Mr. Carson nodded. “I hope it would show the extent of my gratitude for what you are all doing for me.”
Her father appeared delighted and accepted the offer. After refusing to stay for dinner, he left them to their evening. While they awaited the cook’s summons, Amity told stories about her wedding trip, visiting chocolate factories both in England and France.
“When we weren’t eating or drinking chocolate, we were drinking coffee in some of my husband’s favorite coffeehouses. As he mentioned earlier, he’s had the pleasure of taking coffee nearly everywhere it is served. Do you like coffee, Mr. Carson?”
“Yes, my lady—” He interrupted himself and held up his hand before Beatrice could correct him. “I mean, yes, Duchess. We are quite fond of coffee in New York where I’m from. Also, I’ve traveled extensively across the United States, and people drink it almost exclusively, with practically no one drinking tea.”
“No tea?” Amity wondered.
“Remember, my love,” the duke said, “after the tea was tossed into the harbor of Boston because of high taxes, the Americans decided tea was too English. Coffee is their patriotic drink of choice.”
“What about chocolate?” Amity asked.
Beatrice watched Mr. Carson shake his head. “No, ma’am, I mean, Your Grace. I haven’t seen a lot of people drinking chocolate.”
“And you are giving up your home in America for Scotland?” asked the duke.
“There is nothing for me in the States anymore,” Mr. Carson said. “Here, I seek a new life and an old legacy. As soon as I arrived, I went directly to southern Scotland to look at the estate. I decided I would let it be the deciding factor as to whether I attempted to gain a titled wife or let it go out of the family.”
“I take it you liked it,” Beatrice said. “Or we wouldn’t be doing this charade.”
He turned his gray-blue eyes to hers, and she nearly flinched at the intensity of his gaze. “I loved it, Miss Rare-Foure. It was like nothing I’d ever seen, maybe because I knew my grandfather had been born there. Just over the Scottish border, past the fork where the River Esk branches off as Liddel Water, it’s located between Canonbie and Rowanburn. It’s called Carsonbank.” He laughed, perhaps self-conscious at the name. “I confess some of it is derelict, but you can discern its former beauty. It was built in the 1720s in the neoclassical style.”
“Is there anyone living there now?”
“A very small staff paid by a trust set up by my great-grandfather, who died thirty years after my grandfather moved to America. His older brother, the only heir who remained in Scotland, died shortly after that. And it’s been empty of Carsons ever since.”
“You would think they would appreciate any member of the family wishing to return and renovate it,” the duke pointed out.
“My great-grandfather was, by all accounts, an irascible coot. He was a baron, his father was a baron, and he wanted a titled heir living in the house. I don’t think my grandfather thought his emigrating to America would cause such a problem. If I didn’t believe the estate worth saving, I would walk away from it. But there was a painting in one of the rooms that looked like my father, even though I know it wasn’t he. It reminded me that my blood is in those walls and on that land, something I never felt in New York.”
“Does it turn a profit or go further into debt each year?” asked the duke, with the practicality of a landowner.
“I couldn’t believe it, but it does turn a profit, from rents on the estate and from the sheep still being tended and a tremendous amount of wool sold to mills. But there’s been no one to put the revenue back into the main house, not even to patch up the ceiling. It’s all in a trust, waiting for a Carson to come along and take over.”
“Dinner is ready, Your Grace,” said a footman who had entered on silent feet.
Beatrice glanced at Amity, unable to keep from smiling, and knew they were thinking the same thing. How different was her sister’s current dinner announcement from that at their home on Baker Street! Sometimes their father yelled to his girls, sometimes Charlotte was enlisted by him to use the awful skill he’d taught her, summoning her sisters with a whistle. Failing either of those, if their lackadaisical butler, Mr. Finley, didn’t bother to find them, they might miss the start of dinner altogether.
Amity shrugged, looking so sweet Beatrice felt her heart squeeze with happiness for her sister’s good fortune. And then their small group went into the magnificent dining room, still decorated as the Dowager Duchess of Pelham had left it before she’d moved out recently, giving the newlyweds privacy. The wallpaper was the brilliant green of a dragonfly, with accents of gold. Beatrice wondered if her sister would keep it that way. It seemed a bit last-century and gaudy, not that she would ever say anything.
Over dinner, Mr. Carson treated them to stories about riding the rails, as he called it.
“I was sent off by my mother’s only brother to learn the business of railroads by observing the ashcat, the bug slinger, or the Brains, also known as the conductor. I became a railway boomer, doing whatever temporary job needed doing, and I got to see a lot of the towns that dot the American west.”
Beatrice understood little of what he was saying, and thought, by the way her sister and her new brother-in-law nodded politely, the same was true for them.
“Your mother and father don’t mind you taking an English bride?” Beatrice asked, having been curious for days about his parents.
He glanced at her, then shrugged. “They are both deceased. My mother died two months ago, and thus, here I am, having realized from documents that came to light after her death how I might benefit from the institute of marriage. My father perished in the War of the Rebellion, our Civil War, if you will, during the final months of it, in early 1865. I was young and kept hoping as the men came home, he would, too. But then we received word of his death.”
If Beatrice knew him better, she would swear she heard a note of bitterness, but she might be mistaken. Strange to think his father, a first-generation American, had fought and died for that country, and yet Mr. Carson said he’d felt at home in Scotland. For her part, she couldn’t imagine going to a new country and starting over, but then, she had her parents and her sisters. The American had no one, and she was more determined than ever to help him.
After offering condolences, the duke asked about the devastation of losing a generation of young men, even wondering if twenty years later, America was short of labor. Mr. Carson grew thoughtful.
“In many families, decisions were made how many brothers to send into battle. My mother’s parents got rich from Pennsylvania petroleum and had but one son. Therefore, my uncle did not have to go to war, although he paid handsomely for the uniforms and upkeep of three men who went in his place. Ultimately, my mother’s family had to move north to New York when the Confederate Army occupied their city of York. They lost everything. As for my father, as an only son with a wife and young child, not to mention having married into wealth, he could probably have bought his way out of the war, too. Nevertheless, he chose to go.”
Again, Beatrice thought she heard an undertone of disapproval over his father’s actions. Perhaps the young man he was at the time, hardly more than a boy, couldn’t conceive of a father choosing war over his family if it were at all possible to avoid.
