Page 58 of A Perfect Gentleman

“I was afraid you would despise Reginald for it.”

“Everyone always wanted to spare Reginald.”

“No,” Graeme said flatly. “Not for his sake. It was for yours. I didn’t want you to despise our—your—”

“My uncle?” James quirked a brow. “I don’t despise Reginald. How could one? He was unfaithful and foolish with money and generally left his tangles to someone else to clean up, but he was also charming and handsome and warmhearted. He never treated me with aught but affection and kindness, which is more than can be said of Sir Laurence. Reginald was as he was, just as Sir Laurence was only what he could be. All of us have managed to rub along without creating a terrible scandal. That is all that could be expected.”

“I suppose,” Graeme said somewhat dubiously.

“Are you certain Reginald embezzled the money?” James said, abandoning the moment of introspection.

Graeme’s gaze sharpened. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I find it difficult to believe it of him. You called him honorable and I said proud, but wherever the truth lies in there, he was not the sort of man to put a stain on the family name—not of that sort, anyway. Sleeping with another man’s wife was one thing, but common thievery? I wouldn’t think so.”

“I believed it then. But now I am beginning to wonder. Before he was shot, Baker told Abigail that we hadn’t been told the whole story. He asked her for money in return for information that he intimated would throw a different light on the matter.”

“Unfortunate that he died before he could tell you.”

“Especially for him.” Graeme tossed down the whiskey and set his glass aside. “We called on his widow and she said Baker knew my father had not embezzled the money; it was someone else.”

“Who?”

“She didn’t know.”

“Not frightfully helpful.”

“The thing is, I believed my father had embezzled the money because he was the one who told me it was gone. He said he was to blame. I assumed he meant he had taken the money, but looking back on it, I see that he might have meant that it was his responsibility and he must repay it. That because he was in control of it, he must bear the blame.”

“It’s the sort of thing he would do.” James’s tone made clear his words were not admiring. “He would have been more concerned about concealing the scandal than about exposing the culprit.”

“Abby—Abigail and I thought we might look into it, see if we could discover what really happened.”

“Why? I cannot imagine you opening up that old scandal for the world to see.”

“No. It would be just for me.” He looked at James. “I would like to know whether my father was really a thief. Perhaps I misjudged him all these years.”

“I wouldn’t want to delve into that bit of soul-searching if I were you.”

“It’s better than not knowing the truth.”

“Just how do you plan to go about discovering the truth?”

“I am sure Father kept records on the charity, correspondence and such, and I hoped I could find something there—at least the names of those involved in it. But so far we haven’t been able to find even a scrap of paper about it. That’s why we were late to tea today; we’d been in the attic searching for his old business papers.”

“Ah. So that’s the reason.” James’s eyes twinkled.

“Yes.” Graeme sent him a flat look.

“I take it you did not find them.”

“No. There’s more attic to explore, but even if we find the trunk with the papers, I fear we won’t find anything about the charity in it. I’m the one who put the papers in the trunk to begin with, and I don’t remember any of them pertaining to the charity.”

“What’s left then? Talking to these chaps Mother remembered?”

“Probably. The ones who are still alive, at least. But something Grandmother said started me thinking. She said it was her opinion Father used the invalid soldiers’ fund to relieve his boredom at the estate. And it occurred to me that much of his work with it would have been at Lydcombe Hall—perhaps the bulk of it, if she’s right.”

“Lady Eugenia is always right.”