To have a hank on someone - to have a hold over them

- The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, by Francis Grose.

 

“This came for you, your grace.”

Ash looked up from his abstraction, discovering as he did so that he’d been staring across his study at nothing in particular for over an hour at least, judging on the time. Grant was standing at his side, that familiar, inscrutable expression that seemed to fit the man like a mask. Like so many of the servants here in Bath, he was the dowager duchess’ creature, and Ash didn’t doubt his every move was reported back to his grandmother in excruciating detail.

He’d been fortunate to discover that both his mother and sister had been abed the whole of the previous day, both afflicted with megrims. So, as he’d forbidden the staff to speak of it, the distasteful news of Lord Todd’s demise had not yet reached them. For the time being, this had saved him from what he knew well would be hysterical and distressing scenes. The longer he could delay that, the better, but sooner or later they would have to know the truth. His stomach twisted at the idea, especially as he would bear the responsibility for their distress.

He waited until the butler had left the room before opening the letter. It was brief and to the point, to say the least.

I know what you did.

Meet me in the abbey at seven am.

Ash dropped the missive as if it had burned him. Good God, as if things weren’t bad enough. Now he had a blackmailer to contend with. Forcing himself to calm down with difficulty whilst his heart felt like it was trying to escape his chest, he poured himself a drink. He refused to notice that his hand was trembling, and instead considered what best to do. His first reaction was to run to confide in Keziah and seek her opinion, but he felt enough of a fool in her eyes already. If he could deal with this himself, perhaps she wouldn’t look on him with such … pitiful contempt.

He would meet this person, whoever they may be, and discover what they wanted, though he could guess well enough. It was well known that he was amongst the wealthiest men in the country. Any blackmailer would be a fool to demand anything less than thirty thousand. If it was just a one-off payment Ash would have handed it over without a second glance and welcome. But he wasn’t fool enough to believe that was how it would work. No, he would have to think of something else.

He didn’t see Keziah again that day, which was perhaps just as well. He’d likely only blurt out about the letter he’d got, and he was determined to save her that worry, at least.

He’d found himself outside her bedroom door twice during the afternoon, though, the first time put off by the glower of a disapproving maid, and the second by fearing the young woman herself would not be pleased to see him. He was walking back down the stairs feeling discouraged and scolding himself as a coward when the voice of his grandmother cut through the air like a finely honed blade and pierced his brain.

“Felix!”

Repeating the accusations of cowardice to himself, he turned in her direction and forced a smile to his lips. He found her awaiting him, wearing a rather elegant dove grey that he found very becoming, and framed in the doorway of the yellow salon.

“Grandmother,” he said, moving forward to press a dutiful kiss to her soft cheek. There was certainly nothing else soft about her, he thought with a rare moment of criticism. “I hope you are well?”

“Never mind that,” she barked, gesturing for him to follow her in and shut the door. “Why was that grubby little man here this morning, and why have we a young, unmarried female in the house? For I tell you now,” she said, her green eyes flashing fury, “if you’re thinking of getting in the petticoat line, you can just think again!”

“Good God,” Ash replied, nettled by the accusation. “I should think not, and I can’t understand why you should accuse me of it, either. It’s not as if that’s ever been my lay.”

“Oh, do stop using that vulgar cant,” she scolded before returning to the subject at hand. “And what should I think, I ask you?” she demanded. “Strangers in the house and goings on.” The dowager was grumbling in earnest now, and favoured him with a leery eye, glaring at him in a manner which suggested her meticulous household was falling apart solely because of his misbehaviour. Ash had to concede she might have a point, except that she’d failed to realise it was no longer her household, it was his. Something a number of people might do well to remember, he thought with a brooding air of discontent.

“I demand that you tell me what is going on,” the imperious voice commanded. Ash knew only too well how she hated not knowing everything that was going on. “Are you in trouble?”

There was a glitter in the old woman’s eyes that told him she well knew that he was, and he was overwhelmed with the urge to confide in her. Since his father had spent a great deal of his time away from home, the running of the household had fallen to his grandmother. His mother had no head for it, nor any interest, and the dowager had been so loath to hand over the reins that the status quo appeared to have carried on in much the same way since his grandmother had first arrived as a new bride. If one was to believe that the woman only ran the household, however, that would be to do her a great disservice. She did not so much manage the various great estates as much as control them, and every living being under their roofs. Lady Margaret was a grand dame in every sense; she was regarded with as much awe as respect, and if she wasn’t universally loved, she was held in affection by many and feared by more.

As a young man with an absent father and with a house full of females, however, this had not had a positive effect on his confidence. It was hard to be decisive when one’s grandmother constantly overruled one and usually pointed out one was being an utter idiot just for good measure.

No, Ash decided. If he was ever to earn Keziah’s respect, and his own, more to the point, he needed to do this without interference. However, the death of his mother’s beau could hardly be kept from her much longer. He groaned inwardly as he realised how distraught his darling mama would be.

It didn’t bear thinking about.

“Well?” Lady Margaret said, her increasingly tart voice snapping him out of his thoughts.

“No, no,” Ash replied, waving an impatient hand and sitting himself down. “No trouble, but I do have bad news, shocking, in fact,” he added, wondering how the old girl would take it. “Lord Todd has been murdered.”

“Nonsense,” she said, twitching at the drapes of her skirts with an impatient air. “Men of Lord Todd’s ilk don’t go getting themselves murdered, more’s the pity,” she added with a dark look. “They do the murdering.”

“Well, nonetheless,” Ash replied, irritated that she wouldn’t take his word for even this information without believing he’d gotten his facts wrong. “He has been murdered and that’s why Inspector Formby was here.”

The dowager stared very hard at Ash, her green eyes cool and measuring.

“What the devil has that to do with us?”

“Nothing, of course,” Ash said in a hurry. “Only Mama has been seen in his company a good deal, and …” Ash swallowed and looked away from that piercing green gaze. “And that the young lady who stayed the night here was his daughter.”

The fury in her eyes was so magnetic, Ash could not look away, and spluttered to get the rest of his explanation done before she exploded.

“The wretched man beat her and her maid with such violence that you would be shocked beyond measure. They came here to take refuge, and I was more than happy to provide it in the circumstances. I assure you, there was nothing inappropriate in any way. The doctor came to see her, he’ll verify it.”

She stared at him, her expression unreadable, but the silence created by her lack of reaction was dreadfully unsettling. That she was displeased was only too obvious.

“Felix,” she said, her tone that of one who was fast losing patience with one she believed an utter fool. “Why did the young woman seek you out?”

Ash fell silent as he realised he’d have to stick to the story that he’d given the inspector, and that his grandmother wasn’t going to like it one bit. If she’d objected to her daughter marrying Lord Todd, that was nothing to the objections she would throw at him over the idea that Lady Todd might become the next Duchess of Chartley.

She’d have a damned apoplexy.

Ash cleared his throat, his cravat feeling all at once as though he’d tied it too tight. Impossible, of course; if there was one thing he could do that was the envy of almost every man in the ton, it was to tie a perfect cravat. Not that there was much else to brag about, but at least it was something. He realised his thoughts had veered from the point again, and glanced up to find Lady Margaret looking at him like she wanted to commit murder herself.

“I …” Ash began and then fell silent as screams could be heard from entrance hall.

“Good Lord,” he exclaimed, and snatched at the opportunity to run from the room.

On reflection, he rather wished he’d stayed with his grandmother, as the scene enfolding before him was of a melodramatic nature that he found little favour with.

The beleaguered Mr Formby had caught his mother in a swoon and was looking as though he’d wish himself to Hades rather than remain where he was a moment longer. To add to the ghastly scene, his sister Hannah was hysterical.

“What did you do?” he demanded of Formby, who was looking guilty, to say the least.

“Well, how was I to know you hadn’t told them about the murder yet?” he demanded, staggering under Lady Ashwicke’s weight in a manner that that lady would have not appreciated if she’d been awake. Taking pity on the man, as he was not the most robust of fellows, Ash took his mother from the inspector’s arms and returned her to the yellow salon to be laid on a chaise longue, while his grandmother looked on with an air of deep disapproval.

After sending a wide-eyed maid for heartshorn and smelling salts, Ash returned to give Hannah a shake. This stopped her screaming but instead made her cry, a distraught wailing sound that Ash wasn’t sure wasn’t worse. Ushering his sister into the salon with his mother, Ash instructed a stony-faced Grant to make Formby comfortable elsewhere while he dealt with the crisis.

“I would like to speak with the ladies, your grace,” Formby objected as the butler moved off.

Ash favoured him with a look of deep disgust. “And so you shall, when they are calm enough to do so. If you had not broken the news in quite such a manner, perhaps that might have been achieved sooner.”

Ash was rather surprised that the inspector actually looked rather chastened by this set-down. Ash himself was forced to concede that he had never before sounded more like his grandfather. Defending his family seemed to bring out those centuries of ducal breeding and superiority in a manner nothing else ever had. Still, that didn’t save him from actually doing as he said and heading back to the salon to deal with his female relations.

Things were little better. Hannah was sobbing in a chair by the fire and his grandmother was holding smelling salts beneath his mother’s nose with a look of revulsion at this excessive display of emotion.

As his mother seemed reluctant to emerge from her swoon - and who could blame her - Ash went to deal with his sister.

He and Hannah had never been especially close, as he found her spoilt and over-indulged, and her tantrums were something he could not stomach. However, he was fond of her, and though he felt she didn’t hold him in very great esteem, she always turned to him in matters of sartorial judgement, realising, at least, that her dear mama’s taste was not to be relied upon. To see her in such distress was something he could not bear, and he drew up a chair beside her and handed her his handkerchief.

“Why are you so distressed, Hannah?” he asked, though as he spoke, the obvious answer settled in his gut with a feeling of horror.

Hannah looked up at him. Her eyes were a rich brown like his mother’s, but although a very pretty girl, she was not the beauty Lady Anne had been or indeed still was. There was irritation in her eyes along with the very obvious distress.

“He was in love with me, and I with him,” she said, dissolving into heaving great sobs once again.

Any feelings of remorse that Ash may have harboured at having murdered a man were now well and truly at an end. That an experienced man like Todd could have seduced a silly, young chit like his sister, while trying to fix his interest with the mother at one and the same time … Bile rose in his throat, and he knew that, given the chance, he would kill the wretch over again if he could.

“But, Hannah,” Ash said, staring at his sister as though she was a creature he had never seen before, and he rather thought that perhaps she was. “You knew Lord Todd was courting Mama.”

The girl’s face darkened. “He had to marry her,” she spat, and, to Ash’s dismay, he saw that his mother had revived and was staring at Hannah with undisguised horror. “He had to because he had no fortune, but he didn’t love her, he loved me!” This last was screamed in fury as his mother gasped and began to cry herself.

“You stupid little slut!” his grandmother said, her words cutting through the hysteria and jolting Hannah as though she’d been slapped.

“Hannah,” Ash said, his tone hard. “I think it may be best if you retire to your room. You are clearly not yourself, once you have had time to reflect …”

But Hannah just sneered at him with disdain. “But I am, brother dear. I loved Thomas. He was a real man, not some primped dandy who’s scared of Grandmama as well as his own shadow.”

For one exceedingly dark moment, Ash wanted to tell her. He wanted to look her in the eye and tell her that he had killed her beloved Thomas Todd and that he’d do it again in a heartbeat. Instead, he contented himself with a cool look.

“Go to your room or I’ll have you carried there.”

The tone of his voice and the intent behind it must have conveyed his rage rather more eloquently than he’d imagined, as after giving him a rather startled look, Hannah ran from the room.

“It’s not true, it’s not true …”

Lady Margaret stared at her daughter, who was moaning the same refrain over and over.

“Of course it’s true, you ridiculous creature. You’ve given that girl a false idea of her own worth, spoilt and indulged her and given her a deal too much freedom. You’re well served, in my opinion.”

“I think we’ve had enough of your opinion, grandmother,” Ash said, wondering if the woman had a shred of empathy in that lean frame of hers.

To his surprise, the woman gave him a look full of contempt but said nothing further as Ash sat beside his mother and took her hand.

“I’m so sorry, Mother,” he said, his voice soft as she leaned her head against his shoulder. “I’m afraid Lord Todd was neither a respectable nor a kind man. If you saw what he did to his own daughter, that must be enough to convince you.”

His mother stared up at him, her sobs arrested for a moment as he nodded.

“He beat her and her maid very badly,” he said, stroking her face with one hand. “He was a tyrant and a fortune hunter, and you have had a very lucky escape, my dear.”

“No, no, no,” Lady Anne moaned, shaking her head.

“You will see Lady Keziah Todd soon enough, Mother,” he said, his tone rather harder now. “You’ll see her father’s handiwork for yourself. Then tell me if you think he would have made a fine husband.”

Ash got to his feet. He needed a moment alone, away from all this hysteria, but his grandmother stepped towards him, her green eyes cool and curious.

“You never did tell me why the girl came to you,” she said, and Ash just stared back at her, deciding he’d endured quite enough for one day.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t.” And with that he left the room.