Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave - Stephanie Barron [54]
“My dear,” I cried, all concern for her distress, “whatever can be the matter?”
She halted in the chill hall, the only still figure in the midst of her servants. Then, with neither a word nor a look, she brushed past me for the stairs.
“Isobel—” I began, but she continued silently on her way, never heeding me. I turned towards the library door in consternation. What could Fitzroy Payne have done to so destroy my friend?
But it was not the Earl who was the agent of Isobel's misery. Lord Harold was within, standing by the fire with a cigar and a glass of Port. One look at his face told me he had triumphed finally in his relentless pursuit of Isobel's Barbadoes plantations; Crosswinds was hers no more. I understood, now, the flurry about the coach drawn up to the door. Having gained his object, Harold Trowbridge had no further use for Scargrave.
“Lord Harold,” I said, crossing to face him, my fear of his power banished, “I see that the dark angel has triumphed.”
He raised his glass to me in mocking salute and tossed back its contents. “Was there ever a doubt?” he said.
“Lucifer was possessed of just such certainty, my lord, and his prospects in the end were hardly sanguine.”
“I would disagree, Miss Austen. Lucifer inherited a kingdom, assuredly, and one of his own design. Many men would wish to claim as much.”
I waved a hand dismissively. “You talk but to hear yourself speak, my lord, and I have no time for the cultivation of vanity. I am come to bid you good-bye, but not farewell and hardly adieu. I should rather wish you to fare poorly and go straight to the Devil.”
Such language, I admit, is shocking in any woman, and particularly in a clergyman's daughter; but the blood was upon me, as my dear brother Henry would say, and I was careless of effect. The one I produced, however was the last I should have anticipated. Rather than smiling in scorn, or throwing back his head in outright laughter, Harold Trowbridge took his cigar from his lips, and studied me speculatively.
“Your aspect gains something in the liveliness of anger, Miss Austen. Had I anticipated such, I should have provoked you to it sooner, simply for the enjoyment of the effect.” His dark eyes actually danced, with all the impudence of a man who has never known scruple.
“How can you speak so, my lord, when you have been the ruin of one of the gentlest, the best, and certainly now the most suffering of women?”
“You would have it that I find pleasure in my achievements, particularly when they are won at the expense of such.”
“You are in every way despicable,” I said.
“Perhaps,” he rejoined, “but I am nonetheless successful, and the Countess is merely noble and poor.”
“How,” I began, my voice unpleasantly strident to my own ears, “did you prevail upon her? She was in every way opposed to your purpose. It can only be that the weight of her recent afflictions has enervated her, and that she gave up the struggle rather than contest with one such as you.”
“I merely pointed out that she is penniless,” Trowbridge said calmly, “and that her creditors have called in their debts. While her husband was alive, I chose to bide my time, and learn what the cost of clearing the estates’ encumbrance was worth to him; but with Scargrave gone, there is no point in delaying further.”
“Scargrave is gone, but Scargrave is yet with us,” I pointed out. “The Earl has an heir, possessed of all the potency of his estates.”
“And a healthy debt of his own,” the rogue said mildly. “Even if the Countess were to rush in unseemly haste, and marry her lover”—at this demonstration of his knowledge, I gasped, but he took no notice—”Fitzroy Payne must look to his own accounts first. Half of London are his creditors; his own holdings in the Indies are beset with difficulties, and should his uncle not have died, Payne should soon have been hauled into court, or killed in a duel by one of the many men to whom he owes debts of honour.”
“Debts of honour?” I was aghast.
“Miss Austen,” Lord Harold