“I see you have not got that matter of a valet straightened out yet,” Lord Duchamp said while he poured, gesturing with his glass toward Wynn’s neckcloth. “I’ll have a word with the Day brothers at that employment agency of theirs. Have you looking fine as five pence in no time.”
Wynn sipped his wine and said thank you, trying not to rip off the offending article or plant the earl a facer. What else could he do but be polite, having just refused to become the man’s son-in-law?
The refusal was on Lord Duchamp’s mind, too, and he did not beat around the bush. “I don’t suppose if I double the dowry you’d change your mind?”
There was not enough blunt in the Bank of England to change Wynn’s mind. He did admire Lord Duchamp’s plain speaking as much as he admired the library’s floor-to-ceiling bookcases, though, and the wide windows letting in the day’s light. He could be content with a room such as this, if he had it to himself, Wynn thought. He shook his head. “No. I have more than enough brass for my needs.”
“It couldn’t be that my girl ain’t pretty enough, could it?”
“Lud, no. Lady Victoria is a true incomparable.”
“Almost as pretty as her mother, I always thought, but I might be a shade prejudiced. Smart, too, and well educated, my gal. We sent her to Lady Castangle’s Academy to get rid of her Yorkshire accent. Nothing wrong with it that I could see, but my Maggie said it had to go, so off went Torrie to school. Lud, how I missed her. You’d never guess how much that Castangle woman charged, either.”
“No, I am sure I could have no idea.” Except it was bound to be dear, making the headstrong chit conform to someone else’s standards.
“Another female caught your fancy, then? I suppose you must have seen any number of pretty gels on your travels, prettier even than Torrie. I wouldn’t be surprised if they all took to dropping their handkerchiefs to catch your eye, what with your fortune. Not to say you aren’t a bang-up chap, with a title and all now, but the women do look at a man’s bank account first, eh?”
The deuced neckcloth was strangling Wynn. He might as well be a blasted bearskin himself, pegged out to dry, the way the earl had his personal life laid out in public. He gulped a sip of cognac past the knot at his throat. “No, no. I have not, ah, fixed my interest with any woman.”
“You ain’t one of those ... ? That is, you don’t prefer ... ?”
“Good heavens, no! I assure you that, were I looking to get leg-shackled—that is, married—I would search no further than your lovely daughter. I am simply not in the, ah, marriage market, I believe they call it.”
“Ah, well, you cannot uncork the wine before it’s ready, eh?” The earl set his glass down and sighed in resignation. “So what are your plans, if you don’t mind an old man’s prying, if you don’t aim to settle down? More travels?”
Wynn did not care if he never saw another crowded cabin on another storm-tossed ship. Neither could he see burying himself in the country on the family estate in Hertfordshire. He’d stopped there on his arrival at Bristol, to make sure his steward’s reports were accurate and the place was in good heart, and to try to recall any fond memories. There were few enough, as he was sent off to school at an early age, and never encouraged to know the lands that would one day belong to his older brother, the heir.
The steward, Bimm, was a weathered turnip of a man, seeming to have roots in the earth himself, and was delighted when Wynn gave him
carte-blanche
for improvements and modern equipment. It appeared that the previous title holders, Wynn’s father and brother, never cared to waste their blunt on their own lands or tenants, which added to their sins. As soon as the old man had started in about which hogs to purchase, Wynn had left.
He supposed, if he gave up traveling and chose not to rusticate, he could set up an office here in town and make himself another fortune. For what? The thought had been on his mind for months, ever since he considered returning to England. He was a young man, not yet thirty. What the devil was he going to do with the rest of his life?
“I have not decided what I will do,” he told the earl. “I have some business and personal matters to take care of first, then I will consider my options.”
“The reason I ask is, we could use some good men in the party. The government is going to hell in a handcart, what with the war and the riots and the Regency bills. Your brother—”
“I am not my brother.”
“Of course not. Couldn’t be. He’s dead. But if you mean you ain’t ambitious like he was, there’s plenty to be done without putting yourself forward. I have some friends coming to dine this Thursday. Mayhaps you’d—”
“No, thank you. I—”
The earl held up one hand, flashing his heavy signet ring, reminding Wynn that he had not gone to the vault at Ingram House to claim his yet. His sister-in-law most likely guarded it like a dragon its golden horde.
“Hear me out,” Duchamp said. “Can’t blame you for thinking they’ll be a parcel of old bores at the table. Most will be. But think about the invitation a minute. Even if you don’t want to go into government, these are men making laws that will affect your business. At the least, they are deep-pocketed peers, interested in making investments, like your shipping lines. They’ll hang on your every word. And if you are thinking that some of the high-sticklers will cut you, think again. Not at my table, they won’t. No one would dare insult one of my guests, and especially not the man who saved my little girl. It’ll be a good introduction back into society for you.”
“And if I said I did not care about reentering the ranks of the upper ten thousand, what then, sir?”
“Then you’d be a fool. Not that I’d blame you. Happier in Yorkshire myself, raising a pint with my tenants. But a man cannot always choose where he takes his mutton, and it’ll always taste better among friends. Someday you might decide to go courting. Hell, someday you might want to present your daughter at Court, or bring your boy to Tattersall’s. Don’t shut the doors in their faces now, when you can open them with a few hands of whist and a bottle of port. You don’t have to walk through those hallowed portals yourself, mind, just make sure they are open to you and yours.”
This was the second time today someone had spoken of doors opening, when so many had been closed to him for so long. The viscount had not made his fortunes without listening to sound advice when it was offered, and Duchamp did seem to have Wynn’s best interests in mind. Besides, Wynn thought he just might wish to see the inside of White’s Club again, or speak to some person of authority at the War Office without having to steer through the subalterns. “Thank you, my lord. If you are certain I shall not discommode your guests, I gladly accept your kind invitation to dine.”
“Good, good. We can use some livelier company at these deuced dull affairs, and I know Torrie will be happy to have someone near her own age.”
“Torrie? That is, Lady Victoria will be there?”
“Of course. Hostessing for me, don’t you know, since my wife decamped, uh, decided to leave early for our country pile. Redecorating, don’t you know. Torrie will do fine. You can help her and my sister entertain some of the old witches—uh, the wives of my associates.”
“Wives? You never said there would be women at the dinner.”
Wine, women, and Whigs, oh, hell.
Wynn’s new valet was caught stealing. Barrogi had him pinned to the wall with a long, narrow blade at his neck, an emerald stickpin having fallen from his pocket onto the floor. The viscount had not even had time to memorize the miscreant’s name, Randall or something, much less if he were any good at putting a shine on a pair of boots. The man had tears in his eyes, knowing what he’d done was a hanging offense. Barrogi wanted to haul him off to the authorities—except that he did not want to show his own distinctively battered face at Bow Street. Wynn was all for shipping the thief to Botany Bay—but only if he could go along.
What the devil was he doing, breaking bread with a bunch of political boors, blowhards, and bunglers ... and their biddy wives? No matter what Duchamp might think, the females would pull their skirts aside when he walked past, the gentlemen would refuse to partner him at cards. Lady Torrie’s—Lady Victoria’s, that is—party would be ruined. What a way to start a friendship, destroying her credibility as a hostess. He’d warned both her and her father how it would be, but to no avail. They were clinging to their attempts to restore his respectability as hard as a chased cat clung to a high branch of a tree. Their positions were all precarious.
“So are you going to take the gallows bait to the wrong house or not,
padrone?”
Barrogi wanted to know.
“The roundhouse? Dammit, I do not have time for that.” Wynn had two days to order a new wardrobe, eradicate curse words from his vocabulary, and hire himself a new valet. He supposed he also ought to get around to calling on Rosie and Lady Lynbrook and solving their dilemmas, so his troublesome past could stay in the past where it belonged. The stack of their letters, forwarded by his man of affairs, was threatening to overflow the mantel.
While he was at it, he should see about dislodging his sister-in-law from Ingram House. If by some remote chance he was to become acceptable again, he would need a proper gentleman’s residence with an exemplary address. His present remote hidey-hole would never do, nor would a staff that consisted of a half-gypsy bandit holding a knife on a varlet valet. Oh, and he had to catch an arsonist.
“So you want I should cut his hand off, the way they do in those heathen countries?” Barrogi offered.
The valet whimpered.
“What, and ruin the carpet? These are rented rooms, remember. Besides, that seems a rather drastic punishment, doesn’t it, considering Randolph never got out the door with the jewelry. Perhaps it just fell into his pocket while he was tidying up.”
The man nodded vigorously, or as vigorously as he could with the point of a very sharp blade pressed to his throat. “That’s it, your lordship. I was just cleaning up.”
Barrogi was disgusted. “You mean to let him go,
padrone?”
“I mean to have a few words with Mr. Day and his brother. They really have to do better than they have been doing. When I am through, I expect Rudolph here will find himself without references or another chance of employment. Of course then he might take up the life of crime on a more permanent basis, which is not doing any kind of justice to the rest of the population. No, I think it will have to be the ships.”
“Not New Zealand, your lordship,” the valet pleaded. “Not that!”
Wynn studied the slim but wiry valet. “No, you’d be wasted there, if you survived the journey. I can always use good men on my merchant vessels, though. What say you to a berth on a clipper ship, with pay? Of course, if the captain finds you stealing, he’ll toss you overboard. It’s either that or take your chances with His Majesty’s justice. Decide quickly, Rupert, for I am in a hurry. I have to learn to be a gentleman before Thursday.”
* * * *
Someone else was having trouble with his neckcloth, but that may have been because a hired ruffian had him by the collar. Worse, it was his own hired ruffian. Worst of all, the thug expected to be paid.
“What d’ye mean, I didn’t do the job? I set the fire just like we planned.”
“You set three fires, you dolt!” the gentleman shouted. “You burned half the place down instead of creating a disturbance.”
The henchman stopped throttling his employer to scratch his head. The gentleman stepped back, out of range of the long, thin, apelike arms, and downwind of the apelike odor. He straightened his clothes and shuddered to think of what creatures might come crawling out of that stiff, straw-like mop of hair. Tall and reed-thin, dressed in rusty black, the felon-for-hire was called the Hay Man, or Scarecrow, and he was all the gentleman could afford. If he’d been able to part with one of his snuffboxes, he might have hired a more competent co-conspirator, but then how could he match his every ensemble?
Scarecrow spit on the floor, barely missing the gentleman’s sequin-studded shoe buckles. “The first faggot didn’t catch on anything. The second jest made a lot of smoke. It were the third what did the trick.”
“The trick was not to kill the girl, by Jupiter! What good would she be to either of us dead?”
“What good is she now, is what I wants to know. You was supposed to have a roll of soft, soon as you had ‘er rolled up.”
“The cents-per-centers would have made me an advance against expectations, if I could have announced a betrothal. Instead your blundering had her running right into another man’s arms, blister it!”
“So you want I should disappear the flash cove what drug the gentry mort out of the ken?”
“Huh? Oh, no, Ingall is not worth killing. He’s no danger to my plans. Not accepted in polite circles, don’t you know.”
The only polite circle Scarecrow knew was at Ma Johnstone’s nunnery, where he could never afford the girls. He never would, if he didn’t get paid. He growled.
“No, Ingall is no threat. The earl will toss him a purse, then toss him out on his ear. He’s not fit to touch the lady’s hem, and her loving father will be well aware of that fact. I’ll make sure of it.”
“So what then?”
“So we need a better plan, that is all. I
have
to have Victoria Keyes, the key to her father’s fortune! I’ll have to think about it.”
And Scarecrow could think about the whores at Sukey Johnstone’s. They were neither one nearer their goals. Scarecrow spit on the floor again, giving his opinion of his employer’s mental agility. “Meanwhile I’ll be thinking how much to charge when I go sell your cold body to the surgeons’ school, iffen I don’t get paid.”
* * * *
Torrie’s mother had been right, as usual: one should not simply plight one’s troth to the first chance-met stranger on the street. A woman had to be discerning where she bestowed her hand, for she would also be giving the gentleman the rights to her fortune, her body, and perhaps her heart, for all time. She had to know his character, his moral fiber, his attitude toward children if he was to father her unborn babies. After all, she would be married for life—the same life Wynn Ingram had granted her.