London - Edward Rutherfurd [538]
“You should think of the man, not his title,” her mother reminded her.
“But you do not object that he is a lord,” Nancy gently remarked, and saw her mother blush.
“I think he is a good man,” Mrs Dogget replied, “and I’m sure your father will like him.”
“He hasn’t made any declaration yet,” Nancy said a little sadly. “He may not be interested anyway.”
But as the finale of The Gondoliers had just reached its climax, the Earl of St James allowed his hand to brush against hers very lightly.
She would have been surprised to see him an hour later.
The first-floor parlour in the house by Regent’s Park was used by the present earl as a library and office. Unlike his forebears, he had an intellectual and artistic turn of mind. His books were well chosen; he even had a small picture collection. Sitting at a French bureau, he was gazing rather sadly at the figure opposite him.
“Well, old girl,” he sighed. “I suppose I shall have to marry Miss Dogget.” He looked up and his eye caught a delicate little picture of the Thames he had bought recently. “The only person who can save me is Barnikel.” He smiled ruefully. “Don’t you think that’s funny?” But it was always difficult to guess what Muriel thought.
The previous earl had married twice. From the first marriage, only Lady Muriel survived; from the second, the present earl who was fifteen years younger. Yet looking at the slim, handsome peer and his half-sister, it was hard to believe they were even related. Lady Muriel de Quette was so fat she could scarcely squeeze into the big leather armchair in the library. She seldom spoke. She did not ride or walk or read. But she ate continuously. At present she was consuming a large box of chocolates.
“Mind you, she’s a nice little thing.” The earl shook his head and sighed again. “We’d still have been all right, you know, if it hadn’t been for grandfather.”
Lady Muriel pushed another chocolate into her mouth.
When cautious, conservative Lord Bocton finally got his hands on his father’s money soon after the Great Reform Act, he had put most of the family fortune into agricultural land, but even the vast extravagance of his son George, the present earl’s father, would not have destroyed the family’s wealth if it had not been for the railway. When Mr Gorham Dogget invested in the railroads that opened up the American mid-west, he sealed the doom of many English gentlemen. The huge quantities of cheap grain that came from the American plains caused grain prices to tumble and with them the value of much agricultural land. When the present earl inherited, he had been forced to sell twenty thousand acres, at poor prices, to pay off his father’s debts. The big London house, and the old Bocton manor remained, but there was little income. Soon one, perhaps both of these would have to go. If Lord St James was going to find an heiress, therefore, he knew he had better do it soon. Not that he was setting out to deceive anyone about his financial condition. He was not a fraud. But a lord who was still clinging on to a fine London house and an ancestral estate looked a lot more eligible, and dignified, than a lord – even an earl – who had neither.
Getting up and reaching into his waistcoat pocket for his keys, Lord St James moved over to a closet door, which he unlocked. Inside the closet was a small safe which he carefully opened, drawing out several leather boxes. While his sister watched impassively, he brought these over to the bureau and laid them out, lovingly lifting the lids to reveal the sparkling contents. “We’ve still got these, old girl,” he said.
The St James family jewels were extremely fine. The ruby necklace in particular was noteworthy and it was widely known that whoever became the Countess of St James would get to wear it. For the earl, however, they were also a lifeline. Though he liked women and had enjoyed two long affairs, he liked his freedom and only felt compelled to marry from a sense of family duty.