Late August, 1824
“Sign this last document and we’ll be finished, my lord,” the white-haired solicitor directed, shifting a sheaf of parchment from before the Duke to the ink-stained blotter in front of his second son.
Perfectly at ease despite the difficult subject of the papers, Alden dipped his pen and signed below his father’s name in a flourish, noting that the elder Collier had already signed shakily in his place as a witness.
Alden would be entrusting his personal business to the younger Collier, but the Duke’s son knew well that his father would patronize the frail solicitor as long as the old man could still climb the steps of Lennox House and attend the Duke personally.
The elder Collier, currently packing up stacks of paper at the head of the table, was witnessing the end of an era. The highly respected and often-feared Duke of Lennox was sharing, if not ceding, some of his authority with his only remaining son. Lennox and Lord Alden Swenson were attempting a new sort of working relationship, at least in the operation of the Duke’s business and personal finances. Alden had agreed to not openly thwart Lennox’s rule, but Lennox had also agreed not to intervene without first conferring with Alden privately.
Alden well knew that no one would have predicted such a thing a year earlier. Then, Alden had been happily managing the Duke’s affairs in Europe, largely independent of his father’s direct rule. He’d been content residing in Amsterdam, with occasional trips to the major trading centers of Europe. He’d had a full life there, making a home with Oliver in the diverse community of artists and musicians who flocked to Amsterdam.
The news of his nephew’s birth—his elder brother’s first son—had further removed Alden from the succession and cemented his residency in Europe.
But within a very few months, everything had changed for Lennox and his family. Alden’s elder brother, known by the courtesy title the Earl of March, had committed suicide in a very public and unmistakable scandal. With March’s son and Lennox’s new heir only a wee babe, Lennox had renewed an old request. The Duke wanted Alden to return to London, and with the louse who had haunted Alden for three decades finally gone, Alden had few reasons to refuse.
“It’s done then,” his father said softly, sighing and sitting back in his chair. Alden looked up and caught Lennox considering him. “In addition to the business, I’m happy to have it legally established that you shall follow me as one of Eynon’s guardians.” Lennox examined him carefully, even as the Duke spoke of his daughter-in-law and grandson. “Gloria may be safely remarried now, and I am confident her husband will look after Eynon as he matures, but Eynon will still need you to protect his inheritance when I am gone. And Johna and the girls will need someone to look out for their interests.”
Lennox was hardly failing, but he had visibly aged in the years Alden had been in Europe. His face was narrower and the lines around his eyes and mouth had deepened. His hair had thinned, too, and turned a brilliant shade of white that gleamed in the late afternoon sun. Lennox had always been a driven man—full of passion, often moody, overburdened by the combined forces of his financial affairs, government responsibilities, legislative obligations and Court duties. Despite any physical changes, though, Lennox was still that same intense personality that Alden remembered.
The Duke had been rightfully disappointed in his elder son, but he’d also been oblivious to the acrimonious relationship that had defined Alden’s childhood and youth. The bitter feud had begun at Eynon Castle and gone with them to Eton and Oxford. As an adult, Alden’s sense of self-preservation and protectiveness had taken him as far from March as possible, until March had left his life permanently.
Coming home had been disruptive—disconcerting—in ways far beyond the relocation of Alden’s household.
Alden had once acidly said that his father needed to love. He’d only found out in the time since his brother’s death that Lennox had loved, did love. Indeed, Alden now understood that Lennox had probably delegated his responsibilities as a parent to nurses and tutors because of his father’s tragic love life. Lennox had lost his first love to Napoleon, and his second great love was a woman who could not be Lennox’s wife. In his youth, Alden had assumed that Lennox provided a haven for Johna de Rothesay and Lennox’s bosom bow Robert Twicken to indulge their secret passion. Now Alden understood that Lennox, too, had been devoted to Johna. The couple had spent years constructing a web of lies so complete that society still reeled from the revelation of her long-time affair with Lennox. Of course, she remained married to the Earl of Winchester, but Winchester’s crimes meant that she no longer had to endure living within his household. Protected from prison by his peerage, the House of Lords had committed Winchester to an asylum and what remained of his estate had been put into the care of the Chancery Court to support him. A divorce was, of course, out of the question, but Johna now lived openly at Lennox House.
Alden well knew that Lennox fully planned to support Johna and her daughters as if she were his widow and not his mistress, just as he’d been secretly doing for the last twenty years. Indeed, Genevieve, the youngest of Johna’s daughters, was in truth Lennox’s progeny and Alden’s half-sister, though Genevieve’s parentage had only become public knowledge when Winchester’s mental instability had become a sensational affair of the Court and Lords.
“Abigail and Gloria are well provided for,” Alden said briefly, naming the two middle of Johna’s four daughters. Abigail was married to the Earl of Meriden, and Gloria—who had once been married to March and was the mother of Alden’s nephew—was now married to Lord Clare, the Duke of Lauderdale’s heir.
Lennox snorted. “We shall see. Fortunes come and go, and I would not have them ever in need. Meriden may be a wizard with pounds sterling, but he is a pariah among the bishops and relishes in it, as well as straddling the aisles whenever he’s in the mood to disrupt the Lords. He’s really become quite adept at muddling up even Canning’s reform efforts. No one knows if the man is a Tory or a Whig, least of all me, and one day politics or war may well be his downfall. As for Gloria, she is Clare’s second wife. Even if they have children, she did not produce Clare’s heir and she is much younger than him. She’s likely to outlive him by decades.”
Alden did not need Lennox to spell out the complexities. Alden had met Gloria during the summer months when she had come to London with Clare and Eynon. She claimed to finally be happy living in seclusion with Clare and Eynon at the Scottish border. No matter what that poor woman did, she hadn’t been able to escape scandal in London. Her first marriage to March was antipathetic to London’s ladies, who had openly despised March. His death put her in the untenable position of being blamed for it, pitied for it and relieved by it, all in the same ten minutes, depending on the gossiper. Winchester had humiliated her again by going to Chancery Court in an attempt to force her to return to his custody after March’s death, as a sick revenge in which he desired to keep Johna’s daughters in misery and to gain access to Gloria’s inheritance. Remembering the gawking girls and gimlet-eyed gossips who had followed Gloria about London during her visit exhausted Alden.
Alden’s silence did not deter his father from further speaking. “But you know I worry most about Fiona—and Genevieve.”
Genevieve—a sister!—had been a shock to Alden, and her marriage of convenience to the gambler Sir Peter Devon had taken Alden some time to accept. The couple obviously led separate lives, but the marriage had protected Genevieve from the sort of machinations that Gloria had endured.
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