She had seen the truth of this for herself already this season. “But you have your business,” she said. “You do not depend on the goodwill of the grand.”
He raised a dark brow. “My business profits from the goodwill of wealthy patrons. Indubitably.”
“You forget about Arendale, Jem,” Bertie said from the back seat. “You will be our grandfather’s heir.”
“My father is the heir,” he replied with a bitter twist to his mouth. “And I am likely to be my father’s heir, in consequence of which I will inherit whatever my father chooses to leave of the estate and its various incomes, as well as the burdens and debt.”
He did not think much of his father, that was clear. Lucasta combed her memory for information about the Falstead family but came up with precious little.
“Your mother?” she asked cautiously.
“Inherited the draper’s business and died when I was young, and Judith younger,” Jem said shortly. “Dixon & Co. continues under her family name, and will as long as I have breath. It is one thing my father no longer has power to ruin, since I bought out his shares long ago.”
“And Lord Payne is now a governor in the West Indies,” she ventured, trying to make some sense of his antipathy. “Does he—have a second wife?”
“Wife?” Jem turned his face to her, and she flinched, though his ferocity was not directed at her. “If only he would accord her that dignity. No, he brings Portia into his home and expects her to perform the duties of a wife at his board and in his bed, but on paper she is still enslaved. And so are her children.”
He turned his face away, his jaw hard as granite. “That is why I have brought the older ones here. And I’ll bring the younglings as well, as soon as he lets them leave.”
“Because, thanks to the Somersett case, they cannot be removed from England against their will,” Lucasta realized. “How many others?”
“Two yet living, and I gather she is anticipating another happy event, from the steward’s last letter. The child may already have put feet to earth, given how long it would take a letter to arrive.”
Lucasta gathered her courage. She had already decided she must separate herself from Jeremiah Falstead, for her own peace of mind; she lost nothing by being honest. “What is it you despise, Rudyard? The institution of slavery, or the mixing of races?”
This time his furious expression was directed at her. Lucasta lifted her chin.
“You can still ask me that?” His voice sounded pained, rather than threatening.
“I’m afraid I must. You called my friend a zebra.”
“Oh, Jem, that was true?” Bertie said with dismay. “I was hoping it was simply Clara Bellwether being vicious.”
“I was remarking on her gown!” Rudyard shouted, jerking on the ribbons as the vehicle in front of them stopped abruptly. “Those stripes were an offense to the eye.”
He turned his body to face her, hands clenched on the ribbons, and Lucasta drowned in a wave of heat as his eyes burned into her.
“Let me be very clear, Miss Lithwick, about what I detest. Not only do I regret that the vile institution of slavery has enriched the Falstead family to the violence and ruination of a great many human lives, but I find my father’s behavior reprehensible. Even if Portia were a British citizen, I doubt he would do her thecourtesy of marrying her and legitimizing her children. I have made my feelings clear to him with very little effect.”
He turned back to face the street. “And since he knows I plan to get rid of the plantation and free its people the moment the title passes to me, he runs the estate for no other purpose than his own immediate enrichment. It is a belief my uncles before him held, and my grandfather still holds, I am sorry to say.”
At Bertie’s stifled moan, he threw a pitying glance over his shoulder. “Not you, Bertie. I know that.”
“I still benefit,” Bertie said, her tone hollow. “We all do.” She looked down at the picture hat in her hands.
“I do as well,” Lucasta answered. “I eat sugar. I wear cotton, which British ships will no doubt begin bringing from the American colonies again, now that hostilities have ceased.”
Rudyard regarded her sternly. “You ought to wear linen, bought only from my shop.”
“Perhaps I shall.” Ah, another reason to draw near to him, stay close, live within his realm, and know whatever she might be foolish enough to long for could never come to pass. Lucasta tugged at the worn finger of a glove. “Thank you for introducing me to your family, Rudyard. I consider it an honor.”
He kept his profile to her. “Enough to forgive me for being a dandy concerned only with the arrangement of my necktie?”
She allowed herself a smile, relieved at his lightening of the moment. “You may show great care for your neckclothandstill entertain other attachments. I see that now.”
Again he shrugged, as if he were throwing off some unwanted touch. Lucasta studied the breadth of his shoulders beneath the finely cut coat. However thin the approval of the fashionable world might appear, he had it. In addition, he ran a successful business and was heir to a wealthy estate along with one of the highest titles in the kingdom. Add to that his physical stature,and Jeremiah Falstead was a powerful man, a man of presence and command in addition to his wealth.
None of that seemed likehim. He’d seemed most authentic, most at his ease, in the tiny parlor of his Little Chelsea cottage, watching his family interrogate her.
