‘Ah,’ said his father with a smack of lips. ‘Thirsty work on the roads. And good English ale will wash away the dust swifter than any of those Hanoverian laagers I’ve been drinking of late.’ He tilted the mug, searching for a last drop.
‘When … how …’
‘How did I find you?’ Sir James grunted. ‘Your letter to Absolute House gave your address in Bath. I went there and a countryman of ours who was working next door said that in the afternoon you always could be found here.’ He glared. ‘Always was the word used, ye dog. I spent all that money on a Westminster education and bought you a commission in one of the fanciest of regiments for you to become a frequenter of billiard halls.’
This last was said with such a distasteful glance around the room that Jack could only smile. He hadn’t seen his father for nearly two years. In that time he had fought battles – two by land and one by sea – spent a winter in a cave eating bear meat, endured slavery, killed men, loved women … and here he was being chastized for a schoolboy’s profligacy!
‘If you would rather go somewhere else, sir?’
‘No. Ordered the ale now. Might as well drink it.’
His father sat – heavily, Jack noticed. Now that he studied him he was surprised to note his apparel. Sir James loved clothes even more than his son, and had a purse to indulge his appetite. Yet here he was dressed in a leather frock coat such as a coachman might wear, patched shirt poking up from beneath a threadbare vest. Grey flannel breeches were tucked into riding boots that yawned between upper and sole. The whole was covered in the mud and dust that the indifferent roadways of England always conjured. It lay like lady’s powder on his father’s face, dulling the bushy black eyebrows, lining the large Absolute nose, but not obscuring the purplish bags under his eyes.
He is tired, Jack thought, more tired than I’ve ever seen him.
The ales came and his father drank full half of the pint. Jack sipped and waited. His father had not come all this way – and at some speed – to drink beer or chastize his son. A sudden fear came. ‘My mother? She is—’
‘Well, boy. Waiting for me in Hanover. I have a letter, somewhere,’ he patted his coat, raising a cloud, ‘though we did not know for certain you had crossed back over the ocean. She would not stay in London alone, once you and I were both gone. She never was one to obey orders.’ He smiled faintly. ‘But even she accepted that I could travel faster on my own.’
‘You go back to the war? Is it not soon over?’
‘Tell that to the Frogs. Seem unwilling to acknowledge that they are beat.’ The smile vanished. ‘Meantime, I had to take some measures, see some people at court and in the government in secret. My enemies are determined, it seems, to proceed with their act of attainder against our family. I have forestalled them, but only for a while, perhaps.’
‘This secrecy accounts for your clothes. I suppose?’
‘My clothes?’ His father looked down, then slapped at his coat in disgust, raising more dust. ‘Indeed. I am still, technically, a criminal and liable for the taking. So these rags are a concealment.’ He looked his son up and down. ‘What’s your excuse?’
‘These?’ Jack said, pulling at the soiled serge of his short coat. ‘These are also in the nature of a disguise.’
For a moment, both Absolutes looked at each other, a slight smile in their eyes. Then Sir James shook his head and continued. ‘In the wars, I am, once more, building up a reputation as a cavalry commander that might wipe away the memory of my killing of Lord Melbury.’ He nodded at Jack. ‘A killing undertaken on your behalf, I will have you remember.’
‘I remember it well, sir. And I have been doing my best to add honour to the name of Absolute. I have … done some things, by way of atonement.’
‘I am sure you have, boy. Sure of it. And will continue to do so, I know. Absolute blood, eh?’ He raised his mug, as did Jack, and they both drank long till his father belched. ‘Which is why, when Nancy informed me that you had indeed made landfall and where you were, I came straight here rather than returning to Germany. Your timely return means you can make further atonement immediately.’
‘Immediately, sir?’ His voice could not conceal his concern. Sir James would have him back to the Dragoons or transferred to a regiment under his own command – in either case off to war again – in a trice. He was far keener on his son’s military career than Jack had ever been.
‘More or less.’ Sir James set his mug down. ‘These things take a little organizing, of course.’
‘What things?’ said Jack nervously.
Sir James leaned forward. ‘I have told you that friends of mine – of ours – are engaged in a campaign to protect us against the repercussions caused by the death of Melbury. They may not be able to do so for long. Especially since certain individuals require suborning with gold which our friends cannot spare and I would find hard to raise from my exile.’
Jack coughed. ‘I am expecting near two hundred pounds, sir, and would of course make it available—’
His father snorted. ‘A piss drop in a chamber pot! Melbury had many allies while I have always made enemies. If they are not bought off, if they make common cause, well, their squadrons may overwhelm us. We need reinforcements. We need an alliance of both wealth and power.’ He raised a hand triumphantly. ‘What we need, sir, is a wife!’
Jack blinked. ‘But, um, Father, you are already married. At least, I had always assumed so. To my mother?’
His father blinked back, then bellowed, ‘The wife is not for me, you simpleton. The wife is for you.’
He had been so certain his father was going to march him off to war again that this news appeared to him as a kind of joke. He even laughed. ‘That’s impossible.’
‘I can assure you it is not. It is not only possible, it will happen.’
Jack flushed cold. ‘You would force me to marry?’
‘I would expect you to obey. Why, only now you sought further atonement.’ He glared. ‘This is it!’
Suddenly, war seemed preferable. ‘There are limits to atonement, sir. This is surely one. I cannot love just anyone.’
‘Love my arse! What has love got to do with the price of cod? The girl herself is immaterial. It’s the alliance that matters.’ Sir James drank again, smacked his lips. ‘We must ally with a powerful, rich and well-connected family who will help us to fight off those who would strip us of our title, our lands. Who will secure our lines of retreat with gold should my other stratagems fail.’
‘But who … who is this girl? I assume you have someone in mind. It is a girl?’
‘Girl. Woman. Aged spinster,’ Sir James grunted. ‘It matters not.’
‘It matters to me. Surely you see it must matter to me.’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’ He was going mad! ‘What if she is hideous? Twice my weight? A crone with a temper?’
‘You would still marry her and write poems to her slender beauty and her equanimity,’ Sir James sneered. ‘Wasn’t it a poem that led you into this mess with Melbury? Now’s your chance to write a better one!’
Hitherto, shock had kept Jack’s voice low. Now his volume grew to match his father’s. ‘I can assure you, sir, that I will not marry this … whomever it is you have chosen. I will not. I cannot! Because I have already chosen for myself. And she is—’
‘I care not who she is. She is your past. Your future is to marry as I tell you.’
‘And I tell you, sir, that I will not.’
The door of the room opened. A servant stepped in. ‘Can I get you gentlemen—’
‘Get OUT!’ bellowed both Absolutes, and the man staggered from the blast, slamming the door in his panic. But the intrusion had broken the flow of anger – at least on Sir James’ part. His voice, when it came, was almost quiet, twice as frightening.
‘I have restrained myself. I have been patience itself. Your mother would have been proud. She said you might dare to object.’ He tugged the collar away from a neck fast turning purpl
e under the dust. ‘But I will not expose myself to any more of your insolence. Tonight I will wait in the front porch of the Abbey during the twelve strokes of midnight. If, by the twelfth, you have not appeared and agreed to submit entirely to my will,’ he walked to the door, opened it, ‘well then, you are no longer a son of mine. I will find the gold I require even if I have to sell all our tin mines, for you will no longer require an inheritance. And I will fight the battle for the family honour alone.’
He left. Jack watched the open doorway for several moments, then walked to it. ‘You there,’ he called, leaning through. The servant appeared, somewhat nervously. ‘Another pint of ale, if you please.’
Jack returned slowly to the billiards table. There he set up two balls, one red, one white. The cue wobbled as he bent and he had to take several deep breaths to steady it. When he was quite ready, he sighted and shot.
As he squatted in a bush outside the servants’ entrance to Simpson’s Assembly Rooms, there was only one thing of which Jack was certain – he was not going to marry some raddled old harridan just to please his father. Blood or no blood, there were other ways for him to atone for his youthful errors. Besides, if it was a wealthy and powerful alliance Sir James sought, surely a niece of the Earl of Clare would be as useful as any? All he had to do – to use his father’s terminology – was to make a final assault upon the fortress, storm the breech, pour in his Grenadiers, pull down the enemy’s shift – uh, colours …
Bollocks to the language of war, Jack thought. I am a soldier of love now. I need to secure the girl. I need to do that tonight.
As what he was hoping for happened – a servant struggling with too big a load, grateful for Jack’s assistance on the other side of the tray – a final thought came as he stepped inside the building: the threat of disinheritance meant he could act the role of the impoverished suitor for real. A little truth in his performance tonight would not hurt.
Depositing the tray, receiving thanks – and a curious look – from the servant, Jack pushed his way through the jostle. It was chaotic in the kitchen, for the music had just stopped and refreshments were required after the dance. Pausing by the entrance to the main room, Jack scoured the scene, glad that he was once again the observer not the observed. That would have been the problem with paying for a ticket and trying to enter in the customary manner.
Whereas at the baths it was the universal plainness of linen shifts that had hidden his quarry, here the opposite led to as great a concealment, for there now swirled before Jack a mélange of colours, almost nauseating in their variety. Everything was for display, and the wearers strutted; here a lime-green chest speckled with cornflowers, there an orange and pink confection of drape and frill – and that was just the men! The women were twice as colourful, twice as laden with material. The style, since Jack had been away, seemed to have turned largely in favour of the silk apron, thus allowing each of them to wear not one dress but, essentially, two. These did not always combine well; as was the case of a very small woman with no neck who looked like a yellow macaroon, her heated face the cherry atop it. There were also trollopes in every shade of God’s creation and none, whose two-yard trains when stood on caused a constant tripping, making the whole assembly appear as if it partially consisted of bobbing ducks.
Fortunately, the swirl was separating, as the assembly made for the side rooms for refreshment or cards. And it was into one of those rooms that he saw her go, the naturalness of her hair colour, the simplicity of its styling a decided contrast to the artificiality around her.
He was about to cross towards her when he became aware of attention focused upon him. He looked to his left and saw two Macaronies, a type of youth that seemed to have quadrupled in number since Jack left for war. These, somewhat older than the norm, had hair teased into columns above their heads, their faces powdered, lips shaded in crimson, eyebrows plucked to a line. One wore a pink coat and yellow vest, the other reversed the colours on his apparel, though both sported identical satin slippers of luminous green. They each supported one elbow on a hand, their other hand pressing a glass on a wand to the eye. They gazed at Jack through them, looking like nothing so much as Chelsea porcelain bookends.
‘Rough,’ said one, shivering with disgust, his eyes on Jack’s red jacket.
‘Rough,’ agreed the other, but in an entirely different tone, looking Jack straight in the face.
Both their gazes travelled slowly south. ‘Boots!’ they both exclaimed, and the first speaker went on, ‘Really, young gent, you cannot wear such things in company. Have you come straight from the farmyard? Take them off, sirrah! Take them off!’
‘Take it all off,’ said his companion, in the same tone he’d used before.
‘Gladly, sirs,’ said Jack, somewhat flustered. ‘Just as soon as I’ve … you know … important message to deliver …’
He was gone, moving across to where he’d last seen her. But the voices pursued him. ‘Send for Derrick! It will not do. Shameful! Eject him.’
A dart to the left, a jig right and he thought he’d lost the Fashion Watch in the crowd. Yet he knew there’d be a further hue and cry. He must succeed with his mission and leave before he was, indeed, ejected.
He saw her immediately, just settling into a chair at a card table. A swift glance around revealed no guardian; Mrs O’Farrell was tucking into the sweetmeats next door, no doubt. The chairs to either side of Letty were already occupied by two older ladies while a young man was just enquiring as to the empty seat opposite her.
Jack was across in three strides. ‘So sorry I am late,’ he gasped, flinging himself into the chair. ‘Thank you,’ he said, to the shocked young man whose hands were still on it. With a finger to his lips, the briefest of silencing gestures to the wide-eyed beauty opposite him, he snatched up a deck of cards, turned to the woman on his left and said, ‘My deal, is it not?’
The young man harumphed and walked away. The woman – closer to fifty than the thirty her face paint aspired to – picked up a fan, flapped it and said, ‘We ’ave not cut the deck yet, sir. But hif’n the geneelman wants t’ go first, is it for the ladies to disoblige ’im?’ The words, delivered in tones that were purest Thames at Puddle Dock, made Jack smile and begin. He assumed the game was whist, it nearly always was. So he dealt thirteen cards to each of them and, once he had fanned his, finally looked over them at Letty.
The shock had not left her face entirely. It showed most in those wondrous green eyes. He had never been with her in a public arena before – Mrs O’Farrell would not have countenanced it. Fortunately for the lovers, the guardian was most fond of a concoction called Hungary-water, a mix of lavender and rosemary in spirits of wine which some people used as perfume or to rub on minor wounds while others saw it as an aid to digestion. Jack was grateful that Mrs O’Farrell seemed so troubled in the guts; she drank a lot of it and it made her soporific, allowing Jack his visits to the Circus house garden.
I’ll recommend a double dose the night we flee, he thought. His plan was made. He just had to find a way of conveying it to Letty.
He looked at his cards. Though he preferred more active games he had always done well with whist. But there was little to be gained with these cards. Not a royal among ’em and only one middling trump. He’d take one trick at the most.
The cockney pigeon – richly feathered, there was certainly money in fish – laid down the first card. The rounds proceeded and Letty took nine, her ten of spades trumping Jack’s eight. Her cards were not all winners, she had just played them well. As the lady to his left gathered the cards to shuffle, Letty spoke.
‘What makes a soldier among us, sir? Are we so short on wars?’
‘Alas, I have taken a wound, miss, and needs must seek remedy.’
‘A wound?’ the lady on his other side asked. She was less richly dressed than the Londoner, better spoken. ‘Nothing too threatening, I hope?’
‘It is around the heart, so dangerous enough, I fear. Though perhaps here I will f
ind the cure,’ he replied, his eyes on Letty.
‘Perhaps you will, sir,’ she said, and he thrilled, as ever, to that low voice. ‘I do hope so.’
‘Lawks, don’ concern yesself there, lovey,’ squawked the fishwife, ‘they’ve cures for all sorts ’ere. Deal again, shall I?’
Some agitation at the door made him turn to see his twin admirers from before, manicured fingers pointing at Jack, shooing a small neat man ahead of them. A whispering crowd followed.
The man marched up to the table. ‘And who, sir, are you?’
‘Who is it that enquires?’ Jack said softly, folding his hand, laying it down. A good one too, eminently winnable. He was a little disappointed when he realized he was not going to get the chance. You didn’t want the girl you loved to beat you at cards without a response.
His reply caused several to gasp. ‘’Ee’s the Mistress of Ceremony,’ whispered the lady from London, helpfully.
‘I am Samuel Derrick, sir,’ the man said with an icy look at Jack’s abettor, who lowered her gaze with a nervous giggle, ‘the Master of the Ceremonies. And you?’
‘I am Cornet—’
He never finished his title. ‘Interloper!’ hissed the more aggressive of the Macaronies. ‘Cornet Interloper … with his boots!’ Jack was rising so the squeal went up a tone. ‘See, Derrick, see how hideous they are! They reek of the farmyard.’
Jack turned slowly. ‘If they reek, sir, ’tis of horse sweat, gunpowder and Frenchman’s blood. Perhaps you should come nearer so as to be able to note the difference.’
The crowd was getting larger, louder. And all Jack wanted was an audience of one. So he turned back to Derrick, whose head only just reached Jack’s chin and was puffing out his embroidered chest in compensation. ‘Yet since you object to them, sir, I will remove them forthwith.’ Another gasp came and he smiled. ‘And myself in them, have no fear. But first there is a matter of honour I must deal with.’ He looked for a moment at the Macaroni who shrank back against his companion. Then he turned back to the table, to his new friend. ‘What was the stake, madam, for which we were playing?’