Chapter 2
The fire in the study was down to fading embers when he left the room. The glass still stood on the desk, Roark’s smear on it.
Upstairs, his sons lay swaddled in bandages, dosed into silence. Wallace stared at nothing. Walter wept in his sleep.
His wife’s door was shut.
He found Winnifred in the parlour.
“We can recover,” she said, calm as a parson at prayer. “There must be a way. We can petition—”
“Petition?” The empty glass in his hand shattered against the hearth. She flinched. “Petition whom? The same peers who stood by while one of their own broke your brothers’ bones and left us bleeding in the dirt?”
Her voice sank. “That cannot be true.”
He fell into the chair, hand trembling as he ran it down his face. The fire hissed softly, wet from bad coal. Somewhere behind the wall, a rat scrabbled.
A knock. The butler entered, a folded note on a silver salver. Soon, that too would be sold.
Your club awaits your presence
R
Roark. He could still hear that level voice across the desk: If a virgin, worth twenty-five hundred guineas. Sell her to Tom King.
He drew a slow breath, smoothing his expression. “Put on your best dress. Whatever jewellery you have.” He softened his voice. “We are paying an associate a visit.”
“Who, Papa?”
“You shall see.”
She ran upstairs. He poured another brandy and drained it.
When she returned, she wore pearl-grey silk and a ribbon of black velvet at her throat, hung with a paste pendant that caught the light.
Paste was all that remained. He forced his expression smooth.
“Perfect, my dear.”
She curtseyed. He offered his arm. Outside, a hackney. He handed her up and climbed in after.
“Tom King’s,” he told the driver.
The man’s eyes flicked to Winnifred then back to him. “You certain, sir?”
“Drive.”
The wheels creaked forward. Lamplight slid across her face. She stared out into the fog, silent.
The carriage slowed. Stopped.
He stepped down and offered his hand. She stepped down and looked around at the narrow, filthy street.
“Papa?”
He tightened his grip.
The door ahead opened. Laughter spilled out. A man leant against the threshold, arms crossed, gaze fixed on her.
Walton felt his insides turn to water. He drew a breath through his teeth, then nodded.
The man’s smile came slow.
* * *
At White’s, Walton leant back in the deep leather chair, one ankle resting over his knee, the curve of the glass stem cool against his fingers.
Port, good port—the kind that lets a man smile when the wolves are already at his door.
He swirled it once, watching the garnet liquid cling to the glass before sinking down again.
“Dashed shame about the tradesmen,” Kettering said, leaning in across the green baize. His eyes were a little too bright, the way men’s eyes got when they thought they’d cornered a story. “Rumour is you’ve had to turn them away.”
Walton smiled as if the subject amused him. “Idle talk, my dear fellow. The market is tight, yes, but I am hardly at the mercy of candle-sellers and bootmakers. You know how the Town likes to chatter.”
A chuckle went round the table. Cards slapped softly on the felt. Someone called for another bottle. Walton kept his posture loose, the kind of indolence that said he had nowhere else to be, no accounts pressing at his door.
From the corner, Sutcliffe’s voice cut through. “Saw a bailiff in Portland Place last week. Nasty business.”
Walton let the silence stretch. He fixed the man with a faintly bored look, as though the topic were beneath him.
“He was after a neighbour. I gave him the courtesy of a glass in the hall, nothing more.” He placed the port on the table, the stem making no sound.
“I assure you, gentlemen, the Waltons are as secure as ever.”
“That’s the way,” Kettering said. “Let the vultures circle someone else.”
“I find,” Walton said mildly, taking up his cards, “that the best answer to rumour is to let it die unattended. Neglect is its only famine.”
They played on. He lost a hand, won the next, took a small pot with a neat succession.
The talk moved to the races, the singer newly engaged at Covent Garden, and the outrageous waistcoats fashionable in Bond Street.
Walton laughed where custom required, offered the occasional barb, and poured another measure of port.
He was about to raise the glass again when the door crashed open. A footman in livery—his livery—stood in the doorway, breathless, eyes wild.
“Sir—there’s—there’s a fire—” He gulped air. “Walton House, sir. It’s—”
The room seemed to hold its breath.
Walton rose, the chair scraping back. He let the words come as if torn from him. “My wife. My sons.” He paused just enough. “My daughter.” His voice cracked just enough to make Kettering flinch. He strode for the door, his friend already on his heels.
“We’ll have you there in minutes,” someone said, calling for a carriage.
The night air struck cold as they spilled into St. James’s Street. Lamps flared along the pavement, casting long shadows. The footman tried to speak again, but Walton waved him off with a sharp gesture, as if he could not bear the detail yet.
They climbed into the first carriage, four men pressing in, knees knocking. Kettering rapped on the roof. “Portland Place—as fast as the horses can!”
The driver whipped the team on. Hooves rang against the stones, jolting the carriage with every turn. Walton gripped the strap and allowed the dark do its work.
Kettering put a hand on his arm. “We’ll get them out, Walton. You’ll see.”
Walton, eyes fixed on the blur of the streets, shook his head. The smells came in—coal smoke from passing chimneys, damp wool from the men crammed beside him, and underneath it all, the first acrid breath of something burning.
As they turned up Brook Street, a boy darted into the road, shouting something Walton could not catch over the thunder of wheels. They swerved past him, the carriage lurching hard enough to slam shoulders together.
Then they were in the Square.
The air itself seemed aflame. Smoke boiled upward, lit from beneath by the roar of the blaze. Walton House was a skeleton in firelight: windows black mouths, roofline jagged against the orange sky.
People were everywhere—neighbours in dressing gowns, servants clutching shawls, hawkers who had abandoned their stalls to gawk. The crowd surged and shifted, keeping its distance from the heat.
“Buckets! Buckets here!” a voice shouted. Men ran in a line from the public pump, passing sloshing pails hand to hand. Water hissed as it struck the flames, sending up clouds of steam that glowed in the firelight.
Walton stumbled forward, half-running, only to be caught when Kettering seized his arm. “You cannot go in—”
“My family—”
A constable stepped into their path. “Sir, the upper floors are gone. The roof’s likely to fall any moment. Best you stand back.”
“My wife is in there!” Walton barked, loud enough for heads to turn. “My sons. My daughter—”
The sound pleased him less than the effect. He let his shoulders sag, just so.
Sparks rained down like hot snow. The heat pressed against his face, searing the skin. Somewhere inside, a window shattered with a sharp report, followed by the deep, grinding groan of timbers giving way.
Hands caught at him from all sides—Kettering, Sutcliffe, strangers. He let his knees give way, their hands keeping him from lunging further forward. The weight on his shoulders was not theirs.
Around them, the scene was chaos. A pair of parish watchmen tried to push the crowd back. A woman screamed a name into the smoke. From the far side of the Square, a cart arrived laden with more buckets, its driver shouting for men to form another chain.
Walton pressed the heel of his hand to his eyes. “God—no—” he choked out. He let the word carry and listened to it as though it belonged to another man.
Kettering bent close. “We shall find them. Hold fast.”
Walton nodded without speaking, shoulders shuddering. He kept his head bowed, letting the firelight catch his face and slip away.
* * *
The Morning Chronicle
Wednesday, 11 May 1808
Deaths:
On Monday last, at their residence in Portland Place, by the melancholy accident of a fire, Mrs Lucinda Walton, consort of Mr Matthew Walton, and their two sons, Wallace and Walter, together with their only daughter, Miss Winnifred Walton, all perished.
Mrs Walton was in her forty-second year, the young gentlemen in their twenty-third and twenty-second years respectively, and Miss Walton in her seventeenth.
Mr Walton, absent at the time of the calamity, survives to lament the irreparable loss of his family.
* * *
Distressing Occurrence in Portland Place
We regret to report the total destruction, by fire, of the residence of Mr Matthew Walton, of Portland Place, on Monday night last. The lamentable event occasioned the deaths of Mrs Walton, her two sons, and her daughter, Miss Walton.
The origin of the fire remains unknown; the house and contents were insured.