Chapter Six
Barely a day later, in what could only be described as a seedy backstreet drinking den which happened to be in Cheapside, two very much out of place gentlemen sat at a grubby table nursing pewter tankards of beer.
One of them was Thomas Teesdale, the former school bully Jonathan had hated since his days at Eton.
The man who had gleefully witnessed his careless drunken agreement to accept Anthony Farrington’s daughter in payment for the debt.
The other was a much older man who bore an uncanny resemblance to the portrait of Jonathan’s father that hung over the fireplace in his town house’s parlor.
Sylvester Wintringham, the old earl’s younger brother and uncle to Jonathan, might once have been called handsome, but time had not been kind to him.
Ten years younger than his brother Edward, he’d grown up full of resentment in the domineering shadow of a brother who had seemed to excel at everything he turned his hand to.
Even when he’d reached manhood himself, via a less than an industrious career at first Eton and then Oxford, where he was supposed to have been learning to become a clergyman, Edward had overshadowed him in everything he did.
He’d been taller, broader, more handsome, more successful with women, a better and braver rider to hounds and a better shot.
And, to cap it all, he’d been the treasured heir, while Sylvester had very much been the spare and brought up expected to know his lowly position in life and take up the living of St Mary-in-the-Vale, the church nearest to Luxborough.
Of course, one living had not been enough for a man with Sylvester’s expensive tastes.
So, much in the manner of younger sons for hundreds of years, he had procured himself a good half dozen other livings, all of which he employed poorly paid curates to run for him.
Pocketing the majority of the income from all these livings, Sylvester had been able to take up residence in a modest house in London with his family, a hopeful son and two plain daughters, where he managed to just about maintain the sort of lifestyle he considered he was owed.
And whilst doing so, he had been able to observe his despised nephew from a distance, just as he had his hated father.
Which had meant much brooding over the unfairness of birth that had left him a mere second son, and brother to a man who had seemed to boast annoyingly good health.
And who, with the French woman he’d married in his late thirties, an act that had ruined Sylvester’s hope that his brother would die unmarried and childless, had produced a robust young heir.
An heir who was still at Eton when he inherited the earldom, granted, where accidents could easily befall daring youths.
Which had been a couple of years before Sylvester and young Thomas Teesdale had become acquainted.
Thomas was the son of one of Sylvester’s own old schoolfriends, a man who had not long afterwards taken his own life when he’d been ruined by Jonathan’s father in one of his final acts as earl.
This ruination had been undertaken with supreme disinterest and no consideration for Teesdale senior’s wife and family.
But, before this occurrence, the father had invited Sylvester and his wife, herself a woman brimming with spiteful ambition for her husband and son, to a house party.
A house party at which the young Thomas, who was in his final year at Eton and was itching to leave his school days behind, was present.
Something about the angry young man had spoken to Sylvester and, on the second day of the house party, he’d found himself alone in the gardens with Thomas, who of course knew exactly who he was.
Conversation had turned with surprising speed to the fact that both of them knew young Jonathan, who’d been fourteen at the time.
Thomas from school, and Sylvester because he was the boy’s uncle.
And it hadn’t taken them long to work out that neither of them liked him, although possibly for different reasons.
A somewhat unholy alliance had formed between the two of them, with one aim in mind—the downfall of both young Jonathan and his father, and Sylvester’s accession to the earldom, which he’d promised would benefit Thomas monetarily.
As a consequence, before Thomas had finally left Eton considerably richer than when he’d started, one or two not quite accidental misfortunes had befallen young Jonathan, none of which had resulted in permanent damage and all of which had been written off to boyish high jinks. Luckily for Thomas.
Eighteen years, and a very unexpected accident on the stairs at Luxborough leading to the sudden passing of the 5th earl, had passed since that house party, and their mutual dislike of the now 6th earl had forged an even more indelible bond between the two men.
Teesdale was no longer a callow youth attempting to enjoy the fleshpots of Oxford on a shoestring budget, and Sylvester, father of a hopeful son and two younger daughters, had only grown more cynical and resentful of all his nephew owned, which for some indefinable reason he considered should have been his.
And now news had come to him that the young man he’d taken for a confirmed rake, who would probably die unmarried and childless in a duel or from being stabbed in a dark alley one night, was about to marry. Teesdale, who always knew the gossip, had been the bearer of this atrocious news.
Sylvester occupied a table in a shadowy corner of the inn with his back to the wall and fumed.
If he’d fumed any more, smoke would have been issuing from his ears.
He’d chosen this table and this seat on purpose, for he was a man of immense caution.
From here, he could see all who came and went whilst they could not see him.
The last thing he wanted was for anyone to be able to say they’d seen him in conversation with the man he hoped would rid him of his irritating nephew.
His elegant, long-fingered hands, not unlike those of his nephew, had wrapped themselves around his beer tankard and, with his shoulders hunched forward and his brows lowered, everything about him spoke of menace.
If anyone had looked at him, they would have turned away in a hurry.
But no one did. He’d chosen this inn wisely as it was full of the most disreputable of back street scum—thieves, vagabonds, pickpockets, and women of the street.
Not that he feared any of them setting upon him, for a glance from that grim face would have been enough to put them off. And he never went anywhere unarmed.
Thomas Teesdale, seated opposite him, could not but relish the hatred spilling out of his companion in nearly visible waves.
Since Jonathan had started at Eton as a raw but over-confident thirteen-year-old, and had been assigned to Thomas as his fag—basically a slave for one of the seniors—he’d nurtured a strong jealousy of this sprig of nobility with a fat silver spoon poking so obviously out of his mouth.
A whole canteen of silver spoons in fact.
Whenever he met up with Sylvester, their conversation always gravitated towards the young Earl of Dunster, and tonight had been no different.
“It was Walter Farrington who told me Dunster’s going to marry the girl he won in that card game,” Thomas said, his upper lip curling in distaste. “His story is that they’ve been affianced for a number of years, but you and I both know that’s a complete faradiddle. Not a chance of it being true.”
Sylvester gave an angry snort. “News like that travels fast.” His eyes narrowed.
“I rather wish I’d been present to see that card game.
” He sniggered. “What sort of a man wagers his daughter on a game of chance? For that is all cards are. Games of chance for those with more money than sense and those desperate and foolish enough to try to improve their fortunes that way. Which never works.” He grunted.
“Which is why I don’t indulge in any form of gambling. It does not befit a man of the church.”
As Thomas did indulge and had been doing so on that particular night, although not at Dunster’s table, he made no comment.
One of his less appropriate skills was his handling of cards.
He could cheat, but as a wise man, he never chose to cheat anyone who might notice he was doing so.
Which meant he could make a nice living at the card table.
Perforce, he’d not been at the same table as old Anthony Farrington and the Earl of Dunster, the latter of which would have spotted him cheating in an instant.
Sylvester tapped his fingers on the gnarled surface of the table. “And of course, we both know what my nephew marrying will lead to.”
Thomas pulled a dismissive face. “Not necessarily. I think you’re getting a sight too worried about what could be many years down the road. Not every woman is able to produce an heir. And if she does produce a child, odds on it’ll be a girl.”
Sylvester shook his head. “I never leave anything to chance. If he marries and gets himself a son, my chances and those of my own son will vanish.” He bared his teeth in a savage snarl that rendered his face even more frightening.
Age had sloughed away the flesh he’d once had and left him remarkably skull-like in appearance, with a nose like a fierce beak jutting above his thin-lipped mouth.
Thomas would not have liked to have come upon him in a dark alley.
Sylvester almost spat his next sentence. “This wedding needs to be prevented.”
Thomas rubbed his bristly chin. Being so swarthy, he was a man for whom shaving twice a day was a requirement, and after Sylvester’s note had been delivered, he’d not had the opportunity to do so this evening.
“I don’t know how you think you can stop it.
I heard from Walter Farrington that it’s to go ahead next week.
They seem to be in an inordinate hurry to make it look as though everything is above board.
” He shrugged. “Although for the life of me I can’t see why Dunster would even consider marrying that girl.
” He sniggered, like Sylvester had, but his snigger was more lascivious.
“After all, from what I saw of the occasion, he was getting a girl handed to him on a plate with whom he could do just as he liked. No need to put a ring on her finger whatsoever.”
“It turns out she’s young Farrington’s cousin.”
Thomas, for whom this would not have mattered a jot, gave a dismissive shrug.
“And? Why does that matter? A girl’s a girl, after all, and they’re all the same in bed.
And if she turned up on his doorstep the day after the debt payment was agreed, which I’m told she did, then he had carte blanche to do with her as he wanted.
” He sniggered again. “I would have, and be damned to Walter Farrington’s sensibilities. ”
Sylvester picked up his tankard and examined the dregs sloshing about in the bottom.
“Perhaps he did. Who knows? Perhaps Farrington forced him into the marriage when he caught them in flagranté. They are friends, I believe. Whatever occurred, the unpleasant result is that my nephew is to be wed in barely a week, and if he did deflower her before Farrington arrived, then she may already be nurturing my nemesis.”
Thomas shrugged. “And if she is, the chances remain that the child will be a girl. There’s only two choices, after all.
A boy or a girl. And I’ve often noted how many noble families seem to throw out girls more than boys.
It seems a fact of life.” He grinned. “And a boy child often dies… Weaker than girls, I gather, until they’re grown.
You only have to look about you at how many mothers are touting their frumpy girls on the marriage mart.
More than there are suitable young gentlemen to oblige. ”
Sylvester shook himself. “Whatever child she might have, I want this marriage stopped. I’ve waited long enough in the wings to get my hands on what should be mine.
I thought my brother would never abandon life as a rake, but he did for long enough to get his new wife with child.
I prayed for his wife to give him only girls, but he got himself a boy.
I prayed for that boy to die as a baby, and he grew stronger.
I prayed he wouldn’t marry and it seemed the gods had heard my prayer as he followed in his father’s footsteps in a life of debauchery.
I dreamed my time would soon come, and yet now, it seems I’m to be thwarted again.
” He banged his fist down on the table, making heads turn.
They must have seen his face for they quickly turned away again.
“And now,” Sylvester hissed, lowering his voice.
“Now is the time for you to fulfil the promise you made me all those years ago. Do not forget how I’ve been subsidising your income all that time.
And don’t forget your longing to avenge your father. ”
Thomas glanced over his shoulder but no one was now looking at them.
He leaned towards Sylvester. For the last eighteen years, Sylvester had been supporting Thomas’s lifestyle, grooming the younger man, whom he would never have honored with the title friend, and molding him into the weapon he feared he might one day require. “What do you need me to do?”
Sylvester also leaned forwards, putting his mouth close to Thomas’s right ear so he could whisper. No one should hear what he had to say. There must be nothing that would come back to haunt him.