Chapter Fifteen #2
A parade of expressions chased one another across Hogarth’s face. Amusement was definitely one of them. He clearly had a sense for how that conversation had gone with Ginny.
“Here are my stipulations, Lord Highgrove. You are going to tell your sister that this was your idea. Not mine. You will write
a letter addressed to me at Lucifer’s Fall, describing everything I’ve just told to you as though it were your very own idea,
which occurred to you because you were aware I employ children from Bethnal Green. I will then inform your sister that I think
it’s a noble and excellent solution to your debt to the house. Do you think you can handle this assignment and its parameters
better than you handle your liquor?”
“Of course.” Hogarth shrugged with one shoulder.
“All right. Now point to the body part you like best.”
“I—er—I suppose—” Hogarth pointed to his groin. Blushing scarlet.
“Good man. As it should be. That’s the part I’ll remove with a sword if you fail at this.”
“Ha ha!” Hogarth’s face creased in merriment.
“Hogarth. I wasn’t joking.”
“Honestly, Marchand. You can’t persuade me that you’re a thug. Despite all the . . .” He gestured eloquently with both hands
at Gabriel’s general person and demeanor.
“ ‘Thug’ was once an actual position I held at a place of employment. It was on my calling card.
“Written in blood,” he added, when Hogarth’s eyebrows slanted skeptically.
This was maddening in a new way. Perhaps all the Woodvilles were uniquely maddening.
“You don’t have to threaten me,” Hogarth said, almost gently. As if he were soothing a wild beast.
“Yes. Based on your previous performance, I am entirely convinced that threatening you is just the thing.”
Hogarth paused.
“Why is this so important to you?” he asked suddenly.
“Because if you do fail at this, you will break her heart.”
He realized at once that he had revealed entirely too much of his hand. It was stunningly unlike him, and a measure of how
enmeshed he now was.
Too late he pressed his lips closed tightly.
“Why the devil are you worried about my sister’s heart?”
Hogarth said this sharply. He suddenly sounded very much like a brother who would happily call Marchand out and skewer him.
Which Marchand appreciated.
And he hesitated scarcely more than a second.
But it was long enough to incriminate him.
“Marchand . . . are you sweet on my sister? On Ginny?” Hogarth was stunned.
“Sweet? Sweet?” Gabriel made a series of disgusted little noises, as if he’d just accidentally ingested a flying insect.
“It seems like—”
“I’m not sweet.”
“All right.”
“Nothing about me is sweet.”
“I believe you,” Hogarth said, soothingly. But he looked troubled, indeed, as well he might. Given the immense gulfs in their
respective life stations.
They stared at each other in wary silence.
“Your sister is . . . in many ways one of the most difficult humans I’ve ever met. And I’m sure you can imagine the kinds of people I’ve met. But what she has is . . . valor.”
Hogarth’s eyes might be like Ginny’s, but such a different spirit shone out of them. Less fierce, but still soulful. More
innocent and mild and somehow infinitely, objectionably . . . kind. Marchand understood fully why Ginny wanted to protect
him, because now he found himself wanting to protect him, too.
But he also knew that protecting Hogarth meant making sure Hogarth could protect himself.
“True valor is a rare quality in this world, Lord Highgrove. And because she cares about you, you might just crush what remains
of it if you disappoint her again. But if you make her proud, it will be one of the finest moments of her life, and she deserves
fine moments. I daresay it might even be one of the finest moments of your life. And you deserve those, too. Do you comprehend me? I don’t know how to teach you to care if you don’t. Because you bloody
well ought to care.”
Hogarth was still frowning at him thoughtfully.
Finally he said, hesitantly, “I do care, Marchand. My family is the only thing I care about. I made a mistake. A terrible mistake. Perhaps the first in my entire life.” His voice cracked. “I have
scarcely been able to bear it.”
Marchand quietly took this in.
“Then why did you do it?” But he asked it more gently than accusingly. He genuinely wanted to know.
Hogarth didn’t speak for a time. Then he drew in and exhaled a long breath. “There is something you don’t understand about
Sydenham.”
The back of Marchand’s neck tingled with portent. Because this was the other thing he’d come to speak with Hogarth about today. Something Ginny had said in the garden at the Grand Palace on the Thames had sparked in him a suspicion that had at first seemed almost absurd.
But the more he entertained it, the less outlandish it seemed.
He needed to be careful. The web of connections between the aristocrats and wealthy men who sustained his business all but
guaranteed that anything Marchand said would be repeated.
“Did the earl do something you consider untoward on that notable evening?” he asked evenly.
“He insulted my father.” Hogarth said this somewhat thickly.
“And so you retaliated by giving him all your money?”
He said this deliberately to make Hogarth bristle, because he knew too well that being challenged was really the best way
to find one’s spine. Provided he truly possessed one.
“They were friends and ‘cheerful rivals.’ ” Hogarth gave these words an ironic, somewhat bitter lilt. “Sydenham and my father.
At least that’s how my father put it. But there was always an edge to their exchanges and it made me uncomfortable when I
was a boy. Mainly because I heard Sydenham claim more than once that my father stole my mother from him. I heard him say it
quite a few times. They both played it off as a joke.
How can a person be stolen? It seems to me my mother made her choice when she married my father, even though he was a viscount and Sydenham was an earl and considerably wealthier.
And at Lucifer’s Fall that night, Sydenham said to me .
. .” Hogarth paused. And dragged in a steadying breath.
“ ‘Such a pity your father killed your mother. She’d be alive today if she’d married me.
’ ” Hogarth’s voice had gone thick. “And again, he played it off as a joke. I think he might have been drunk. I simply could not let it stand.”
Marchand was not easily horrified. But that was an egregious thing to say to another man, drunk or not.
“Unforgivable,” he told Hogarth quietly.
“It just struck me as unconscionable to assert that to my face,” Hogarth continued, “whether or not there is some truth in it. And I’m not naive, Marchand. I
know there’s some painful truth to it. My father could be reckless. But I wanted to win. I wanted to humble Sydenham thoroughly and wipe that smug expression from his face. Just
once. I wanted to do it for my father and for my mother.” His voice thickened. “And I was winning . . . well, and also losing, quite a bit”—his eyebrows dove in confusion—“and then suddenly I lost and lost and lost
some more. And I couldn’t seem to even see clearly or concentrate at all. I’d never been drunk before that night. I swear
to you I didn’t know being drunk was like that. I was, in fact, so drunk that I could have sworn the satyrs on his waistcoat buttons were jeering and winking at me.”
He flushed red.
That was exactly what Ginny had told him.
The suspicion that had been coalescing on the periphery of his awareness for days finally settled into a cold spot in Marchand’s
gut. He could trace its origins back to a certain conversation in the smoking room of the Grand Palace on the Thames.
“Lord Highgrove . . . do you remember if Sydenham gave you anything to drink? That is, did you accept a drink specifically
from him, rather than from one of the waiters on staff?”
“He was the only one who did bring drinks to me. I thought it would be rude to decline his offer.”
“He brought them to you? Not the waiter?”
Hogarth nodded. “Brandy. He wanted to toast to my father’s memory.”
Damn.
Inwardly Marchand cursed quite a bit more colorfully.
He knew what he needed to learn next.
But deciding what he would do if his suspicions were confirmed would be sticky indeed.
“I don’t know if your debt to Sydenham can or will be resolved,” Marchand told him, carefully. “I believe your sister is doing
her best. But in truth, it ought to be you, Hogarth, who is attempting to resolve it.”
Hogarth swallowed. “I know. It’s just that she’s . . . she’s always taken charge. I’m so used to her taking things on . . .
and it’s hard to say no to Ginny.”
Truer words were never spoken, Marchand silently conceded.
“The donkey you won was delivered, by the way, and is resting comfortably in a livery stable.”
Hogarth brightened. “I won a donkey?”
Marchand sighed.
“All right,” he said briskly. “Please write that letter today and send it to me care of Lucifer’s Fall in London.
Within a fortnight, I will write to you with information on when and where your instruction will begin.
I will have my solicitor draw up a contract for you to sign, which you will do, in London, in my presence.
As of now, if we shake on it, I will consider your debt settled unless or until you otherwise violate the terms of the contract.
And you can tell your sister when she returns to Sussex.
I need to leave now in order to get the coach back to London. ”
Hogarth exhaled windily. “I cannot thank you enough, Marchand.”
He extended his hand and Marchand shook it. Then he turned to leave.
Then he paused, and turned back.
“Lord Highgrove . . .” He hesitated. Then decided he could not forgo this opportunity, because he might not ever have it again.
And he wanted to do it both for this young man and for Ginny. “Most men of any worth make mistakes of magnitude at least once
in their lives. But when you care about others in your life more than you care about yourself—and that means more than you
care about your pride, or your honor—you don’t make those sorts of mistakes. The kind that cause utter destruction. Perhaps this is something that can only be learned the hard way.
I don’t know. It’s just something I’ve learned, and if it has any value at all I just felt I should tell you. Do you understand
me?”
Just the faintest hint of sullen rebellion flickered over Hogarth’s face. No man likes to be lectured by another man. Particularly
not by a man who is far from his social equal.
But the expression was fleeting. Hogarth nodded somberly. “I understand. Truly. Thank you.”
“Sweet,” Marchand muttered as he jammed on his hat and headed for the door.