Chapter 3 #2
“Didn’t think so,” said Sir Oliver rather morosely. “She’s all set to lead apes in hell.”
She’d lead the apes a merry dance, thought Bryght dryly.
He sent a hovering link boy for a hackney and turned as Andover came up beside him.
“Are we interested in this one?” Andover asked quietly with a nod of his head toward Upcott. He was a loose-limbed blond of very easy-going temperament.
“In a limited way. Having restored his funds, I intend to get him safely home. Then, I hope, my obligations are over.”
Andover raised his brows, but made no difficulty. “Right you are.”
The one-horse carriage rolled up, and they hoisted the happy baronet into it then followed him inside. He collapsed onto the hard seat and began to sing. Out of key.
As the coach rolled off, Andover winced at Bryght. “What’s the interest?”
“Just my noble nature.”
“Indeed,” said Andover skeptically. “Take to rescuing every unlucky gamester in London and you’ll be worn to a frazzle.”
“Talking of being worn to a frazzle, do we go on to Mirabelle’s after we’ve delivered this?”
“After last night? I’m exhausted, my dear fellow.”
“No stamina. You’re a disgrace to your rank.”
“Alas, likely true, mon ami,” They chatted over the rambling songs until the coach halted.
“Sir Oliver,” said Bryght, cutting through a chorus, “is this your place? Number twelve, Dresden Street?”
Upcott peered through the window dazedly. “The whole upstairs, my lord, but a sorry accommodation all the same. I’d ask you in, but…”
Bryght climbed out and extracted the young man. “You are everything that is kind, but it is late, sir. If I may be so bold, I advise you never to look at cards or dice again. You have no gift for it.” He bowed. “My respectful regards to your sister and all that.”
Upcott frowned slightly in bewilderment, then nodded. “Excellent, my lord. Excellent. Enjoyed the game. Must play again someday. Let you get your revenge….”
Bryght sighed and left him to find his own way into his lodgings. He commanded the driver to return them to civilization and took his seat again.
“Sister?” queried Andover in interest.
“A chance acquaintance, only.”
Now that there were only two of them, Andover stretched out his long legs. “Ah. And I hoped there was a rival for the Findlayson.”
“Hoped? How crude of you. How could any woman rival the bounteous Mrs. Findlayson?”
“Certainly none can rival her bounteous fortune, completely under her control.”
“Precisely,” said Bryght with a beatific smile.
“Why the devil are you so set on a wealthy marriage? With your income from your family and your luck at the tables, you surely have no need of money.”
“One always has need of money, it would appear.”
Andover frowned at him. “Are you really in straits? I could lend you—”
Bryght laughed. “A penniless Malloren? My dear, it is just that I have sunk a great deal in Bridgewater’s scheme.”
Andover straightened in surprise. “The canal? You think there’s something to it?”
“Don’t you?”
“It’s madness. Typical of Bridgewater. What’s wrong with river transport if roads won’t do? It goes against nature, cutting a waterway straight across the countryside.”
“Say rather it conquers nature,” Bryght responded. “Roads are rutted in frost, become mud soup in rain, and are poorly maintained at the best of times. Rivers turn shallow in summer, and flood in winter. A canal just sits there, always calm and ready to transport goods at a fraction of the cost.”
“But the cost of construction…”
“Ten thousand guineas a mile, apparently.”
Andover’s jaw fell. “How can Bridgewater ever recover those kinds of costs? I heard him say earlier that he’s not just going from his coal pits to Manchester. He’s going to push to the sea. That’s another twenty miles or so. It’ll cost a fortune.”
“It’s already cost his. He’s over thirty thousand pounds in debt…”
“Zounds.”
“…and people are very reluctant to lend him any more.”
“Hardly surprising. And you’ve actually lent him money?”
“All I can spare, and nearly all I raise at the tables.”
Andover slumped back down again. “I wondered why you’d taken to deep play again.” He looked thoughtfully at Bryght. “I’ve never known you to back a failure. Perhaps I should make him a loan.”
“Perhaps you should, but I tell you honestly there’s no guarantee in it. It’s a damned risky business. Apart from technical problems—and they’re working out how to do things as they go—there are plenty of people who want to see him fail.”
“All those with money tied up in river navigation schemes, for a start, never mind those with money in cartage.” Andover chewed his thumb. “It’ll be a lot cheaper to transport by canal?”
Bryght took out his snuff box and offered his friend a nerve-steadying pinch. “Immensely. By road a horse can pull about a ton. On a canal, it can pull close to fifty.”
Andover’s hand paused in the act of taking snuff. “Can it indeed? That is quite a saving.”
Bryght smiled. “Isn’t it? Bridgewater’s going to be able to sell coal in Manchester and Liverpool at a fraction of the present price and still make a profit.
And he’s going to be able to bring imported goods from Liverpool back inland at the same vast savings.
We’re going to change the face of England and grow very, very rich. ”
“Or go bankrupt.”
Bryght closed his snuff box with a click. “That is a risk. But risk, as you know, is my delight.”
Andover chewed over this in silence, but then he asked, “How does Jenny Findlayson fit into this?”
“I’m not willing to let this project fail. If we run out of money, I’ll marry the woman and use her money to keep going.”
“Zounds, and I thought you were the idealist about women and marriage.”
“That was before I encountered the delightful Nerissa.”
“So, she turned out to be a beautiful strumpet. Just give thanks that Lord Trelyn won her hand rather than you.”
“Oh, I do,” said Bryght.
“And seek a better bride. Jenny Findlayson has all the makings of a shrew.”
“But a wealthy shrew. If necessary I’m sure I can find a rundown house and set her to scrubbing floors….”
Andover burst out laughing. “You think to tame her? ’Struth, Bryght, you’re a braver man than I.”
Bryght leaned back at his ease. “Perhaps I’m just well guarded against women now.”
Portia twitched awake at a crash in the other bedroom. It was followed by a familiar curse. Thank heavens. Oliver was home! Then she registered that it was the dead of night. Where had he been till such an hour?
Gaming?
No, it couldn’t be.
She slipped out of bed, shivering at the icy chill, and wrapped the thin coverlet around herself. When she peeped into the next room the dim moonlight just allowed her to make out Oliver sitting on his bed, rubbing his shin.
“Oliver? Are you all right?”
“Yes. Don’t fuss, Portia. Just crashed into the corner of the plaguey bed.” She heard the slur of drink in his voice with relief. If brandy was the worst of it, that was not too bad.
He stood and his voice brightened. “Tell you what, Portia. I had the greatest luck tonight.”
“You met someone who would help you raise the money?”
He chuckled. “You could say that. And I won over two hundred guineas from him!”
It was like a blast of icy wind. “Won?”
“Plague take it, Portia. I tell you I won and you sound as if I’d been condemned to hang!”
She gripped her hands tight on the coverlet. “But you promised you wouldn’t play, Oliver.”
“I won’t. Or not much,” he blustered. “I’ve told you, a man has to play a bit, Portia, or he’ll look demmed fishy.
I was with some friends—Twinby has an uncle who’s trustee of a bank.
Might be a loan there. Couldn’t not go with him, could I?
And it turned out excellently. See!” He began pulling money out of his pockets and heaping it on the table.
Some coins rolled off to spin on the floor.
Portia flung herself after them before they disappeared into some chink in the floorboards. She scrambled to her feet, found the tinderbox, and made a light for the candle. The growing flame reflected merrily off a heap of gold coins.
“See,” said Oliver proudly. “Isn’t that a pretty sight?”
She couldn’t deny it. “Yes. Oh, yes. I don’t think it’s wise of you to have played, Oliver, but this will be a help. If the worst comes about, this money will allow us to get by for a long time.”
“Such dull stuff. With all this, we’ll be able to enjoy London!”
“Oliver!”
His smile was brilliant. “Don’t turn Puritan on me, Portia. Look at it.” He sank his hands in the pile of gold. “I left the house with only thirty guineas, and I come home with all this.”
Portia swallowed. If he’d left with thirty guineas he’d taken nearly all their small stock of money. He had said he needed a few, and she’d agreed. It had never occurred to her that he would translate a few into thirty.
“You could have lost the thirty,” she pointed out, forcing herself to speak mildly.
“But I didn’t. My luck’s changed!”
Oh lord. It was like the first smell of putrefaction. The shock of losing so badly had made him swear off gaming, but now he’d had this taste of success, could she stop the rot? Portia’s hands shook as she gathered the money into a towel. She had to admit that it made a remarkably heavy bundle.
“Don’t I get any of that at all?” he asked plaintively.
“How much do you want?”
“Fifty perhaps. A man has to have money in his pocket.”
Portia wanted to remind him that he was deep in debt. No matter how many coins in his pocket, they were not truly his. But she could see there was no point now. She counted out the fifty. “We must keep the rest safe for necessities, Oliver.”
“Of course we must.” He grinned and flicked one of the golden coins. “After all, there’ll be more where this came from.”
“Oliver!” Portia protested, seeking the words to turn him from this course.
He shook his head, almost glowing with new hope. “Perhaps we won’t need a loan from anyone. People win thousands at the tables every night. Now my luck’s changed, we can get Overstead back the way it was lost.”
Portia started to argue, but he ignored her and began to struggle out of his clothes. She returned to her own bedroom clutching the bundle of coins. So much gold should be a comfort, but she felt only despair.
She had truly thought that Oliver had learned that gaming was the road to ruin, but this success had changed everything.
Perhaps that was the purpose of it.
For all she knew he had fallen into the hands of a rascal who would tease him on with small winnings until he became over confident and lost all. It was a well-known trap for the unwary, and they called the practitioners of the art “hawks.” An appropriately predatory name.
She thumped the bundle down on a chair. Why could Oliver not see what was happening?
On the other hand, what was there left to lose? Clearly Oliver was making such a good pretense of prosperity that the new hawk was not aware that his prey had already lost all.
She wished she could announce it in broadsheets all over London.
Previously Portia had not hidden any of their money, but now she knew she must. She didn’t feel comfortable about it, for it was Oliver’s, but she wasn’t sure she could trust him not to gamble away every last coin.
Oh, but it was a form of madness she dealt with here.
She studied the room with despair. Her simple iron bed and plain armoire offered no cunning place of concealment.
Then she looked at the fireplace.
It had a simple wooden surround much like the one in Maidenhead. When she inspected it, it too had a gap all around between the wood and the wall. A test showed that a guinea would just fit into that gap and not be able to fall farther.
She began to methodically slide the coins in there all the way around, hoping no glint of gold would reveal their situation. That only took care of half the money, but Portia felt better knowing that some of the coins should be safe.
She huddled back into her still-warm bed.
They had three weeks left before the New Year, before the evil Barclay claimed Overstead—beautiful Overstead with its fertile fields and glorious gardens.
The fields were partly her work, for she had chivvied her stepfather into introducing some of the new methods of agriculture.
The gardens were her mother’s work, and it would break Hannah’s heart to give them to a stranger.
Three weeks left, stuck here in dirty, expensive, wicked London, and it was all her fault. She should have agreed with Oliver and gone home. Having landed them in such a pickle, however, she must keep Oliver away from his vice until Fort came to London.
And what of the rest of his life? taunted a little voice.
Portia ignored it. It was boredom that drove Oliver to the tables. If they could just raise the loan to save Overstead, Oliver would be too hard at work trying to pay it off to be gallivanting to London and falling into evil ways. All she had to do was manage the next few weeks.
But he’s gaming again, and he thinks it’s the way to solve everything.
If I keep the money I have safe, he can only lose the fifty guineas, and that’s fifty we didn’t have this morning.
He can run up debts. He didn’t have Overstead in his pocket when he lost it, did he? Men sign IOUs—vowels, they call them. Good as gold, they are. What are you going to do if someone turns up with a handful of vowels? Pay up, or see Oliver dragged off to the Fleet?
Presumably in the Fleet he won’t be able to lose any more.
Portia was immediately ashamed of that spurt of anger. Of course she didn’t want to see Oliver in debtor’s prison.
Tomorrow, when he wasn’t swayed by brandy and excitement, he would surely see that at best, tonight’s win had been a fluke.