Taking Liberties Read Online Free Page B

Letter, it was The Will.
    She knew its contents already. Before the Earl’s mind had gone, she had been able to persuade him to have the lawyers redraft the document so that it should read less painfully to some of the legatees. Phrases like ‘My Dutch snuffbox to Horace Walpole that he may apply his nose to some other business than mine . . . To Lord North, money for the purchase of stays to stiffen his spine . . .’ were excised and, at Diana’s insistence, Aymer’s more impoverished bastards were included.
    Her own entitlement as Dowager was secured by medieval tradition—she was allowed to stay in her dead husband’s house for a period of forty days before being provided with a messuage of her own to live in and a pension at the discretion of the heir.
    As he fell into step beside her, she knew by his gabbled bonhomie that Robert was uncomfortable.
    â€˜The Dower House, eh, Mater? It shall be done up in any way you please. We’ll get that young fella Nash in, eh? Alice says he’s a hand at cottages ornés . We want you always with us, you know’—patting her hand—‘and, of course, the ambassador’s suite in the Mayfair house is yours whenever you wish a stay in Town.’
    â€˜Thank you, my dear.’
    â€˜As for the pension . . . Still unsteady weather, ain’t it? Will it rain, d’ye think? The pension, now . . . been talking to Crawford and the lawyers and such and, well, the finances are in a bit of a pickle.’
    The Dowager paused and idly sniffed a rose that had been allowed to ramble through a fault in an otherwise faultless hedge.
    Robert was wriggling. ‘The pater, bless him. Somewhat free at the tables, let alone the races, and his notes are comin’ in hand over fist. Set us back a bit, I’m afraid.’
    Aymer’s debts had undoubtedly been enormous but his enforced absence from the gaming tables during his illness had provided a financial reprieve, while the income from the Stacpoole estates would, with prudence—and Robert was a prudent man—make up the deficiency in a year or two, she knew.
    â€˜Yes, my dear?’
    â€˜So, we thought . . . Crawford and the lawyers thought . . . Your pension, Mama. Not a fixed figure, of course. Be able to raise it when we’ve recouped.’ He grasped the nettle quickly: ‘Comes out at one hundred and fifty per annum.’
    One hundred and fifty pounds a year. And the Stacpoole estates harvested yearly rents of £160,000. Her pension was to be only thirty pounds more than the annual amount Aymer had bequeathed to his most recent mistress. After twenty-two years of marriage she was valued on a level with a Drury Lane harlot.
    She forced herself to walk on, saying nothing.
    One hundred and fifty pounds a year. A fortune, no doubt, to the gardener at this moment wheeling a rumbling barrow on the other side of the hedge. With a large family he survived on ten shillings a week all found and thought himself well paid.
    But at five times that figure, she would be brought low. No coach—fortunate indeed if she could afford to keep a carriage team—meagre entertaining, two servants, three at the most, where she had commanded ninety.
    Beside her, Robert babbled of the extra benefits to be provided for her: use of one of the coaches when she wanted it, free firing, a ham at salting time, weekly chickens, eggs . . . ‘Christmas spent with us, of course . . .’
    And she knew.
    Alice, she thought. Not Robert. Not Crawford and the lawyers. This is Alice.
    Ahead, the end of the tunnel framed a view of the house. The mourning swags beneath its windows gave it a baggy-eyed look as if it had drunk unwisely the night before and was regretting it. Alice would still be asleep upstairs; she rarely rose before midday but, sure as the Creed, it was Alice who had decided the amount of her pension.
    And not from niggardliness. The Dowager acquitted her daughter-in-law of