Both Henry and Browning looked uncomfortable, almost as if they had been dragged there by the ear, and George got the sense that whatever they had to impart, it was nothing good.
“Let them through,” George insisted as the butler and all three of the men before him dropped into bows at the sound of his voice.
“Your Grace,” Henry said, sounding a little nervous, his head still bowed. “Please, forgive us the disruption. We can return at a better time.”
“Nonsense, Henry!” George insisted. He hurried forward, grabbed the old man, and hugged him as if they were brothers. In a way, they were: brothers in arms and friends since school. He clapped him haughtily on the back as he added, “It is good to see you!”
He felt the man relax in his arms, and Henry finally returned his embrace. Yet, when George pulled away, he still looked quite pale.
“Come now,” George insisted, tapping him on the shoulder, “we are old friends. Why do you look at me so?”
“Henry seems to think you’re all high and mighty now that you have inherited your father’s title, and he does not wish to be seen as a bother,” Walter said, nudging their friend in his side with his elbow. “I told him you would most certainly wish to hear what he has to say.”
“And you, Mr Browning?” George asked, turning to the solicitor who remained in the back of the group, his gaze at the floor, his spectacles hanging low on his nose. “Why is it that you darken my doorstep, sir?”
Mr Browning nervously cleared his throat, pushing his spectacles up his nose as he lifted his pocketbook and said, “I umm … I have the evidence you may require, Your Grace.”
“Evidence?” George echoed, stepping back. He blinked in surprise. “This does sound serious.”
Gesturing back the way he had come, he added, “Come. We will talk in the study.” He looked to the butler and added, “See that we are not disturbed.”
The man dipped his head, taking each of the visitors’ coats and hats before they all shuffled into the study behind George.
“What is all of this about?” George asked the moment he had clicked the door closed behind him.
Walter needed only to utter one word for George to immediately be alert: “Fitzwilliam.”
George’s throat constricted. He shoved his hands into his pockets in an attempt to hide how he stiffened. “You mean, Greystone?”
It was Henry who responded, though not in words. Instead, he made a point of spitting as if the mere name was disrespect itself.
Stunned by Henry’s out-of-character gesture – remembering what a mild-mannered and polite gentleman he had always been – he blinked at his friend and waited for further explanation.
“Forgive me, Your Grace, but there has never been a man less deserving of a title,” Henry said, his entire body trembling visibly.
“Please, sit,” George insisted, waving his arm to indicate the several seating options for the other men, “explain.”
George took to his own seat behind the desk once more, his hands hidden beneath its surface to hide the way his fists began to clench as Henry started to tell his story.
“Fitzwilliam is a liar, a coward, and a criminal,” he said as all the men took to their seats. “He is a smuggler and a blackmailer, and perhaps everything in between.”
Walter and Mr Browning sat with their heads bowed as Henry explained how he had been acquaintances with people in association with Fitzwilliam, people who had trusted him and been betrayed by him, people who he had used to fund and work an illegal alcohol smuggling operation, using extortion, blackmail and all other manner of things to get the right men in the right positions to do his bidding with the help of several high-ranking British officers.
The more that George heard, the more his nausea began to rise.
And just when he finally thought he was finished, Walter added for him, “And that is not the worst of it.” He looked between Henry and George and back again. “Tell him how he came to be a viscount.”
“He did something heroic in the war,” George said quickly. “I don’t need to hear about all of that again. Lady Westmere has been practically bashful about mentioning it whenever she hints at her daughter’s marriage to the man.”
“That’s just it, Your Grace,” Henry said, and George wished he could tell him to stop calling him that, but he feared if he did, his friend might clam up. “Fitzwilliam never did anything heroic in the war. Quite the opposite, actually.”
“So Fitzwilliam did not rescue Lieutenant General Godfrey when he was left unconscious and bleeding on the battlefield?” George questioned. He had heard the story a hundred times of how Fitzwilliam had dragged the man three miles from the battlefield, making it within metres of a medic tent before he himself succumbed from exhaustion.
Godfrey’s close ties with the crown, and his life being of great value to the royal family, whose blood he shared, had been what had led to Fitzwilliam gaining his title, and had even earned him a small estate to go along with it.
Henry shook his head.
“How do you know this?”
