The Rules of Seduction (28 page)

He laughed lightly. “You were never so serious with me, darling.”

“I was very serious. It may have been a game to you, but not to me.”

His face fell. “A game? Is that what you think? I knew that I should have spoken more openly yesterday. I did not toy with you, Alexia. You stole my heart completely.”

Not completely, but his declaration touched her anyway. Her pride liked hearing she had not been
too
stupid.

“I wish you did not come, Ben. It was unwise. Your wife will not be pleased.”

“She knows I came. She is worried that you will betray me. She wants me to beg you not to do so.”

“She worries a lot about a small thing. If your family knows you live, what harm is there? Your sisters and I can keep your secret. The man to whom you owed that debt will never find out.”

“It is more complicated than that. I must ask you to trust me, darling. I cannot risk the world learning.”

“And I cannot promise others will not learn. One has already.” She glanced pointedly around the chamber.

Ben’s gaze followed her direction to the man’s brushes on the dressing table and the boots standing outside the wardrobe. His face flushed. “
He
is here? You never said that he had accompanied you.”

Hayden walked in the door just then. “She did not know I was coming. I arrived last night.”

Ben pivoted. They faced each other. Time inched forward.

“It is good to see you alive and well, old friend,” Hayden finally said.

Ben tried one of his dazzling smiles. “There is an explanation.”

Hayden sighed deeply. She doubted Ben noticed, but she did. His expression of forbearance revealed how this reunion pained him. He looked much as she had been feeling.

“Of course there is an explanation, Ben. However, there is no excuse.” He walked over to Alexia, ignoring Ben for a moment. “I received the information I sought. I should locate him this afternoon.” He raised his voice. “I am speaking of Timothy, Ben. You remember Timothy, don’t you?”

“Of course I remember my brother.”

“Why don’t we seek him together, Ben? It will not take long. If you traveled this town’s streets to visit another man’s wife in secret, you can risk it to see that your brother is safe.”

“Are you suggesting—See here, Rothwell, I will not allow you to insult her by insinuating—”

“I do not insult her at all. I merely impugn you.” Hayden strode to the door. “Come now. We can argue as we go. Alexia, do not allow anyone in. Bar the door this time, even to servants.”

“You were damned rude in there,” Ben blustered as soon as he and Hayden reached the street.

“I found a man in a bedchamber with my wife. I have a right to be rude.”

“She is my cousin.”

“You were more than a cousin to her.”

“If Alexia told you that she and I shared a
tendre,
she must have misunderstood my concern for her. You know how women can be, especially ones who have been left on the shelf. It is a damned shame when a man cannot visit his cousin without having scurrilous suspicions raised.”

Ben’s insistence that he had been tragically misunderstood took them all the way into Hayden’s waiting carriage.

“Alexia is not a woman who would build dreams on nothing. Be glad I did not thrash you up there. Pray I do not now.”

“That is a hell of a welcome back.” He sank back on his cushions. He had the audacity to look hurt. “But I understand you are still too shocked to know your own joy.” He beamed a smile and leaned over to clap a firm hand on Hayden’s shoulder. “Damnation, but it is rum to see you. I am almost glad that Alexia confided in you, since it allows this reunion, even though I told her that I cannot let the whole world know.”

“I am not the whole world. Just one man, and the last one you should fear knowing.”

Ben smiled his way to indifference while he took inventory of the carriage appointments. He examined the upholstery, curtains, and woodwork so long he might be buying the equipage. It was the studied business of a man ill at ease.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“To a tavern. This reunion deserves a good deal of drink, don’t you think?”

“Like old times. I knew you would come around once you…well, once you got past—”

“Once I got past the urge to beat you bloody because you deceived me in the worst way? You let me think you died, and you allowed me to believe I left you to do so.”

Ben rearranged his body on the bench, as if the carriage walls crowded him. “Is my brother going to meet us at the tavern?”

“I am fairly certain that we will find Timothy before the day is out.”

The carriage stopped on a street of shops and businesses. Ben glanced out the window and his face flushed. They were in front of a tavern frequented by lawyers and tradesmen, the sort who would spend their days in the City if this were London. Across the street and up several doors was the entrance to Ketchum, Martin, and Cook, a county bank.

Hayden led the way out of the carriage and into the tavern. Finding a table next to the window, he positioned himself so he could see the street in front of the bank.

They called for ale, silently awaited its arrival, then sat facing each other over their pints. Ben looked over his shoulder at the facade of the bank only once, but every glance he sent Hayden contained growing caution.

“You have not said one word about your family’s circumstances,” Hayden said. “Alexia told you what happened, what I did, but you have expressed no anger and asked no questions.”

“I was angry yesterday when she told me. I know how these things can go, however. Any crisis makes men worried, and this was a bad one. Over seventy banks have failed, after all. You had a responsibility to your family and decided the risks you saw were too great. I do not blame you. If my brother had proven a better banker, it might not have been necessary.”

“That is damned understanding of you. I should have you talk to my wife and explain all that. She blames me most severely.” He drank his ale while he checked the window’s view again. “Of course, she does not know what really happened. The truth is that my family’s money is still in that bank. Timothy told her a lie that I am bound by honor not to correct.”

Ben looked relieved. “I told her Tim had most likely lost it all on gambling and such. I knew you would not destroy them like that. Not my family.”

“Oh, I destroyed them. There is no question there. I sent them packing to Oxfordshire with little pride and less money. Oddly enough, it was intended as a kindness, as the lesser of two paths to ruin.”

“I am sure you did your best.” His tone communicated finality.
No need to explain, old friend. Whatever you did is fine with me.

“Ben, I discovered that Timothy had committed utterance and embezzled money from bank patrons. His theft is why he is ruined. It was sell out and take on debt to reimburse his victims, or swing.”

Ben’s reaction would do a comic opera actor proud. “You shock me with this accusation against my brother. Utterance? Theft?”

“He was forging names on securities, selling them, keeping the money, and continuing to pay off the income.”

“You have distressed me beyond composure. This is not my brother’s character.”

“He has the character for it, but it takes more than a lack of honesty to effect such a sophisticated swindle. The problem, and I should have seen it at once, is that while Tim could talk himself into stealing tens of thousands of pounds, he is not brilliant enough to figure out
how.
His character was up to it but not his mind.”

Ben frowned, perhaps deciding if he should defend his brother’s mental capabilities. “No doubt he read about a previous, similar embezzlement.”

“It has only happened once before that is commonly known. I expect other banks may have found ways to compensate prior victims of similar crimes, all without the thief ever standing for judgment. No bank could survive the scandal if it became known.”

“It doesn’t sound like a complicated scheme. Tim could have devised the scheme on his own.”

“But he didn’t, did he? He learned it from you.”

Ben went still. He gazed at his ale and no part of him moved, not even his fingertips resting on the glass.

“How much do you know?”

“Not that you were still alive, but most of the rest.”

He sighed deeply. “The more I thought about what Alexia had told me, how you ruined them, the more I worried. All night my certainty grew that you had discovered it all. I knew you were not likely to make a move that would force the bank to fail. How did you find out?”

“Timothy made the mistake of forging my name and selling funds on which I was trustee.”

“Damn.”
He slammed his fist on the table. “The
idiot.
”

“Hell of a thing, isn’t it? When the student does not learn the niceties from the master.”

He received a snarling glare for that, but Ben could never remain angry long. “I suppose we should all thank you for not prosecuting him. Although…”

Although if he had, there would have been a run on the bank and it would have failed and closed. Maybe no one would have ever learned that the older Longworth brother had done the same thing. Should the earlier thefts come to light, they would have been blamed on the executed Timothy, not the dead Benjamin.

Ben rested back in his chair. His relaxation implied remaining on his guard had been an effort and he was happy to drop it. “The first time was a loan of sorts. An attempt to settle a debt honorably. I wanted to get out from under the last of my father’s obligations. Unfortunately, it was a big one, to a financier of the worst kind. The little land left and the house in Oxfordshire had been pledged as surety, and he was going to take it in his impatience. So I looked for a way to pay it off fast and completely. I always intended to make them whole.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“One of the first discovered what I had done. He allowed me to reimburse him, but in order to do so I had to forge more names, sell more securities—well, by then I was in deep.”

“That would be Keiller in York?”

“You do know most of it, don’t you?”

“I found the account at the Bank of England. I saw the early dispersals to Keiller’s bank account.”

Ben stilled again. He did not glance back at the bank across the street, but his mind seemed to snap alert to the symbolism of their current location.

“I realized the danger then. Most of those funds sat there forever. Most were in trust. But there was always the chance someone would actually want to sell, after I had already done so. That would be awkward.”

“That is how I learned you, not Timothy, had devised the scheme. Sir Matthew Rolland came to Darfield and wanted to sell.”

“Sir Matthew? Who would have guessed. He rarely even came to town. Well, I knew that just such a situation could be my undoing.”

“Is that how Suttonly learned the truth?”

Ben glared at him. “
Hell.
You did not let any of it go, did you? I hope that you confronted the bastard. He ruined everything. He kept bleeding me and bleeding me—it
amused
him to see me cornered, to see me sweat. Damnation, Hayden, for a smart man you have some bad judgments in your choice of friends. Suttonly is a bloody rogue.”

Hayden smiled at the irony of Ben’s indignation. It was a sad amusement, however. He would lose two old friends because of this sorry business and gain nothing at all.

That was not true. He had gained Alexia. But for this knot of crimes, he might have never come to know her. She more than balanced the accounts.

“I should never have gone near Suttonly’s funds,” Ben said. “It was careless. But it was such a damnably small amount. A thousand. A mere token, thrown in when you asked your friends to help me get established. I assumed he would never remember it was even there. Nor did I dream that when I asked for time to produce the securities, he would send his solicitor to demand them immediately. I had no choice but to admit what I had done and offer to make him whole.”

“He refused?”

“He knew one utterance was enough to send me to the gallows, no matter how small the amount. He could bleed me and there was nothing I could do to stop it.”

Except die.

“I paid him fifteen times what I had taken, and he only demanded more. It seemed all I gained went to him. I was stealing just to satisfy him.”

“Terrible.”

“I know that tone.” Anger crystallized his eyes. “Are you enjoying this? Approving of how that devil made my life hell? You think I deserved it, don’t you? You are sitting there in that damned moral superiority paid for with Easterbrook money, thinking I was lucky to get bled only symbolically.” He looked away in disgust. “Hell, the older you get, the more you are like your father.”

It was an old goad, the one sure to get a reaction. Hayden barely controlled what it did to him. “Since I am his son, it is not surprising some of him is in me.”

“More than some. More than in the others.
Some
of his sons escaped his legacy better than you ever will.” Any attempts at hiding his frustration disappeared. “Why are we sitting here, in this tavern, at this table? What is your game? Are we waiting for a magistrate? Are you enough like him to do it? Hand me over in the name of justice and right?”

Hayden could not answer that. He had not decided that part yet.

His silence stunned Ben. “
Damnation,
man, are you really thinking of doing it? How can you? You
owe
me better. You would have been flayed alive in that farmhouse, and no one,
no one,
was willing to attempt to get you out. Except
me.
You like calculations, work that one out. What were the chances I would survive that day?”

Poor. At best one in five odds. But Ben’s pistols were loaded and the Turks were busy enjoying their torture, and once a shot was fired, others had rushed to help too. Still—

It would have been a terrible death. Ignoble. The kind where the last conscious thought is horror and the last sound is one’s own screams.

Ben leaned forward, pressing his advantage. “No other friend would have charged in that day.”