Chapter 8
Eight
Thomas’ valet Jackson had returned to Sommerleigh to gather fresh garments as the earl continued, listlessly, to pursue other wealthy widows. Thus, Thomas assumed his rooms were empty when he returned from his night at Madame Flora’s.
Even though funds were low, Thomas had still managed to bed a whore last night.
Madame Flora wisely did not extend credit to her clients, but she had taken pity on Thomas.
He was a handsome man, Madame Flora said, and her girls reported he was never rough and he was a bit of a favorite.
He could be good for her new girl who was shy and from the country.
No charge as long as he was patient and taught her some exotic novelties.
Thomas was relieved to find the girl was at least twenty years of age and no virgin.
He discovered the young woman’s shyness came from her newness to the city and her fear of being seen as the country maid she was.
She grew quite bold after some wine and fondling.
In fact, she taught him a new trick—a clever way she had of tickling his perineum just before climax.
In his rooms, he untied his cravat and took off his tailcoat and waistcoat.
“I have a proposal for you, Lord Drake.” The voice was low and throaty.
He spun around. It was the girl who had squeezed his cock and given him that bloody, bloody nose at Lady Huxley’s ball. She was seated in a wing chair by the window.
“How did you get in here?”
She stayed in the chair. “I paid an awful lot of money to the porter. He said my hair wasn’t red and I didn’t seem like your regular women and I said he was right and I was your, quote, irregular woman and here’s more money. Unquote. And he let me in.”
“Miss, I don’t know who you are, but this is very dangerous for you.” He fumbled to put his waistcoat and tailcoat back on.
“Dangerous? Will you molest me?” There was no fear in her voice. Equally, there was no coyness. She seemed to be merely gathering information.
She went on, “The porter made it clear to me you were a venereal fiend, but surely you would not touch me without my consent.”
“You were at Lady Huxley’s ball,” Thomas said as he buttoned his waistcoat. “So even though I don’t know your name, I know you have a place in good society. If you are seen leaving my rooms, the rooms of a disreputable rake, you will no longer be welcomed in that society.”
“I don’t think that will be a problem if we get married,” she said flatly.
Of course. A cunning shaver.
“Oh, no, no, no. I won’t be extorted by some chit. Where is your confederate?” He looked around the room to see if others might be lurking.
“Confederate?”
Thomas slammed open the wardrobe, looked under the bed. The girl stood up.
“Lord Drake, be at peace. You misunderstand me. It’s not your fault. It is quite a common problem for me. With me. To me. I assure you I have no intention—”
The wretched girl fainted, crumpling to the floor.
Thomas picked her up and deposited her back in the wing chair, avoiding the bed and all its connotations, and threw the contents of his wash basin and pitcher on her.
She woke up wet and sputtering.
“Who are you? What do you want?” Thomas paced in front of her as she wiped her eyes.
“I’m Harry Lovelock.” Her voice quavered.
Thomas stopped pacing.
“You know my stepmother.”
Thomas faced her. “You . . . you’re Harry?”
“Harriet.”
“I thought you were a boy.”
“No, I’m not.”
“I can see that.”
She looked dreadful. She had been quite wan at the ball, but now he noted the black circles under her eyes.
When he had lifted her back up to the chair, she had weighed no more than a child despite being tall for a woman.
She had no breasts, certainly no hips, and Thomas would have been surprised if there were a scrap of excess flesh anywhere on her body.
“Miss Lovelock, let me get you a cloth and my dressing gown.”
“And could you give me some breakfast? I really shouldn’t have walked all this way without eating something first.”
Harry soon had a dry face and was wearing Thomas’ voluminous banyan over her own clothing. Thomas noted she held his banyan to her face for a moment before draping it around herself. And was that a sigh?
He left the rooms and weathered the wagging eyebrows of the porter in order to request breakfast. Thomas carried the tray of bread and butter and coffee into the room himself.
Harry ate half a piece of bread smeared with butter, drank some coffee, and said, “Now, to business.”
“Yes.” Thomas paced while he waited to see what possible business he might have with this bizarre wisp of a girl.
“Perhaps you could sit. All this walking about is dizzying to me, and I want to be as clear as I can in laying out the terms. I have made quite a bit of effort to work this out.”
Thomas sat.
Harry looked at the ceiling. “You are in want of a wife. Well, not exactly. You are in want of money, and I assume you have exhausted other means for acquiring the necessary funds. Ergo, you are in want of a wife because that is the only way you can get the money you need for your estate. My stepmother has refused you. Honestly, I think she would have refused you no matter what because you could never be the man Papa was.”
She shifted her gaze to the window. “But certainly, the peculiar terms of my father’s will—id est, that his fortune would revert to his daughters if my stepmother ever remarried means you likely no longer desire her as well.
Because now there would be no money when you married her.
You would just have a wife but no money. Do you follow me so far?”
She looked at Thomas. He closed his eyes and nodded.
“Keep your eyes open when I talk to you so I can check to see if you really understand me. I think I have laid out a very clear scheme of the problem.”
Thomas opened his eyes and kept nodding. Now was not the time to wonder why he felt so compelled to do what she asked.
“I am in want of a husband,” Harry said. “Well, again, not really. But I am in want of what a husband can do for me. Namely, put an end to Seasons and balls and calls.”
Thomas kept his face very still.
Harry leaned forwards, tapping her fingers on the arms of her chair, her eyes burning with a zealotic fire. “Do you know Fermat’s conjecture?”
He noted her eyes were very large. And hazel. He shook his head very slowly. What was this girl on about?
Harry stood and now stalked about the room herself, his banyan flapping around her, her hands clasped behind her back.
“I know you must have heard of Pythagoras and his theorem. The right triangle, the sum of the squares of the legs equals the square of the hypotenuse? Every schoolboy knows that.”
Thomas did have some recollection of Pythagoras and his theorem. But he had no earthly idea what could be the connection between Pythagoras and needing a husband.
“It has been posited that no three positive integers exist, Lord Drake, let us say, x and y and zed, which can make true the equation x to the nth plus y to the nth equals zed to the nth for any whole value of n greater than two.”
Thomas had no idea what she was saying. Where was Enth and why were these letters going there?
Harry’s words gushed out of her in a torrent.
“Two obviously works as the exponent—Pythagoras, right? But for exponents greater than two, it is thought—but not proven—that one cannot come up with the integers to fulfill the equation. But one hundred and eighty-one years ago, the French mathematician Fermat wrote in the margin of one of his books, a copy of Diophantus’ Arithmetica, that he had a proof for this theorem. ”
A knock at the door came then.
Harry ignored the knock and went on, “But Fermat wrote that the margin of the book was too small to write the proof there.”
The knock was now a banging. The door flew open, and two hulking roughs stood in the doorway.
Thomas leapt to his feet. “What is this?”
The two large men parted and revealed a bewigged, beribboned, gaunt man putting a small portion of snuff on the back of his hand.
“Lord Drake.” The elderly man very slightly inclined his head to snort his snuff and stepped into the room. He then saw Harry wrapped in Thomas’ banyan. “Oh, I see. Another whore. Your appetite is prodigious, Lord Drake.”
“Sculthorpe,” Thomas said, trying to keep his voice even.
The man wiped his nose. “You know why I am here. You have not been answering your letters. I felt I should make a call. In person.”
“I have received your letters,” Thomas said, feeling his face go hot. “I did not answer because I do not yet have the funds to satisfy my debts. But this intrusion on my privacy is unwarranted.”
“But what am I to do, Lord Drake?” The man played with his snuff box. “The debt stands. Eight hundred and seventy pounds for the last three years.”
Harry stepped forwards. “At what interest rate?”
Sculthorpe laughed. “What an ugly doxy you are. You must be cheap.”
Harry cocked her head. “What is the interest rate on Lord Drake’s debt?”
Sculthorpe stared. “Seven percent.”
“Illegal. The maximum allowable interest is five percent. I would have thought you would have known that law. It’s only been around for the last one hundred and four years. And is it compound or simple interest?”
Sculthorpe looked at the two roughs still standing in the doorway. They stepped into the room.
Harry threw her arms up and waved them and shouted, “Compound or simple?”
The two men halted in their tracks, unsure what to do next. Thomas stepped to Harry’s side and hissed, “What are you doing?”