A Kind And Decent Man

‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Hart; I didn’t mean to frighten you,’ he earnestly apologised. ‘Samuel said you’re to be found here most afternoons. I…I needed to speak with you…’ He looked at the grave, the pretty arrangement of pastel spring flowers atop the cropped grassy mound. ‘I apologise for intruding on a private moment…I just…I’m afraid it is important….’

Victoria banged earth from her gloved hands. ‘Please don’t apologise, Mr Beresford. In any case, I was just about to return to Hartfield. ‘Twill soon be time for dinner. Will you stay and dine?’ she pleasantly invited her late husband’s attorney.

Alexander Beresford reluctantly demurred but with grateful thanks for the kind offer as he gallantly helped Victoria to her feet. She was surprised to see him. He usually made the trip from the town of St Albans to the village of Ashdowne about once every six weeks to advise her on Daniel’s investments and her current financial situation. She was sure not yet a fortnight had passed since last she had seen him. He was a pleasant, stocky man of perhaps thirty-five. He seemed efficient in all he did and had been a great deal of help to her in the weeks following Daniel’s death, patiently explaining exactly what provision Daniel had made for her and that, with careful administration and a tight grip on the purse-strings, the funds would prove adequate to frugally maintain Hartfield.

She noticed he seemed more nervous than usual. Despite the chill afternoon air, a beading of perspiration glistened along his hairline. ‘Is something amiss, Mr Beresford?’

He cleared his throat, thrusting large hands into his greatcoat pockets while gazing off into the distance. This was to be a momentous day for both of them and he still wasn’t sure how or where to start. So he didn’t. ‘You have made that look very nice indeed, Mrs Hart. Those bright flowerheads can be seen from beyond the chapel gate.’ His praise was fulsome yet not once did he glance at the crocuses he so admired.

‘Is there something amiss, Mr Beresford?’ Victoria persisted, seeking contact with his evasive brown eyes.

‘Yes, Mrs Hart, there is,’ Alexander Beresford told her bluntly, his gaze finally colliding with hers. ‘But I think we should leave further discussion until we’re back at Hartfield.’ With a solemn air of finality he offered her his arm.

‘Surely the warehouse ought to have been insured against fire?’ Victoria demanded of Alexander Beresford, seated opposite her, his papers spread across her small library desk.

The man raked some chubby fingers through his brown hair. ‘It seems it was not, Mrs Hart. I have to admit to being equally amazed and angry at this discovery.’ A stubby finger poked between his neckcloth and his red-mottled throat. ‘The clerk charged with dealing with insurance cover on the premises at the East India Dock had not paid over the cash to the insurance company. In short, the man appears to have fraudently used the money as his own and allowed the policy to lapse.’ Mr Beresford clapped both hands down on the table, pushed himself back in his chair and issued a hearty blow of mingled annoyance and resignation. ‘None of which helps your cause, I’m afraid, Mrs Hart. Practically all Daniel’s stock was lost in the inferno. The rogue could possibly be punished, if the theft was proven and his whereabouts discovered. I have it from a reliable source that the coward is gone to ground. No doubt he trusted the theft would go undetected.’

Victoria gazed at him with wide grey eyes. The enormity of what he was saying was slowly penetrating her mind, in terrifying fragments. ‘Just how badly will I…will Hartfield…be affected by this loss, Mr Beresford?’ she asked quietly, determinedly.

His thick fingers plucked distractedly at the papers in front of him before clasping together. ‘To pay off creditors Hartfield must be sold,’ he eventually burst out.

‘Never!’ Victoria whispered in fierce astonishment. She certainly had not anticipated that things were as bad as that. ‘Daniel bequeathed Hartfield to me to provide a home for us all. And also to retain the servants who have served him…us so faithfully. Some have been at Hartfield for twenty years or more. Samuel was but nine years old when he commenced work in the stables. I would feel I had utterly failed Daniel…betrayed him, and so soon. It is barely eight weeks since his death. No! There must be some other way…’

‘I have searched for other ways, I assure you,’ Alexander Beresford stressed quite truthfully, his fleshy face ruddying in indignation. ‘The bank that forwarded loans to Daniel for the speculative purchase of those silks and cottons, now mere ashes, is pressing for payment. I need to forward some cash soon. An interim payment might appease them for a short while. I suggest sale of the last of the sterling bonds…’ He swivelled some papers towards her as he spoke, but they barely received a cursory glance. Her grey eyes were pinned back on his face, desperate for some reassurance that this awful, unexpected situation wasn’t as dire as it seemed. None came.

‘I’m sorry, my dear, but Hartfield will need to be sold. And as soon as possible. There is no stock now to sell to meet the interest or the principal. You probably know that during your late husband’s illness his finances declined quite considerably. There is the matter of the overdue rent from the Holdbrook farm, but I know Daniel was not keen to sue for that while the family were suffering such tribulations.’

Victoria nodded, murmuring her wholehearted agreement with Daniel’s forbearance. The tenants at that farm were experiencing dreadful hardship: two of the sons had been taken with consumption and just before Daniel had died of the same pitiless condition they’d had word that the youths’ mother was also afflicted. Adam Holdbrook, a man in his late forties, was now struggling to run his farm single-handed and rear three young children under five years of age. To insist on payment of overdue rent at such a time would have been beneath humanity. In fact, it was time she visited the family with a little of Hartfield’s butter and cheese. Samuel had told her only that week that, in desperation, Adam Holdbrook had sold the family’s last dairy cow. At one time, Daniel had been in a position to help luckless villagers. It had cemented good relationships between landlord and tenant. Now there was very little she could offer at such times. Her thoughts raced back to her own predicament. The awful truth was that she might soon be in need of a little charity herself.

‘Will there be any residue from the sale? Enough to provide a home for myself and my father and aunt?’

‘There will be very little, my dear…very little indeed.’ Alexander knew there would be nothing but voicing as much was beyond his courage.

Victoria stared at him, obliquely aware that he was kindly trying to comfort her. He had done so before on the fateful evening Dr Gibson had told them that Daniel would be dead before morn. And when reading Daniel’s will to her and explaining that everything her late husband owned was to be hers.

Hartfield was to be hers to keep or sell as she would but no other man would ever lay hands on it. Codicils had been added to the deeds to Daniel’s estate so it could be bequeathed to her yet never pass out of her control and into the unworthy clutches of a future husband, should she remarry.

Alexander Beresford’s brown eyes settled on the woman he secretly desired and admired. He strove for the boldness to voice his proposal. ‘There is another way, Victoria.’

The immediate bright hope in her eyes made him blurt quickly, ‘You could…you should remarry.’

Victoria frowned across the library table at him. ‘Remarry? My husband is barely eight weeks buried. It is far too soon; besides, I have no wish…’

‘I realise, my dear, that so soon might seem indelicate but in circumstances such as these…desperate circumstances…people understand such behaviour. What choices have you? A man to support you or employment are the only options if you are to avoid the parish relief.’

‘Well, which man would take on a widow with an estate and property to upkeep that will never be his own? He would need to be a wealthy saint. No such man exists.’

‘Well, naturally, Victoria,’ Alexander Beresford said mildly, ‘no man would burden himself so. Hartfield must be sold to meet your debts, for no man would take on such losses. But you still need protection and security. And any amount of gentlemen would be proud…happy to have you grace their home…’ And their bed, ran involuntarily through Alexander Beresford’s mind, making his chubby features perspire at such lustful thoughts. He repeated quickly, ‘No, Hartfield must be sold to pay your debts and I expect you would feel obliged to make provision for your relatives before you wed, if at all possible.’

‘My relatives? You mean my papa and Aunt Matilda? Well, naturally they would live with me…’

‘Daniel Hart was indeed philanthropic. But a new husband might not countenance such an arrangement, my dear,’ Alexander warned firmly. His brown eyes roved discreetly over her fitted buttoned bodice. Even the drab mourning grey and serviceable material could not deflect an appreciative glance at her slender ribcage and small rounded breasts.

He was determined to make his offer and in the circumstances was reasonably confident of it being successful. But his means and generosity would never stretch to her extended family. He earned a reasonable salary, had good prospects, and a comfortable home in St Albans. Victoria was very welcome to share it as his wife but his duty ended there. He had no intention of charitably boarding and lodging her brain-sick father or her outspoken widowed aunt, no matter what precedent Daniel Hart had vexingly set.

She would lose Hartfield. She had debts to pay and would thus lose the home her husband had had in his family for three generations. This was all that dominated Victoria’s mind. Daniel had left it in her safekeeping and within two months of his death it was to be lost. But how could she have prevented it? She could never have averted this disaster. Was there sense in Alexander’s proposal that another good man might be her salvation? She had married one kindly husband who had cared for her and her family. But then Daniel Hart and Charles Lorrimer had been old acquaintances: she had known her late husband all her life. She had always liked him…trusted him implicitly. It was the reason she had agreed to marry him when her future looked so bleak. She sighed dejectedly. ‘My papa and my aunt are settled here. I so wish my father could see out his remaining days at Hartfield.’

‘Well, I would do all in my power to please you, my dear,’ Alexander said. ‘But retaining Hartfield even for one more month is, I believe, quite beyond me.’

Victoria looked at him with wary grey eyes. Surely he didn’t mean…?

‘I see you have guessed, and I can’t say I’m surprised for I know I have difficulty at times in shielding my feelings for you. I have long admired you, Victoria. To my shame, I held you in great affection even when Daniel was alive. I envied him so…’ The admission seemed ripped from him.

‘Please, I feel I should stress that I…that I…’ Victoria could think of nothing to add quickly to make him stop.

‘No, let me finish. I must say these things, my dear. I have loved and admired you for a long while. It would make me the proudest man alive if you would consent to be my wife. I have a comfortable villa in St Albans and good prospects and salary. I have my business premises there and ambitions to expand and take on a partner—’

‘Please, I have to speak.’ Victoria softly interrupted him. She smiled and it prompted the florid-faced man to spontaneously reach across the table and grasp one of her small-boned hands in his pudgy fingers. The instinct to withdraw from his moist palm was not easily curbed. ‘I truly thank you, Mr Beresford, for your proposal. But I cannot…I cannot even countenance remarrying at present. Your kindness in offering to share your home with me does you great credit and me great honour. But at present I cannot consent…’

‘I understand; of course I do. A year at least to mourn one’s dear departed is usual…indeed expected. I have spoken too soon in the normal way. But circumstances are no longer normal. People understand that financial hardship countermands such codes. But I understand you need time to think.’ He gave her a rather sweet smile. ‘I pray you will consider quickly and favourably, Victoria.’ He hurriedly collected together his papers and within five minutes was gone from Hartfield.

As Victoria pivoted on her heel in the hallway after the great door closed behind him, she pondered on all he had told her. She thought of her father and her aunt and, because he was a kind man, she knew Alexander would provide for them. She turned back and stared at the arched oaken doors of Hartfield. He was quite right: her circumstances were exceptional. Protection for herself and her family was a priority; clinging to social niceties was not. She suddenly felt sorely tempted to run after him and give him her answer now.

Chapter Three

‘Well, I think it is an admirable idea!’

‘You do?’ Victoria quizzed her aunt, amazed.

‘Of course. What you have to bear in mind, Vicky, my dear, is that you are property-rich but income-poor. You need an alliance with a man who is the reverse. That would solve everything.’

‘I am not property-rich, Aunt Matty,’ Victoria patiently explained. ‘The bank will seize Hartfield, and Alexander Beresford is hardly rich…’

‘Tush, not him!’ Matilda Sweeting dismissed, contemptuously flapping a hand. ‘We can do better than him, I’ll warrant. We want a man of serious wealth, not reasonable prospects. No, what we will have to do, my dear Vicky, is take a trip to London and put you on the marriage block!’

‘You are simply priceless, Aunt Matty,’ Victoria censured on a giggle. ‘In case it’s slipped your mind, I am not a debutante of eighteen with an enticing dowry but an impecunious recent widow in her twenty-sixth year. Husband-hunting so soon and so blatantly would be frightfully unseemly. Besides, how many rich saints do you know that we can impose upon? For such a man is indeed what we need. Someone willing to take on all the responsibilities of Hartfield, and yet be content never to own it himself. A man prepared to support with equanimity a wife and her relations…’ Victoria glanced anxiously at Matilda’s reaction to that; she hadn’t meant to imply her aunt was a burden.

‘Keep your head still,’ Matilda ordered, unperturbed by Victoria’s tactless comment. She gently drew a silver-backed hairbrush through her niece’s thick hair, fanned ebony tresses over the shoulders of her white cotton nightgown and teased strands to frame her ivory complexion. Satisfied with her artistry, she curved her age-spotted hands over Victoria’s silken scalp, showing her her reflection in the glass. ‘Now tell me which man would not like that beautiful sight greeting him nightly.’

‘Aunt Matilda!’ Victoria admonished in an outraged squeak.

‘Now don’t get prudish with me, my girl. What you have to bear in mind is that what always counts with gentlemen when the chips are down—or more importantly aren’t down in our case, as we are all now so poor—is the lure of beauty. I suppose that tubby solicitor courting you told soppy tales of admiration and respect,’ Matilda fawned, contorting her lined cheeks into further wrinkles. ‘Pah! He desires you. So does every lusty male who claps eyes on you…that’s the truth of it.’

Placing her elbows on the dressing table, Victoria rested her slender chin in her cupped hands and looked. Limpid grey eyes roved across her creamy brow from where ebony satin hair curtained her small, heart-shaped face. She swivelled her pointed chin in her palm, examining her features. Her nose was too short and narrow, she was sure, and her mouth too full and wide. But throughout her life she had been told she was pretty. Even her papa had once grudgingly admitted that she mirrored her mother’s pale beauty and not a scrap of him…apart from his black hair. But she could only recall him complimenting her that once, when mellow with brandy and bonhomie after a successful afternoon’s gambling at his club. There had been very few such cheering incidents. He’d invariably lost, and heavily. Yet he would return to St James’s confident of recouping the previous day’s misfortunes.

Daniel had constantly said how proud he was of his child-wife, as he affectionately termed her. But the man who had pleased her most with his quiet compliments…she no longer thought of, she firmly reminded herself, abruptly sitting back in her velvet chair. But her grey eyes held with her reflection. She rubbed at her high cheekbones, stirring some colour into them.

‘Leave yourself be!’ Matilda whipped pins from her own greying locks in readiness for retirement. ‘You weren’t meant to be one of those milky-pinky misses with yellow hair and baby-blue eyes,’ she lisped through the pins lodged temporarily between her teeth. They soon scattered on the dressing table. ‘You’re just fine as you are. I noticed David Hardinge couldn’t keep his eyes from you…when he thought you were looking elsewhere, of course. I swear you quite took that wealthy bachelor’s breath away,’ she innocently declared, sliding a pale blue eye sideways at her niece.