Lady Susan Plays the Game Read Free Page B

does – but he did notconfide in me that there was any problem. He always told me that nothing was too much to do for me.’
    She studied the window pane and sliding rain for a moment while Burnett glanced at her face. He thought he caught a sudden contracting, a hardness unusual to her expression. ‘I never assumed he was beggaring us.’
    Burnett pressed the point. ‘I’m afraid, your ladyship, that the sums of money advanced are considerable and will need to be paid.’
    â€˜But surely a lady cannot be held responsible for a husband’s debts. It would be a strange world if that were the case.’
    She looked levelly at Burnett.
He is enjoying this
, she saw.
Let him. He will not see my thoughts
.
    â€˜Certainly not. But these are debts which’ – and he paused – ‘your ladyship has incurred through your husband’s name and which now fall to the estate. They must, I am afraid, be paid.’
    â€˜You sound like the butcher and draper demanding their money.’
    â€˜I may do so, your ladyship,’ responded Burnett who had come to the end of the rehearsed part of the encounter. ‘And I’ve no doubt that the butcher and draper will do as you surmise. But the truth remains that there are as many debts as assets.’
    â€˜You repeat yourself,’ said Lady Susan. ‘I think we have done enough for today.’
    She rose and Burnett took a step back. He was a short, stocky man, only a little taller than Lady Susan, but it was rank rather than size that sometimes oppressed him. The woman before him was poor, ruined, in worse state than his own increasingly affluent family. But she was the daughter of an earl, if only of an Irish creation, and she had the assurance of birth. He bowed, not quite satisfied with his performance, although he couldn’t say quite where it had gone wrong.
    In the past he had made much of a very distant connection with the Burnetts of Crathies and had a woodcut of their Aberdeenshire castle and sumptuous pleasure gardens on his parlour wall. But, although always a well-bred gentleman and unfailingly polite, Mr Vernon had never followed up the subject, and it would certainly not impress his widow.
Yet, when all is said and done
, he mused then and now,
a connection to a bona fide Scottish laird should count as something before a spendthrift English lady and her Irish title
.
    â€˜I will leave your ladyship at this difficult time,’ he said. ‘Perhaps she will call for me when the moment is more opportune. I may have some advice that might profit her.’
    The verb was ill chosen. Lady Susan gave him an icy smile, inclined her head and left the room. She rarely needed to be alone but she felt the need now.
    When she entered her dressing room Barton was waiting for her. Usually Lady Susan enjoyed her pert talk, but not today. She dismissed the maid and sat at her dressing table looking at the mottled swinging glass from which she’d pushed back the modest fabric covering. She must think.
    Of course she knew where the money had gone, but she’d assumed there was more to come. She’d thought that Frederick, for all his ineptness in other areas of life, would have managed things better. He’d always been over-scrupulous in paying minor tradesmen whom it was unnecessary to flatter in that way. They could only gain advantage in being known to supply the Vernons, whether they paid or not. If their custom were removed from such people, surely other gentlemen’s families would follow suit? Frederick himself could have spent little. He was no high liver and he had clearly not kept up the house. And what did he and their daughter want with money in the country?
    Certainly they had been rich enough some years ago. They must have been, for she had persuaded her husband to sell Vernon Castle – rather advantageously – to a stranger instead of letting his brother have it for a lower price, so