The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances (32 page)

“Aye, son,” his father mourned. “I cannot change any of that. But I can regret it.”

Jack stared at his father as if mountains had crashed down on him.

John Stanhope cursed blatantly. “Time, I hope, will heal our breach. For now, I see you don’t believe a word I say. Will we stand here all night arguing? Take the papers and read them!”

Jack snatched them from his father’s hand. But instead of reading, he laid out his plans to his father. In quick detail, he summarized and then said, “I bought up Pinrose’s debts. I plan to go to London and call them in.”

“He has no inkling?” the earl mused.

“I made it a condition of the purchase, at a good interest rate I might add, that his former creditors not tell him I have the paper. They are all friends of mine, as luck would have it. I am in the process of buying up stock of a merchant company that Pinrose wishes to own outright.” Jack examined Emma. “One reason he wants your inheritance, darling, is because he wishes to use your land rents to purchase an option to buy up the majority owners’ stocks once the Army invades France and creates a greater market for merchant vessels.”

“I thought the rents were what he wanted,” she told him. “They are sizable.”

“Clever plan, Jack.” His father praised him. “But it is not enough to ruin Daniel.”

“And why, Father, would you be at all interested in helping me or your newest daughter-in-law be free of that man?”

John cast a paternal eye on Emma and smiled like an old man proud of his family. “I wish to live differently. I want to be a part of you.”

Jack’s mouth dropped open.

With a nod and sigh, the earl ignored his son to turn to Emma. “I was a friend of your father. He was one of the finest gentlemen I have ever known. Kind. Honest. Honorable. He died too young.” He turned to admire his son. “I wish to help you save his daughter, Jack. Her reputation. Her inheritance. Her future.”

“I still do not understand,” Jack muttered. “All our lives, you have ignored Adam, Wes, Clarice and me, as if we were so much baggage. Then you appear and announce you wish to live differently? Preposterous.”

“I was wrong.”

“You think you can buy your way back into my graces?”

“Money may be my means in this instance. I say one must use the resources one possesses. Don’t you?”

“Of course. Especially if it is the only means you will part with.”

The older man pursed his lips, rocked on his heels and cleared his throat. “I grow older, Jack. And contrary to what you and your siblings may think of my, shall we call it, lack of paternal regard, I do care for each of you. I hear and read of your triumphs. Adam’s success in Parliament. Wes’s on the fields of Spain. Yours in businesses you are too modest to discuss among your friends. I can see what you have done here to save Emma from this odious man and his little dog, Trayne. I also see every one of my children now married, with charming spouses, and children coming into the family. ”

Jack looked like the house had fallen on him. “What makes you think you merit our companionship, let alone any forgiveness?”

“Men change, Jack. Surely you know that. I wish to prove my intentions are honorable and true.”

Emma saw Jack frown, then open the documents. “What are these?”

“The deeds to Pinrose’s offices in Lombard Street and Emma’s home in Park Lane.”

Emma was stunned. “How do you have them?”

“They are mine, dear Emma,” said her father-in-law. “I purchased them from their former owner, also a good friend of mine, a few days ago.”

“They must have cost you a fortune,” she marvelled.

“I have money. I use it for good causes,” he informed her with a smug smile.

Jack continued to read the papers, flipping pages. “Pinrose has no office and no home.”

“Precisely.”

Jack stared at his father and the way his features changed seemed like night had become day. “So now that you own these, he has no collateral to use as assurance for the purchase of the merchant company.”

“Precisely.”

“Does he know you own these?”

“No. And he won’t until the directors meet to vote on partners for the company.”

A beam of joy flashed across Jack’s features. “Wonderful. I want to be at that meeting.”

“So you shall, my boy. It occurs Friday. At noon.

“It’s three days ride back to London,” Emma pointed out.

“Just enough time for Jack and I to return to London if we leave at dawn. What do you say, Jack?”

The question of her husband’s acceptance hung in the air for a long and perilous moment. As if emerging from a dream, Jack stepped to the bell pull, all the while contemplating his father.

When Simmons appeared, Jack’s gaze did not waiver. “Simmons, have the housekeeper prepare the south bedroom. The earl stays the night with us. And bring us three glasses and the bottle of brandy.”

****

Four days later, Jack sat next to this father in the coach to London and pondered for a countless time his loneliness. To be apart from Emma left him with a hollow in his heart. Odd to be so enchanted with a woman whom he’d known mere days. Comforting to know she waited for him out of desire and not mere duty. Unnerving to know that she waited for him in hope that she might be free when he returned. Free to leave him. If she wished.

Did she?

Jack shifted in the coach at the despair that idea engendered. He had long ago decided that he did not wish her to leave him. But how to keep to his promise to help her if he did not divorce her? Shaking his head, he willed himself to leave that worn out topic for another day. He turned to the other obsession that plagued him on this journey. His father.

If Jack had ever thought his father could be amiable, after almost four days in his company, Jack now wondered he had ever assumed otherwise. The older man was congenial to the point of giddy. As they left Durham Manor, his father became capable of small talk. But as the hours and days wore on, he learned that the man suffered from a sore heart that he had ignored his children. “I closeted myself each time I found a woman I cared for and soon lost to illness or childbirth. True, I would discover a new
amour
soon. Perhaps far too soon to suit the purviews of Society, but then, the heart does not obey rules. Does it?”

“How true,” Jack had agreed and fit the words to his own situation.

His father’s newly declared humility suited his new humanity, his largesse to aid Jack for Emma’s benefit a boon Jack would not soon forget.

Friday, the two strode into the offices of Hampton and Roe in Threadneedle Street, more comfortable with each other than they had ever been. Hampton and Roe were the factors in Plymouth who brokered the new merchant shipping line and Jack and his father agreed to present a united front. Here, they greeted the four original investors milling about in the central office with more than half a dozen other potential investors.

“Good afternoon, my lord.” Todd Gibbons, a baron whom Jack knew from the card tables at White’s, stepped forward to shake hands with his father. “Ralph Roe told me you have business with us. And you have brought your son with you!” The man’s bushy white brows shot high. “Surprised to see you here, Durham.” He leaned close to confide, “And with him, no less.”

Jack smiled at the wealthy baron who had always used Jack’s honorific, instead of his given name. “My father invited me, Gibby.”

“Did he now? Smashing. Well, do come in. We have sherry on the sideboard, there. I think you know all the others, by sight if not formally. Let me know and I shall do my host’s duty by you, Durham. We have a few more interested parties soon to arrive. Then we will begin promptly. We did say noon, did we not?”

“You did,” John Stanhope proclaimed and took a seat at the long mahogany table.

Outside a chapel bell began to toll the hour.

Gibby waved them to the table. “Do let us start. Latecomers will have to catch up.”

The twenty or so in attendance took their seats. Jack sat beside his father.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” began Ralph Roe, a roly-poly man Jack had met years ago when he made his first investment in clipper ships out of Boston. “Each of you has before you a copy of the proposal for this shipping line. We have listed the costs of purchasing two older clipper ships and refurbishing them. On the next page, the estimated outlays of capital to construct four new ships, one each year, out of Plymouth. The third page details the projected routes, the commodities traded, current prices and the profits for the first five years, based on today’s prices.”

“I have a question.” Winston Dutton was a man whom Jack knew to be a wealthy landowner from Kent. “You are assuming that the shipping lines remain open for the next five years and that Bonaparte will be contained.”

“Actually, Winston,” Gibby piped up, “we are assuming that Boney is clobbered and that we have clear sailing in the sea and on land.”

“Wellesley comes along,” Winston replied, “and the Royal Navy performs well without Nelson. Yet this impressing of sailors is a frightful problem with other countries, especially the American States. The reason I balk at this is the precarious nature of the whole enterprise. I do not wish to spend thousands to build new ships only to see them sink to the bottom of the ocean.”

“I agree,” Jack said, then ran his index finger down the list of goods traded. “A large part of your profit is projected from the rum trade.”

“That we do, Durham,” Gibby answered.

“That triangular trade,” Jack’s father put in, “is a nasty business.”

“You object?” asked Hampton, one of the factors here.

His father’s brows arched in disdain. “Not to sugar or rum, but to the sale of human beings. I do.”

Jack scanned the faces of the others. “I do as well.”

Hampton scratched his bald head. “Any others here join the Stanhopes in that?”

Four others added their objections.

Gibby looked at Hampton and Roe. “Well, then. May I ask, are your objections to the commodities enough to totally dissuade you from investing?”

The four plus Jack and his father agreed and this had Hampton and Roe putting their heads together.

The door opened.

“Mister Pinrose,” Hampton and Roe shot up from their chairs to greet the hawkish looking grey haired man. “Do come sit down. We have begun but we can summarize for you.”

Pinrose stared at Jack, then glanced at John Stanhope. “Thank you. I apologize for my tardiness. I had an urgent matter requiring my attention.”

Because he had not removed his gaze from the two Stanhopes and perhaps too because all others knew Pinrose accused Jack of abducting his step–daughter, every other man in the room went silent and still as stone.

Jack would have laughed, but found the prospect of confronting his nemesis too thrilling to court frivolity. Besides, where was Trayne? Had not both blackguards agreed to attend this meeting? And why would Trayne suddenly not appear?

“Then do sit, Mr. Pinrose,” Hampton said with no warmth. “We shall continue.”

Jack bit back a smile. The meeting began anew.

More than an hour later, the business venture had been debated to its finest point.

Hampton folded his fingers before him and glanced down the table. “We come then to the final issue. Are you willing to invest in this, and if so, please state your initial sum and when you will deposit it to our bank. We urge promptness in this matter as these prices from the shipwrights in Plymouth may increase without notice. We will begin with Lord Gibbons.”

Within thirty minutes, all had spoken save Pinrose who, since he arrived last, was invited to speak last.

“I wish to invest twenty thousand July first.”

Jack fought the urge to sneer. As he surmised, Pinrose would try to wait until he had Emma’s money in his clutches, then put up his share in three months’ time.
Not good enough, you thief.

Hampton thanked him for his support, but then demurred. “Mr. Trayne was to have come with you. I wonder if I may inquire as to his sentiments in this matter?”

Pinrose stared into Jack’s eyes. “He wishes to invest ten thousand.”

Does he now?

“On July first, Mr. Pinrose?”

The hawk-nosed man nodded. “That is so, Mr. Hampton.”

Jack’s father rapped his fingers on the tabletop. “We cannot wait that long for such a meagre sum.”

“It is not meagre,” Pinrose retorted.

The earl said, “I’ll give you another twenty right now, Hampton.”

“To add to your forty?” Hampton asked, astonished.

“Quite so.”

Jack grinned and knew his expression was pure evil as he turned to Pinrose and said, “And I give you another twenty to add to my thirty, if we exclude Mr. Pinrose and Mr. Trayne from the corporation completely.”

“My word,” Hampton breathed.

“See here!” Pinrose jumped to his feet. “You cannot do that, Stanhope.”

Jack glared back at him. “Of course I can. And did.”

“You abduct my stepdaughter—”