Marchmont didn’t care about money. Or he hadn’t, until today. Yesterday Zoe had spoken of his “family,” and he knew she wasn’t referring to the mad aunt and indigent relations he supported, fully or partially.
She referred to the children he and she hoped to have.
Suppose they had eight, as Lexham had done. Or more. King George and Queen Charlotte had produced fifteen children. The fourth Duke of Richmond had fourteen. Worcester’s father, the sixth Duke of Beaufort, had ten.
Marchmont’s eldest son would inherit everything. But the duke must pay to care for and educate them all. He must find places for the younger males and pay for the girls’ come-outs and weddings and the wardrobes that went with these. He must provide dowries as well.
He didn’t care about money. A gentleman didn’t.
But a gentleman was honor bound to care for his family, and a family needed money. A duke’s family needed pots of it. He had pots of money, so much that ten years’ steady and zealous thieving had not attracted anybody’s attention.
He continued scanning Osgood’s neat entries: some thousands to found an Infirmary for Diseases of the Eye. A subscription to a Samaritan fund. A contribution to a society for the deaf and dumb, another for the indigent blind. He gave money for the relief of wounded soldiers and sailors. He contributed to funds for widows and orphans. He gave to churches and hospitals and asylums.
He’d presided over any number of dinners devoted to one charity or another. To him these were social obligations, more or less like appearing at court. Most of his friends attended. Such an event was merely another dinner, where one must endure too many speeches.
At least he hadn’t spent all his money stupidly or selfishly. The wretches below, locked in Harrison’s room, had not, after all, stolen more than he’d given away or squandered unthinkingly.
Marchmont thought of the money thrown away on great dinners for his friends, where he’d drunk prodigious quantities, and spouted Shakespeare, as he was wont to do when three sheets in the wind.
I can see you’re rapidly approaching the point where you start quoting Shakespeare and falling into the fire, Adderwood had said at the dinner where Marchmont had become so stupidly jealous of his friends’ interest in Zoe.
Though he wasn’t drunk at present, Shakespeare wandered into his mind:
The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown…
He rang, and a footman came.
Which one was this? There were so many of them. Perhaps it was time to start learning who these people were.
“What’s your name?” said Marchmont.
“Thomas, Your Grace.”
“Thomas, I shall want my cook, butler, and valet brought to this room. But first ask the duchess if she would be so good as to return here.”
Thomas went out.
When the trio entered, Marchmont had taken his place behind the handsome French desk a previous Duke of Marchmont had acquired during the time of Louis XV.
Zoe sat by the fire, her hands folded in her lap.
“You must be here,” he’d told her. “They all need to understand that you and I are united in this.”
“If you cut off their heads, I’ll watch, if I must,” she said. “But I’ll throw up afterwards.”
“I’m not going to cut off their heads. This is England, not Egypt. And certainly not France.”
He’d made a joke of it because that was what he always did. Whatever else he changed, he refused to become too boringly serious.
