Matthew had been the one to follow in his father’s footsteps, studying to become a physician. It was Matthew who’d been going to help the world, look after their family, and be the son his parents had longed for. Then Matthew had been killed, and it was entirely Valentine’s fault.
Val ran a hand over his face. Thank goodness he had Jemima. Although his sister, with her own brilliance, was often a reminder of all that he lacked.
He thought of Rebecca and her father entrenched in the long gallery. That was what he needed — help. Someone who understood all of this much better than he.
“Howard!” he called to his butler, who appeared in moments. The man seemed to lurk the halls, awaiting his summons.
“Yes, your grace?”
“The steward that was here before I arrived…”
“The one you were rid of, your grace?”
“The very one,” Val replied. As soon as he had realized the ledgers hadn’t been updated in years, he had been rid of the man. “Did you know much about him?”
“I, ah, do not wish to speak out of turn…”
“Please do,” Val said, realizing that the one aspect he did enjoy about being a duke was the fact that people did as he bid.
“He was a lazy bastard,” Howard said, then straightened and returned to his usual reserve, “your grace.”
What Val needed to do more than anything else, was to find people he could trust. People who would do for him what he couldn’t do for himself. The problem was determining who he could put his faith in. It was why most of those he hired had been friends or acquaintances before he became a duke. Most others, he had found in his experience thus far, all used him to further their own connections. Those who didn’t latched onto him in the hopes of leeching wealth and prestige.
Valentine had a three-step plan. First, he would fight for short-term funds. Then, a wife to regain the Wyndham prestige. That, however, wouldn’t be enough to save the dukedom for his heirs. For he refused to do what the old duke had done to him. Thirdly, he needed to get all of the affairs in order.
“Howard?”
“Yes, your grace?”
“Is there a local magistrate?”
“There is.”
“Have him meet me here tomorrow,” he said. “In the meantime, I am going to prepare a letter to be sent to my solicitors in London. We need to turn things around.” He sighed. “And we need to do it now.”
Rebecca leaned back in her chair, rolling her shoulders to try to ease the tension.
She had been sitting too long hunched over, as was often the case. She picked up the plans before her and moved with them to stand in front of the fireplace before stretching out over top of the rug so that she could lie on her stomach and review them. Perhaps something would miraculously come to her if she changed positions.
She tapped her pencil against her forehead as the fire crackled beside her. This was a long, drafty room. At one point in time, it had been a gallery of some sort, but as the duke had noted during their initial tour, many of the paintings had disappeared. Likely they’d been sold over the years as the previous duke lay ailing in his bed.
It was sad, really. This beautiful estate, so mismanaged, not looked after to keep its prestige. And now it was all up to Valentine to regain its status.
Rebecca could sense his discomfort in taking on this new position. Most men she knew would do anything to be in his shoes. But if one wasn’t prepared for such a life, she could see how it could become rather isolating and a great burden.
She returned her thoughts to her task at hand. The estate included many spectacular rooms and fantastic views, but it was as though each wing was a manor in itself. They all circled the courtyard in the center, an Elizabethan holdover. Rebecca was surprised it had lasted so long without being given over to another style more popular of the day. The courtyard could be beautiful, she knew, but at the moment each wing of the house functioned as its own separate entity, and the courtyard had been seemingly forgotten. Rebecca would have liked to have worked with the original style, but her father was insisting on redesigns to bring in the neoclassical he was known for.
The dukedom, however, did not seem to have any financial wellbeing. How the duke was going to fund all of this, Rebecca had no idea, though she supposed that needn’t be her concern.
Except she couldn’t, in good conscience, design extravagance such as a new wing when the duke would never recover from the debt.
She had tried to discuss all of this with her father over the past couple of days they had been here, but today had been a particularly unproductive day. He was convinced that they were at Remingford Hall, and when he did have more lucid moments he was determined that he needed to be designing the brand new wing.
“But there are rooms within the current estate that haven’t even been touched in years,” Rebecca had argued, remembering the dusty, musty rooms that the duke had shown them on their initial tour.
“Think of how grand it could be, Rebecca,” was his response. “All who come to visit the duke will be speaking of my finest accomplishment!”
Except it wouldn’t actually be his accomplishment, for her father hadn’t been putting pencil to paper. Instead, it was Rebecca who had taken a mixture of his ideas as well as her own and created the designs, and she who would help direct the work.
She looked around her at the long, empty gallery. The estate had a library, but it was in a separate wing. A wing that, at the moment, housed nothing but guest chambers and a room that she assumed had once been a billiards room but was now lacking a billiards table.
Inspired, she began to draw, her pencil seemingly moving of its own will, removing current walls, combining rooms, and adding in various aspects. The duke enjoyed the outdoors, and she had noted his eyes light up at the idea of the French windows in his library in his London house.
Perhaps with a few additions here and there…
Rebecca didn’t know how much time had passed, nor how long she had worked. When inspiration struck her, everything else around her no longer mattered, only the ideas that flowed from her heart, through her mind, to her hand and pencil onto paper.
“Miss Lambert?”
Rebecca jumped, pushing herself up to her heels, nearly falling over backward in her haste. She had no wish for the duke to find her stretched out on the floor of his gallery in the middle of the night.
“Your grace," she greeted him, lifting her hand to her head to determine what state her hair was currently in, dismayed to find that tendrils had fallen out of their pins and were now strewn around her shoulders. She must look like quite a fright.
“What are you doing?” he asked, sauntering across the room, and Rebecca took advantage of the length of the room to quickly fold and cover her drawings.
“I, ah, I must have fallen asleep,” she said, with what she hoped was a convincing smile of innocence. “I was cleaning up some of the notes I took earlier while helping my father.”
He nodded, causing a stab of guilt to course through Rebecca at his easy belief in her. As he walked toward her, her heart rate quickened, but then he brushed past her and began to stoke the fire, which had fallen to embers. She swallowed hard, for his large frame seemed to fill the room and make her suddenly feel quite small.
“It’s late,” he murmured now, turning around and leaning back against the marble that surrounded the fireplace.