The Countess Conspiracy

“I know you were thinking about shipping,” Benedict interrupted. “But it takes months to make money on shipping. Years, even!”

“Well, not my way,” Sebastian said simply. “I thought it would be interesting to try this. I thought that if I did…” He trailed off.

His brother didn’t look pleased. He didn’t look interested. Instead, he shook his head, a frown darkening his face. “What have you done now, Sebastian?”

“Ah. Let me explain.” Once Benedict understood, everything would be better. Sebastian settled into a chair. “I had this idea. When a ship sails, you can purchase a share of the voyage. If indigo happens to be riding high when it comes in, you’ll make a tidy profit. If it falls, you might lose your capital. And if the ship is lost at sea…” Sebastian shook his head. “Well, then you lose everything.”

“Speculation,” his brother said, his nose wrinkling as if he’d smelled something awful. “You engaged in speculation.”

“Only up to a point. You see, there is a point when ships are particularly late coming in where people start to panic and sell their shares. After all, nobody wants to be left holding shares worth nothing. Better to hold on to a little bit.”

“Even worse,” Benedict rubbed his eyebrows. “You engaged in rank speculation.”

“There are all sorts of reasons why ships are late—bad weather, incompetent captains, strange and inexplicable occurrences. Turn the page.” Sebastian gestured.

His brother turned the page and frowned at the sea of numbers that followed.

“You know about the numerical methods that have come into use in scientific research? I went down to Admiralty and got a little information. About three hundred pages’ worth. How often certain captains were late; what ports ships visited, and how that contributed to whether the ships were on time. Using the methods previously mentioned and a few brave souls whom I hired—those costs are accounted for on page seven—I was able to determine a few variables that contributed to the lateness of ships. I estimated how one should account for them on page four. At that point, it became easy to identify voyage shares that were undervalued—that is, ships that were late not because they should be presumed lost at sea, but because certain factors on the voyage suggested that they ought to be late as a matter of course.”

Benedict stared blankly at him. “I don’t understand a word you just said.”

“Yes. Well. I can go over the maths in more detail later, if you’d like.” He stopped, clearing his throat. “I still have several hundred outstanding shares—the ships might never come in—some of them, of course will not, as a statistical matter—or they might come in later. In any event, I wanted to try my hand at trade, let you have some idea of what I’m capable of, who I am.”

“But…but…” Benedict shook his head.

“It actually could have been seventy thousand,” Sebastian continued, “because Blotts and Snoffling—the insurers; I’m sure you’ve heard of them—figured out that I had some sort of trick, so they offered me fifty thousand pounds to disclose it. But I—”

“Oh my God,” Benedict exclaimed. “Fifty thousand pounds? That’s ridiculous!”

“Precisely what I said! Fifty thousand, when I’d made almost half that in a handful of weeks? Do they think me an idiot?”

Benedict ran a hand through his hair. “That’s…not precisely what I meant.”

“In any event,” Sebastian said, “this little method is only profitable now because I’m exploiting a gap between the information I have and that of those who are investing. Eventually, people will catch on to what I’m doing, and then there will be no profit in it. So I’ll have to be subtler in the future.”

His brother screwed his eyes shut and very, very carefully, hit himself in the forehead with a fist. “God,” he muttered, and hit himself again. And again.

Sebastian felt his smile fade into something cold and mechanical. He licked his lips. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s a fluke,” his brother said. “A damned fluke, using the most dangerous investment methods possible.”

“No, no!” Sebastian said. “Look, I brought the figures. It’s not dangerous, not the way I spread out my investments from ship to ship. It’s safe. It’s one of the safest things I could have done! I used information that nobody else had collected in a way that nobody else understood—that’s why I was able to do it. As soon as I publish my findings, every bank in town is going to be looking for a numerical specialist.”

“Fluke or…or whatever this is,” Benedict said, shaking his head, “this is…this is so you, Sebastian. You don’t need more money. I wanted to see you take up trade because I thought it would settle you down. Teach you to be careful, to not take…awful risks on the basis of some newfangled number-mangling. For all we know, this modern numerical nonsense could be completely wrong.”

“Mathematics are never wrong!” Sebastian said, aghast. “Only misapplied!”

Benedict waved this off. “I wanted you to learn responsibility. I wanted you to learn about organization, about how things worked. I didn’t want you to treat business like a game, one which you could win by garnering the maximum number of points in the smallest amount of time. This is precisely the opposite of what I was looking for.”

His brother was acting like Sebastian was a child to be scolded because he’d done something forbidden. But he was an adult, and Sebastian still couldn’t figure out what he’d done wrong. It had seemed a good idea at the time: He’d create a common interest and he’d have a little fun in the process.

“I see.” His voice sounded cold. “So…”

He’d been sure that he could present Benedict with the results, that his brother would pay attention, that he would begin to feel maybe just a little pride. A little kinship, something to replace the years that lay between them. So he’d thought.

“I’m not angry at you, Sebastian,” Benedict said. “But sometimes I think we inhabit completely different countries, use entirely separate languages. It’s like having a dog. You tell it, ‘No chasing rabbits!’ and what it hears is ‘Rabbit!’ Next thing you know, there’s a big, dumb, slobbering beast tossing a hare at your feet.”