Page 12 of An Earl's Bet
“Your grandmother was a slave?”Earnest hadn’t been surprised to hear that Lord Horden had a relative from another part of the world.Horden’s darker skin, rich brown eyes, and tight curly black hair gave that away, but he hadn’t wanted to pry about the details.
“No.She was lucky enough to be beautiful.”Vitriol coated Horden’s tone.
“I don’t understand.”
Horden sighed.“Neither do I.My grandmother was brought to England as a lady’s maid.It was very fashionable back then to have beautiful Black servants.”
“Did she have a choice?”
“I doubt it but I ...”Horden stared at Earnest, and he forced himself to hold Horden’s gaze and not flinch away just because he was uncomfortable.“There is no evidence either way.She caught the eye of my mother’s father, who was an industrialist, and they married.It was a happy marriage according to my mother, but I’m not sure I believe that.”
“Why not?”Earnest could get behind the fairytale of a man falling for a maid and elevating her in society.He wished for the same for himself on occasion; to be elevated, that is.A knighthood gave him access to society, but he still had almost no money.He needed a benefactor to support his poetic efforts, otherwise he’d be doomed to be Dickson Hurquim forever.
“My grandfather may have been happy in his own marriage, but he also married his daughter, my mother, off to the Earl of Horden for status.If he was happy in his own marriage, why force his daughter into an unhappy situation?”
“Did he know it was going to be unhappy?”
Horden shuddered.“I don’t know.By all accounts my father was a charming man.I just never saw it.”
“Perhaps your father loved your mother?Or maybe they loved each other at first, and then it faded with time.”He wanted to think of people being in love; it was much more pleasant than the alternative, even if all the evidence was contrary to that.Most peers seemed to marry for financial or status reasons.
“Earnest, you haven’t been listening.My grandfather was an industrialist.The Earldom was able to pay all its debts, thanks to my mother’s dowry.”
That certainly burst his bubble around the notion of love.“Why does this make you a radical?”
“Look at me.Isn’t it easy for someone who looks like me to say that people shouldn’t own other people who look like me?”
“Interesting choice of word; easy.”He didn’t think it was easy at all to decide to embark on changing a system that so many of Horden’s peers profited from.Earnest was an avid reader of the newspapers, and he knew it had taken twenty years for Wilberforce to get the smallest ban on the slave trade.By all accounts, there was a long way to go before the appalling practice was abolished globally.Why on earth did Horden think this would be easy?It sounded incredibly challenging.
Chapter 6
Hugo wished he hadthe raw confidence of a damned poet who thought he could change the world with a few handy words.It was different for Hugo; he didn’t need to see slavery in action to know that he had a shared heritage with the enslaved.He was just pleased his father had been too busy spending his mother’s dowry locally to invest in overseas plantations.He wasn’t about to credit his father with any level of morals, although perhaps his mother might have influenced him on that front.He’d never know, as she’d died in her childbed along with his sister when he was only five.
“It’ll probably take my entire life to get rid of this scourge.”And he wasn’t sure he was the right person for the job.He liked rules.He liked the certainty of them.And he knew, deep in his heart, that when he asked for rules to changed, bad things happened.
“If it matters to you, make it your life’s work to change it.Put all your resources and all your time into it.Let me help you.”