottages for centuries, Father. And do you care nothing for this house?”
“Less than nothing! It’s a plaguey farmhouse, for all you like to call it a manor.”
Hawk wished his father was well. Perhaps then he might feel justified in hitting him. “And Slade will be squire here, since the title goes with the property. You are selling everyone here for your own petty ends.
”
His father reddened, but raised his chin. “I do not care! What is this place to me?”
“So what is? The Deveril estate? It’s going to be a damn chilly comfort with no money to go with it, isn’t it?”
His father glared, but said, “You have a point. That is why I have come up with a solution. You are not a bad-looking man, and you have a certain address. Marry the heiress.”
Hawk laughed. “Marry a ‘poxy chit’ to rescue you? I think not.”
“To rescue Hawk in the Vale, George.”
It hit home, and his father knew it.
All the same, every instinct revolted. He had made one vow, many years ago—that he would not repeat his parents’ mistake. He would not marry unless he was sure of harmony. He’d accepted that it meant that he would likely never marry, but that would be better for everyone than more bitterness and bile.
“I have a better idea,” he said. “Do you have any cogent reasons to believe the will is false? What arguments have your lawyers made in court?”
His father glowered, but he said, “It was handwritten, and it left all his money to this girl, to come under her complete control at twenty-one.”
“Absurd.”
“Quite. And the heiress is one Clarissa Greystone. You may not have heard of the Greystones.
Drunkards and gamblers, every one.”
“And yet you failed to break it. Why, apart from better lawyers and influence in high places? Our courts are not so corrupt, I hope, that they would overrule reason.”
“Because the will was in Deveril’s hand and found in his locked desk with no sign of a break-in.”
“Witnesses?”
“Two men in his employ, but they went missing after his murder.”
“Murder?” Hawk repeated. “How did he die?”
“Stabbed in a back slum in London. His body wasn’t found for some days.”
“Good God. So he was murdered and this Greystone chit has all his money and no one has been able to prove she did it?” He laughed. “And you think I will marry a woman like that?”
“That, or lose Hawkinville, dear boy.”
Hawk gripped the back of the chair tightly. “You’re finding a kind of satisfaction in this, aren’t you? Does it give you so much pleasure to see me wriggling on this hook?”
The twisted smile was definitely a sneer now. “It gives me pleasure to see you taken down a peg or two.
So superior you’ve been, especially since returning home. You’ve always despised me for marrying for money, haven’t you? Well, what are you going to do now the shoe’s on your foot, eh?”
“What am I going to do?” Short of throttle you? “I’m going to prove that damn will false, and if possible see the Greystone creature hang for murder. And then, I hope, I’ll see you out of here, and begin to repair the lifetime’s damage that you’ve done.”
The sneer became somewhat fixed, but his father disdained to answer.
“When does the loan come due?” Hawk asked. His father laughed. “The first of August.”
“Two months!” Control. Control. Hawk carefully let go of the chair. “Then I had best get on with it, hadn’t I?”
It was only as he left the stuffy room that another disastrous aspect hit him. Titles were hereditary. One day he would have to be Lord Deveril.
For the first time he sincerely wished his father a long, long life.
But away from here. At his precious Deveril estates. Instinctively he sought his mother’s rose garden, even though this mess was her fault. He’d heard that there had been solid, reliable local men courting her.
He shook his head. That was all past history. For the present and the future, the Hawk had one more hunt to fly, and as reward, a golden future tantalized.
If he could prove the will a forgery and get the money for his father, the new Lord Deveril would move away from here. After paying off Slade, of course.
Twenty thousand pounds. It was a sum that staggered him, but he put it aside. Five times that much waited if he did his job right.
Then he would have Hawkinville. His father called it a farmhouse, and he was right. It was two stories and contained only four bedchambers. The ceilings were low, the fixtures practical, the “grounds” merely the courtyard and a garden at the back.
But it was his piece of heaven. He would not let it be torn down, nor would he let Slade rip the heart out of Hawk in the Vale village.
He walked back out onto the green. A few people called to him, waving, with no idea that their world was threatened. He waved back but turned to look at the manor house and the line of cottages.
Most of the front doors were open, with children running in and out. Old people, who had lived in their cottage for most or all of their lives, sat hunched on chairs, watching their generations enjoy themselves.
Mothers, babies on hip or even at the breast, chatted together as they kept an eye on their families.
None of the cottages had a straight line, and most of the thatch needed work, but that was all the responsibility of the manor, not the tenants. No roses bloomed at the front because the cottages opened right onto the road around the green and faced north, but he knew that in the long gardens running down to the river roses bloomed among the well-tended vegetables that fed these families. He watched Slade strolling around, beaming, clearly— in his own mind at least—already the master here. Perhaps he was envisioning a tidy clearing, a modern improvement.
A pure and simple urge to murder held Hawk rigid for a moment. But no. That would not serve. What if he couldn’t prove the will false? Then he would prove the Greystone chit a murderess. That would work just as well to throw doubt on the will. It probably wouldn’t even be hard for a man like him. His work in the war had included investigations, and he’d been very good at it.
He’d hoped never to unleash the Hawk again. Those investigations had left unpleasant memories, and sometimes pushed the borders of his honor.
But this, again, was war. He made a silent vow that greed and folly would not destroy Hawk in the Vale.
June 18, 1816, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Clarissa Greystone stared at Miss Mallory in shock. “You are saying I have to leave?”
Miss Mallory, neat and round, took her hand to pat it. “Now, now, dear. I am not throwing you out into the street. You have been welcome here for the past year, but that year is nearly over. And this is a school, not a home for stray ladies. I have been in communication with the duke, and with Beth Arden, and both agree that you must begin to take your place in the world.”