Another of the paper men grimaced. “There’s a legend, or a rumor, that when MacKittrick stepped up onto the gallows, he cursed the newly minted Lattimer title and everything that went with it.”
“What’s the curse?” Gabriel asked, folding his arms over his chest. If it was something about contented soldiers being pulled away from their duties for no good reason other than to listen to scrawny men who refused to give straight answers about anything, it was time for a drink.
“It’s the nonsense of which I was speaking, Your Grace. The curse is merely an excuse for the steward to use every time something goes wrong.”
“Mr. Blething, the four of you have been throwing figures and papers at me for three days with the relentlessness of an invading army. In that time you have regaled me with every useless bit of inane information at your disposal.” Gabriel took a slow breath, trying to keep hold of his temper. “Tell me something useful.”
In all likelihood the Lattimer cursewasa basketful of idiocy, but the reluctance of the solicitors to discuss it made it more interesting than anything else he’d heard since he’d left Spain, and far more intriguing than deciding whether to sell Ronald Leeds’s collection of rooster portraits or use them for target practice.
The second paper man found an old, stained piece of vellum. “Evidently while frothing at the mouth in either madness or fury, Malcolm MacKittrick declared that in English hands the land would turn to ruin, that any who allied with the English usurper would perish, and that the Lattimer line would fail.”
“Considering it took you and the Crown better than six months to find an heir for Ronald Leeds,” Kelgrove noted, “it seems like part of that might’ve come true.”
“Nonsense,” Blething stated again. It seemed to be the solicitor’s favorite word. That and “income.” “The new Duke of Lattimer is here. The line hasn’t ended.”
“The line took a ball through the arm the day your letter reached him.”
“What about the rest of it?” Gabriel asked, figuring Kelgrove had won that argument. “The ruined land and the dead allies?”
“I’m certain no one’s perished because of a curse, Your Grace.”
“You’re certain, are you? And the ruin?”
“Your Grace, you must understand that—”
“I understand that I’m beginning to lose my sense of humor.”
The solicitor grimaced. “It is a complicated matter. I have, over the past eight or nine months, since the duke’s—the former duke’s—illness, sent correspondence to Mr. Kieran Blackstock, Lattimer’s steward. The first four letters went unanswered. The fifth letter, which I couched in sterner language because of His Grace’s death, was returned to me five months ago. Inside, over my writing, I found scrawled the words ‘Threaten me again and you’ll find a dirk through your gizzard, English.’” He cleared his throat.
Ah, battle.Gabriel didn’t bother hiding his amusement. “Let’s see it.”
“Beg pardon?”
“You said the letter was returned five months ago. Show it to me.”
These men thought him an idiot best suited to shooting and punching, he knew, but they still did what he ordered them to do. Not out of respect or a sense of duty, but because he now controlled that flimsy thing known as purse strings. These paper men clung to those like a babe to its mother’s teat.
As the solicitor on the far left nodded at his fellows and then bent down to dig through a file of papers, Gabriel clenched his jaw. He knew all about paper men. Paper men far away from war decided how many deaths were an “acceptable” loss and whether ten or a dozen lead balls would be sufficient per soldier to win a battle. They saw numbers and profit, not sweat and death. Generally he stayed as far away from accountants and solicitors as he could manage, and now here four of them were bowing to him and employed by him—four being, he assumed, the correct number required to tell him what he now owned.
Finally the missive appeared. He grabbed it out of the paper man’s soft hand before any of them could decide he was incapable of reading all the words himself. The solicitor’s letter was of course many-syllabic and fairly threatening, with words like “legal action,” “required by law,” and “easily replaceable” sprinkled throughout. Crossways over the neat lines of words, and written in a large, bold script, sprawled the gizzard threat in heavy black ink.
“Kieran Blackstock, you said?” he commented, handing the letter over his shoulder to Kelgrove. A large part of him wished he’d made that same response when they’d sent the letter naming him a duke.
“Yes, Your Grace. A Scotsman, who inherited the position from his father, I believe.” Blething’s tone implied that the fellow’s employment hadn’t been his doing.
Gabriel stood. “Then we have our orders, don’t we, Sergeant?”
“That we do, Major. Your Grace.”
The paper men all scrambled to their feet. “I assure you, Your Grace, we have been overseeing the Lattimer finances for decades. This Blackstock barbarian will be replaced, as soon as we receive your approval, by someone more reasonable and duty-minded. We will have a report on the financial status of the estate by… by the end of the month.”
“No.”
“I… No?”
“No,” Gabriel repeated. “You go on putting your numbers in columns and rows.Iwill see to Lattimer Castle, Mr. Blackstock, and to finding a replacement steward who better knows his duty. And it won’t take me a damned month.” He settled his officer’s shako over his head. “Good day, gentlemen.”
“But we haven’t yet settled on your monthly allowance, or where you wish to set up residence, the hiring of new staff—a valet, for goodness’ sake—or—”
