From Fitzroy's Private Diary (Extract 74)

It is not surprising that a man might not regard as his best chum the chap who is forever taking his wife away to foreign locations. Bertram Stapleford and I are very different sorts of men. He is the worst product of the rising middle classes.

I am being a tad unfair. Bertram was raised by a monster of a father, and a mother who found him of little interest - a reaction that I can, in part, understand. They attempted to indoctrinate him in all their values, which were founded primarily on the basis of do whatever you like to the other fellow, just as long as you come out ahead. Bertram is not, I am glad to say, like that. Sometimes he needs a prompt from his wife to regain his bearings, but at heart he is a good man (I did say we were quite unalike), and keen to help and support others. He hasn’t quite reached the heights of noblesse oblige, but he is trying. Why, he has even supported Euphemia in her membership of the Suffragette Society.

Which is why, when he asked me to be a witness to his will, I was so shocked. I had come to believe there was no harm in the man, and that he adored Euphemia. I had not accounted for the pride of a man who feels himself less than he should be, on account of his poor health. It transpired that Bertram still had some of the old Stapleford scruples.

Euphemia had brought to their marriage a considerable sum of money. Bertram had refused to use it and asked that it be put into trust for their children. I thought him a damnable fool, but I saw his perspective. He wanted to provide for his wife, as any gentleman might. Personally, I would have let her keep the money to do as she wished. Add to this the fact that their house has ongoing repair issues, and their land is still not drained properly. Even with the home farm up and running, Bertram was never going to be able to provide Euphemia with the luxury she deserves. In fact, both of them will be dogged with financial worries for the rest of their lives because he will not allow her to use her money, or let it be spent on the farm. I don’t mind him impoverishing himself, but I’m damned if I can see why he should impoverish Euphemia.

I have done what I can to rectify the situation. I have ensured she has a reasonable salary from the department, although she doesn’t know that I top this up myself. I have set things up for her to have her own private banking arrangements and I gave her what I said was a loan of an apartment in London that she could use as her own (someday I will have to find the right moment to hand her the deeds, which have her name, rather than mine, on them).

Bertram would be furious if he knew any of this. And perhaps I would not have interfered so much between the two of them if it hadn’t been for the will. It really took my last ounce of restraint.

I had been about to sign it as a witness but, as a matter of form, I never sign anything without reading it, and while this was technically nothing to do with me, I had scanned the document before I even realised it.

In it, I discovered that Bertram had decreed that should he predecease Euphemia, which given his health he surely will, the estate and all monies would transfer to their children, bypassing her entirely. None of Euphemia’s own money would be returned to her. She would be left a pensioner, reliant entirely on her own offspring. If there were no offspring, Euphemia would inherit a trust fund that would cease should she remarry. In this instance, the estate and remaining monies would transfer back to the Stapleford’s original bloodline, to be divided equally among the living relatives.

There are several interpretations that can be placed on his actions. None of them are kind. It was, of course, no business of mine how he chose to treat his own wife, but I would not sign the damn thing, and told him so curtly and crudely. I both wanted to thrash the man for his controlling ways, and to demand why he would treat Euphemia so shabbily. I had no right to do either. Instead, I did what little I could to ensure she would never be without her own place to live and her own small income.

I do not know if Bertram got someone else to witness the will. He has a house full of staff to ask. I have never discussed the matter with Euphemia. However, I know damn well that his will is written in such a way because he fears I will run off with his wife, and he was showing me how he could punish her if she did.

Little does he know that, and if I chose to, I could buy Euphemia, if not a palace, a great house at the very least. And damn the man, one day I just might.