“Well, I suppose we are thinking of the cruel grasping of his wretched wife all the more lately because of the terms of settlement we just discovered only this week,” Thomas said.
“Only this week,” Roarke said flatly. “You are telling me that you are still finding new terms of inheritance after all this time?”
“Yes,” Thomas said, his tone getting a bit sharper. “You have no idea what we have endured. How hard it is to go through papers and papers, trying to sort out the whims of a father.”
Roarke bit his tongue. They never had considered his father much of anything, despite his being their mother’s brother, so of course they wouldn’t see his death and the ripples that had come from it as the same thing.
“Hmmm” was all Roarke responded.
“Dearest Papa was far too kind,” Gertrude continued, moving closer to Roarke. He realized they were all doing it, almost surrounding him, and his stomach turned. “There was an additional term in regard to our stepmother, and it will come into effect very soon if we do not stop it.”
“And what is the term?” Roarke asked, trying to back away from the circling vultures, but only serving to edge himself farther into the corner of the room.
“Flora will inherit an additional ten thousand pounds if she reaches the third year of her widowhood without remarrying or taking a lover,” Thomas said, his mouth twisting with disgust.
Roarke’s head spun a moment. Ten thousand pounds. Great God, he came to beg for one percent of that amount just to stay afloat, just to keep his mother fed and minded.
“It’s not much of a sum,” Philip sneered. “But that bitch hasn’t earned it.”
Yet again Roarke flinched at the crude language his cousin used to address his stepmother and in front of his maiden sister. “Your father seems to have felt differently,” he said softly. “He must have cared for her a great deal in order to wish to protect her so thoroughly, as I imagine she must have inherited a tidy sum at this death.”
“Fifteen thousand,” Gertrude sneered. “Half again over what I inherited.”
Roarke shook his head. Great God, but these people were so entirely separated from reality. They lived like kings and compared themselves to paupers. They hated a woman for taking from them, when it seemed there were unlimited resources available left to them by a caring father who had stewarded his unentailed finances carefully to protect his family. All his family.
Roarke despised them for it.
He smoothed his coat and then forced a sympathetic smile. “I am sorry to hear of your woes, cousins. I imagine you must feel great frustration over this news. I feel as though I am intruding now on your grief. Perhaps I should go and we can meet again another—”
“No,” Thomas interrupted, arching a brow and glowering at Roarke in what he could only assume was his cousin’s attempt at a lord of the manor expression. “You came here to ask for our assistance, as you do several times a year.”
“The money is for my mother,” Roarke began, but his cousin lifted his hand.
“I don’t give a damn about your mother,” he snapped. “She was not related to us through blood.” Roarke clenched his fists at his sides but managed not to react in any other way as his cousin continued, “You receive a sum from the family at our pleasure. Our discretion. I’ve never asked you for repayment, have I?”
“No.” Roarke managed the one word through clenched teeth. “You are very kind.”
“Do you feel you owe me?” Thomas pressed, his eyes lighting with further cruelty.
Roarke bent his head, his breath coming rough. “You are talking about repayment, I suppose. I don’t know how you expect such a thing when you are so keenly aware of my circumstances. I thought lording it over me would be enough for you, as it has always been a pleasure to you to do so.”
“Watch your tongue, cousin, or it might be watched for you,” Philip said, edging closer. “The duke is talking to you.”
Roarke forced himself to lift his gaze back to Thomas’s and held there. “What do you want?”
“Nothing dire,” Thomas said, his tone dripping with false reassurance. “Nothing financial, so it will not be a trial to you. I am only asking that you investigate our stepmother. She didn’t know you, so she wouldn’t suspect if you did a little snooping into her life.”
“Investigate what?” Roarke sputtered.
“She must be whoring herself out,” Gertrude spat.
Roarke jerked his attention toward her. Here he had been surprised at the blunt language of his male cousins in front of her, but she was just as vulgar when it came to her stepmother.
“She has to have a lover,” Gertrude continued. “She probably had one while she was watching my father die in the bed beside her. And now she hides his…or even their…existence just so she can milk a little more away from Papa’s estate where it belongs.”
Roarke pushed past his cousins at last, his distaste finally overriding any duty he felt here. “No,” he said, walking toward the door. “Absolutely not.”
“Five hundred pounds.”
Roarke stopped as Thomas said the sum. He stared at the door, his escape. He usually got three hundred pounds a year from this lot, barely enough to scrape by and cover his mother’s carer. With an extra five hundred he could make her more comfortable, even give her a few niceties.
He swallowed and turned back to stare at the vultures who called themselves his family. They were smiling at him now. They already knew the trap was sprung, and he hated them and himself for the fact that it was true.
“You cared for your uncle, didn’t you?” Thomas asked.
Roarke pursed his lips. “Yes,” he choked out, and it was true. As a child he’d been close to his uncle, who had always been kind to him. But once his aunt had died, all that had changed. Thanks in part, he believed, to the very cousins who he stood before now. They had pushed him out and he had lost the bond to his uncle, except for fleeting conversations when they found each other at the same club.
“Flora was a monster,” Thomas continued, his tone serious. “Whatever you think of us, know that to be true. She took advantage of him in his old age, she played him for a fool all for what she could gain from him after his death. If you do this, you would be defending his honor.”
Roarke drew in a long breath. He had to give it to his cousins, they were experts at manipulation. Yes, the money was a tantalizing carrot to dangle in front of him, but the idea that he could do the right thing was even more attractive. If they were even a fraction correct that his late uncle’s young wife was using the situation for her own gain, then perhaps she did deserve to have her schemes uncovered.
And if not…well, at least Roarke knew he wouldn’t lie about it. Not like some other investigators his cousins might hire if he refused them. He could be a dispassionate judge of the circumstances and either deliver the dowager from the lies her stepchildren told, or condemn her for being a mercenary and using his uncle.
Either way, when he told himself this, convinced himself, it made him feel a little less guilty. “When do I get the money?”
“I will put half in your account today,” Thomas said. “Along with the other amount we agreed to earlier in our meeting. And when you have given me your report, you’ll have the other half.”