Chapter 7
Seven
The famed fencing master Antonio had once told James, “Your technique? Merda. But like many young men, you have endurance. This is good. Good for you and good for the ladies, eh?” The swordsman had winked and stroked his chin.
“And you surprise. When you thrust, you are going for the kill. I never expect it with you. You deceive like a snake asleep in the sun. And then you strike, like an asp.”
Antonio had then sighed. “But when you parry an attack, you have no caution. Hit me, you tell your enemy. Hit me, I do not care if I bleed. I do not care if I die. This is not good.”
Today, as James went up and down the piste with Antonio’s son Ernest, he managed to sweat off the two glasses of illegal Scottish whisky he had allowed himself last night in the privacy of his rooms. He had invited his valet to join him, but Enfield, ever sensitive to propriety, had declined.
So James had sat alone and gulped down the spirits and then found his bed and gone off into a dreamless sleep.
But the exercise today lifted his mood and spurred him to hope.
He must do this more often. Perhaps if he became more proficient with a sword, Mr. Bulverton might let him undertake something with a bit more danger to it than seduction and eavesdropping.
And James should polish his skills at other forms of combat.
Visit a shooting gallery and improve his aim, regain some of his acumen at fisticuffs.
Tutelage in boxing was one of the things his dead brother William had given James—along with Enfield, swimming lessons, and a horror of the French Pox.
James finally had to ask Ernest if he might pause and catch his breath. He leaned over, hands on his knees, heart pounding, sweat pouring off his face. Perhaps that endurance Antonio had praised once-upon-a-time was waning.
James raised his head and saw Ernest—not perspiring, not breathless, damn it!
—go over to where his father was instructing a youth wearing a face mask and a breastplate.
The boy was doing some rather advanced footwork, but the face mask and breastplate during a lesson, not a match, were curious.
Probably an overprotective mother had insisted.
James wondered what it might be like to have a mother who protected her sons. Not out of duty to bloodline, but out of love.
Ernest came back to him. “Ready to go again, old man?”
“That lad is rather good, isn’t he?” James nodded to the corner.
Ernest looked over and then back at James. “Yes,” he said and smiled and held up his foil in a mock salute. “Again?”
James straightened up and flourished his own foil. “Again.”
After an afternoon of rigorous play at Antonio’s Academy, James spent the evening at his club, working.
At the moment, that work consisted of doing an excellent job of losing at three-card loo.
He always lost. Losing had endeared him to countless gentlemen and paved the way for many useful invitations.
He had a small glass of whisky at his elbow and often held it to his lips, but he did not drink.
He had already staggered to the necessary three times holding his glass, and, upon his return to the room where the gentlemen sat at their cards, he had requested the barman fill the now-empty glass.
“To the top, to the top, to the tippity-top, man.”
Most of the young rakes who might be part of James’ set were not in attendance at the club tonight.
Probably already in the country for the shooting, if not at the theater or Madame Flora’s.
James was playing cards with older men, important men.
Good. They were more likely to spill the type of information Mr. Bulverton wanted.
And James was seated next to one of the men in whom Mr. Bulverton had taken a very keen interest over the last six months.
Sir Francis Ffoulkes, sporting an elegant waistcoat and crisp cravat, was winning handily.
And winning tended to make him less reserved, less priggish, more talkative.
He was landed gentry, a baronet—he had a sizable estate in Kent, apparently—but he had also made a fortune provisioning the Royal Navy.
Very wealthy from that, what with decades of England at war on numerous different fronts.
And he had been widowed in the last year or so.
But there must be something more to the man. Otherwise, Bulverton would not ask about him.
Sir Francis Ffoulkes sipped some claret and patted his lips with a folded handkerchief. “Daventry, there is a woman—”
“Yes? Do I know her?” James waggled his eyebrows in a lecherous manner and smacked his lips noisily.
The other four men at the table laughed.
“No, no,” Sir Francis said, laughing as well. “I’m going to tell a story. A joke. You must let me tell it correctly, in the right order. Let’s see, there is a woman who prosecutes a man for rape, and the judge—”
“Are you sure I don’t know her, what?” James interrupted again. He knew the joke. This awful joke, once again. Maybe he could derail it at his own expense.
Laughter again around the table. Several other gentlemen walked over to discover the source of the gaiety. Sir Francis could not speak for laughing.
“You must let me finish.” Sir Francis wiped his eyes. “I will never get through if you keep breaking in.”
James put his hand over his own mouth.
“There is a woman,” Sir Francis paused and looked to James, “who prosecutes a man for rape,” again he paused and looked at James, “and the judge asks her if she had done anything to fight off her attacker. Oh, yes, the woman says, I cried out.’”
Under his hand, James bit his own tongue until he could taste blood.
“She cried out in ecstasy, eh?” The interjection came from one of the men who had wandered over.
He was tall and spare with a large nose, high cheekbones, dark hair flecked with gray.
James supposed he was handsome in a rather lupine way.
He was almost certainly a guest of someone at the club as there had been no new members admitted in over a year.
The man smiled. James didn’t like his smile. Others laughed at what the man had said, but James and Sir Francis Ffoulkes did not.
“You have ruined the joke, Roger,” Sir Francis said with anger.
The wolfish man shrugged and walked away. Sir Francis pursed his lips and would not tell the end of the story even though the other men at the table clamored for it.
For his part, James was glad he had been spared the last line. He knew the piece of questionable wit well, having made it up himself two years ago. The joke had circulated widely since then, and he inwardly winced every time he heard it. He was only glad no one present could attribute it to him.
The joke ran as follows: a woman accuses a man of rape. The judge asks her if she had done anything to defend herself. “Yes,” the woman replies, “I cried out.” Then a witness pipes up and says, “Yes, but that was nine months later.”
Riotous laughter ensues. Exclusively from men. Frowns from women. Rape combined with the pain of childbirth. Not occasions for hilarity, to be sure.
James knew it was a despicable joke, and, of course, he had known it was despicable at the time. But it played so well into his character that once he had thought it up, he had felt compelled to recite it.
And now he had to live with hearing the joke at least once every month or so. He had been thoroughly punished.
The onlookers dispersed as James shuffled the cards. Sir Francis Ffoulkes called for more claret by waving his handkerchief. James noted the delicate lace edging of the handkerchief and its small size.
“Is that the favor of a lady?” James said, grinning as he dealt the cards round the table. Sir Francis quickly put the handkerchief away. James leered. “She must be fearsomely beautiful for you to redden this way, what?”
Sir Francis picked up his cards and held them close to his chest. “She is.”
“And is she your mistress?”
“She is not. I plan to make her my wife.”
“Lucky lady, then.”
“I would be the lucky one.”
“And the fair lady’s name?” James turned over the card that would indicate trump.
Hearts.
Sir Francis shook his head. “That would be indiscreet. Let me secure our engagement first, and then I will make her name widely known.”
“I will hold you to it, sir!” James looked at his cards and considered what he had seen. When Sir Francis Ffoulkes had patted his lips with the handkerchief earlier, it had been folded in such a way that subtle white embroidered initials were visible. Two Cs. CC.
Cecilia Cox, daughter of the Marquess of Miltonshire.
No, she had married two Seasons ago. Christianna Crampton was only fifteen years of age and not yet out in society.
Clarissa—what was her last name?—no, it was Kingman.
And she had not the face nor figure to make Sir Francis blush.
And there were far too many Charlottes. Come to think of it, his own fourteen-year-old sister was Charlotte Cavendish—
“Your turn, Lord Daventry.” The gentleman on his right, Sir Ambrose Crawford, nudged him.
Oh, yes, what would be a losing but believable play? James had not studied his cards at all.
So he overturned his whisky instead and let his cards fly from his hands as he got up from the table, cursing at his clumsiness and pulling at his wet trousers.
“Trust Daventry to make a mess,” Sir Ambrose said.
“I’ll pass, I’ll pass,” James said as one of the club’s barmen came over to mop up the whisky.
“You can’t pass. And we can see your cards,” Sir Francis said. Indeed, James’ cards were lying face up on the floor in a pool of whisky. “You’ll have to deal again.”
“Oh, rot,” James said and giggled as the barman dabbed at his trousers. “Ticklish on my knees, Chester.”
The barman, who was on his own knees, ducked his head. “Sorry, my lord.”
James pressed a coin into his hand and winked. “Upsidaisy. Fetch us some dry cards and some of that brown water of life for everyone at the table, what?”
“Yes, my lord.”
James sat back down in his chair. “None the worse for wear or for whisky or for women!” He rubbed his hands together. “Now, Crawford, I’ve been meaning to ask if you have a daughter. Perhaps a younger sister, what? And her name? Could it be Caroline, perchance?”