Asher took the sealed notes with a nod, tore open the first one from Lady Lilias, and cursed at the news that Guinevere had not been to her house. Then he opened the next from Lady Emmeline with the same result and another curse, and then the next from Lady Abigail. It, too, imparted the same news.
“Damnation!” he swore. “I am going back out.”
“My lord!” Cushman burst out.
Asher swiveled back toward the man. “Aye?”
“You received another letter. This one came yesterday.” Cushman held the sealed letter out to Asher, who took it, saw it was from his solicitor, and opened it, thinking perhaps Pierce had contacted Mr. Benedict in his scheming. Cushman left him alone to read, which was a good thing, as Asher’s mouth slipped open when he read the note.
Your Grace,
Your father instructed me to send this letter to you if you ended up wed to Lady Guinevere. I am sorry for the short delay, as I was ill for several days.
Asher turned to the next page and began to read.
Dear Son,
It’s my hope that all is very well with you and your wife. In all I have done to make this union possible, I want you to know I have done so out of the recent comprehension of my own fault in character, and out of a hope that you will accept that, from the time you left London and foreswore me, I understood I had much to atone. Your anger and wish not to forgive me is fair, but I hope this will show you that I did love you and I was incredibly proud of the man you became, despite my presence in your life—or more likely because of my lack of presence in your life.
I regret immensely choosing money over you and your mother, and I regret even more that I asked you to come to London after your mother died for some right reasons but mostly for continued selfish ones.
You see, you were my chance to have the heir I’d always wanted. To crow to my friends of your shining glory. To prove to myself I had done one thing right in my life. I did crow, by the way, though you were not around to hear it, and I did nothing to make you who you are. You and your mother did that.
What I did was raise a selfish man, a man who will do anything to attain what he desires, a man weak in character just like his father—your brother. I don’t believe for one moment that he’s admitted any of his wrongdoings to you, though on my deathbed, I implored him to do so. He was, rightfully so, full of hatred for me because I could never love him the way I should have, in the way I love you.
Here are the facts of which you need to be aware. Do with them what you will once you know, but remember, at every turn, I’m quite sure I made your brother feel less than worthy because that’s how my father had always made me feel.
I first forbade you from pursuing Lady Guinevere because your brother had advised me that she was a woman of easy virtue.
Asher paused as a fresh wave of anger and fear gripped him. The need to find Guinevere pressed in on him from every side, but he suspected the letter would clear up some things and possibly guide him, so he continued to read.
I did not investigate this as I should have. I simply took his word, which I learned shortly after was not to be taken. I did not fathom until later how jealous he was of you before you had ever even arrived. I’ll admit, I was probably easily swayed by his false words because I wanted an Incomparable for you, which the Lady Guinevere was not at the time, or at least not by the silly standards I had come to accept.
Life is an ironic opponent, for as I write this now, I’ve come from the lady’s house to visit her father and inquire as subtly as I could if you had once truly had her affection. I chanced to glimpse her in the garden, and she is much like the most stunning of roses in full bloom. I’ve also discovered after further inquiries that she has wit as sharp as any thorn.
Asher smiled. How true those words were.
But I digress. I discovered after you were wed that your brother had orchestrated a great plot to ensure you would not end up with Lady Guinevere, whom, to my utter shock, he had nurtured hopes of wedding since they were much younger. I fear I may have worsened an already intolerable situation for the lady when I met her quite by accident in Town and tried to make amends for my part in her current predicament as the on-dit of the Season. I apologized for your pursuing her to spite me.
Asher winced, though Guinevere had told him of that meeting already.
In my defense, I had not yet discovered your brother’s plot to come between the two of you, the details of which I feel at this juncture cannot possibly matter, for one player, Elizabeth, is deceased and the other player, Lord Kilgore, is paying handsomely for his transgressions against you. Once I did discover it, though, I forbade your brother from pursuing Lady Guinevere with the threat of cutting him off completely from my funds.
That explained why Pierce had not attempted to do so until their father had died.
I did write all of this in my letters to you, each of which you returned unopened. Mr. Benedict has them now if you ever wish to read them. I have instructed him to keep them safe for you.
Guilt struck Asher in the chest that he’d never forgiven his father.
I did what I could with my will to ensure you end up with Lady Guinevere and to make amends for what has happened to you. Between myself and Mr. Benedict, we chose candidates for your wife that we knew were not truly candidates. And I did what I could in Scotland to ensure that you were motivated to swallow your pride and come to London so that I might right some wrongs for you, as I never had the chance to do in life.
He’d done what he could in Scotland? Was his father the cause of the troubles with his distilleries? He’d had contracts that people had unexplainably backed out of. Competitors that had come into huge amounts of money that enabled them to win bids he’d tried to win. The list went on, but in that long list was all the reasons he’d been forced to sell shares of his company.
Yes, Asher, I was the cause of your troubles.
It was as if the man were here speaking to him.
It pained me, but it had to be done, and it was nothing permanent. If you failed to wed, Benedict was instructed to give you the shares of your company that I had anonymously purchased from you, as well as a large sum of money for you to use as you saw fit. He was also instructed to tell you none of this. I am hoping you are thanking me now.
