Roarke had done little better. His mother had been left behind and was not well. She needed constant care—some days she didn’t even know who he was. Desperate, he’d followed in his father’s footsteps, trying to catch up, trying to make enough that he could take care of his responsibilities. To keep her comfortable.
He had failed. Almost as spectacularly as his father had. Which was why he had to come here and listen to his snobby cousins gossip about people they knew and be generally unpleasant. He was, for all intents and purposes, a dependent person now. If he wanted their continued financial support, this was the only way.
His stomach turned at the thought and he set his own teacup down. “What are your plans now that the Season is coming to an end?” he asked, hoping this would change the subject from one vapid subject to another more palatable one.
“I would say I was happy to be returning to the country estate,” Thomas groaned, and rolled his eyes at his siblings. "But I feel as though we are always working there to undo the damage that dreadful woman did before our dear father’s death.”
Roarke wrinkled his brow. “Are you talking about the dowager? Your stepmother?”
Gertrude slammed her cup down on the sideboard and let out a little pained cry. “My God, but I hate that she gets to claim any title that has to do with my father. Hateful, wretched thing. She married my father at his lowest point and did everything she could to turn him against us.”
“She used her grubby hands and smutty charms to grab everything she could,” Philip agreed, and Roarke recoiled. He was shocked his cousin would use such plain language with Gertrude in the room. She was a lady, after all, and an unmarried one at that. It was unseemly.
He shook his head. “I know she was a good deal younger than your father—”
“Younger than me,” Gertrude said. “By two years. So what does that tell you?”
Roarke didn’t respond. He had some thoughts about what that said, most of which were a bit more judgmental of his uncle than the young lady he had wed. After all, women had fewer choices when it came to their fate. And from what he knew of the lady, she had come from a good family, one that would see a union with a duke, old or young, as a triumph for her.
And though he hadn’t spent much time with his uncle after the death of his aunt, his father’s sister, the few times he’d bumped into him at a club or gathering, Uncle Stuart had seemed vastly content with his choice of second wife. He always spoke warmly of her, at least, in their brief encounters.
“But you know, you must have seen her,” Thomas was continuing, and Roarke realized he had blocked out much of their complaints.
He forced himself back to the present. “Er, no. I never met the lady, I’m afraid. Though you’ve made it no secret how little you three think of her, before or since your father’s death.”
“I should think we wouldn’t,” Philip said, his brow lowering. “After all she has taken from us. Her settlement was outrageous. Absolutely outrageous. If I had been in charge—”
“Philip,” Thomas said sharply, and Roarke’s younger cousin snapped his mouth shut with a sullen glare.
Roarke couldn’t help but look around the opulent home they all sat in at present. He didn’t think his cousins were hurting for funds, no matter how much their uncle had gifted for the widow he left behind.
“It has been three years since his death,” Roarke said as gently as he could. “And it seems the lady is no longer in your lives. Thomas is happily in place as duke, so he makes the decisions for the future of the family, and there were no children from the second union to take anything from you. I am surprised you are still so bitter toward his second wife.”
Thomas let out a long sigh and the three cousins exchanged a look heavy with meaning. It immediately put Roarke on edge. He knew that look, had seen it dozens of times as a child. It almost always meant his cousins had a plan of some kind, usually a cruel one, and they wished for him to be part of it. Probably so he could be blamed if the entire thing went wrong.
And once again Roarke cursed the fact that he had to grovel to them for money three times a year for the upkeep of his ill mother. Why had he not been more prudent? Why had he inherited his own late father’s penchant for risk when it came to bright ideas of the future? There had been so little left to inherit, but perhaps if he had been prudent and guarded, he might be in a different position now.
“Well, I suppose we are thinking of the cruel grasping of his wretched wife all the more lately because of the terms of settlement we just discovered only this week,” Thomas said.
“Only this week,” Roarke said flatly. “You are telling me that you are still finding new terms of inheritance after all this time?”
“Yes,” Thomas said, his tone getting a bit sharper. “You have no idea what we have endured. How hard it is to go through papers and papers, trying to sort out the whims of a father.”
Roarke bit his tongue. They never had considered his father much of anything, despite his being their mother’s brother, so of course they wouldn’t see his death and the ripples that had come from it as the same thing.
“Hmmm” was all Roarke responded.
“Dearest Papa was far too kind,” Gertrude continued, moving closer to Roarke. He realized they were all doing it, almost surrounding him, and his stomach turned. “There was an additional term in regard to our stepmother, and it will come into effect very soon if we do not stop it.”
“And what is the term?” Roarke asked, trying to back away from the circling vultures, but only serving to edge himself farther into the corner of the room.
“Flora will inherit an additional ten thousand pounds if she reaches the third year of her widowhood without remarrying or taking a lover,” Thomas said, his mouth twisting with disgust.
Roarke’s head spun a moment. Ten thousand pounds. Great God, he came to beg for one percent of that amount just to stay afloat, just to keep his mother fed and minded.
“It’s not much of a sum,” Philip sneered. “But that bitch hasn’t earned it.”
Yet again Roarke flinched at the crude language his cousin used to address his stepmother and in front of his maiden sister. “Your father seems to have felt differently,” he said softly. “He must have cared for her a great deal in order to wish to protect her so thoroughly, as I imagine she must have inherited a tidy sum at this death.”
“Fifteen thousand,” Gertrude sneered. “Half again over what I inherited.”
Roarke shook his head. Great God, but these people were so entirely separated from reality. They lived like kings and compared themselves to paupers. They hated a woman for taking from them, when it seemed there were unlimited resources available left to them by a caring father who had stewarded his unentailed finances carefully to protect his family. All his family.
Roarke despised them for it.
He smoothed his coat and then forced a sympathetic smile. “I am sorry to hear of your woes, cousins. I imagine you must feel great frustration over this news. I feel as though I am intruding now on your grief. Perhaps I should go and we can meet again another—”
“No,” Thomas interrupted, arching a brow and glowering at Roarke in what he could only assume was his cousin’s attempt at a lord of the manor expression. “You came here to ask for our assistance, as you do several times a year.”