Chapter 22: The Accounts

"My fortune, Uncle," I said, "is a very good question.

"I'm glad you asked it in front of so many people."

He smiled at me, comfortably.

He believed he still had one card, and I watched him count it.

"Your mother's portion remains in my care until the first of September.

"The accounts will be rendered, my dear, in due course, to the proper authority."

"I have a witness," I said, "to what you did with it."

I looked to the foot of the stairs.

There stood a man in a tight blue coat, with a large red face and a hat in his hand.

He had been there for an hour, between two footmen, because the Dowager had invited him by name.

The gentleman of Leeds came forward, looking at nobody.

"I'm a plain man," he said, in a voice that carried because he did not care that it did.

"I came down from Leeds on the strength of a letter.

"I paid his lordship six thousand pounds, in notes, last March, for the settlements.

"I understood I was marrying a young lady who had consented."

"Sir," said my uncle.

"I am told she was not asked.

"I am told she was not his to give.

"And I am told, by that old lady in the turban, that he offered my son the girl in the white frock.

"On the same terms."

The room made a low, appalled sound.

"I'm sixty-one, madam," said the gentleman of Leeds, to me.

"I'm not so old that I don't know when I've been took for a fool.

"I'll have my six thousand back, my lord, in front of these people, or I'll know why."

My uncle had gone the colour of tallow.

"The accounts," said the Dowager, "since the question has been raised."

She rapped her cane, and a footman brought her a flat tin box.

She opened it herself.

"I had these from the lawyer who drew the trust in the year eight.

"He kept a duplicate, and has wanted to be rid of it since the day Brayne's name went on the ledger.

"Forty thousand pounds, the portion of Wilhelmina and Katherine Aldridge.

"Thirty-one thousand drawn.

"A stud at Newmarket, a house at Brighton, and Lord Brayne's creditors, in that order.

"Nine thousand remain."

A woman gasped and turned it into a cough.

"It is," said the Dowager, "a very interesting hand.

"I should like the Lord Chancellor to read it on the first."

"Forgery," said Brayne. "A trick of the girl's."

"If it please you, my lord," said a high clear voice.

Kitty stepped out from beside the Chairman with her notebook in her hand.

Her braids were tidy and her cheeks were pink.

A young man in a shabby black coat stood at her shoulder with a letter in his fist.

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