Page 6 of The Raven’s Lady

The duchess’s gaze swung to Honoria, still twisting the ends of her shawl. “Honoria, whatever are you in a quake about?”

Honoria’s gaze darted from Lady Cassandra back to the duchess. “There’s been a terrible mistake, Lottie. Sir Adrian wishes to buy Verwood.”

The unblinking icy-blue gaze turned from Honoria back to Raven. Cassandra Lavenham’s shoulders slumped.

“Then he’d best be on his way,” the dowager announced. “All the iron and glass in England can’t buy Verwood. It is not for sale. This house has belonged to the Lavenhams since 1485. Honoria, Cassie, bid the man good day.” The duchess turned. The young footman sprang forward to open the door, and the dowager swept out. Honoria rose and scuttled after her.

The door closed behind her, leaving Adrian, Trimley, and Lady Cassandra in the room with its crimson silk walls and gilt furnishings. Lady Cassandra had not hurried after her relations. Adrian took that as a favorable sign.

Somewhere beyond the red room another door banged shut, and Lady Cassandra Lavenham came to her feet. Raven took in her appearance again. The long-sleeved pale-blue gown was several years out-of-date to his London-trained eye, and well-worn. Its only claim to fashion a strip of gold velvet trim at the waist. An incongruous pair of sturdy boots, still showing bits of mud, peeked from under the hem. It was plain that she was in dire need of funds.

“I’m sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused you, Sir Adrian,” she said. “I thank you again for your intervention on behalf of Dick Crockett earlier. It was most kindly done. Good day to you.” With a nod she turned away.

“Wait,” he said. “I am still very interested in the lease of Verwood.”

She stopped and glanced back at him. Her dark straight brows went up. “Did you miss how highly offended my grandmother is?”

“But you,” he said, “are of a more practical turn of mind. If I can convince her to reconsider, may I have your support?”

“You think you can appease my grandmother? You can’t simply wave Bank of England notes at her.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

She regarded him with frank puzzlement. “Why, may I ask, are you so interested in Verwood?”

He did not intend to tell her that, at least not just yet. It would all come out when he’d succeeded in his purpose, when his triumph was complete. “It is exactly the sort of property I’ve been looking for since I came into my … inheritance. It will suit me perfectly to establish myself in a neighborhood among country families. You said earlier that in the country one knows one’s neighbors.”

*

From the top of Verwood’s south steps Raven looked down the long, straight, chestnut-lined avenue. The trees were newly in leaf, sparkling in the rain’s aftermath. The tall spikes of bloom that would produce chestnuts in the fall, swayed in the last of the breeze. In the distance, the avenue passed a smallish lake on its way to the lodge with its Lion Gates. He could not fault the taste of the dead dukes of Verwood, nor did he wonder at the dowager for clinging to her horses when she could no longer afford them. Verwood was not a place to relinquish easily.

In the end, Raven believed Lady Cassandra would come to terms. Plainly, she was the practical one of the three. While her aunt dithered and wrung her hands over the difficulties of moving household, and her grandmother waved away what was beneath her notice, Lady Cassandra would accept the inevitable. Raven would have his lease, and an option to purchase the entire estate should the duchess pass away. In time, he knew, Verwood would be his. He could sense it as he had always sensed opportunity.

He never doubted his luck. Even when the Reverend Clumber had pronounced Raven unworthy of a place at college, Raven had known that he would move freely in a world far beyond the banks of the Thames or the Cam. And Clumber, for all his self-appointed role as guardian at the gates of rank, had indirectly shown Raven the way.

It had been Clumber’s practice to take his pupils on walking tours of ancient Britain, to the ruins of Roman and Saxon settlements. The one summer that Raven had been admitted to the group, he and the others had scrambled over the shale rocks of the coast west of Poole and come upon bronze Roman arm bands and the substantial remains of an ambitious seventeenth century glassworks. Raven had seen at once what held no interest for the others. The old glassworks might be a ruin, but the man of vision who built it had risen in the world and set his heirs on a path to become sirs and lords, men of influence and consideration in the world.

When Raven left college, he talked his grandfather into buying a bankrupt glassworks in Shoreditch. Making the old glassworks profitable, he told his grandfather, would be his education, not Cambridge.

Reluctantly, his grandfather had agreed. Raven bought the existing inventory and machinery at auction, tracked down and hired the out-of-work artisans, and established the new works on seven acres of vacant land on the river. At first the business supplied mirrors to cabinet makers, but in an age of vanity and fashion, Raven’s mirrors had drawn the king’s notice and a royal patent. Raven had expanded the business, shipping glass ingots around the world to places starved for English goods, and experimenting with mechanical presses. In time, he was sure, London shopkeepers would fuel a demand for plate glass in ever larger smooth panes through which passing patrons could view the goods for sale. Cole’s Cast Plate and Glass Manufacturers was ready. Soon his glassworks would produce a million square feet of plate glass a year.

That was before the fire. Since the burning of the Houses of Parliament, with the role of a Cole fire engine in the saving of Westminster Hall and his own knighthood, both the original Cole iron works and the new glass manufactory had been flooded with orders.

The carriage rumbled through the iron gates from the stable complex. Trimley, when pressed, had admitted that the stables were a separate piece of the estate, the use of any part of them to be negotiated separately. Trimley had been eloquent about the grandeur of the facilities. Raven had seen for himself the duchess in finery and her granddaughter in near rags. What Raven meant to determine was why the Verwood stables were draining money from the estate, not paying their way. He knew just the man to get to the bottom of that little mystery.

He would send Trimley back to London with his instructions, but Raven would put up at the Crown.

His carriage pulled to a stop at the foot of the stairs. Raven was getting ahead of himself, and he knew better. Once the ladies removed to the dower house, he would bring in an army of carpenters, plasterers, and painters until he had Verwood the way he wanted it. He knew there had been neglect and suspected there would be surprises—leaks, wood rot, crumbling mortar—but he had the blunt for anything the old house had to offer, and he knew how to manage men to get things done. For the first time since he had begun his search for a property, he allowed himself to think of what it all meant.

By midsummer he could step out of these doors, stroll to the stables, mount a horse, and be at Lord Ramsbury’s door within an hour. What had been beyond his reach from those London rooftops he had roamed as a boy with Jay and Lark, Rook, Finch, Swallow, and Robin was no more than a short ride away, Ramsbury’s daughter, Lady Amabel Haydon.

Chapter Four

A brilliant spring morning followed the rain of the day before. The birds started up shortly before first light, and by the time the kitchen fires were lit and the chocolate brewed, Cassie had escaped with a set of keys to the dower house. No one except William observed her leaving. Honoria was at her writing desk and Grandmama was riding.

There was nothing like the clear light of day to reveal truths one would rather not face. They were quite out of money, and Sir Adrian was their best hope of providing a respectable means of keeping Verwood solvent. He would be back, and Cassie wanted to be prepared for his return.

He had no idea what an immovable object her grandmama could be, but Cassie sensed that Sir Adrian was not easily swayed from his course. She had changed her opinion of him since their first meeting. What had seemed like kindness to Dick Crockett was perhaps mere annoyance at the inconvenience of the scene in the inn yard. Sir Adrian clearly had money to toss at problems to make them go away. The question that puzzled Cassie was why he wanted to toss money at Verwood. It seemed odd to her that he had fixed his attention on a small, relatively obscure Hampshire property at an inconvenient distance from London. If she understood his motive, she felt sure her position would be stronger. As it was, he had seen her true circumstances, the worn furnishings, old gown, and muddied boots. It irked her to think he was right. She had to be practical.