Miser of Mayfair (11 page)

‘You seem to understand the cards very well for a beginner,’ said Lady Disher.

‘Thank you,’ said Fiona, her voice so low it carried only to Lady Disher’s sharp ears. ‘At first I was confused.’ Her slim fingers ran delicately over the backs of the cards. ‘I see now that two pin pricks on the back means an ace, four a king, one a queen, and—’

Lady Disher snatched the cards from her. ‘My servants have been playing tricks,’ she hissed. She gathered up the cards from the other players. ‘They are also very greasy.’ She smiled. ‘Perhaps we will break open a new pack.’

‘Shall I go round and see if the other tables have these odd cards?’ asked Fiona solicitously.

‘No,’ said Lady Disher, beads of sweat standing out on her brow.

‘No, what?’ demanded Mrs Carrington suspiciously.

‘Nothing . . . nothing at all,’ said Lady Disher brightly, tearing off the wrapping of a new deck.

Fiona looked at her with interest, as if wondering why Lady Disher was suddenly feeling the heat, for the room was pleasantly cool. Lady Disher had a sharp-featured face and when she smiled, which was often, she revealed a row of strong, yellow teeth. But she was not smiling now. Grooves ran down either side of her mouth, and her eyes were hard and flat.

Determined to do things in the proper manner, Fiona scowled horribly as well.

The smell of a lady’s perspiration was often savoured by the gentlemen who referred to it delicately as
bouquet de corsage.
But as Fiona continued to win steadily, the smell of fear emanating from Lady Disher was far from pleasant. By the time she had amassed £1,500, Fiona was beginning to feel dizzy and uncomfortable.

‘I must leave,’ she said suddenly. With quick, deft movements, she gathered up all the coins and notes and stuffed them into her reticule.

‘You
can’t!
’ wailed Lady Disher, clutching at her sleeve.

‘But I must,’ said Fiona, arching her delicate brows in surprise. ‘Papa will be lonely without me.’

Lady Disher looked wildly about her. But she had lost her allies at the other tables. They were glad to see Lady Disher get her comeuppance for once, and she had not given them a chance of getting any of the miser’s gold away from Fiona. She had invited only her cronies, Mrs Carrington and Mrs Jensen, to play with Fiona. Both these ladies had considerable fortunes and often lost several thousand at a sitting without a blink.

Lady Disher could not appeal to either Mrs Carrington or Mrs Jensen for help, for neither of these friends of hers knew about the marked cards, and Lady Disher was suddenly quite sure that if she did not let Fiona leave, then, in her artless way, Fiona would tell them.

There was only one person she could turn to.

Smiling all about her, Fiona made her way out. Joseph, who had been slouched in a chair in the hall, hurriedly got to his feet.

‘Goodbye, Miss Sinclair,’ said Lady Disher. ‘You must return soon and give us our revenge.’

‘Of course,’ said Fiona. ‘Thank you for an exceeding pleasant and . . . er . . . rewarding afternoon. Oh, the sandwiches and cakes you promised me . . . ?’

Lady Disher bit back the unladylike retort that had risen to her lips. ‘I shall go down to the kitchens myself and make sure they are ready for you,’ she grated instead.

Lady Disher slammed into the kitchens and went straight to the pantry, where she found her butler, Seamus O’Flaherty, sampling the port.

‘Seamus,’ she snapped, preferring to call her butler by his first name as she found the ‘O’Flaherty’ a bit of a mouthful. She felt anyway that servants should be like sheepdogs and have short names so that they could be the quicker called to heel.

‘Seamus, a certain Miss Sinclair is on the point of leaving. She has tricked me out of a large sum of money. She is guarded only by an effeminate footman. There is a basket of cakes and sandwiches on the kitchen table for her. Follow me upstairs with the basket and then follow Miss Sinclair. Before she gets home, which is at the Piccadilly end of Clarges Street, snatch her reticule and bring it back here.’

Seamus nodded. He was a wizened little individual. But he was wiry and tough and had performed this sort of service for Lady Disher before.

Lady Disher’s house was in Manchester Square. Joseph had expected Fiona would return the way they had come – that is that she would cross over Oxford Street to North Audley Street, across Grosvenor Square, down South Audley Street, then along Curzon Street and so into Clarges Street. To his surprise, she turned left on Oxford Street and started heading east.

‘Excuse me, miss,’ said Joseph. ‘I hope you ehre not plenning to go down New Bond Street. It ain’t the place for a lady.’

‘No, Joseph,’ said Fiona. ‘I have a desire to see Hanover Square.’

Joseph cursed under his breath. He wore shoes two sizes too small in order to make his feet look tiny and refined, but his refined feet were smarting and pinching and aching.

Fiona’s beauty began to fade in front of his jaundiced eyes. No longer did he bask in the gawking, admiring stares she drew. He wanted to get home and soak his tortured feet in a basin of mustard and water.

His powdered hair was itching. Joseph longed for expensive hair powder instead of having to damp his hair and then plaster it with flour from the flour bin in the kitchen. He was six feet tall with broad shoulders and a trim waist. He had delicate, fair features and very round blue eyes surrounded with short, weak sandy lashes, which were his despair. As Fiona glided rapidly along and Joseph had to quicken his step to keep up with her, he began to feel more and more like an old and crippled dwarf.

Once in Hanover Square, Fiona stopped and looked about her. ‘Which is the Earl of Harrington’s town house, Joseph?’ she asked.

‘Over there, Number Nineteen,’ said Joseph, who knew the address of every aristocrat in the West End. Fiona had been asked by Lady Disher over the teacups whether she, Fiona, had been to the earl’s town house in Hanover Square. Fiona had shaken her head but had remembered the name of the square.

Fiona stood at the edge of the gardens in the centre of the square, under the arch of a lilac tree, and studied the house with interest. Joseph stifled a groan as he eased one tortured foot slightly from its tight shoe. Finally Fiona transferred her gaze to the glory of the lilac blossom above her head.

And that is how the Earl of Harrington saw her.

He was walking home from his club in St James’s. He stood stock still, captivated by the vision, at first not recognizing Fiona, only seeing a beautiful girl standing under a lilac tree, as motionless as the still blossom above her head.

Then he recognized her, and his lip curled in a sardonic smile. So Miss Sinclair had decided to join the ranks of women who got up to every vulgar trick to bring themselves to his notice. He was about to turn away when his sharp eye saw the gnarled little figure of a man in a plain fustian coat and knee breeches sidling in Fiona’s direction. He had just time to take in that the little man had the upper part of his face covered by the brim of his hat and the lower by a large muffler, when he saw the fellow move like lightning.

The man darted forward and snatched at Fiona’s reticule.

Fiona held on like grim death.

Seamus, for it was he, raised his fist to strike her, but Joseph seized him by the collar. Seamus twisted about and punched Joseph on the nose. Joseph burst into tears, clutching his face and wailing. It all had taken a matter of seconds. As Seamus moved to attack Fiona again, he heard the pounding of feet and saw Lord Harrington bearing down on him.

Seamus took one scared look at the blazing yellow light of rage in Lord Harrington’s eyes, at his clenched fists, and at the breadth of his shoulders and ran as hard as he could out of the square. He heard Lord Harrington pounding after him and flew into a tavern in Oxford Street, crashed through to the back premises, out into the area at the back, over a wall, and down a twisting network of alleys, only pausing for breath when he no longer heard the sound of pursuit after him.

Lord Harrington, having lost Seamus, returned almost as quickly to Hanover Square. Joseph was propped up against the railings and Fiona was ineffectually trying to staunch the flow of blood from the footman’s nose with a wisp of lace handkerchief.

‘I do not know why you ladies carry such ridiculous little things,’ said Lord Harrington, producing his own handkerchief. ‘It is not my handkerchief,’ said Fiona, taking the serviceable one that Lord Harrington was holding out. ‘It is Joseph’s.’

‘Ooooh, I’m dyin’,’ wailed Joseph.

‘Come along,’ said the earl sharply. ‘My servants will clean you up. Stand up straight, man, and walk or I will take my boot to your backside.’

Joseph sulkily straightened up and followed Fiona and the earl.

‘And you, Miss Sinclair,’ said the earl, ‘may have some refreshment while you wait for this milksop of a servant to be fit to accompany you home.’

‘Do not be hard on Joseph,’ said Fiona. ‘Oh! My basket.’

The earl twisted about and saw the basket Joseph had been carrying lying under the lilac tree. It seemed easier to go back and fetch it himself rather than try to get the spineless Joseph to do it.

Once indoors, and with Joseph sobbing his way down to the kitchens, Fiona looked about her with interest. It was much larger than Number 67 Clarges Street, having rooms on either side of a magnificent staircase. In fact, it was unusually large, most of the aristocracy being still reluctant to spend much on a London home, as all their interest went on their mansions and lands in the country. Most lived in town only for the Season, with perhaps an occasional jaunt during the Little Season in September.

The earl led the way through a shadowy hall over black-and-white polished tiles and showed Fiona into a library. It was a large, gloomy, book-lined room. The walls were ornamented with some dark landscapes badly in need of cleaning. There were also some gory pictures of the hunt. In one, slavering hell-hounds were dismantling a fox, and, in another, a wild-eyed deer was being mangled about the throat by what appeared to be the same pack. Two portraits of high-nosed gentlemen in powdered wigs had been hung in the darkest corner of the room as if the gentlemen were in disgrace. Small windows at the end of the room looked out onto a weedy garden.

There was no fire in the hearth and no poker, tongs, or shovel, as they had probably been put away for the summer and wrapped in paper before being liberally rubbed with goose grease. The fire basket was made of Britannia metal, so highly burnished that it looked as if a burning coal had never sullied its brilliance.

The earl rang a bell by the fireplace, and, when his butler appeared – not a weasly man like Seamus or attractive and intelligent like Rainbird, but fat and pompous – the earl said curtly, ‘Fetch Mrs Grimes.’

The butler bowed and withdrew and, in a very short time, a housekeeper appeared, crackling with starch.

‘Take a seat by the door, Mrs Grimes,’ commanded the earl, and, to the hovering butler, ‘Fetch wine and biscuits.’

‘Now we are properly chaperoned,’ said the earl without a trace of humour, ‘please be seated, Miss Sinclair.’

Fiona smiled vaguely and sat down.

‘I am sorry I could not catch your assailant. It is unusual for a lady to be attacked in this part of town while it is still daylight,’ said the earl. ‘You were surely not carrying jewels or money?’

‘I am carrying a great deal of money,’ said Fiona. ‘What nasty pictures! I would not like them in a dining room. They would put me off my food. So savage.’ She looked at the painting of the tortured deer.

‘May I ask what you were doing carrying a great deal of money,’ asked Lord Harrington.

‘I won it at cards.’

‘Where?’

‘Lady Disher.’

‘Did no one warn you against Lady Disher? I have heard said she cheats. She marks the cards.’

Fiona looked surprised. ‘Is one not supposed to mark the cards?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Oh. The first few games the cards were marked by little pin pricks. I pointed this out to Lady Disher who became most alarmed because she thought the servants had been playing with them. But when she ordered a new pack, I simply was at my wits’ end to tell which were the aces. So I marked them myself.’

‘How?’ demanded the earl, fighting down an unmanly desire to giggle helplessly.

‘My hands were a little bit sticky from all the cakes I had eaten so I put a little bit of stick at the top of each ace.’

‘That is cheating!’

‘How sad,’ said Fiona.

‘Are you really as naive as you appear, Miss Sinclair? Sometimes I have a feeling you know very well what you are about.’

Fiona smiled at him but said nothing.

‘Miss Sinclair, what were you doing in Hanover Square? Was it in the hope of seeing me?’

Her wide grey eyes with their thick fringe of sooty lashes looked at the earl with the clear, innocent candour of a young child. ‘I have no reason to seek you out,’ said Fiona. ‘Why should I?’

‘I am used to ladies trying by every means to bring themselves to my notice, Miss Sinclair.’

‘How very odd,’ said Fiona, stifling a yawn. ‘I do hope Joseph is not going to be overlong.’

‘I am sorry you find my company fatiguing.’

The butler came in bearing a tray with cakes and biscuits and wine. Fiona accepted a glass of madeira but closed her eyes at the sight of the cakes and biscuits. ‘No, no more,’ she said faintly. ‘I ate too many this afternoon.’

A silence fell while Fiona sipped her wine and the earl studied Fiona. The sun outside had sunk lower in the sky, and a dusty shaft of gold shone through the windows to gild Fiona’s face and figure and to send prisms of light flashing from the crystal glass she held in her hand.

There was a
yielding
about her, a softness and femininity that made Lord Harrington’s pulses quicken. Her skin was unbelievably pure, and each little movement she made betrayed a natural grace. Little gold silk slippers peeped out from below the flounces of her gown. He wondered what her ankles were like. He wondered . . .

He gave his mind a slap, straightened up, and asked, ‘And what are your impressions of London?’