he certainly wasn’t, Jack thought. Lacey introduced him to Jack, although Jack thought that he had almost certainly met Richard years ago, before the war.
‘Fighting Jack, isn’t it?’ he remarked cordially. ‘We met at Ascot in ‘13, I think. Squiring young Miss, were you? Come to dinner tonight as a thank-you, you deserve it.’ This was all said with the greatest good humour.
Jack accepted the invitation to dinner, even though he had packed his evening wear before he had left for the lawyers that morning and would now have to unpack it. It would give him yet another chance to meet Lacey and take a last memory of her home to Sussex.
‘Though I don’t think that I really deserve a thank you,’ he ended, ‘it was a most enjoyable afternoon.’
Lacey murmured, her eyes twinkling mischief, ‘I think that Jack enjoyed himself on the roller coaster as much as I did.’
‘I’m sure he did,’ smiled Richard, looking knowing.
Later that evening, before the guests arrived for dinner, he remarked to Lacey, to Aunt Sue’s annoyance, ‘Young Compton’s better than your average escort. He had a good war and gave up a promising career in the Army in order to try to improve the family fortunes. His brother Will is a helpless cripple—war wounds, of course. The other brother was killed at Passchendaele.’
‘I know,’ Lacey said simply. ‘He’s not at all like his cousin Rupert or any of the other young men I have met over here. He takes life seriously.’
One thing she had already privately decided: that London season or no London season, she would be off to Sussex as soon as decently possible!
Chapter Three
‘I hope that you didn’t rush home for my sake,’ said Will anxiously.
Jack’s answer was robust. He always did his elder brother the honour of speaking to him as though he were still the hearty athlete he had once been and not a man paralysed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair. ‘I came home for mine. I’ve too damned much to do here without wasting my time in London.’
‘Did you meet anyone interesting?’
‘Cousin Rupert—who is apparently in hock to the money-lenders. He always was a bit of an ass. Richard Chancellor—he asked to be remembered to you. The Chancellors are now even more enormously rich than ever, I gather, with interests in oil in the States. Oh, and Darcey, his cousin. A more sensible chap than our cousin Rupert from the sound of it. Rupert was behaving very badly, up one minute, down the next.’
He deliberately didn’t mention Lacey. If nothing came of their sudden romance then, so far as Will was concerned, what the heart doesn’t know, the heart can’t grieve. Good God, that was yet another ghastly saying of his old nurse’s which had popped into his head after many years’ absence! He was so busy lamenting its reappearance that he only just heard Will’s next question.
‘No interesting young women, then?’
‘Come, come, Will, by interesting do you mean, beautiful, glamorous or rich?’
‘All three rolled into one gorgeous package would be useful,’ sighed Will, ‘but rare, one supposes. You must admit that if you found one and married her all our money troubles would be over.’
Lacey Chancellor certainly fitted that bill, was Jack’s inward and clichéd response, but fortune hunting was not his game, and so he told Will.
This brought on another attack of sighing from his brother. Jack thought that Will looked frailer than ever. He was leaning back in his chair, a blanket over his knees and a scarf round his neck even though the day was a warm one.
They were seated on the terrace which looked out over the neglected park where a few sheep were grazing. The folly at the end looked more broken down than he had remembered it, while the state of the ha-ha was even more disastrous. On the whole, though, it was probably better to be sitting in the open rather than in the house whose every room reminded the brothers of the splendour which had vanished and which was beginning to look increasingly unlikely to be restored.
‘I’m not in the market for fortune hunting.’ Jack was short.
‘Pity,’ sighed Will. ‘I had the local bank manager round the other day about our account there. He was surprised to find you in London.’
‘Was he, indeed? I suppose that we ought to be grateful that rather than summon us brusquely to his parlour he still cares to visit us. What did he have to say?’
‘That we ought to sell some more land to help our finances and improve our living conditions.’
Jack frowned. ‘I don’t like the thought of selling any more land. We have little enough left to farm profitably as it is. Besides, our main account is at Coutts, as he knows.’
‘I don’t exactly like the thought of selling it myself,’ admitted Will, ‘but do I have the right to tie you to this sinking ship? Things might yet take a turn for the worse. You’ve sacrificed enough already—and to what end?’
Jack tried to reassure him. ‘That we are not quite in such a desperate state as we were when the war was over. A little more than a hundred years ago we were in a similar predicament when young Sir Jack inherited and pulled us round again.’
Will was sighing again and looking worried. Jack wondered why. ‘It was easier for him,’ he said ruefully. ‘Now we live in an age which sees something wrong with inherited land and titles. Consequently the kind of deference which young Jack almost certainly received, and which helped us to survive and prosper until the damned War came along, has almost disappeared.’
‘You mean that bank managers didn’t descend on us with ultimatums—or should it be ultimata?—we sent for them at our leisure.’
‘Something like that,’ said Will.
‘Is this why you wished me to come home as soon as possible?’
‘Not quite. There is something else, just as worrying. In fact, to be honest, much more so. It’s my fault as well.’
He looked away from Jack, his fingers plucking at his blanket. When he spoke his voice was low and ashamed.
‘I did a damned foolish thing before you came back from Palestine. I had a lot of debts of honour incurred in my Army days. I contacted a London money-lender and took out a loan to enable me to pay them—and some other, larger ones, which I had run up by unsuccessfully gambling on the Stock Exchange in an effort to mend matters.’
He paused. Jack stared at him. ‘Come on, Will, that’s not the end. Finish what you have begun. What did you use for security?’
‘Compton Place—and the remaining lands. What else was there?’ He stopped again.
Aghast, Jack exclaimed, ‘Why did you never tell me of this? Did our solicitors know? Did our former land agent, old Baines?’
Will shook his head. ‘Not the solicitors. At first I conducted most of the business through Baines. As you know, he died just after you took over here.’
‘And without saying a word to me about this.’ Jack was grim. ‘I take it that you paid interest to this shark—how did you do that?’
Will looked away. ‘He wasn’t really a shark. To begin with I paid him out the money cousin Alfred left me. The interest wasn’t exorbitant. He didn’t want to ruin me. He said that in the long run he would make more money that way. I used some of young Robbie’s inheritance from his maternal grandfather after I had adopted him. His mother, as you know, couldn’t wait to hand him over to us once she remarried. Said her husband didn’t want another man’s brat.’
‘And now Robbie’s money has gone as well?’
There was a quiet desperation in Jack’s voice since Will, despite his brave words earlier, had behaved