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Jess sat down in the chair indicated and gazed at the bad oil paintings of bygone Bowlbys on the walls. He reflected amusedly that it had been easier for him to see Mr Coutts in his London office than Mr Bowlby in his country one—but then Mr Coutts knew exactly who he was and all that Mr Bowlby knew was that he was Miss Jesmond’s nephew.
The door opened and Mr Bowlby emerged, followed by his clerk. He extended a welcoming hand.
‘Always honoured to meet the late Miss Jesmond’s nephew,’ he boomed, his fat face one smile. ‘Pray step this way, sir,’ and he flourished a hand towards the parlour where he offered Jess a seat in an armchair facing his large and imposing desk.
‘Now, sir, what may I do for you?’
Jess looked round the comfortable room before saying, ‘First of all, I should like to take charge of the deeds of Jesmond House, which I believed are lodged with you. Was there any particular reason why they were not given to the keeping of her solicitor, Mr Crane?’
‘None, sir, none. But I had been a friend of Miss Jesmond’s for many years and when she indicated that she wished me to retain them for safekeeping after she had paid off her mortgage, I did not argue with her. I shall have them delivered to you at Jesmond House tomorrow. What else may I do for you, sir?’
‘I would like to open a small working account with you, so that I have a source of income here in Netherton. Nothing large, you understand. My main account will remain at Coutts.’
Mr Bowlby rubbed his fat hands together and said in the manner of a wise man instructing a foolish one, ‘Will not that present some difficulties for you, sir, if you intend to remain in Netherton? Would it not be wiser to have your main account here, rather than at a distance? Our reputation is an excellent one.’
For some reason Jess found that he did not like Mr Bowlby. He could not have said exactly why, but years of working with Ben Wolfe had first honed his intuition and then had led him to trust it. Nothing of this showed. He poured his charm—noted among the circles in which he moved in London—over the man before him.
‘Since I have not yet made up my mind whether I intend to make Netherton my permanent home, I think it wise to retain my present financial arrangements. You are happy to have a small account on your books, I trust.’
He did not add that transferring his full account to Bowlby’s Bank would have enlightened the man before him of the true extent of his wealth—something which he preferred to remain a secret. His trust Mr Bowlby would have to earn, since Jess Fitzroy had long since learned that nothing was ever to be taken for granted in the world of business and finance. Only time would tell how far he could trust Mr Bowlby.
‘Certainly, certainly, no account too small, sir. I was but trying to assist you. Finance is a tricky business and gentlemen frequently find themselves adrift in it.’
Not surprising if their metaphors are as mixed as yours, was Jess’s inward comment while Mr Bowlby roared on, ‘And is there nothing further we can do for you?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Jess sweetly. ‘You may inform me of the way to Mr Crane’s office where I also have business.’
‘With pleasure, sir,’ and he walked Jess to the bank’s front door before pointing out Mr Crane’s front door as cheerfully as the ostler had done.
But Jess did not leave him a tip.
Instead, he bowed his thanks and walked the few yards down the street to Mr Crane’s office, where something of a surprise waited for him.
The surprise was not Mr Crane, who was an elderly gentleman whose manner was as quiet and pleasant as Mr Bowlby’s had been noisy and officious. His office was quiet, too. No oil paintings, Jess noticed, just a small water-colour showing a country view with sheep in the foreground and a river in the distance.
Instead, the surprise consisted of Mr Crane’s information as to the extent of his inheritance.
‘I fear that I misled you, sir. When I came to investigate Miss Jesmond’s financial position more fully I found that, in fact, her estate was less than half of what I had originally indicated to you in my earlier letters. It seemed that she invested unwisely, sold off good stock and bought bad. I spoke to Mr Bowlby about the matter and he confirmed that she had refused his advice and depended on that of a friend who claimed that he had been an expert in the City. At one point, she did so badly that she was compelled to borrow from the bank, lodging her house deeds as security—although I understand that she later paid off the loan. In order to do so, she sold him a large part of what had been Jesmond land for many years.’
‘But Mr Bowlby retained the deeds,’ Jess said slowly, ‘even after she had repaid the loan. He has promised to forward them to me tomorrow.’
‘Oh, you must understand that she trusted Mr Bowlby, who had been so kind to her, and allowed them to remain with him. Of course, until she was compelled to take out the mortgage, they were in my charge. I saw no need to bring pressure on her to lodge them with me again. They were safe where they were.’
‘Oh, that explains it,’ said Jess—who thought that it didn’t.
‘I repeat that I am sorry that I unintentionally deceived you over your inheritance. I did not realise that matters had gone so ill with her. I hope that you have not yet made any unbreakable decisions based on its apparent original size.’
‘Not at all,’ said Jess, who had regarded his aunt’s money as a bonus. He had been more interested in the house in which the bank no longer had any interest. He was surprised that Mr Bowlby had said nothing of these matters when he had indicated his misgivings over the bank’s holding the house deeds. Or was he surprised? He wondered what advantage Mr Bowlby thought that he was gaining by holding on to them. Nor had Bowlby informed him that it was he who had bought his aunt’s lands so that she might pay off the mortgage: that transaction had never been mentioned.
He also thought that Mr Bowlby had supposed him to be a gentleman who knew little of matters financial and therefore might be fobbed off with an incomplete story—which raised, in Jess’s mind, further suspicions as to his motives.
Mr Crane was still speaking. ‘There are some documents for you to sign, Mr Fitzroy, which will, in effect, transfer all her inheritance to you. It will then be your decision whether I continue to act for you as I did for her.’
‘For the moment,’ returned Jess coolly. ‘Until I have made up my mind what I intend to do, you may continue as my solicitor here—for my business in Netherton only. It is only fair to inform you that I have a solicitor in London who will continue to act for me there. Your interests will not conflict with his. My London affairs have nothing to do with Miss Jesmond’s estate.’
Mr Crane nodded. ‘I understand. If they do, then I must ask to be relieved of my responsibilities to you.”
Jess rose, bowed and sat down again.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘let us get down to business. You will be good enough to tell me all the details of the late Miss Jesmond’s estate which are in your possession and not those of Banker Bowlby.’
Mr Crane looked up sharply. Mr Jesmond Fitzroy had spoken coolly to him throughout in a most offhand manner, but he was not sure that his first impression of him as a charmingly lightweight young man was necessarily the true one.
And what had he meant by his last remark about Banker Bowlby?
He did not enquire and Jess said nothing further to make Mr Crane ponder on the true nature of his visitor. He listened quietly to the old solicitor’s exposition of Miss Jesmond’s admittedly muddled affairs, offering no opinions of his own before leaving with mutual expressions of goodwill.
He strolled along the street, familiarising himself with its layout before returning to the inn to collect his gig. After he had driven out of the White Lion’s stable-yard, he found himself behind a chaise which followed the road which led to Jesmond House until it turned off into the drive to Pomfret Hall some half-mile before Jess reached his own gates. He noted idly that Mrs Pomfret had visitors and wondered whether he would meet them at supper.
His main preoccupation was with his morning’s work and in particular with Banker Bowlby and with what Mr Crane had—and had not—told him…
‘Garth! What brings you here? And why did you not inform us that you were coming to visit us? Georgie, pray ring for the housekeeper—she must prepare a room for my brother immediately.’
Sir Garth Manning made no attempt to answer his sister’s questions. He was too busy smiling at Georgie, who was, for once, dressed demurely in Quaker’s grey with a high white linen collar trimmed with lace, as were the cuffs of her long sleeves.
‘Oh, don’t fuss, Caro. I never stand on ceremony, you know that. I always do things on impulse. Much the best way—one never knows what or who one may encounter next. And, to prove my point today, I have found your sister-in-law. I had no notion that she was staying with you—which proves my claim about the unexpected being best. You look charming, dear sister—I may call you dear sister, may I not?’
Georgina, who had never cared overmuch for Sir Garth, would have liked to retort to him with ‘No, you may not,’ but her regrets over her recent encounter with Jesmond Fitzroy had made her a little wary about being needlessly rude to gentlemen.
She simply gave him an enigmatic smile which he took for agreement. ‘Sister it shall be then. I cannot be constantly calling you Mrs Herron, most clumsy.’
‘But accurate,’ Georgie could not help retorting.
‘True, true—but how boring the truth often is, you must agree?’
Georgie could scarcely contradict him. Nothing could be more boring than the truth which Jesmond Fitzroy had served up to her the other day. It seemed that thinking of him had almost brought him to life for Caro exclaimed to her brother, who had sat down beside her and was fanning her gently, ‘Oh, Garth, it is most apropos that you have come. We shall now have not one, but two, handsome and unattached men with whom to entertain Netherton!’
‘Two,’ remarked Sir Garth archly. ‘Pray, who is the other? I am not sure whether or not I am pleased to learn that I have a rival.’
It took Georgie all her powers of restraint not to inform him that he and Mr Fitzroy would make a good pair so far as being obnoxious was concerned. Caro, on the other hand, was only too happy to inform her brother of the new owner of Jesmond House.
‘Plenty of tin, has he?’ enquired Sir Garth negligently.
‘So one supposes,’ she said, ‘but I have not yet met him. He is to sup with us this evening and then you may pass judgement on him. At least he has Miss Jesmond’s inheritance, which cannot be small.’
Sir Garth raised dark eyebrows. He was dark altogether, glossy-haired, with a saturnine hawk-like face, rather like, Georgie thought fancifully, a villain in one of Mrs Radcliffe’s Gothic romances.
‘Perhaps,’ he returned enigmatically. ‘The old lady was light in the attic towards the end, was she not? Sold all that land to pay for bad investments. If you want to hook him for yourself, Caro, be sure that you find out exactly how deep his purse is. Another unfortunate marriage—begging your pardon, dear sister Georgie—would be one too many.’
Caro simpered, ‘Oh, seeing that we have not yet met, are you not being a little forward, brother, in handing him to me for a husband?’
‘My habit, Caro dear, is always to further your interests,’ he assured her. ‘It’s a cruel world we live in. One needs to know one’s way about it. All that glisters is not gold.’
Georgie thought that Sir Garth knew whereof he spoke. She wondered cynically if he had arrived in Netherton to lie low at his sister’s expense—or to recoup himself, perhaps. She did not believe that Netherton was at all the sort of place which he would choose to frequent—unless necessity drove him there.
‘It’s your good luck that I am here to inspect him, my dear. I look forward to the evening.’
So, apparently, did Caro. She arrived in the drawing room where Georgie was looking at an album of the Beauties of Britain while waiting for Mr Fitzroy to arrive. She received the full benefit of Caro’s elaborate toilette.
For once her sister-in-law did not immediately make for the sofa, but instead pirouetted in the centre of the room, waving her fan and looking coyly over the top of it.
‘How do I look, Georgie? Will I do?’
Georgie, inspecting her, had to confess that her sister-in-law had seldom looked more enchanting. Her golden hair, her blue eyes and her pink and white prettiness were undiminished although she was nearing thirty.
She was wearing an evening dress of the palest blue trimmed with transparent gauze and decorated with small sprays of silk forget-me-nots. Her fair curls were held in place by a small hoop of the same silken flowers mounted on a ribbon of slightly deeper blue. Her slippers were frail things of white kid.
All in all it seemed that three years of sitting on the sofa doing nothing and letting others worry on her behalf had enhanced rather than marred her good looks. If she had become slightly plumper as a consequence of her lengthy idleness, her figure was so charmingly rounded that most gentlemen, Georgie conceded glumly, would have nothing but admiration for it.
And all this hard work over the past few hours was for Mr Jesmond Fitzroy—as Sir Garth immediately remarked when he entered to find Caro in her glory and Georgie, as usual, feeling eclipsed by it.
Her own green outfit with its cream silk trimmings seemed drab and ordinary, but Sir Garth bowed over her hand as though she were beauty’s self and complimented her on her appearance with, ‘When last I met you, many years ago now, you were only the humble little sister, but time has worked its magic on you to transform you.’
How in the world did one answer anything quite so fulsome? Georgie put down her book and offered him a meek thank-you, and was saved from further extravagant nonsense by the announcement of Mr Jesmond Fitzroy’s arrival.
Any hope that she had possessed that her memory had played her false by enhancing his good looks and his perfect self-command flew away when he entered. If anything, she had under-rated his good lucks and the ease with which he wore his good, but unspectacular, clothes.
She heard Caro draw a sharp breath when he bowed over her hand. Sir Garth, more sophisticated in the ways of the great world, raised his quizzing glass to inspect the visitor more closely, drawling, ‘I thought that we might have come across one another before in town although your name is not familiar, but I see that I was wrong.’
Jess surveyed him coolly. So this was Mrs Pomfret’s brother, the owner of the carriage which he had seen earlier that day. He was a regular London beau with all the hallmarks of one who moved in good society and had been born into it.
‘Oh, I live on the fringes of the ton, as many do, I believe.’
He offered Sir Garth no explanation of who and what he had been, and what he had just said to him was no more, and no less, than the truth.
Caro said suddenly, ‘I believe, Mr Fitzroy, that you have already met my sister-in-law, Mrs Charles Herron, when she was looking after my two children, so no introductions are needed, although to make everything comme il faut, I will offer you a formal one.’
She took Georgie, who had been standing half-hidden behind the brother and sister, by the hand to bring her forward—and Jess found himself facing the hoyden in breeches whom he had rebuked the previous afternoon. Only she wasn’t wearing breeches, but a plainish green frock with few trimmings. Her riotously short russet-coloured hair was held back and half hidden by a black bandeau, and the low collar of her dress and its artful cut left one in no doubt that here was a young woman in her early twenties and not the young girl whom he had thought her. Only her green eyes were the same—but even more defiant and mutinous than they had been the previous afternoon!
Caro Pomfret was explaining to him that Mrs Herron was a widow and was living with her so that they might keep one another company instead of being lonely apart.
‘She’s so good with my lively two, and keeps them in order, which I never could,’ she sighed, as though Georgie was a rather helpful nursemaid.
It would have been difficult to know which of the pair of them, Jess or Georgie, was the more embarrassed in view of the unfortunate nature of their previous meeting, although nothing that they said or did gave Caro or Sir Garth any hint of their mutual feelings.
I ought to apologise, they both separately thought, but how does one do that without making matters worse?
Jess’s other thought was that, unlike her sister-in-law, Mrs Caroline Pomfret was exactly the sort of unexceptional lady whom a wise man might make his wife. She would always, he was sure, say and do the right thing—indeed, was busy saying and doing them even while they sat and talked about Netherton and the late Miss Jesmond.
‘I was so fond of the dear old lady,’ sighed Caro untruthfully. She and Miss Jesmond had disliked one another cordially. It had been Georgie who, until her marriage, had provided Jess’s aunt with congenial company. After she had been widowed and had returned to Netherton she had lightened the old lady’s last days with her bright presence until death had claimed Miss Jesmond.
Caro was now giving Jess her version of her friendship with Miss Jesmond—which was an accurate account of Georgie’s transferred to herself.
‘So,’ she ended, smiling sweetly, ‘you may imagine how pleased I am to meet at last the nephew of whom she was so fond.’
Great-nephew, thought Georgie a trifle sourly.
‘And Georgie knew her a little, too,’ Caro sighed. ‘Although none of us was aware that you were her heir.’
‘And nor was I,’ returned Jess, who was enjoying more than a little the attention and admiration of a pretty woman. ‘It is many years since I last visited my aunt, but I believe that I am the only member of her family left—which accounts for the inheritance, I suppose.’
Sir Garth said, ‘I am never sure whether having relatives is a good thing or not, but one is supposed to commiserate with those who have none—so I shall do so.’
Jess bowed his thanks. ‘It leaves one feeling lonely,’ he admitted. ‘However, I can well understand that there are occasions when relatives can be a liability—although I am sure that that term could never be applied to your sister or your sister-in-law.’
‘True,’ replied Sir Garth, ‘and I was spared an unkind father so I am lucky.’
‘And I also,’ sighed Caro. ‘Until I lost my husband,’ she added hastily.
Georgie refused to join this mutual congratulation society. She was more than a little surprised by the resentment aroused in her by Jess’s admiration of Caro. It was not that he was being obvious about it. Indeed, most people would not have been aware of his interest in her, but Georgie was finding that she could read him.
It was her late husband who had tutored her in the art of understanding the unspoken thoughts of men and women, and she was beginning to regret that anger had led her to misread Jess when she had first met him. It was not that she was interested in him—no, not at all, she told herself firmly—but in a small society like Netherton’s she was bound to meet him frequently and it would not do to be at open odds with him, for that might cause unpleasant gossip.
So she said a few moments later, just before the butler came to announce that dinner was served, ‘Have you found the opportunity to visit Netherton yet, Mr Fitzroy?’
‘Indeed. I drove there this morning. I needed to find a bank and Miss Jesmond’s solicitor. Not all my business could be concluded by correspondence before I visited Jesmond House. I was pleasantly surprised by how attractive the little town is—and how busy. I had no notion that there were Assembly Rooms, for example. There were none, I believe, when I visited my aunt over twenty years ago.’
Georgie replied, pleased that they were about to have a civilised conversation at last, ‘They were built about fifteen years ago. My late father and Mr Bowlby headed a committee which thought that Netherton needed to have a more varied social life. They were also responsible for improving the streets and creating the public park and the small Arboretum which lies at the end of the main street. My father was a keen gardener; so, too, was your great-aunt when she was a young woman and they frequently made presents of flowers and plants to both the park and the garden.’
Jess privately noted that Georgie had been careful to refer to Miss Jesmond as his great-aunt rather than his aunt and had also informed him—or rather, reminded him—of her love of the outdoor world. He had already decided to restore the gardens around Jesmond House in celebration of her memory.
He told Georgie so.
Her face lit up. ‘Oh, how pleased she would have been if she had known that! I think she rather feared that once she was gone the gardens might never recover their old glory.’
Caro was privately yawning at this discussion of matters in which she had no interest. So far as she was concerned, flowers and plants were things which the servants collected from the gardeners and placed in bowls and vases around the house for her to admire if she chose to—which wasn’t often.
She was pleased that the butler arrived to announce that supper was ready immediately after she had seconded Georgie’s remark by exclaiming, ‘What a sweet thought. It does you credit, does it not, Garth?’
Sir Garth, whose lack of interest in things botanic was even greater than his sister’s, drawled, ‘Yes, indeed, great credit, I’m sure. I like a tidy garden.’ A remark which would have killed that line of conversation even if the butler had not summoned them to the supper table.
‘I thought,’ Caro said, after they were all seated, ‘that you would prefer a small private supper party with only a few present rather than a formal dinner where you might be overwhelmed by all those wishing to meet you. You must be aware that the whole of Netherton is excited by your arrival—we meet so few strangers.’
Georgie thought drily that she had rarely met anyone less likely to be overwhelmed than Mr Jesmond Fitzroy, whose reply to Caro was a model of tact and charm.
‘Very good of you, madam. Most thoughtful of you. A slow introduction to all the curious would certainly be easier than encountering them en masse.’
Now Mr Jesmond Fitzroy was not being quite truthful in coming out with a remark made primarily to please his hostess. He had long been aware that in war, business and life, early reconnoitring of one’s surroundings and their inhabitants was highly desirable—particularly when those surroundings were new. He would have been perfectly happy had Mrs Caroline Pomfret invited most of Netherton society to meet him, but no one would have guessed it from his manner.
