At a turn in the hallway, near the front of the house, he bumped right into a young footman carrying a tray of letters. “Beg your pardon, milord!” the footman apologized immediately, and got down on all fours to retrieve the scattered missives.
As the footman gathered up the letters, Camden saw two addressed to him. He recognized the handwriting of his friends. The new university term had already started; they must be wondering why he hadn't returned yet. He had not informed his classmates of his upcoming marriage—he and Gigi had decided to throw a surprise reception in Paris, in the spacious apartment her agent had located for them on Montagne Sainte Geneviève in the Quartier Latin, a stone's throw from his classes. A few essential items of furnishing had already been set up at the apartment, where a cook and a maid had also taken up residence in preparation for their arrival.
He held out his hand for the tray. “I'll take them, Elwood.”
Elwood looked baffled. “But, sir, Mr. Beckett said all letters must go to him first, so he could sort them out.”
“Since when?”
“Since right about Christmas last, sir. Mr. Beckett said His Grace didn't like too many letters begging him for charity.”
What? Camden almost said the word aloud. His father had never met a beggar for whom he didn't have a coin to spare. It was his very softheartedness that had in part made them paupers.
An appalling suspicion was beginning to coalesce in Camden's mind. He wanted to bat it away with something heavy and powerful—a club, a mace—to disperse the filaments of deductions and inferences that threatened to choke his perfect contentment. He wanted to forget what he had heard about the majordomo just now, ignore the clamor in his head that had risen to a screaming siren, and pretend that everything was exactly as it should be.
Tomorrow he was getting married. He couldn't wait to sleep with that girl. He couldn't wait to wake up next to her every day, bask in her adoration, and delight in her verve.
“Very well, take these to Beckett,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
Camden watched the footman march down the hallway. Let him go. Let him go. Don't ask questions. Don't think. Don't probe.
“Wait,” he commanded.
Elwood turned around obediently. “Yes, sir?”
“Tell Beckett I would like to see him in my apartment in fifteen minutes.”
Chapter Eleven
22 May 1893
A gentleman's club had seemed the perfect remedy after a tiring, weeklong business trip to the Continent, during which he'd thought very little of his business and too much of his wife. But Camden was beginning to regret his freshly minted membership. He had never set foot inside an English gentleman's club before, but he had harbored the distinct impression that it would be a quiet, calm place, filled with men escaping the strictures of wives and hearths, drinking scotch, holding desultory political debates, and snoring softly into their copies of the Times.
Certainly the interior of the club, which looked as if it had not been touched in half a century—fading burgundy drapes, wallpaper splotchily darkened by gaslights, and furnishing that in another decade or so would be called genteelly shabby—had seemed conducive to somnolence, giving him the false hope that he'd be able to while away the afternoon, brooding in peace. And he had done so for a few minutes, until a crowd begging for introductions surrounded him.
The conversation had quickly turned to Camden's various holdings. He hadn't quite believed Mrs. Rowland when she declared in one of her letters that Society had changed and that people could not shut up about money these days. Now he did.
“How much would such a yacht cost?” asked one eager young man.
“Is there a sizable profit to be realized?” asked another.
Perhaps the agricultural depression that had cut many a large estate's income by half had something to do with it. The aristocracy was in a pinch. The manor, the carriages, and the servants all bled money, which was getting scarcer by the day. Unemployment, for centuries the gentlemanly standard—so that one could devote one's time to serving as parliamentarian and magistrate—was becoming more and more of an untenable position. But as of yet, few gentlemen had the audacity to work. So they talked, to scratch the itch of collective anxiety.
“Such a yacht costs enough that only a handful of America's richest men can afford one,” Camden said. “But, alas, not so much that those who supply them can claim instant riches.”
If he were to solely rely on the firm he owned that designed and built yachts, he'd be a well-off man but nowhere near wealthy enough to hobnob with Manhattan's elite. It was his other maritime ventures, the freight-shipping line and the shipyard that built commercial vessels, that comprised what Americans called the “meat-and-potato” portion of his portfolio.