Yr. Friend, John.
I am concerned my letters are getting lost on their way to you. I have not heard back now in twice the time it usually takes for you to reply. Are you still receiving my letters? Is something wrong? Are you unwell in anyway? I am exceedingly anxious on your behalf and would appreciate a reply by the soonest return possible.
Yr. Friend, John.
Thirty-One
Phineas sat with a small table in front of him, quill poised over foolscap.
“What next, Jack?”
“That’s it. That’s all.” Jack moved a pile of books away from his still-splinted leg. The doctor said he was close to being able to put weight on it again, but not quite yet. Maybe next week.
The last fourteen weeks had been the most miserable of Jack’s life. Worse than the lost months after his broken engagement to Elizabeth, when he had often found himself drunk or raging or copulating with whores. Sometimes all three, at once.
And yes, he had had some drunken stupors in the first week after the Titchfield ball and Helen’s flight from London. But then the doctor had scolded him, warned Jack’s household staff not to let him indulge, upbraided his friends for bringing him whisky.
“The care for your leg will mean nothing if you rise from this bed in four months as a habitual drunk, Your Grace. You will break the leg again or you’ll break your skull or you’ll become yellow and bloated. You’ll die a young man in an old man’s body.”
Like my father did.
The doctor’s admonition cut through the haze of Jack’s pain and intoxication. Maybe because the man had been in the navy and was unfazed by Jack’s surliness and curse words.
“What the hell am I to do then in this goddamn bed, Doctor? How am I going to survive this fucking prison sentence?”
“Your body cannot be active so you must make your mind active to compensate. You can see to the administration of your duchy from afar, can’t you? And you should read. Read something that might involve you. Your duchy is in the Highlands? ReadThe Lady of the Lake, by Mr. Walter Scott, a Scottish poet. And you should write. Write letters to friends.”
“My friends are here. In London. They don’t need letters.”
“Surely there is someone you know, far from London, who is doing something of interest to you. Someone who might take pity on you and write you back and tell you of his own life. So you can remember there is more to the world than this room and your pain.”
Yes, there was such a person. Of course, there was.
Helen.
He drank no more whisky or wine or even small beer. He found himself sipping weak tea, all day, every day. Tea almost as weak as the tea he had drunk in the keep of the Countess of Kinmarloch.
He hired a new steward, a clever man who was frank and unapologetic. He instructed the steward to make sure the castle became a patron of the farmers and blacksmith of Kinmarloch. Money must flow to the earldom from Dunmore, but it must not appear to be charity.
He read extensively on the issue of clearances and then made offers to resettle farmers back in Dunmore. He had money enough to buy time for the duchy and the earldom. Time to find the livelihoods Helen had mentioned in her letter to the duke that she had written when she was still in London. Livelihoods that would support the people despite the barren soil and harsh conditions.
He had roped Phineas in. He had to. Phineas had penned the letter to Helen as the Duke of Dunmore, and that letter had not been found in the abandoned rooms. Helen could have taken the letter with her when she left London. She might compare the handwriting. The Duke of Dunmore must continue to write in Phineas’ sloping script.
Because it must be the duke who wrote to Helen, not Captain Pike. Jack was sure Helen wouldn’t answer any letters from the man who had fornicated with her and then put her up for sale on the marriage mart and exposed her to multiple indignities at the Titchfield ball.
He had difficulty exercising patience, waiting for her return letters. As soon as one arrived and he had read it a hundred times until he knew it by heart, he would thunder and bluster at his valet or his butler until someone went and fetched the Earl of Burchester so the Duke of Dunmore could reply to the Countess of Kinmarloch.
“You’re trying me,” Phineas had said a fortnight ago, dropping into a wing chair in Jack’s bedchamber.
One of Jack’s footmen, desperate not to return without the earl, had gone to the house of Phineas’ new mistress, Lady Starling, and had him roused from her bed.
“Some of us are trying to conduct affairs with women in person, you know.”
“Don’t rub it in, Phin,” Jack had growled. “Now, get ready to write.”
“It’s a good thing you saved my life years ago on theEndeavor, John MacNaughton. Otherwise, I would be breaking your other leg.”
“John MacNaughton didn’t save your life. Jack Pike did.”
