Untalked Of and Unseen: Part Two

"Be great in act, as you have been in thought."

September 20th

Morning had come too soon. Fitzwilliam had slept poorly on the too-small sofa and had been too sullen to move when Juliette left. He dreaded the confrontation with his uncle, and sleeplessness only magnified it. As well as dread, he felt shame for not noticing this trickery sooner, for not thoroughly investigating his ledgers the moment they became his in the spring. Atop it all, he was humming with so much anger that he feared losing his temper entirely. 

After the struggle to don a calm countenance, he was rather late leaving his room. Yet, he was greeted by a good stroke of luck. His uncle's wife was in the windowless corridor just outside his borrowed room. "Good morning, Aunt Maria." 

"Oh, good morning, love!" Lady Fitzwilliam greeted her nephew with a kiss on each cheek. The former Maria Nowell was only a few years older than her nephew and nieces, but she doted like a grandmother on them all. All of them were her avowed favorites. "And where is my newest favorite niece this morning?"

Fitzwilliam was grateful this morning for his aunt's affection. If he damaged his relationship with his uncle in the next hour, it would be very helpful that his aunt, the favorite child of Lord Nowell, would still speak well of him and Juliette. "I haven't seen her yet. I imagine she and Georgiana were trading confidences until dawn."

"I imagine you're right," Maria agreed. "It seems every time I see either of them, they're chatting away like sisters. What a lucky turn, that they should like each other so much. A married lady could feel quite lonely in a new home, and a grown-up sister might fear for her future when her brother marries, but they won't have a moment's worry between them! You must be so pleased with how it's all worked out."

Fond as he was, he felt he was in grave danger of being sapped of all courage by this barrage of pleasantries. "Indeed, it is most gratifying. Would you happen to know where Uncle Andrew is this morning?"

"I do, but my lips are sealed. You will be late for breakfast if you start fussing over business together."

"Surely we will be later still if I have to waste time searching the house for him." When this didn't quite satisfy Maria, he promised, "My solemn word, aunt, we will be entirely punctual."

"Well, if it is your word, then I shall tell you, because you are always as good as your word. You are the pride of your mother and grandmother, you know. Why, your mother is extraordinarily fond..." She saw the impatience on her nephew's eyes and sighed. "Oh, listen to me prattle. I'll tell you the rest another time. Your uncle is in his study." 

Fitzwilliam quirked a brow at this. He knew his noble uncle was not at all the type to squeeze an hour's work between sleeping off a bucket of wine and a mid-day breakfast. "Are you certain?"

"Quite. I sent his man down earlier to set him to rights, but Andrew sent him out straight away. Stubborn man! I don't doubt he's in an exceptional state this morning, Fitzwilliam."

"I understand. Thank you, aunt."

"You are most welcome, love, but please do your poor aunt one favor. If Andrew is, as they say, fighting fire with fire, take the bottle away from him. Your grandmother will never let me hear the end of it if he is sick at the breakfast table twice in one month."

Though surprised by his aunt's blunt honesty, he promised to do so. He no more wanted to witness that sight than she.

After eluding a few weary guests on the way down to his uncle's study, he stopped to greet one who was bright-eyed and awake. "Georgiana, good morning."

"Good morning, brother." She embraced him quickly. "Did you sleep well?"

He smiled. "I did. How are you this morning?"

"I am very well, thank you. In fact, I am longing for a walk. Could I convince you to join me?"

"I would like nothing better, but might we delay until after breakfast? I need Uncle Andrew's advice on a matter."

"Of course. You won't mind terribly if I still go out now, will you?"

"Not at all. I'll see you at breakfast, dearest." Then, he had an afterthought that prompted him to stop her. "Georgiana, wait a moment."

"Is something the matter?"

"Nothing so serious, but..." He sighed. "I am very happy that you are such good friends with Juliette, but I would appreciate if you did not expose every embarrassing detail about my childhood to her." When he saw his sister's smile dissolve, he immediately felt like a villain.

"I'm so sorry, Fitzwilliam. I will be more guarded," she promised. "I didn't realize I was being too familiar with her. Please, tell me, did I reveal something particularly awful?"

"Storytelling."

She frowned slightly. "I think it is a wonderful quality to have, but I am sure I never said anything about it to her. At least, I do not remember that I did so, but I must have revealed it somehow. I am very sorry, Fitzwilliam. I never meant to embarrass you." 

"No, please, there is no need for an apology. If you never said anything, then surely I let it slip." And that was the truth, for Fitzwilliam had just realized that Juliette had yet again tricked him into revealing something by pretending she already knew of it. He had fallen for this more times than he cared to remember. "Don't give it another thought, dearest. I'm delighted you feel so comfortable talking to her. Enjoy your..." A heavy, dreadful march somewhere beyond the opposite door drew the eyes of brother and sister. They knew the voice attached to those feet all too well.

Lady Catherine!

"My word, this corridor is very poorly lit! This should not be! It was never so dark and unpleasant as this when I lived here. And these candles! They are not fit for their duty. They would not do even if they were properly lit and arranged. Who put these here? They ought to have used..."

The siblings looked at each other for just a moment; it was all they could spare. Georgiana flew outdoors on silent feet while her brother fled into the study. He didn't pause to knock, and he was opening his mouth to apologize when he saw that it wouldn't be necessary.

His uncle's state gave Fitzwilliam a second thought. There was little honor in excoriating the defenseless, even if it had been the man's choice to imbibe his weight in wine. Yet, this attack on the weak was exactly the sort of crime the man had perpetrated, and turnabout must be fair play. So, after a few quiet calls for his uncle to wake up, Fitzwilliam picked up a hefty atlas and slammed it onto the desk.

Andrew jumped out of his chair. "Bloody hell!" The vibration of the collision in his ears was physically painful. He glared at the figure that had caused it, just barely able to make out his face through his squinting eyes. "What are you playing at?"

Casually, he retrieved the book from the desk. "Good morning, sir."

"Like hell it is. Get out." He sat down and burrowed his head back into his arms.

The atlas crashed down once more and up again popped the noble Lord Fitzwilliam. "Goddamn it, enough! You're a bloody nuisance!"

"I suggest you reconcile yourself to being awake, uncle. This book of yours is quite slippery."

Andrew obliged and regretted it instantly as the filtered daylight burned his eyes as if he were staring directly at the sun. "God Almighty! Put that damn thing aside and tell me what has you in such a state - quick, mind." 

Fitzwilliam stared down his uncle until he met his eyes. "Are you bankrupt?"

"Excuse me?"

"Are your coffers empty?"

Andrew snorted. "I have more than you ever will, brat."

"At least thirty thousand gold crowns more, at least." Fitzwilliam resisted a smirk when the number caught his uncle's attention. "I had cause to go back into my grandfather's ledgers. You were entirely correctly to say that the most impressive point was the rapid saving of gold in his final two years. In fact, I decided to follow the entire line, to see just how far he got with it before he died." 

"Could we possibly get to your point before I die?"

"His additional savings came to twenty-eight thousand in gold and almost four thousand in silver. When you became the trustee, you rounded it off to thirty-thousand in gold and marked it off for Georgiana, but you never put it back into the trust."

"It's a damn nuisance to take a dowry out of the main trust. You understand liquidity, don't you? I kept it aside to save you the trouble."

"You stole it!" Before he realized he was out of his chair, Fitzwilliam was pacing. His hands, tightly clenched, shook at his sides with he wrestled with a most unfamiliar desire to physically injure another person. He knew his uncle to be avaricious, arrogant, and boastful. If he were not his uncle, Fitzwilliam wouldn't have trusted him to keep a candle lit. But he had trusted him, trusted his sense of family honor, enough to make this betrayal hurt. "It's gone. All thirty thousand, gone. You didn't leave her a single copper coin!"

The screaming of Andrew's head matched that of his nephew. He had never seen him so agitated. If he hadn't known the boy was too proud to violent toward one of his own, Andrew might have feared for his well-being as he walked to the front of his desk. "I can explain."

"You were face-down in a pile of gold coins not a minute ago! Don't you dare tell me there is some reason why you stole from-"

"For God's sake, be quiet! Or do you want the entire house to know your business?" This, to Andrew's immense relief, brought the first inkling of temperance back to Fitzwilliam. "Sit down, and I will explain it to you in a way you will understand. Sit." He stared, waiting in vain for his nephew to move. "Fine, we'll stand. Yes, I did temporarily reallocate the gold, but it was a loan, a matter of convenience, not a theft. I will repay every crown."

"Am I to be impressed by this offer to repay what you stole? She a good-hearted girl who's never done harm to anyone and your niece as well. Did you even hesitate before you robbed her? Or will it take my bringing a suit against you to make you ashamed of what you've done to her?"

"Oh, come off it," he scoffed. "You are an uptight little prig - far beyond what you have any right to be. We both know you aren't going to lay our family business bare for all the world to see."

Although he was only a few inches taller, Fitzwilliam now seemed to tower over his uncle. "At this moment, sir, I would not presume there is anything, if for the sake of my sister, that I would not do to you."

"Whether you believe it for not, my motives were not so different from yours. What I did had to be done for the good of the family."

A scoff answered for Fitzwilliam's level of faith.

"We would have all been humiliated by Samuel's vices. My brother is a feckless moron, possessing a self-confidence far beyond his resources and abilities. If he's ever met a wager he didn't like, I've yet to see evidence of it. When he finally came to me the first time, his debts of honor alone were staggering."

Behind one eye, he could feel a sharp, throbbing pain. Fitzwilliam thought it would burst out of his head from this immense anger that had piled up within him, all of it pressing down on one sensitive point. "You gave my sister's fortune to gamesters?"

"I made use of it, yes, as a final resort. Your uncle came to me five years ago, up to his neck - ten thousand gold, dangerously overdue to exactly the sort of men to whom you do not want to be indebted. He didn't have two coppers to his name. His inheritance, his allowance, even his damn salary, gone. I needed coin immediately, and Georgiana's dowry was there, liquid and unneeded for years to come. I always meant to replace the money, but he kept getting into trouble. You must understand that, surely."

"I most certainly do not. All you have impressed upon me is that you found it easier to steal from a little girl than to tell a grown man to stop gaming with money he doesn't have."

"It wasn't that simple!" Andrew snapped. "I would have been happy to let them teach Samuel a lesson if they only meant to break his legs, but there were other considerations. He was even then rising very quickly in the Ducal Guards. It was evident that he would soon be named Captain of the Guard, terrifying as that is, and I wasn't about to permit whomever was financing these crooks to own him and his favors then. I wanted to know who that was, so I had to keep them in business. The least suspicious way to go about it was to pay Samuel's debts off - with your sister's fortune, yes."

This was a pretty piece of luck. Fitzwilliam had gone in with fire in his veins, ready to shoot down a high-handed villain for even thinking of taking advantage of his beloved sister. He intended to be resolute and strong. In doing this, he would prove to others that he was his own master, the head of an independent house, not a cadet branch of his mother's family. To himself, he hoped to prove he was more than simply the last man standing of his bloodline, more than a mere replacement for those who ought to have gone ahead of him. Now, standing at the gate with sword in hand, he saw the villain but heard his words; reason threatened to disarm him completely. While his mind scurried to design a strike that would injure but not kill, his mouth worked to buy time to think. "You said someone was financing these people. Who was behind the scheme?"

"I suspected it was old Lord Montague. He had ambitions, that one. Good Lord, say what you like about the Capulets or even my own father, but none of them were ever were so desperate for a crown as to bow and scrape to the rabble. The Montagues make a point of pandering to the lower classes, as if 'strength in numbers' should ever apply to milkmaids and fishmongers, and make a lot of the other families nervous." These nervous families included the other three houses headed by a governor of Verona. Even the more moderate houses - the Nowells and Fitzwilliams - had some ambition lingering beneath their contentment with the status quo. If the Era of Abeyance were to end, each of the governors wanted it to end with a crown on their head. The Montagues were traditionally the least discreet about this. "If a popular revolt ever came to fruition, it could cause a civil war - one that would be a great deal more bloody if the Montagues owned the Ducal Guards through my nitwit brother."

"Were the Montagues behind the gamesters?"

"Not directly, no. I know not exactly which, but I suspect it is another family, hoping to put people in their pocket and then parlay those favors into a connection with a greater family - the Montagues, possibly, but I have no proof."

"And what are you to do about this situation now that you are limited to your own resources?"

Andrew yawned and started to stretch out his stiff joints. "When my investigation ran dry, I had the gamesters killed. Nobody who wants to remain alive will be extending credit to Samuel."

"Certainly not," he muttered as he turned away. Such vigorous defense of one's interests was hardly uncommon and, regrettably, sometimes necessary. Fitzwilliam knew there would be times when the good of his family would not served by exposing someone who had done them harm. As his uncle did not need to know of that understanding, he put his all into maintaining his countenance. Private feelings had to remain so, and it was much easier to always keep one's own counsel than to be constantly adjusting one's candor to suit one's audience. Nothing more would be said about it. "How much credit do you expect me to extend to you, uncle?"

Andrew glared at his nephew, reluctantly admiring the shift in conversation. "For the lot? A year, at the least."

"A year?" he repeated incredulously. "She will be eighteen in January."

"And your mother has barely let her off the leading strings. Her dowry shouldn't be a concern for more than a twelvemonth."

"It should not be a concern for even a moment. It should be available to her immediately, and that it isn't is entirely your doing. Furthermore, my wedding is also in January, and I have no wish to taint the intervening with excessive concerns about my sister's fortune." 

"And there is no need to do so. She has you and your mother to look after her, not to mention any number of relatives, including myself. And if, God forbid, anything should befall you before you can sire a son, your sister will inherit the lot, in which case the thirty thousand will be of small importance."

When his nephew responded only with an annoyed silence, he offered, "Six months. Look, you have to give me time to raise that kind of coin. I can't possibly do it in less than six."

Fitzwilliam believed he could, just not comfortably or discreetly. Comfort was irrelevant, but discretion was worth considering. He had no immediate plans to tell Georgiana what had happened to her dowry, neither directly nor by allowing gossip to be created that might reach her ears. One day, he swore to himself, he would do his sister the compliment of telling her the truth, but not yet. With discretion on his mind, he offered, "Christmas."

"I can't-"

"Let me finish. If you will show some good faith now, I will accept half at Christmas and the remainder by the end of June."

Andrew, assuming this gesture would be monetary, asked, "And how much good faith am I to hand over?"

"I ask for a gesture, not a payment. Last night, I discussed with the grandmother of my godchildren - that is, with Ambassador Summerdream - certain troubles her people are facing. I believe you may be able to assist her, as a favor to me. You must be aware that the ambassador has been petitioning for Verona's assistance in protecting the Fae border villages from marauders. You were the one that banned her from addressing the Council, were you not?"

He had done it, and he would do it again in a heartbeat. If forced to endure another audience with the Ambassador, listening to her quote one ancient treaty after another in the most obnoxious performance in the history of diplomatic theater, he might rip his ears off of his head. "If I was, and I am not saying that I was, we can't do a damn thing for her now. The new Montague is Governor of the Sword, and he won't be seated until January."

"Surely, something can be done to satisfy the Ambassador. Does not the role of Governor of the State include diplomacy? And, as you are fond of pointing out, your father-in-law is the Senior Governor." Fitzwilliam hoped the words sounded the same aloud as in his head. Twisting harms did not come easily to him, though it was for the greater good. His uncle might benefit from a lesson in humility, and the Fae, if their villages were truly being raided by barbarians from the lawless remains of the Old Empire, needed help. "All I ask is that you arrange a fair hearing for her."

After a bleary-eyed assessment of his situation, Andrew decided this was the best he could hope for. He was damn lucky that Fitzwilliam had found this all out on his own. Andrew didn't want to know that the world of agony he would live in if Anne was made aware. Fifteen thousand was no modest sum to raise very quietly in three months, but if it couldn't be done without inconvenience to himself, he would at least have three months to come up with a delay tactic. The more immediate problem was Ambassador Summerdream, but cutting a deal with her was preferable to losing face in front of his father-in-law. He had invested too much into crowing about his "beloved" nephew's alliance with a prospective Lady Capulet to permit a tear in the family fabric now. Pride was something that uncle and nephew had in common. "Then we have a deal." 

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