This Wicked Gift (12 page)

Over at the small table near the door,
Lavinia watched as James entered a book loan in the ledger. He slipped two
pennies in the cash box and then wrapped a book and waved farewell to Mr.
Bellow. As he recorded the transaction, he avoided her gaze. She came up to the
table anyway, approaching it from the front, as if she were a customer instead
of a fellow laborer. Still, he winced.

“I did it exactly as you instructed,” he
whispered. “Did I do it wrong? Oh God, I did it so completely backward you can
tell it’s wrong without even reading what I’ve entered.” He put his head in his
hands.

“You’re doing very well.” She resisted the
urge to turn the book upside down to check. “Perfect, even.” No, she was not
going to even glance down. “You’re doing so well, in fact, that I am going
upstairs to rest.”

He lifted his face. His eyes shone in
pleasure. “I’ll take care of everything.” Then he paused. “But perhaps an hour
or two before we close up the shop, would you be willing to take over again?
There is one thing I should like to take care of this evening.”

She patted her brother’s hand. “Of
course,” she said with a smile.

She headed upstairs. She would not have
minded deprivation for herself. But William…If her gloves had holes, William’s
hands would freeze in sympathy. If she ate brown, unbuttered bread, the bitter
taste would linger on his palate.

She’d given him hopelessness. She’d made
him miserable. If she truly loved him, perhaps she needed to let him go.

T
WENTY-FOUR HOURS
EARLIER,
 
William
had cowered in the office where he worked, for fear of losing his position.
Today when he walked in, he felt not even a hint of disquietude.

Why had he been so afraid? He was young.
He was competent. And even if he were turned off, he would find something else.
Losing a position where he was regularly treated like the grimiest gutter
refuse was not something to fear. It was something to celebrate.

When the door to the office opened just
after nine and in walked Lord Blakely followed by his glowering grandson,
William felt triumph.

When he was let go, it would be a
financial setback. It might take weeks to find work again; his wages might even
be reduced. He ought to have been terrified. But this was not a punishment, to
be allowed to walk out of this dark and dismal place. It was an opportunity.

The two lords stepped into the back
office. After a few minutes Mr.
Dunning
walked up to
William and whispered that he’d been asked to enter the room. They were
unlikely to be inviting him to a picnic lunch. Just
 
before he stood, Mr. Dunning laid his
hand on William’s shoulder—an empty gesture of pointless support.

William smiled and stood, calm.
 
Let them sack
me. Please.

He’d expected the back office to appear
precisely as he’d left it yesterday.

But when he arrived, there had been one
tiny alteration. Lord Blakely still peered at him from beneath white, bushy
eyebrows, examining him as if he were some strange insect. But the marquess had
not seated himself in his throne behind the desk. Instead, he’d ensconced his
grandson in the position of power. Lord Wyndleton sat, ill at ease. He
smoldered with a repressed anger so fierce that William thought he would leave
scorch marks where he tapped his fingers against the desk.

Three account books, a small portion of
the work William had done over his years of employment, made a small pile on
the edge of the desk.

The old marquess picked up one negligently
and thumbed through the pages. “Sometime between the months of January and—” a
pause, and a last glance at the end of the third book “—April, Bill Blight here
made a mistake.”

William did not mind being stripped of his
position and his wages. He no longer fancied losing his dignity alongside. “My
lord, my name is William White.”

Naturally, Lord Blakely took no notice of
the interjection. “Bill Blight made an error. Find it and then sack him. When
you can lay the mistake before me, I shall allow you to leave.”

Lord Wyndleton sighed heavily, but reached
for a book. He opened it and stared intently at the first page. His grandfather
watched, silent, for a few minutes as the young lord scanned the entries.
Finally he shook his head and walked out, leaving the two younger men together.
William heard the front door to the building rattle shut; shortly after, the
jingle of his carriage sounded.

As soon as they were alone, the young lord
looked up. “Did you make a mistake between the months of January and April?”

William rolled his eyes. “Yes.”

“Well, tell me what it was. I haven’t got
all day.”

“I don’t know. Between the months of
January and April, I must have accounted for upward of four thousand
transactions. Of course there was a mistake somewhere in the lot—it’s
impossible not to make one. If your grandfather were even halfway rational, he
wouldn’t sack his employees for minor imperfections.”

William had thought the insult to the
marquess would be enough to have him sent on his way.

“Hmm,” Lord Wyndleton said.
“Four thousand transactions.”
He glanced up at William, and
then shook his head as if it were somehow William’s fault he’d been so
efficient. “What a bloody nuisance.”

With that, the man turned his head down to
the
 
books. Minutes passed. His
eyes moved slowly down column after column. He turned one page, then another.
At the turn of the tenth page, William sighed and sat down without permission.

The old marquess might have turned him off
for that offense in an instant, too; his grandson didn’t even appear to notice.

At the twentieth page, William began to
wish he hadn’t been so meticulous in his accounting. If he’d missed a shilling
on the first page, at least he would have been able to leave.

At the twenty-sixth page, Lord Wyndleton
sighed loudly. “I bloody hate this,” he muttered.

How sweet. They had something in common.
It was time to escalate his plan to get sacked.

William was already bored. And he had
nothing to lose. “I hear you are interested in scientific pursuit.”

Lord Wyndleton’s eyes moved only to glance
down the page of numbers in front of him. He turned his hand over. It might
have been an unconscious gesture. It might have been the barest acknowledgment
of William’s uttered words.

William decided to take it as
acknowledgment. “Well, then. I should think you’d enjoy numbers.”

Lord Wyndleton shrugged but still did not
look up. He flipped to the front of the book, then back to page twenty-six. For
a long while William thought the man was going to ignore him.

But the viscount finally spoke without
lifting his
 
eyes from the page.
“I do like numbers. I like numbers when they are attached to little
 
t
 
and double-dot-
x
.
Maybe a calculation of probability.”
He spoke in
swift, clipped tones, his voice unemotional and unvarying. “I dislike
arithmetic. Finance bores me. It has no rules to discover.
Just
opportunity for error.”

“Ah,” William said. “You prefer calculus?”

Lord Wyndleton sighed and turned to page twenty-seven.
Then he looked up—although he didn’t look directly at William. Instead, he
leaned his head back and fixed his gaze on the ceiling. “Let me tell you what I
 
dislike
.
I dislike servants who make obscure mistakes, forcing me to spend Christmas Eve
morn studying dusty accounting tomes. My dislike accelerates when said servant
attempts to distract me from my duty by yammering on. That means,
 
Bill
,
I dislike you.”

“That,” said
William,
“makes us a pair. I despise men who let their vast fortunes go to waste. You’re
so
helpless,
you can’t even get thirty miles on a
Christmas Eve. You’re spending your morning glowering at books instead of going
to Tattersall’s and purchasing a very swift horse.”

“If my grandfather did not control my
fortune, I would have done precisely that.”

The viscount was angry. He was, also,
William realized, entirely serious.

William stared at him for a few moments,
his own pique dissipating. “You really don’t like finance,” he finally said.
“Your grandfather doesn’t control your fortune.”

“Ha.” Lord Wyndleton undoubtedly intended
that single syllable to be a dismissal.

“It wasn’t I who made the mistake.
It was the marquess.”

“Do be quiet.”

“He ought
never
have left you alone with me.”

Lord Wyndleton slammed his pen down. “Oh,
Lord almighty,” he muttered to the desktop. “What are you going to do to me?
Annoy me to death?”

“You see,” William continued, “I’ve
recorded the accounting for your trust every month since I started here. Those
funds became yours, free and clear, upon your majority.”

Viscount Wyndleton cocked his head and
turned it. It was a gesture reminiscent of his grandfather—and yet on him, it
seemed attentive rather than predatory. His eyes were steady and almost
golden-brown. For a few seconds he stared at William, his lips parted.

William knew precisely what that look
meant. He was entertaining hopes. Then he let out a breath and shook his head.
“No. When the trust was established, the money would have become mine on my
majority. But six years ago I came to an agreement with my grandfather. I
signed over control of my funds after my majority. In exchange he let me—well,
never
mind
that. Your information is wrong.”

He paused, tapping his pen against his
wrist.
“Next time, if you have something to say, come out and
say it.
I don’t hold with talking in such a roundabout
 
fashion, as if you’re a cat circling
your prey.
Pounce already and be done with
it.”

For a second William thought the young
lord intended to leave his words at a rebuke. But then Lord Wyndleton looked up
again. “But thank you,” he said. “It was well-meant.”

So the grandson was not the grandfather,
however alike they might have seemed at first. What had started as resentment
on William’s part had turned into something—something more.
He wasn’t sure what it was yet.

William stood. “I’ve seen the statements.
I’ve recorded the accounts. I know every detail, and they’re in your own name.”

“Couldn’t be.
There
must be some legal nicety you’re missing. Blakely is too meticulous. I signed a
contract, and I have no doubt the matter it covered was executed immediately.
 
He
 
wouldn’t miss the opportunity to keep
me under his thumb.”

“This contract—you signed it six years
ago?” The hackles on William’s neck rose. His calm dissipated. A great and
sudden weight tensed on his shoulders. “You’re two-and-twenty now?”

Lord Wyndleton waved his hand and turned
back to the books, dismissing William. “This isn’t getting me any closer to my
mother’s home.”

William strode forward and slapped his
hand over the page Lord Wyndleton was reading. “I’m pouncing. The agreement
wasn’t executed because it couldn’t have been. Legally you were an infant. The
contract was
 
a nullity. It’s the
rankest abuse of power for your guardian to have required you to give away what
was rightfully yours in exchange for…for something else that is rightfully
yours.”

Lord Wyndleton let out his breath, slowly.
“Are you sure?”

“I can prove it,” William said. “Tell them
you need to verify my figures against another set of books. They won’t deny
you.”

A curt
nod,
and
William left the room. Forty-five minutes later, with the books spread out in
front of him, Lord Wyndleton believed. He looked up.

“Aren’t you some kind of lowly clerk or
some such? How do you know arcane details about the legalities of contracts?”

William smiled faintly.
 
I made love to a
beautiful woman
 
hardly
seemed to be an answer that would keep him in his lordship’s good graces. “I
read,” he finally said. It was true.
Just not the whole
truth.
“I’ve been training myself to take over an estate.”

“Expectations?”

“No, my lord.
None.
Just…” William nodded once. “Just hopes, really.”

Lord Wyndleton drummed his fingers against
the desk. “If I had my way,” he said quietly, “I’d leave England entirely. I’ve
wanted to explore the Americas—but lacking
funds,
of
course, it’s never been an option. It is now. But I need someone here. He would
have to be someone who could be trusted to make sure
 
my funds arrived wherever I had need
of them.
Someone who could not be suborned by my grandfather.
Someone competent and efficient—perhaps even someone who likes finance—even if
he does make the occasional mistake sometime between the months of January and
April. Now—” Lord Wyndleton leaned back and looked at the ceiling “—if only I
knew someone like that.”