An Unusual Bequest (2 page)

She distracted the children from the conversation and they finished their tea and set about the game of cross-questions, which occupied them for an hour or so. After they had gone to bed, Charlotte went back downstairs, back to reality, and that set her wondering about the future again and whether her brother-in-law could be relied upon to give her a home. But even if he did, she would still need to find an income from somewhere in order to retain her independence. Whatever happened, she must protect and provide for her children.

The crowd in the card room at White’s was noisier than usual. There were four men at one table who had imbibed too freely and were becoming boisterous. Viscount Stacey Darton sat a little way off, idly watching them and wondering how long it would be before they came to blows. One of them looked vaguely familiar and, though he racked his memory, he could not place him. He was thickset and his face was tanned to the colour of rusty hide, even more than Stacey’s, which, after three years, still retained a trace of the sun he had caught in Spain. The man was dressed in a black frockcoat and calf-length grey pantaloons at least two years out of date. His neckcloth was drooping and his hair untidy. Though he did not look like one, Stacey assumed he was a gentleman or he would not have been admitted to the club.

His companions were better dressed, young bucks out to fleece someone they saw as a rustic; each had a pile of coins and vouchers at his elbow. The untidy one threw down his cards. ‘That’s me out, gentlemen. I assume you will take another voucher?’

‘What, more post-obit bills, Cecil?’ one of his companions enquired. He was tall and so thin his face was almost cadaverous, surrounded by lank dark hair. ‘How do we know you will cough up when the time comes?’

Cecil laughed. ‘Because the time has already come, Roly, my friend. My revered father was buried today.’

‘Good Lord! Should you not have been at the funeral?’

‘Why? He never wanted me when he was alive, why should I trouble with him now he’s dead?’

‘So, you’ve come into your inheritance at last, have you?’ another asked, looking at Cecil under beetle-black brows. He was shorter and broader than the first speaker, his complexion swarthy.

‘Yes, but I’ll thank you not to noise it abroad, Gus, or I’ll have the dunners on my back before I can retreat.’ He laughed harshly. ‘Present company excepted, of course.’

‘Oh, so you mean to repair into the country soon?’

‘Naturally I do. I must take up my inheritance, though what state it is in, I do not know. From what I hear, my father had windmills in his head the last few years and didn’t know what he was about.’ He laughed again. ‘It’s all been in the hands of my sister-in-law.’

‘What’s she like?’

‘Oh, she’s comely enough, or she was, haven’t seen her for years and she’s had two bratlings since then, females, luckily for me. I’ll soon rid myself of her.’ He chuckled. ‘Unless she’s worth keeping. You never know…’

‘Supposing she has married again?’

‘Then she will most certainly be out on her ear and her husband along with her. I want no leeches on my back.’

‘I think, my friend, you need some protection,’ one of the others put in. ‘What say we come with you?’

Stacey smiled, knowing the men were not wishing to protect the man so much as the money he owed them and their debtor was well aware of it, but he shrugged as if it did not matter to him one way or the other. ‘Please yourselves, but be warned—the estate is on the coast of Suffolk, miles from anywhere. A dead end.’

‘Oh, we’ll soon liven it up.’

Stacey was still racking his brain to remember where he had seen the one called Cecil, when he heard his name called. He swivelled round to see a huge man bearing down on him, his face split in a wide grin. ‘Stacey Darton, by all that’s wonderful!’ he exclaimed, holding out his hand as Stacey rose to greet him, revealing himself to be almost as tall and broad as the newcomer.

Stacey had met Gerard Topham in Spain and they had fought alongside each other right to the end of the war, including the aftermath of Waterloo, and become great friends. ‘Topham, my old friend, I did not know you were in town.’

‘Nor I you. I thought you would be in the country with your family, or I would have let you know I was coming.’

‘I needed a respite.’

Gerard laughed and folded his huge frame into the chair next to Stacey’s, beckoning to a waiter to bring more wine. ‘You’ve only been back six months and you need a respite? Civilian life not to your liking, my friend?’

Stacey resumed his seat, forgetting the noisy card players. ‘Civilian life is fine, if a little dull; family is another matter. My father nags worse than an old woman and as for my daughter—’ He stopped suddenly. ‘Never mind that, tell me what you are up to.’

Gerard poured from the bottle the waiter had brought. ‘I couldn’t settle to civilian life either, so I offered my services to the Home Office…’

‘Militia? A bit of a comedown after Spain, isn’t it?’

‘Not militia exactly. I’ve joined the Coast Blockade.’

Smuggling had fallen away after Pitt reduced the excise duty on tea, but it had received a boost when the wars with Napoleon began and a new line in merchandise offered itself: French prisoners of war going one way, spies coming the other. Later, when the French economy began to totter, English guineas fetched more than their face value. If reports Stacey read in the newspapers were accurate, it was still going on. The Coast Blockade had been formed to combat it. ‘Catching free-traders. That must make you very unpopular. Most people accept them, accept what they bring too.’

‘Maybe, but free-traders are far from the romantic figures those of us in our comfortable homes imagine them to be, bringing cheap luxuries, and doing no harm. Many of them are discharged soldiers with no work and a dangerous knowledge of firearms, explosives and tactics, learned in the service of their country, and they are putting their knowledge to good use. They are vicious and often murderous if someone stands in their way, and the damage they do to the economy of the country is enormous. Nabbing them is a challenge and I have never been able to resist a challenge. I came to town to report to the Home Office and tomorrow I’m off to ride along the coast, picking up what information I can along the way. Come with me, if you like.’

Stacey was tempted, but, remembering his responsibilities, smiled ruefully. ‘I’m afraid I cannot. I must go home.’

‘To be nagged?’

‘Most likely.’

‘What about?’

‘Marrying again. My father thinks I have been widowed long enough and my daughter needs a mother, not to mention that he wants a male heir before he dies. Not that he is ailing, far from it. He is hale and hearty. Too hearty sometimes. As for my daughter, she has been thoroughly spoiled by her grandparents. I shall have to take her in hand.’

‘And you are not relishing it?’

‘She is like a stranger to me, treats me with polite indifference as if I were a visitor who has outstayed his welcome. Understandable, I suppose, considering I was with the army all her life and saw her very infrequently. Her mother was expecting her when I was posted out to India and would not come with me because of her condition and her fear of the climate. In the event she was proved right, because she died having Julia…’

Gerard had known that, but he hadn’t known of the difficulties his friend faced on returning home. ‘I’m sorry, old man. So, you are in town looking for a wife?’

‘My father might wish it, but I don’t. Anyway the Season is not yet begun and I am not in the market for a débutante; they are almost always too young and usually too silly. If I remarry, it would have to be someone of my own age or perhaps a little younger if I am to have an heir, with a modicum of intelligence and common sense, not to mention having some regard for me and me for her. I am unlikely to find someone like that in the drawing rooms of the
ton.
It won’t be an easy task, considering whoever takes me on has to take my wayward daughter with me, and at this moment I do not feel inclined to inflict her upon anyone.’

‘Oh, surely she is not as bad as that?’

‘I wish I could say I was exaggerating, but she has become a hoyden of the first water, rides astride her black stallion all over the estate, shoots and fishes and hunts, just as if she were a boy. I wish she were a boy, I could be proud of a male child with those accomplishments. There isn’t a feminine bone in her body and at thirteen that is to be deplored.’

‘That will change, given the company of other young ladies of her age. Send her away to school.’

‘I thought of that, but I can’t find one to take her. She doesn’t want to go, so, whenever I take her to view a school and meet the teachers, she behaves so badly they won’t even consider her. And my father is no help. He humours her in whatever she wants and told me he likes to have her near him.’ He stopped suddenly and laughed. ‘I am sure you do not want to hear about our family squabbles. Let us have dinner together and talk of old times and free-traders and anything else but wives and children. I assume you have neither shackles.’

‘No, and, if your experience is typical, I am glad of it.’ He turned as the group of card players behind him tipped over their chairs as they rose drunkenly to go. ‘I don’t know what White’s is coming to, allowing people like that through the doors. Who are they, do you know?’

‘No idea,’ Stacey murmured. ‘That swarthy one with the scar on his cheek seems familiar, but I cannot place him. When you arrived he was telling the others he had just come into his inheritance. If it means a title and some blunt to go with it, I suppose that’s why they were admitted.’ He watched the men leave, lurching from side to side and grabbing hold of each other for support. ‘He said the estate had been run by his sister-in-law of late and he was about to go to Suffolk to claim it from her. I pity her, whoever she is.’

They dismissed the men from their minds and did as Stacey had suggested and ordered dinner and enjoyed a convivial evening reminiscing about their time in Portugal and Spain and the horror that was Waterloo, the terrible state of the economy, the poverty and unrest in the country and the extravagance of the Regent, who must surely be the most unpopular ruler in England’s history. And from there they went on to smugglers and lawbreakers generally, many of whom were driven to desperate measures by poverty and hunger, and what could be done to cure the country’s ills. By the time they parted, they had set the world to rights and Stacey was feeling more cheerful, though none of his problems had been solved or were on the way to being solved.

His father had a town house in Duke Street and he ambled back there at two in the morning, deciding that he must do something about Julia, though he freely admitted he knew nothing about bringing up children, especially girl children fast approaching womanhood. If only Anne-Marie had not died…

He reflected on his eighteen months of marriage, eighteen months in which he had bitterly regretted being talked into it by his parents. ‘She will make an admirable wife,’ he had been told. ‘She has the right connections and a good dowry and she is more than agreeable.’ That had been true, but what they had failed to point out and what he had been too young to appreciate was that Anne-Marie was little more than a schoolgirl with an empty head. She wanted him for what he could provide: the status of being addressed as ‘my lady’ and clothes and jewellery, piles and piles of clothes and boxes and boxes of jewels. She was entirely ignorant of the duties of a wife and, once he had got her with child, would have nothing more to do with him and sat about all day eating sweetmeats. Who could blame him for purchasing his colours and going off to India to serve with Sir Arthur Wellesley? Later, after a brief sojourn at home, he had gone to Spain with him to share in his setbacks and his victories. Sir Arthur had been showered with honours and become first Viscount, then Marquis and now the Duke of Wellington, beloved of the people. Stacey came home to a problematic daughter and very little else.

Would Anne-Marie have matured if she had lived? Would their marriage have reached any kind of accommodation? He doubted it. But her legacy was Julia and their daughter was his responsibility, not his father’s. He should not have left her so long that he had become a stranger to her. But he did not think returning with a new wife was the answer either. She would then have two strangers to contend with and, as she resented him, how much more would she hate a stepmother? He resolved to return home the next day and take her in hand.

The cold and rain of the last few weeks eased overnight and the sun was trying to shine, though it was hazy and the roads were still full of puddles that drenched pedestrians every time a carriage clattered by. He spent the morning at Gentleman Jackson’s Emporium in Bond Street, honing his boxing skills, and the afternoon at Tattersalls, wondering whether to buy a mare to put to his stallion, Ivor. At six o’clock he went home, changed into a travelling coat, ate a solitary meal and took a cab to the Spread Eagle in Gracechurch Street to board the stage for Norwich. He was only marginally surprised to find three of the card players of the previous evening were also travelling on it. After all, the man called Cecil had said something about going to Suffolk to claim his inheritance and it was roughly in the same direction.

The men were not as rowdy as they had been the night before; in fact, they looked very grey about the face with dull, red-rimmed eyes. Stacey was thankful they were disinclined to talk and, as soon as all the baggage had been stowed and the outside passengers had climbed to their perches, he settled in the corner of the coach and shut his eyes. They were out of town and well on their way before anyone spoke and then it was the man he had heard addressed as Cecil who uttered the first words. ‘I know you, don’t I?’

Stacey ignored him, but the man leaned forward and poked his knee, repeating his question. Forced to open his eyes, Stacey found the fellow close to him, breathing brandy fumes through blackened teeth, although Stacey noticed he had bought himself a new suit of clothes and was looking tolerably smart. ‘I beg your pardon?’