Page 79 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

A handful of older men from the House stood closer to the fire, men who had known Mr. Whitmore and the former Duke of Ashvale in their day, whose faces Julian recognized from a lifetime of being introduced to them at other men’s funerals. And near the door, trying with limited success to look as though they belonged there, stood the journalists.

Julian counted nine of them.

“You said eight,” Julian murmured to his brother as they crossed the threshold.

“I said at least eight.” Piers did not look remotely apologetic. “The ninth turned up on his own. I could hardly send him away. It would only have made him more determined to write something inventive.”

“You are enjoying this.”

“I am enjoying watching you be brave in public, yes. It is a beautiful sight.”

Julian did not answer that, because the room had noticed him, and the low hum of conversation was already folding itself into silence.

Mr. Harding met him near the front, statement in hand, and passed it over with a small nod that might have been encouragement or simply relief that the waiting was over. Julian took it. The paper felt heavier than it had three days ago, though nothing about it had changed.

He looked up and found Thomas Whitmore standing near the back wall, half in shadow, his arms crossed over his chest in the particular way of a man holding himself together by sheer will.

Julian held his gaze for a moment until Thomas nodded once. Then he began to read.

He did not hurry through it, nor did he soften it. He described his father’s actions in plain terms. He spoke about the falsified accounts, the silence purchased and maintained for years, and did not permit himself the small mercy of qualifying any of it.

He distantly heard the murmurs of the solicitors when he mentioned the sum involved, but he did not pause. He named Vane next, his voice unwavering, though he felt something in his chest tighten as he laid out exactly what Thomas’s letters and the financial records had shown: the payments, the dates, the silence bought twice over.

A man near the fire made a low sound of disgust. Another simply shook his head, as though confirming something he had long suspected and never wanted proven.

Julian did not look at either of them. He looked only at the paper in his hands, and once at Thomas.

“… and it is the sincere wish of this family,” he read, “that the name of Edward Whitmore be restored, without qualification, to the standing it was so wrongly denied. Toward that end, and toward whatever measure of restitution can be made where restitution is possible, this family pledges what its finances will bear, and offers beyond that its sincerest apology.”

He lowered the paper.

For a moment, no one spoke. Then, from somewhere near the back, one of the journalists began writing, and the sound of pencil on paper seemed to break whatever spell had held the room, because after that the murmuring began in earnest.

He looked at them—people who have just watched something happen that they will spend the next several days describing to others.

Thomas crossed the room before Julian had fully lowered his arm. He did not speak. He simply held out his hand, and Julian took it. They stood like that in front of solicitors and lords and journalists who would no doubt describe the moment tomorrow in much more flattering terms than either of them would have chosen for themselves.

Piers stood at his shoulder the whole while, exactly as promised, and clapped him once on the back the moment the room began to empty.

“Well, that is done,” he said.

“It is.”

“You look as though you expected to feel worse than you presently do.”

“I did expect to feel much worse.” Julian found, turning the observation over, that it was entirely true. “Instead, I feel lighter than I have in longer than I care to measure.”

* * *

Julian had braced himself for backlash. He had spent the days after half-expecting to find his name dragged through the same mud he had voluntarily walked into. He had also rehearsed, in the small hours, the arguments he would need to make should the House or the papers decide that his father’s sins were his to answer for after all.

It did not come. Instead, men he barely knew stopped him in the street to shake his hand. A dowager of considerable standing, whom he had met perhaps twice in his life, sent a note praising his courage in terms so effusive that he had been faintly embarrassed reading it over breakfast.

Whatever outrage there might have been seemed to have been thoroughly and wholly directed at Sir Edmund Vane.

Vane’s collapse, once it began, did not take long. Within the week, the same newspapers that had carried Julian’s statement were carrying less flattering accounts of Vane’s conduct. They were drawn, Julian understood, from the letters Thomas had supplied and corroborated by several of Vane’s former associates, who appeared to have been waiting years for sufficient cover to say plainly what they had long known. His clubs revoked his memberships. The ton ceased inviting him to social events within a fortnight.

A few days later, Dominic arrived at Ashvale with the satisfaction of bearing excellent news.