Читать книгу Lord Portman's Troublesome Wife - Mary Nichols, Mary Nichols - Страница 5

Rosamund looked about her at the mourners, standing with glass in hand, or slowly perambulating the drawing room of her Holles Street home, and wondered why they had all come. They could surely not expect a bequest for everyone knew Sir Joshua had frittered away a fortune. Perhaps they hoped to pick up a little gossip, something to pass on over the teacups when they next met their friends. Her father’s death had been sudden and violent and surely there was more to learn about that?

He had been found in Tyburn Lane in the early hours of the morning, evidently on his way home after a night out. Everything pointed to him having been run down by a vehicle, which had not stopped. ‘Rolling drunk,’ everyone said. ‘Not looking where he was going.’

Maximilian, her brother, had been closeted with the family lawyer in the library for the best part of an hour, leaving Rosamund to attend to their guests alone. There were some cousins she hardly knew, fancy people who looked down on her, whispering amongst themselves, calling her an ape leader and plain to boot and hoping they wouldn’t be expected to give her house room. A few of her father’s acquaintances had turned up to offer condolences and no doubt to find out their chances of being paid what was owed to them. No one truly mourned the passing of the irascible man, except his daughter. Rosamund had kept house for him ever since her mother died seven years before and, believing he needed her, had never married. At twenty-six, she considered herself well and truly on the shelf.

‘What are you going to do now, Rosamund?’ Aunt Jessica interrupted her reverie. Mrs Jessica Bullivant was her father’s sister. She was dressed in a black silk mourning gown; its caged hips made her look broader than she was tall.

‘I expect I shall stay here, at least for a time.’

‘Here, child? You cannot live alone.’

‘I will not be alone. I shall keep Cook and Janet.’

‘They are servants. No, Rosamund, it is not to be thought of. I know someone who might offer you the post of companion. Of course it will not pay much, but you will have bed and board and little enough to do. After looking after Joshua, it will be child’s play.’

‘Companion!’ Rosamund shuddered at the thought. She was outspoken and used to her independence and there was no one less independent than a paid companion at the beck and call of her employer twenty-four hours a day. ‘No, thank you, Aunt. I am sure Papa will have made provision for me. There will be enough for me to live frugally without having to resort to paid employment.’

‘I doubt that. Everyone knows my brother was a profligate. Did he ever give you anything more than pin money?’

‘I did not need anything.’

Her aunt snorted at this loyalty. ‘Being companion to a lady is better than unpaid employment, which is what you have been doing for the past seven years.’

‘I did what any daughter worth her salt would do.’

‘And now you are long past marriageable age.’

‘I know that, Aunt. I have no expectations in that direction. I shall do good works.’

Her aunt laughed at that, causing everyone else in the room to stop talking and turn to look at them. She immediately became serious and put on a mournful expression. ‘If I did not have my dear Miss Davies to look after me, I would take you in myself, but I would not, for the world, hurt her feelings. And truly my little house in Chandos Street is not large enough to accommodate us all.’

‘I know that, Aunt, but I thank you all the same. I shall manage.’ The last thing she wanted was to move in with her domineering relative.

Rosamund, seeing the lawyer emerge from the library and hurry out to his waiting carriage, slipped into the room where her brother sat with his head in his hands, his full brown wig pushed to the back of his head. Hearing her enter, he looked up. He was not mourning, he was dry-eyed and furious. ‘That…that…stupid old man…’

‘You mean Mr Tetley?’

‘No, our father. He has left nothing, Rosie, nothing but a heap of debts. How could a man be so gullible? He let people persuade him into worthless investments, refused to listen to wise counsel and lost everything.’ He gave a cracked laugh and picked up a canvas bag which chinked as it moved. He threw it down at her feet. ‘Except this.’

‘What is it?’ She bent to untie the cord that closed it to reveal a heap of gold coins. ‘But there’s a fortune here!’

‘No, there isn’t. They’re counterfeit, every one. Tetley says they must be surrendered to the judiciary.’

‘Oh, dear. But how does Mr Tetley know they are counterfeit?’ She picked up a guinea to examine it. ‘This looks perfectly good to me.’

‘It is clipped.’ He delved in his coat pocket and produced a genuine coin. ‘See? Put them together and you can see the clipped coin is smaller and the milling is fresh with sharper edges.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘Neither did I, but Tetley explained it to me. The coiners snip or file off the edges of real coins and mill a new edge on to them. Then they are passed into circulation again and the spare gold melted down and used to make new coins, often by just covering base metal with a layer of gold, then stamping the head and tail on them and milling them. Like this one.’ He delved into the bag and produced another coin. ‘It is apparently a very profitable undertaking.’ His grunt of a laugh was humourless. ‘So long as you don’t get caught, of course.’

‘But how did Papa come by them?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine. I would like to think he sold something and was unknowingly paid in counterfeit coin, but he might have been aware of what they really were and intended to pass them off…’

‘No, he would never do that,’ she insisted. ‘He was gullible and difficult to deal with and sometimes mean, but I will not believe he was dishonest.’

‘We shall never know, shall we? The point is what we decide to do now.’

‘Take them to a magistrate as Mr Tetley said.’

‘And be asked a lot of questions about how we came by them? No one will believe in our innocence. Counterfeiting coin and distributing it is treason; we could hang for it. I’ll take charge of them until I can decide the best thing to do with them.’ He took the coin she still held, popped it back into the bag and tied the neck tightly. ‘One thing is certain: we cannot use them to pay Father’s debts.’

‘No, of course not.’

‘In the meantime, you have a fortnight to quit the house…’

‘Quit the house?’ she repeated, shocked to the core.

‘Yes, Father mortgaged it and the mortgagors are foreclosing. We can make enough selling the furniture to pay the immediate debts and that is all.’

‘You mean I am destitute?’ She could not believe the father she had loved had left her penniless, but then he had not expected to die as he did and no doubt hoped to come about.

‘As good as.’

She was silent a moment, trying to digest the information. ‘I suppose that means I shall have to come and live with you?’ The prospect was not pleasing. Max had a demanding wife and six children, none of whom were well behaved. She could see herself becoming an unpaid nursery nurse. Even the lot of companion was preferable to that. Suddenly her secure world was collapsing about her.

‘You could find yourself a husband.’

‘Max, who would marry me? I am twenty-six and have neither looks not fortune. You are not being realistic.’

‘Someone must be willing to take you on. A widower, perhaps, someone needing a mother for his children? There are plenty of those about.’

‘What about love?’

‘Love, Rosie? Can you afford love?’

The question was a brutal one, but Max had never spared her feelings, and he was right. ‘No, but finding a husband in a fortnight when I have nothing to offer is surely outside the bounds of possibility.’

‘I could perhaps rake up a small dowry so you don’t go empty-handed.’

‘If you can find money for a dowry, then give it to me. I can use it to set up a little business.’

‘Now who is not being realistic! What do you know of business? All you are capable of is keeping house.’ He stood up and went to the mirror to straighten his wig and tweak his black silk cravat. ‘The trouble is that time is not on your side. But leave it to me, I may yet come up with something.’ He strode out of the room and back to the mourners, followed by a very dejected Rosamund.

She was too numbed by Max’s revelations to attend to their guests as she should, but Max made up for her deficiency, exhorting them to take refreshments, and conversing amiably about the deceased, telling stories about his life, listening to them recount theirs. At last, realising there was nothing more to be learned, the guests departed, leaving Rosamund to sit down, surrounded by the debris of plates, cups and glasses, half-empty bottles of wine, stewed tea and crumbs. Max, clutching the canvas bag, was last to leave, together with his wife and noisy children who would not have normally been allowed to come, but they were thoroughly spoiled and their demands acceded to if they were loud enough. Rosamund hardly noticed them go. Janet came in to clear away and tidy the room, a task Rosamund would normally have helped her with, but she could not raise a finger.

She mourned the passing of her father, but she was also angry with him for being such a gullible fool, and even more angry with those so-called business associates who had sold him useless shares and ruined him. And who had given him that bag of counterfeit coins? Why had her father kept it instead of bringing the criminals to justice and obtaining some restitution? He must have realised they were counterfeit or he would have used them to pay his debts and buy them a little extra comfort. But supposing he had, supposing he had already spent some of them? Would she have angry tradesmen on the doorstep, demanding proper payment? Or worse, a constable or a Bow Street Runner with a warrant for her arrest? Would pleading ignorance save her? She needed to know, but she would have to be careful in case she uncovered something not to her father’s credit. She prayed that was not so and he was entirely innocent.

Max was disinclined to do anything about it.

The only other person who might be able to help her was Mr Tetley, so she set out next day to ask him.

‘My dear Miss Chalmers,’ he said, when she was shown into his office and offered a seat. ‘May I offer my condolences on your loss? I am sorry I did not have the opportunity to do so yesterday, but business had to prevail and you were engaged with your relations. And no doubt your brother explained matters to you.’

‘He did, but I should like to hear it from you.’

Mr Tetley sighed, but patiently went over everything, exactly as Max had explained it. ‘I am unconscionably sorry that you cannot be given more time to order your affairs, ma’am, but my best endeavours failed to allow you more than two weeks to quit. No doubt Sir Maximilian will look after you.’

Hearing her brother spoken of as Sir Maximilian brought her loss home to her more effectively than anything else and she had to force herself not to cry. There were things more important than tears. ‘Thank you, Mr Tetley.’ She paused to gather herself. ‘I am mystified by that bag of gold coins my brother showed me. How did my father come by it?’

‘I have no idea. I knew nothing of it. It was your brother who found it locked in a cupboard in Sir Joshua’s library. I am afraid he was angrily disappointed when I told him they were all counterfeit.’

‘So you cannot throw any light on it?’

‘No. I can only suppose your late father sold something, a picture or jewels or something of that sort, and that was the payment he received.’

‘Then those responsible should be brought to book and forced to pay good money for whatever it was.’

‘But we have no idea who they might be. And such men are dangerous. I would not like to confront them. No, my dear Miss Chalmers, I advise you to leave well alone. Take the bag to a magistrate, say you found it, wash your hands of it.’

‘My brother has it and he will do what is necessary. But can you tell me anything about the shares Papa bought that were worthless?’

‘There is nothing you can do about those either if they were sold and bought in good faith. Playing the ’Change is a gamble at the best of times.’

‘Could the two things be connected? The buying of shares and the mutilated coins, I mean.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘But you must know the names of those who sold my father the shares. You were, after all, his legal adviser.’

He grunted a laugh. ‘When he decided to take my advice, but very often he ignored it, as he did in this case.’ He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a folder tied with red ribbon. He untied it and laid the folder open. ‘The name of the organisation is the Barnstaple Mining Company.’

Rosamund gave a brittle laugh. ‘Mining gold, I suppose. What is the name of the signatory on that document?’

He consulted the paper. ‘Michael O’Keefe.’

‘That sounds Irish. Do you know anything about him?’

‘Nothing at all, Miss Chalmers. It might not even be his real name.’

‘And where is the office of this company?’

He looked at the papers again. ‘The only address I have is the Nag’s Head, Covent Garden. It is unlikely to be a bona fide address. I advised Sir Joshua against investing, but he would not listen.’

‘I cannot believe my father would be so gullible. The whole thing is decidedly smoky.’

‘So I told him.’ He paused. ‘Miss Chalmers, what are you intending to do?’

‘I do not know yet.’

‘Do nothing, I beg you. You surely have enough to occupy you, ordering your affairs before moving out of Holles Street.’

The meeting of the Piccadilly Gentlemen’s Club at Lord Trentham’s London mansion was drawing to a close. It was no ordinary drinking and gaming club, but one dedicated exclusively to the tracking down of criminals and bringing them to justice. Officially designated the ‘Society for the Discovery and Apprehending of Criminals’, its members were all high enough in the instep not to require paying for their services. Not for them the taking of bribes as other thieftakers were known to do; they did it for the love of adventure and to make the country a safer place for its inhabitants.

Set up ten years before by Lord Drymore, then simply Captain James Drymore, its other members were Viscount Jonathan Leinster; Harry, Lord Portman; Sir Ashley Saunders; Captain Alexander Carstairs and Sam Roker, James Drymore’s servant and friend. Each had their own area of expertise, but this year they were especially concerned that the wedding of George III to Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz on 8 September, and their coronation two weeks later, should not be marred by more crime than usual. They were, among other matters, on the look out for pickpockets and criminal gangs who might be planning to take advantage of the crowds come to witness the processions and take part in the celebrations afterwards.

Harry’s particular interest was in counterfeit money and he had been instrumental in bringing several gangs before the courts. But there were always more to take their place and what better opportunity for passing counterfeit coins could there be than among the crowds flocking to see the processions? He was indefatigable in pursuit of these types of criminals, though you would never think so to look at him. He wore a full-skirted coat of amber silk embroidered with gold thread. Lace flounces fell over his hands from the wide cuffs. His embroidered waistcoat had a long row of pearl buttons from the neck right down to his knees, though only half of them were meant to be fastened. His cravat was starched and frilled within an inch of its life and his breeches and stockings were white, tied at the knee with yellow ribbons. His pose was relaxed, the long fingers of his left hand, loaded with rings, lay idly on the table. The other fingered his quizzing glass on its ribbon about his neck. To anyone who did not know him, he was a macaroni of the first water.

‘I’m off to the Old Bailey,’ he said, when the business of the day was concluded and everyone was preparing to leave. ‘The Dustin Gang are on trial and I would know the outcome.’

He picked up his tall hat from the floor at his side and stood up. The high red heels of his shoes and the height of his white wig made him seem at least six inches taller, even though, at five feet eleven, he was by no means short. Most men of his acquaintance found it more comfortable to shave their heads for wearing a wig, but as he often needed to go out and about without one, he put up with the discomfort to appear the fop. The real Harry Portman was a person very few people knew.

‘Are you to give evidence?’ Jonathan asked.

‘No, don’t want to blow my cover, do I? Do you fancy coming with me?’

‘No, Louise is expecting me home.’

‘I will come,’ Ashley said.

They left together and a greater contrast between two men would be hard to find. Ashley’s clothes were muted in colour, though they were superbly tailored and he wore his own dark hair tied back in a queue. Unlike Harry, whose face was powdered and patched, Ashley’s was tanned and rugged. But appearances were deceptive because they were equally athletic, equally observant and sharp-witted, able to react swiftly to any given situation. It was simply that it amused Harry to play the fop.

At first his dandified mannerisms had been a front to disguise his deep hurt and the terrible guilt he felt over the death of his wife six years before, but then he found it useful when pursuing criminals. Seeing him mincing along in his fine clothes, they thought he was a fool and it pleased him to let them think it. Naturally the members of the Piccadilly Gentlemen’s Club knew better.

‘How did you bring the Dustin Gang to book?’ Ash asked, as they emerged on to the street and looked about them for chairs for hire. The road was busy, but they could see no chairs and so began to walk, or rather Ashley walked and Harry picked his way daintily between the dirt and puddles.

‘By becoming one of them.’

Ashley laughed. ‘You! Why, you would stand out a mile. I cannot believe they were taken in.’

‘Oh, I can be one of the great unwashed when it suits me, Ash.’

‘I believe you, though many would not.’

‘That is as it should be. My long association with the theatre has stood me in good stead when it comes to putting on a disguise and acting a part. I do believe if I had pursued it, I could have become as famous as David Garrick.’

‘Why did you not?’

‘The responsibilities of an estate, dear boy. I came into my inheritance when my father died in ’53, and it behooved me to marry and settle down to bring forth the next generation of Portmans.’

‘I did not realise you were married and had a family.’

‘I was married less than a year. My wife died giving birth to a daughter.’

‘I am sorry, Harry, I did not mean to pry. I always assumed you were a confirmed bachelor as I am.’

‘It is no secret. I simply do not talk about it. Beth was too young, barely seventeen. No one had told her what to expect and she did not understand what was happening to her when her pains began.’ He paused, remembering her screams which went on and on and the strident way she had cursed him. ‘God will punish you for this!’ Her words were punctuated with screams of pain. Feeling helpless and unable to stand any more of it, he had gone out to walk about the garden until it was all over. He should have been with her to comfort her, but no, men had no business anywhere near childbirth and he would be told when he could come in. Why had he not insisted?

Instead they had called him in to look at her pale, dead body. It had been washed of blood, but a heap of linen thrown in the corner was saturated with it. He tried not to look, but his eyes were drawn to it in horror. He had not wanted to know his lustily yelling daughter and had packed her off to a wet nurse and after that to a foster mother. She wanted for nothing, but that did not make him feel any less guilty about it. ‘No woman, let alone one so young, should be asked to give up her life to gratify a man’s need for an heir,’ he told Ash.

‘You are being too harsh on yourself, Harry. You could not have known what would happen and next time it will surely be plain sailing.’

‘There will not be a next time. How can I put anyone, particularly someone for whom I have the tenderest feelings, through that torture?’

‘Women do have a choice, my friend, to marry or not to marry, and most, if you ask them, would certainly say they want to be married and have children. It is their lot in life and they know it.’

‘You are a fine one to talk,’ Harry said. ‘A bachelor of, how old?’

‘Thirty-two. I have given up expecting to meet the lady with whom I could contemplate sharing my life. I am too set in my ways. We should drive each other to distraction and as I have no great estate to worry about, there is no need.’

‘But you have mistresses?’

‘Naturally I have. But there are ways to prevent conception.’

‘What use is that to a man who needs a legitimate heir?’

‘But you must have an heir somewhere,’ Ash said.

‘So I have, a muckworm of a cousin who has no care for the land, nor the people who depend upon it, and would ruin his inheritance in a twelvemonth with his gambling.’

‘Then you must prevent that and marry again.’

‘I am not like to die in the immediate future.’

‘I hope you may not, but you can never be sure, can you?’

‘No.’ The answer was curt, and spying a couple of chairs for hire, Harry beckoned the men over and they climbed in, effectively ending the conversation. In this fashion they were conveyed to the Old Bailey where they took their seats to listen to the trial.

The room was already crowded. Some of the audience had an interest in the case, but many came to the proceedings simply out of curiosity. Until the entrance of the court officials they talked, ate pies and fruit and noisily speculated on the fate of those to come up before the judge.

Those of the Dustin Gang who had been apprehended were brought into court and ranged in the dock. There was Alfred Dustin, his wife Meg, their twenty-four-year-old daughter, Matilda, and her husband, Bernard Watson. All were charged that ‘they not being employed at the Mint in the Tower, nor being lawfully authorised by the Lord High Treasurer and not having God before their eyes, nor weighing the duty of their allegiance to our lord, the King, and his people, did between the first day of May and the tenth in the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and sixty-one, feloniously and traitorously forge and counterfeit forty coins of pewter in the likeness of silver shillings and sixpences’. They all pleaded not guilty.

The first witness was the landlady of their lodgings who had gone into their rooms to clean them when they were out and had found a mould filled with chalk, some clay pipes, much burned, and two sixpences, which had been stamped on one side but not the other. When Bernard Watson came home she had taxed him with her finds and he had admitted to her that he was counterfeiting and had shown her how the coins were made.

‘He had a mould,’ she said. ‘It was filled with chalk and had an impression of a sixpence in it. He poured in pewter, which he had heated in a tobacco pipe over the fire. He said good-quality pewter was best and he obtained it by cutting up a tankard. When the piece was taken from the mould he nicked it with a clean tile to mill the edges, then he scoured it with sand to make it look bright. Lastly he put it into a pot of water boiled with a powder he called argol to make it look silver.’

‘What did you say to this?’ the judge asked.

‘I told him I would have none of it and they must all find other lodgings.’

‘You lie,’ Bernard Watson protested. ‘I never made a false coin in my life.’

The woman turned to the judge. ‘Your honour, as God is my witness, I tell you true.’

‘Then what happened?’ the prosecutor urged her.

‘He said he would pay me well to pass the coins off when I went shopping, but I refused and said they must all leave.’

‘And did they?’

‘I left the house and went to fetch a constable. When I brought the constable back, they had packed up and gone and taken all the sixpences with them.’

The constable was called next and told the court that he found nothing except a broken-up pewter tankard and the bowl of a pipe with a residue of pewter in it. He saw no counterfeit coins.

‘God, I do believe the rascals will get off,’ Ash murmured.

‘Patience,’ Harry responded, flicking invisible fluff from his sleeve.

‘Where did they go?’ the prosecutor asked the witness.

‘They went to a house in White Lion Street. I got the address from a man at the Nag’s Head, who heard them speak of it. I went there with Constable Bunting and we broke down the door and found them all gathered to make coins.’

‘I suppose you were the man at the Nag’s Head,’Ash whispered to Harry.

‘Shh,’ Harry warned him, smiling.

Other witnesses were called to corroborate. Their defence that they were making buttons and buckles to sell in the market was thrown out. Alfred, Meg and Bernard were sentenced to hang; Matilda’s plea that she was not aware her parents and husband were doing anything but making buttons was accepted and she was set free. She left the court vowing vengeance against whoever had ratted on them.

Harry and Ash did not wait to hear the next trial, but made their way out to the street and comparative fresh air. ‘I did not know it was so easy to make false coins,’ Ash said. ‘But surely the profits are minimal.’

‘Not if you make enough of them. Take a counterfeit shilling or even a sixpence to a shop to buy something for a ha’penny or a penny and receive the change in good money and you soon make a tidy profit. Usually the coiners employ what they call passers-off to go into the country with a supply of bad coins with which they buy goods needing change.’

‘Not worth the candle,’ Ash said.

‘Not for such as we are, but for the lower sort a welcome supplement to low wages and, for those with no work at all, better than starving.’

‘The young woman was very angry. Do you think she will try to carry out her threat?’

‘She has no idea who turned them in.’ He paused. ‘They are small fry. The really big profits come with clipping gold coins, but for that you need to be supplied with real coins to make a start and it is altogether on a more lofty plane. That is what I’m going after next.’

‘What have you discovered?’

‘Not a great deal as yet, but I was handed a clipped guinea at the wine merchant’s the other day. It had been used to purchase wine. Unfortunately he could not remember who had passed it to him. He has promised to let me know as soon as he sees another one.’

‘You can’t do it more than once in the same shop, surely?’

‘It depends how observant the shopkeeper is. And if the rogue thought he had got away with it he might be tempted to try again.’

They had been walking back towards St James’s as they talked and turned into White’s and the subject of coiners and, indeed, of crime in whatever form was dropped in favour of playing cards. Harry drank and gambled in moderation; he found that men in their cups often let fall titbits of information that helped him in his work for the Piccadilly Gentlemen. And there was nothing to go home for. He could attend soirées, routs and balls, he was always a welcome guest, simply because of his title, wealth and unmarried status, but he became tired of gushing mamas throwing their daughters in his way. He found himself reiterating that he had decided not to marry again, but that did not stop them trying to change his mind.

He could, of course, find one of the hundreds of ladies of the night to amuse him for an hour or two, but he had always found paying for that dubious pleasure distasteful. He went frequently to the theatre and enjoyed supper with the cast afterwards, but there was a limit to the number of times he could view one play, especially if it were not particularly well done. It was easier to spend his evenings at one or other of his clubs.

A four was made up by Benedict Stafford and Sir Max Chalmers. Benedict was a pimply youth of no more than twenty, heir to a Viscount who kept him on short commons, which everyone knew. Harry had never met Sir Max, but he was well dressed in sober black, relieved by silver embroidery and a white lace cravat, matched by the froth of lace emerging from his coat sleeves. With his sharp nose and chin and thin legs, he reminded Harry of a magpie.

‘You have the devil’s own luck,’ Stafford complained several hours later when Harry scooped up his pile of winnings. ‘Unless you take my voucher, I can play no more.’

‘Naturally I shall accept your voucher,’ Harry said, using the high-pitched voice of the fop, though he drew the line at a lisp. ‘But if you have scattered too many of them about, I wonder when I might be paid.’

Benedict laughed. ‘That I cannot tell you, but you are in no hurry, are you? I believe you to be prodigious high in the instep.’

‘So I may be, but neither am I a fool.’ He was idly looking at the coins he had won as he spoke, but not so much by a flicker of an eyelid did he betray the fact that one of them was clipped. He wondered which of the players had put it there and if he was aware of what he had done. The trouble was that it was easy to pass clipped guineas without realising it; they had once been genuine and their only flaw was that, after clipping, they were smaller and weighed less than they should. He put it in his pocket. ‘I like a man to pay his debts.’

‘Then I withdraw,’ Benedict said huffily. ‘Any other man would demand satisfaction for that slur on his honour.’

‘I am relieved you do not,’ Harry said, smiling lazily. ‘I abhor violence.’

‘I will toss you the dice for my share of the pot,’ Ash told the young man. ‘If you win, it will give you the stake to go on playing.’

‘And if I lose?’

‘I will take your voucher.’

‘Agreed.’

The card game was suspended while the dice were called for. Harry spent the time studying his playing companions. Benedict was a young fool, wanting to impress, to be counted a man about town, but he would not have the stomach for passing counterfeit guineas. Max Chalmers was different. He was thirty or thereabouts, not ill looking, though his expression was surly. His clothes were well made and his powdered wig one of the best; a vain man, he decided, then chuckled secretly at himself for his own pretensions.

‘Allow me to offer condolences and congratulations, Chalmers,’ Ash said while they waited. ‘I believe you have recently come into your inheritance.’

‘I thank you, though there is little enough to salvage and I am left with an unmarried sister to provide for.’

‘Is that such a burden?’

‘It would not be if our father had not invested foolishly and left no portion for her. My wife is not over-fond of her and is reluctant to offer her a home.’ He sighed. ‘If only I could find her a husband. You do not know of anyone requiring a wife, do you?’

Ash looked meaningfully at Harry, who frowned at him, but he took no notice. ‘What can you say in her favour?’

‘Not a great deal,’ Max said gloomily. ‘She is twenty-six and not beautiful, but I suppose you could say she has a good figure…’

‘Why does your wife not like her?’ Harry demanded.

‘She is too opinionated.’

‘Mmm, a bad trait indeed,’ Harry said. ‘Is that why she has never married?’

‘It could be. But she has been housekeeper to our father since our mother died. To give her her due she is very good at it. The house always ran like clockwork. That is half the trouble—if she comes to our house, she will want to impose her own ideas…’

Harry laughed. ‘Then you have a problem, my friend.’

‘Marry her off,’ Ash said.

‘So I would, if I could find someone to take her.’

‘Is she healthy?’ Ash persisted in his questioning.

‘Never had a day’s illness in her life.’

‘It seems to me,’Ash said thoughtfully ‘that your contention that she has little in her favour is false. She is a good housekeeper, can hold her own and is healthy enough to bear children. Is she particular as to a husband?’

Max laughed. ‘She cannot afford to be.’

‘You mean she would agree to a marriage of convenience?’

‘If one were offered, I think I could persuade her.’ He paused, realising he might have sounded unfeeling. ‘Of course, I would not let her to go any Tom, Dick or Harry…Oh, I beg your pardon, Portman.’

‘Granted.’

‘I would wish to know she would be dealt fairly with, not kept short of pin money or treated like a skivvy,’ Max went on. ‘She is, after all, a lady. Our family can trace its lineage back to Tudor times.’

‘Dowry?’ Ash asked, ignoring the kick Harry gave him under the table.

‘Alas! There you have me.’

Ash chuckled. ‘Not much of a bargain, then. How do you propose to bring this marriage about? Advertise her for sale?’

‘That’s a thought,’ Max admitted.

‘How can you be so callous?’ Harry burst out, forgetting his usual languid air. ‘She is your sister and a lady; surely she deserves your protection.’

Max looked startled by this outburst from a man who had the reputation of indolence and a studied lack of finer feelings, except when they were his own. ‘Naturally she does and until she marries she shall have it, but she would be happier married, of that I am certain.’

‘We should like to meet the lady, should we not, Harry?’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Harry said brusquely, wondering how much longer the waiter was going to be fetching the dice. The whole conversation was becoming offensive.

‘You?’ Benedict queried, addressing Ashley. ‘I thought you were content to remain a bachelor.’

‘So I am. I was thinking of someone else.’

Max laughed. ‘A man-matchmaker—whoever heard of such a thing?’

‘I would not go so far as to say that,’ Ash said.

‘I should think not!’ Harry put in. ‘I beg you to forget it.’

But Ash had the bit between his teeth and was not about to let go. ‘It cannot hurt to meet the lady. Socially, of course. She need not know.’ He turned back to Max. ‘Where and when could this be done?’

‘She is in mourning and not going out in society, but she likes to walk in Green Park of an afternoon. If you care to be there, we could come across each other by chance and I could make her known to you.’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow afternoon. Shall we say two o’ clock?’

‘Capital! We will meet you at the gate and take a stroll together.’ Harry’s kick was even more vicious than the previous one and drew a cry of ‘ouch’ from Ash, which he hastily covered with a cough.

‘Where has the pesky waiter got to with those dice?’ Harry grumbled, looking about him.

‘I have changed my mind,’ Max said. ‘I will not wait, if you will excuse me.’ He left the table and strode away. He was quickly followed by Benedict, who was glad to escape without writing out a voucher. Harry noted it, but decided not to pursue him.

As soon as they were out of earshot, he turned to Ashley. ‘Just what are you playing at, Ash? If you think I will stoop to buying a wife, you are grossly mistaken. I will not go.’

‘It seems to me that you will be doing each other a favour. She cannot want to live with that coxcomb of a brother. You could provide her with a comfortable home and she could provide the heir you need without disturbing your sensibilities.’

‘I wish I had not told you anything about my wife,’ Harry said. ‘I beg you to refrain from mentioning the matter again.’ He beckoned to a waiter and asked him to send out for chairs to convey them home: Ash to his bachelor apartments in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Harry to Portman House in Berkeley Square.

Ash laughed. ‘Twas but a thought, but I’ve a mind to take a stroll in the park tomorrow afternoon for amusement’s sake. I will call for you. You may come or not, as you please.’

Harry did not please and he went home to a lonely dinner of sirloin of beef, partridge, capon and fruit tartlets and two whole bottles of Rhenish wine. He had friends a-plenty and enough work to keep him occupied and could always find diversions, but Ash had unsettled him and he found himself admitting that he was sometimes lonely. He began to wonder what Chalmers’s sister was like. An antidote, he did not doubt, outspoken if her brother was to be believed, and if she was as healthy as he maintained, she was probably big and muscular. Mannish was a word that came to mind.

Impatient with himself, he went to his chamber, where he threw off his wig, changed from his finery into a brown stuff coat, fustian breeches, wool stockings, which had once been decorated with vivid red clocks, but were now faded to a dusky pink, and a black waistcoat, so old and worn it was turning green. Jack Sylvester, his valet, declined to help him don this strange attire, and busied himself tidying away the discarded garments, and then watched as his master tied a spotted neckerchief about his neck, put on a tousled scratch wig and set a three-cornered hat on it. Then he rubbed brown make-up over his face and hands and filled his beautifully manicured nails with it. Lastly he pulled on a down-at-heel pair of shoes. ‘I am going out, Jack. I do not know when I shall be back, but you do not need to wait up for me.’

He did not hear Jack’s reply, but he could guess it, and clattered down the stairs and said the same thing to the footman, locking the front door behind him and putting the key into his pocket against his return. Then he strode out for the Nag’s Head. Harry Portman, the mincing macaroni, had become Gus Housman, an altogether more shady character, one that Sir Ashley Saunders would hardly recognise.