Chapter 23 A Visit To White’s
Lance followed Denny up the steps. At the top, the doorman watched them approach impassively.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said, as they reached the door, smiling but moving so that he blocked their way. “May I be of service?”
“Smithson?” Denny said, peering at him with a frown. “Good Lord, how did you ever get to be Head Doorman?”
“Not quite there yet, sir,” the doorman said, staring at Denny. “Is it—? Can it be—? Mr Wyatt?”
“Very well done, Smithson.”
Lance’s eyebrows lifted. It was both unexpected and yet, oddly, not a surprise.
He had always known that Denny was a gentleman, so to find him acknowledged as a member of White’s was not terribly shocking.
And yet… after ten years as Denzil Pendleton, now he was revealing himself as one of the Wyatt family, and whatever secret he hid was about to be exposed.
The doorman swung open the door and they entered the hall. “It’s wonderful to see you back here, sir, I’m sure. Would you care to sign your friend in? Mr Augustus and Mr Marcus are in the coffee room.”
Denny signed Lance’s name in the book, and then said, “Actually, I am looking for Lord Liswood.”
“Liswood?” The doorman frowned, shaking his head slightly.
Beside Lance, Denny’s intake of breath was audible, and he swayed a little, as if he was about to swoon. “Then I was mistaken in thinking I saw him enter an hour or so ago.”
The doorman smiled. “Have you been out of the country for a while, Mr Wyatt?”
“Something like that.”
“Thought so, you being so out of touch. He’s Lord Mannerdale now. The old earl went to his eternal rest… oh, some six, seven years ago now. His lordship’s in the card room.”
“Mannerdale… card room…” Denny said dazedly.
“You remember the way, I’m sure, sir.”
“I do. Thank you, Smithson.”
Lance walked in silence beside Denny, who was still shaking like a leaf. “Of course, it could be his brother,” he muttered. “Or the evil cousin.”
Denny got half way up the wide stairs before he ground to a halt. “It could be anyone. That is the trouble with titles.”
A group of three men, laughing together, jostled past them on their way down the stairs, looking at them with curious eyes.
“Do you want to abandon ship?” Lance said quietly, for he was tolerably certain now of what Denny faced.
“It is too late,” he whispered. “I have been seen, Smithson knows who I am and he knows I came with you. There is no hiding now.”
“Then let us go on. You have never lacked courage, my friend.”
“Perhaps.” He took a deep breath, hands on hips, then another. “Very well. Onwards.”
At the top of the stairs, he turned purposefully into a small lobby and thence to a larger room, filled with light and the low rumble of men’s voices, with an occasional burst of laughter.
Several small baize-topped tables were occupied by lively games of cards or dice, while non-players clustered around to watch.
Footmen moved about silently with decanters and platters of food.
Denny stood on the threshold, scanning the room, his face white. Then, abruptly, a long exhalation, like a sigh. “There he is! It is all right,” he whispered, and swayed slightly.
Lance watched him carefully in case he swooned, but he rallied, straightening his back and giving a quick laugh. “How the devil—? But it is him… truly it is.”
“Not the evil cousin, then?” Lance said.
Denny turned to him, laughter in his eyes. “Thank God for that, at least! But it could have been his brother.”
“So your ghost did not die at your hand after all, and his younger brother did not inherit their father’s honours in his place.”
With a slow nod, Denny said, “You understand it, then?”
“I can guess. Your ghost is watching you, by the way. I am not sure he recognises you yet.”
Denny turned his gaze towards the table in the far corner, where a man with very fair hair had risen to his feet, staring at him.
Around the room, conversation died away, and faces turned towards the newcomers and then to the blond man.
There were whispers of ‘Who is it?’ and ‘Do you know him?’, but the blond man said nothing, merely watching Denny with a slight frown on his face.
Abruptly, he moved out from behind the table and strode down the room towards Denny, several of his friends following him.
“Wyatt?” the blond man said, his face wreathed in astonishment. “Julius Wyatt? Good God, I thought you were dead!”
Denny uttered a bark of laughter. “No, no! That is my line! I thought you were dead!”
Amidst laughter, slaps on the back and bemused glances from the others in the room, Mannerdale hustled them out of the card room, shooing away all but the four of them, Lance, Denny, Mannerdale himself and one friend, introduced as Tuffnell.
He led the way to a private room, unceremoniously ejecting two men already there engaged in a low-voiced discussion.
They yielded at once without demur, and Mannerdale shut the door firmly on them.
He opened it again at once to call for a footman to bring brandy then slammed it shut once more.
“Lord, Julius, what a shock you gave me! Everyone thinks you are dead.”
“Not Augustus. He was looking for me in Brinshire only a few weeks ago,” Denny said. “But Harry, how on earth did you survive? I thought I got you through the heart!”
Mannerdale frowned, his gaze shifting to Lance and back. “Who is your friend, Julius?”
“I beg your pardon. I thought you must know each other. This is Lance Chamberlain, my very good friend, who knows nothing of our business, but is utterly trustworthy. Lance, the Earl of Mannerdale and his brother, Arthur Tuffnell.”
“Ah, the younger brother,” Lance murmured, making his bow.
Denny laughed. “When Smithson said that Liswood had inherited, Harry, it crossed my mind that I might have been mistaken in thinking I saw you on St James’s Street, and perhaps it was Arthur instead. You are rather alike, you know.”
“Lance Chamberlain? The painter?” Tuffnell said. “And how do you come to know our reclusive friend, then, Chamberlain?”
“For the past seven years he has been my valet, using the name Denzil Pendleton,” Lance said.
The entrance of the footman bearing a tray of decanters and glasses, followed by another with pastries, muted the effusions of surprise, but as soon as they had gone, and Mannerdale and Tuffnell had begun to ask more, Lance said, “Never mind about that. Let us start at the beginning, with the thrust to the heart.”
“Oh, it started long before that,” Mannerdale said, filling a plate with pastries and tucking in. “It started at Adderby. Tell him about Adderby, Julius.”
“Certainly, but I think my brothers should be here,” Denny said. “Augustus and Marcus are in the coffee room, and Augustus was my second, just as Arthur was yours.”
A footman was dispatched to the coffee room, and after a few minutes, two men, showing a marked similarity to Denny, entered.
“I knew it!” the elder said, as soon as he set eyes on Julius.
“I was sure you were not dead and would turn up like a bad penny one day.” Laughing, he wrapped Denny in a tight embrace, then held him at arm’s length.
“You look well,” he said in surprised tones.
“Very well. Dear God, Julius, but it is good to see you again. You cannot imagine… ten years thinking you were dead! How could you stay away for so long, and not a word to anyone? We have been…” His voice wavered. “Dammit, it is good to have you back!”
“Why on earth did you imagine me dead?” Denny said. “You saw me onto the packet ship yourself, after all.”
“No, no, no! Not so fast!” Lance said, laughing. “Begin at the beginning, gentlemen. We will get to the packet ship in due course. Adderby… it started at Adderby, you said.”
“Adderby Hall,” Denny said. “The ancestral home of the Wyatts in Kent. When I went up to Eton and met Harry there, we became friends, for some unfathomable reason—”
“One of life’s great mysteries, old boy,” Mannerdale mumbled, through a mouthful of pastry.
“Indeed. However it was, I visited his home and he visited Adderby, and so inveigled his way into my family’s hearts.”
“Can I help it if they adored my charming and amiable self?” Mannerdale said, with a wide grin, accepting a glass of wine from his brother. “And that was how I met Dorothea.”
“My cousin,” Denny said. “An orphan and heiress, and since my father and Harry’s were the best of friends too, they concocted a match between Harry and Dorothea.”
“We were just children, then,” Mannerdale said, “but when we grew up and Dorothea came out, I dutifully offered for her and she dutifully accepted.”
“Duty!” Denny said sharply. “It was rather more than that on her side, Harry. You broke her heart when you jilted her.”
“You might think so, but it was not the case. She accepted me because she was beset by fortune hunters, and since she had to marry, I was the least hideous prospect on offer. But she never loved me — she was in love with a man called Robert Barker.”
“I saw on the family tree that she married an R Barker, not even given the courtesy of an Esquire after his name. Who the devil is he?”
Mannerdale laughed. “A yeoman farmer, would you believe? A very prosperous one, and in no need of her dowry, but he would never have been accepted as a suitor by her uncle.”
“No, my father had ambitions for her,” Denny said. “If you had not come up to scratch, he had a long list of sprigs of the nobility to press on her. He would not have looked so low as a yeoman farmer, no matter how prosperous.”
“Precisely. But when she came to me and explained how it was… Julius, I had to help her, you must see that.”
“Help her? You have a strange idea of helping!” Denny said wrathfully. “You ruined her, Harry! And then you jilted her!”
“No! I never touched her, I give you my word.”
“Then… what was that all about? You let me call you out, even though—? You have always been an idiot, but that makes no sense, even by your low standards, Harry.”