The Two Lords of Wealdhant Manor (9 page)

Algernon got to his feet and crossed the room to fetch a box of Congreves so that he might light the lamp. The long heavy curtains by the window moved.

“Stop that,” Algernon said, speaking mostly to himself for jumping at shadows rather than to any hypothetical ghost. Advancing upon the curtain, he pulled it aside, finding nothing within. No draught, and no sign of mice.

Feeling like a superstitious fool, he fetched the matches and lit the lamp, stubbornly ignoring the way that the shadows crept and clutched at the his ankles.

The lamplight did much to reassure him, and Mr. Cullen arrived only moments later with the tea.

Putting Jasper and the ghosts both from his mind, Algernon sat down to reply to Mr. Sutton’s letter. As he wrote, he left the map of the intended railway route laying nearby, and his eyes kept creeping back to it.

Jasper had said that the railway plans would cut through some of the estate’s best land and leave at least three families homeless.

Algernon turned the map face down. The railway had an Act of Parliament. He must sell, and the railway must be built. All he could do was try his best to be a good leader for the people of Wilston during the inevitable upheaval.

J
asper left
before dawn for Cairkby.

Far to the east, a thin line of red and gold had begun to edge up from the horizon, but he still had an hour to sunrise.

Striding across the moors to the Cairkby road, Jasper paused only briefly to glance back at the manor. There was a single light on in a lower window—servants up early, he expected. Algernon tended to sleep in.

He turned away and quickened his pace. He had a train to catch, and no time to delay in unnecessary thoughts.

If Algernon could be deposed, then he would simply go back to London and resume whatever life had been his before this whole nonsense started. And once he was gone Jasper would still need to find some way to stop the encroaching railway development.

It was just past sunrise when he crested the hill to Cairkby. There was a train waiting, and the new, unused train tracks in the direction of Wilston stretched out, glinting, in the morning sun.

The formerly sleepy village of Cairkby had changed so much as to be nearly unrecognisable. New construction was going up in at least three areas, including what looked like a boarding-house and a new brick building for shops. Carriages crowded the muddy streets, and new plank sidewalks had been built along the shopfronts.

“Here, now, sir, what’s your hurry?” a young woman asked him. He stopped in surprise at being so accosted, blinking at her. She took the opportunity to stride forward and smile at him. Though she wasn’t unattractive and she had an excellent smile, she looked thin and sick. “I’ve a room, if you like, or there’s the alleyway—”

Jasper coloured to the tips of his ears, suddenly understanding that she was a prostitute. “No, thank you.”

Stepping around her, he continued very quickly along his way.

He felt ill at ease. In another year, if the railway had its way, Wilston would look just this way. Rich and fat with new industry and commerce, with an underbelly of new poverty and corruption. The trains brought new factory-made goods from halfway across Britain, and the local artisans were reduced to idleness and alcoholism. Cairkby no longer traded with Wilston—it had little need for Wilston’s goods if there were cheaper goods to be bought from the new shops in Cairkby. Wilston’s potter could no longer sell his wares even in Wilston, and in their place Jasper kept seeing more and more copies of factory-made teapots in Wilston homes.

Paying his train fare, Jasper climbed into the carriage and claimed a seat. He was glad for the cheap accommodation of the Parliamentary train, but his eyes lingered upon the almost unrecognisable village of Cairkby.

There wasn’t long to wait before the train lurched into motion with deafening whistles and thick, choking billows of black smoke from the engine. Jasper set his jaw. The train would take him south to Lincoln, where he could catch another train west to Nottingham, where he would be able to access the supposed marriage records of Mrs. Tabitha Cropper.

“
W
here are ye
, ye disobedient slattern?”

Algernon startled awake from a dream, sitting bolt upright and looking about himself in panic.

He felt pursued, weighty with terror that his pursuer was just behind him, a tall, hulking shape that carried a whip.

The room was quiet and dark, fire burning low, and shivered at the cold of the room and the cold sweat that drenched his shirt.

Jasper was gone. After Mr. Cullen had thrown him out, he’d stayed away that night, and one of the staff had claimed to have seen Jasper headed off Cairkby way before dawn the next morning. No one had any sense of where he’d gone and when he’d be back.

Algernon didn’t care.

Shivering, he got out of bed and hauled off the dampened shirt, fetching a fresh one from the wardrobe which felt just as icy, though dry. Ringing for a servant by the newly-repaired bell, he went to the low fire in order to warm himself.

The house was dead quiet, without a whisper of life other than the soft crackle of the fire. Everything in London was always noisy with people—drunks in the street, servants below-stairs, neighbours heard through thin walls. The past two nights he’d woken to Jasper beside him in bed: warm, solid and safe.

“Quickly, quickly, this way!”

Whirling about, Algernon stared at the young woman by the door, wearing a white cap to cover her hair. When she realised that he saw her, she beckoned urgently. He didn’t recognise her, but she seemed so desperate and panicked in her urgency that Algernon went to her at once.

“This way,” she repeated, seizing upon his wrist with an icy little hand and pulling him down the hallway.

He went with her, heart quickening with urgency and fear.

“
Where are you? I’ll find you!
”

The voice seemed to bellow from everywhere and nowhere, deep and masculine, and the girl gave a breathy little shriek.

“This way,” she whispered, “this way. He’ll catch us!”

They turned down a corridor, and then another. Algernon had no idea where they were, and the abyssal darkness of the hallway didn’t help. His guide knew her way even in the dark, and the brightness of her white cap was Algernon’s only beacon.

“
Ye cur, ye whore!
” the voice howled. It felt closer, and Algernon scrambled after the girl down a set of narrow back stairs and into a short hall.

She rattled at a set of doors, finding them locked, and gave a little sob of terror.

“
Ye’ll regret what you’ve done, I swear ye shall. I’ll whip ye within an inch of your life.
”

This time, Algernon was certain the voice came from the direction of the stairs they had just descended. He stared in that direction, frozen in terror.

“Mr. Clarke? Mr. Clarke!”

Blinking in confusion, Algernon stared at the familiar, motherly face of his housekeeper, Mrs. Underwood, and the bright candle in her hand.

“Mr. Clarke,” she said, gentle and concerned. “Whatever is the matter?”

“I,” Algernon said, whipping back to stare at the stairwell. It was as dark as the void, untempered by the light of Mrs. Underwood’s candle. “There was…”

“Had a bad dream, did you?” she coaxed, patting his elbow. “Mr. Cullen said you got restless at night. We’ll see to that soon enough. Let’s get you back to your room, sir, and I’ll bring you a cup of warm milk. That’ll put you to rights.”

“Yes,” Algernon said, letting himself be steered further down the hallway and up the front stairwell. He looked behind himself more than once, but there was nothing chasing him and nothing waiting for him.

T
he trip
to Nottingham took four days, all told, and Jasper returned with a sheaf of papers and a heavy heart. It had been easier than he expected to find the marriage records of Mrs. Tabitha Cropper, who had given her place of birth as Leicestershire and listed a maiden name that was not Allesbury.

Those records ought to be enough to prove that Algernon Clarke, her descendent, was not the heir to Wealdhant. It would send Algernon back to London, where he belonged, and return Wealdhant to Jasper’s authority—at least until the railway came up with some new scheme.

No matter the outcome, the marriage records revealed the truth. Algernon was not the heir, and could not stay.

His mind lingered on Algernon and the brief few days they had spent in harmony. He knew that Algernon laughed easily and slept late, that Algernon could never resist exploration or adventure, that Algernon was ticklish from head to toe, and that when they kissed sometimes Algernon was sweetness and mirth and sometimes Algernon was heat and ferocity.

And yet there was so much about Algernon that he didn’t know, and would never get the chance to know.

There was still some hope. If Jasper tried again, if he controlled his temper, Algernon might listen. If Algernon had a decent heart in his breast, he might at least try to save Wilston from the fate of Cairkby. And if he didn’t, Jasper and Wilston would be best rid of him.

He thought of the playful way that Algernon smiled before he leaned in to steal a kiss. Algernon could be generous with affection, and never seem to run out of energy.

Jasper shook his head to clear it, but everything he thought of—Wilston, Wealdhant, the railway—always led back to Algernon.

As he came around a bend in the lane from Cairkby, he saw men ahead of him on a crest of a hill—a hill that was within Wealdhant lands.

More workmen for renovations under Algernon’s approval, he supposed. Quickening his pace, he left the road and headed up the low hill to meet them.

There were four men, roughly dressed, and carrying surveyor’s tools.

“Here now,” Jasper demanded, advancing upon them. “What’s your business?”

One of them stood out as somewhat more sharply dressed than the others, and held himself straighter at being challenged. He puffed out his chest, being not so tall as Jasper, and lifted his chin enough that he could look down his nose. “Railway business. On your way, sir.”

“I most certainly will not,” Jasper said, squaring his shoulders and glaring at the man, who quailed visibly. “You are on Wealdhant property, and your damned railway has no claim upon it.”

“Will soon enough,” the man said, hunching his shoulders. “You can’t stop an Act of Parliament! Railway goes through, or we’ll have the law upon you for it!”

“Bring the law!” Jasper roared. “I will meet it. The Wealdhant land has not been sold, and will not be sold if I have anything to do with it. To the devil with your railway.”

“There’s no use fighting progress!” the man huffed at him, though he had begun a sideways retreat from Jasper’s scowling. “The railway will bring prosperity and trade to the district, don’t you know, and—”

“Get off my land before I have the law upon you for trespassing,” Jasper spat.

“We’re going,” the man said, starting to retreat more quickly with his companions.

“Now!”

Picking up their heels, the little band scurried away down the road and back toward the visible railroad tracks waiting just the other side of the next hill. They were so certain of their course that they were prepared to bring the railway up to the edge of the estate—or perhaps onto it.

He could feel the weight of the marriage records like iron in his breast pocket. Whether Algernon stayed or went, Jasper needed a permanent solution to the threat of the railway.

If Algernon went, at least the legal and bureaucratic paperwork that entailed would buy him time.

If Algernon stayed...

Algernon could not stay. His claim was a lie, and Jasper could not abide being party to a lie. Particularly not with the fate of Wilston at stake.

A
ll of the
maps in the study were out of date.

Algernon spread them out on the floor, resting his chin in his hand as he studied them. He had first made an effort to put them in some sort of chronological order, but had in this process realised that several of the older maps had been updated more recently than the newer ones, and only two out of seven had dates on them.

At last he decided upon arranging them with the most recent or most useful ones at the centre and dwindling out to the rough-sketched, ancient, and crumbling maps near the edges. He put the diagram from Mr. Sutton directly in front of himself, showing the proposed and probably inevitable train route.

Jasper had objected that the train route went straight through several of the best parts of the estate, and would necessitate demolishing three farmhouses. Algernon could only find one farmhouse marked on the most recent map, but the oldest map had five in the direct path of the railway and showed the manor as being in another place entirely.

If there were farmhouses to be demolished, Algernon would need to meet with the tenants and arrange other accommodations for them. He dreaded the thought of those conversations, but it didn’t seem like the sort of task which he could honourably foist off upon Mr. Cullen.

Of course, in order to have those conversations he would need to locate the farmhouses in question. By this point he was beginning to dread that he should have to take Mr. Sutton’s diagram and simply walk the course indicated until he found the three farmhouses in question. It seemed a silly and roundabout way to do things, but without Jasper’s guidance Algernon didn’t know what else he could do.

It had been five days since he had last seen Jasper. Rubbing wearily at his face, Algernon wondered whether he might drop by the groundskeeper’s cottage where Jasper lived. He had learned that Jasper had two sisters. Algernon didn’t know what he would say to them if Jasper wasn’t there. Nor did he know what he would say if Jasper was there.

Jasper wouldn’t help. The railway was coming, and it was now Algernon’s responsibility to see to the livelihood and comfort of the citizens of Wilston who would be impacted. Jasper would have to accept that, even if he fought it every step of the way and never forgave Algernon for enabling it.

“I think we’d get along famously,” Algernon muttered to himself. “If only. If only Jasper weren’t a pig-headed
imbecile
.”

There was a rap at the study door. Algernon jumped. “Come in.”

Mr. Cullen entered, followed by Jasper.

Algernon made an attempt to spring to his feet, but got tangled up in his own legs and sat down again in a jumble. “Jasper!” Giving up the attempt for the time being, he frowned up at him from the floor. “Or shall I resume calling you Mr. Waltham?”

“Jasper will do,” he said, and then glanced sternly toward Mr. Cullen, who cocked an eyebrow at him before exiting.

Once the butler had gone, the two of them stared at each other. Algernon wasn’t sure what to say.

Striding over, Jasper offered his hand. Algernon took it, and was pulled to his feet.

Keeping hold of Jasper’s hand, Algernon stood amidst the maps, studying Jasper’s face as he sought for words.

“I wasn’t sure you were coming back,” Algernon said.

“Of course I was coming back.” Jasper’s tone was gruff. He also hadn’t released his grip.

“To be sure. To Wilston, without a doubt. And your sisters. I meant…” Algernon cleared his throat. “I thought you’d be avoiding me.”

“We tried that,” Jasper said, and let go of Algernon’s hand. “It didn’t work.”

“Certainly,” Algernon said, and then faltered, not sure what else to say.

Jasper clenched his hands at his sides and looked away.

“Are you—is this a business call?”

Jasper fidgeted, and then turned a stern, weighing gaze upon Algernon. “Of a certainty, it is my responsibility to check back in with you after being away.”

“Yes, of course,” Algernon agreed. “Where did you go? Was it on some business for the estate?”

“It was…” Jasper looked profoundly uncomfortable. “I had some business in Cairkby.”

“For five days? No, forgive me, it would be four, I suppose?”

“No, that is—I caught the train in Cairkby.”

Algernon’s shoulders dropped with exasperation. “Oh, do you ride trains? I would have thought that antithetical to your nature.”

“I have no objection to trains if they aren’t infringing upon the lands and people of Wealdhant,” Jasper said.

“Well, the train from Cairkby will be, soon enough.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it!”

Algernon folded his arms. “What business did you have which necessitated a train ride?”

“That’s my own affair.”

“Nothing to do with me?” Algernon asked, since he was quite aware that Jasper’s sudden trip had commenced within a day of their last fight.

Jasper stiffened.

Annoyed by Jasper’s inability to lie or even to conceal his aims, Algernon glared at him. “What is it, then?”

Jasper set his jaw and likewise folded his arms.

“Something to evict me, like you’ve threatened?” Algernon asked, hearing his voice rise and making an effort to keep himself from turning hysterical. “Well, then. Did you succeed?”

He could hear his blood beating in his ears, vision hazing with the dread that if Jasper threw him out, he’d be on the streets or in a debtor’s prison within a week.

“Why is the floor covered in maps?” Jasper asked, by way of changing the subject.

The maps were safely esoteric, only tangentially connected to the immediate threat of eviction, and Algernon seized upon the new topic as a welcome distraction. “I was endeavouring to determine where the three farmhouses in danger were located, because it ought to be my responsibility to speak to their tenants.”

“To tell them they’ll soon be homeless?” Jasper asked. He came around the small sea of maps and squatted down on the little island of bare floor in the centre. “These maps are out of date.”

“Yes, I’d rather gotten that impression,” Algernon said. He took a seat on the floor next to Jasper, eyeing him curiously.

Jasper’s attention was focused entirely on the maps, picking up the diagram that Mr. Sutton provided. Algernon let him alone, intrigued to discover whether Jasper would be able to make some better sense of the maps.

“Does it have to be this route?” Jasper asked.

Puzzled, Algernon leaned forward to consider the diagram and the maps beyond. “I haven’t the faintest idea. I don’t know the first thing about trains.”

Jasper sat down beside him so that their thighs were pressed together, and showed him the diagram along with one of the more detailed maps. “Look. Mr. Sutton’s proposed route follows the topography of the land by the most efficient route. But the first trouble he’s going to encounter is that this lowland route, along the curve of that hill to the south, is a creekbed which flows only in the spring. Easy to mistake it for a game trail the rest of the year.”

“So he’ll have to change his route,” Algernon said, studying the maps with more interest now. “But where?”

“The other side of the hill.” Jasper traced a path with his finger. “It’s rockier and there’s a steeper grade, but no threat of the tracks flooding in spring. It could continue on here, across the moorland, and then curve back to here when it exits Wealdhant lands. Most of the moorland of Wealdhant is too rocky to farm, and this route would only cut through a stretch of Mr. Cranston’s farmland, which is likely inevitable, but at least not through his living room.”

“So there’s a compromise,” Algernon said. “I thought you were entirely opposed to the railway line.”

“I am opposed, but I’m aware that railways are coming and England is changing. I cannot stop the advance of progress, and it would be better for Wilston to suffer the changes of a railway line than to continue losing trade to the towns which are.”

Algernon got up and fetched a fresh sheet of paper, bringing it back to Jasper. “Draw it for me.”

“What?”

“This route. The one that would be better. Draw it.”

Jasper took the paper, and Algernon reclaimed his seat on the floor by Jasper’s side.

“You said it was steeper here,” Algernon pointed as Jasper drew. “Will it be too steep for the train?”

“I don’t know. I know that trains need flat land, but I don’t know how flat.”

Continuing to watch as Jasper drew the new proposed route, Algernon leaned against him. His body was warm and solid through his clothing and Algernon remembered trailing kisses over his skin.

“Are we friends again?” Algernon asked.

“We might be. If you’ll help me.”

Algernon stayed quiet, idling his fingertip along one of the maps. He wanted to help, but he didn’t know how much he could do.

Quite advantageous for all parties
, he thought, remembering Mr. Sutton’s words and the way he had emphasised that the railway company knew about Algernon’s debts and that if Algernon wasn’t willing to cooperate—they’d withdraw the paperwork with his claim to Wealdhant and still have their railway soon enough. Better to endure Mr. Sutton’s route than oppose him too firmly and land in debtor’s prison.

“I could give you a tour,” Jasper was saying. “Take you through Wilston and especially up to Mr. Cranston’s farm.”

“Will you?” Algernon asked, wondering if he’d missed part of the conversation. “Yes. I think I’d like that.”

Jasper gave him the page with the new route and Algernon stared at it. Certainly there would be no harm in proposing it to Mr. Sutton. And drawing his attention to the trouble with the creek bed. No doubt he’d appreciate that.

“Tomorrow morning, then?” Jasper proposed, and got to his feet.

Algernon wobbled as Jasper pulled away, feeling bereft of his solid warmth. He got to his feet as well, wanting to ask Jasper to stay, but once he was standing he bit his tongue. Jasper had been away for four days and would no doubt want to see to his sisters and his gardens.