Vanity (39 page)

“Yes, you’re quite right, Bartram,” Thaddeus said smoothly. “It does indeed mean that your investment is reduced, and I find myself a little strapped for cash to complete the project.”

He reached behind him for another bottle of wine. The cork had already been drawn, and he pushed the bottle across the table to the chief justice. “Another glass, dear fellow.”

“Capital … capital,” the justice said with a rasping rub of his hands. He refilled his glass and passed the bottle along. “So what is it ye want from us, dear boy?”

“Another twenty thousand apiece,” Thaddeus said coolly. “It will enable me to finish the houses on Acre Street and make a start on the next development. I have six customers for new houses, gentlemen. Tongues hanging out for a gentleman’s residence befitting a substantial citizen with a hopeful family, to set up in a manner to encourage good connections.” He smiled and the scar twitched. “The attractions of society are manifold for those who can’t as yet aspire to it. But a grand mansion, good governesses, Eton and Harrow for the boys—and a dynasty is born.” He gestured expansively. “Who are we to quibble at the vanities of the socially aspiring?”

“But what guarantee do we have that this twenty thousand won’t go the same way as our other investments?” asked Dirk, refilling his smudged glass.

“Oh, have a little faith, sir,” Justice Greenaway protested. “It’s hardly Nielson’s fault if the Exchange had a bad month. But we all know that what goes around comes around. Next month, it’ll be paying ten percent or thereabouts.”

“But unfortunately I cannot wait until next month to provide the materials to finish the houses already under construction,” explained Thaddeus. “If we cannot finish them on schedule, then we lose our customers. If we lose our customers, we will be obliged to return to them their
original deposits … and that, gentlemen, could be a little awkward at present time.”

“For you,” stated Dirk. “But not for us. It’s nothing to do with us whether you have the money to repay them or not.”

“Ah, well, I’m afraid it is,” Thaddeus said, drawing a sheaf of papers toward him. “Surely you read the contracts before you signed them, gentlemen. It states here most clearly that you are members of a consortium that agrees both as a body and as individuals to fulfill the terms of all housing projects presently under contract.”

He pushed the papers toward Hector and Dirk. “Pray refresh your memories, sirs.”

The two peered in the gloom at the spidery writing. Hector drew the candle toward him with an impatient movement, spilling wax on his finger.

“Odd’s blood!” He snatched the document from his friend’s grasp and held it close to the flame. “So if you fail to fulfill your commitments, then
we
end up in the Fleet?” he exclaimed.

“Gentlemen … gentlemen,” Thaddeus said softly. “Don’t be so exercised. That’s not going to happen. This is a very temporary setback. I need a further injection of funds just to bridge the gap until the houses are completed. Then the purchasers will pay the price of the houses, and we’ll be sitting pretty.”

“But this further twenty thousand. You’ll not be putting that in the Funds?” Dirk asked uneasily.

“Oh, no, there’s no time for that,” Thaddeus explained. “The money must be used immediately to ensure we don’t renege on our contracts with our customers. You need have no fear of losing a penny.”

Dirk scratched his head. It sounded reasonable, and everyone else with the exception of Hector was nodding placidly. “What d’you think, Lacross?”

“I don’t see that we have any choice,” Hector said curtly. “But it had better not be good money after bad.”

“My dear sir, you insult me.” Thaddeus Nielson’s voice was so low it was almost a whisper. There was an
expression on his scarred countenance that caused Hector involuntarily to draw his head back as if away from the strike of a cobra.

“Surely you aren’t questioning my probity, Mr. Lacross?”

“Of course he’s not, Thaddeus,” the banker said with a hearty slap on Hector’s shoulder. “I daresay the man’s not accustomed to dealing with Funds and the Exchange and such like. Daresay he knows nothing about percentages.” He smiled kindly at Hector. “New to the business, aren’t you, my dear sir?”

Hector was still trying to recover his equilibrium after that frightening glimpse of a very different side to Thaddeus Nielson.

“It’s possible,” he mumbled, shifting on his chair. “But I for one don’t have another twenty thousand in cash. I’ll have to put up a piece of property as security for it. Your bank will advance the money with that security, I imagine.”

“My position, too,” Dirk said.

“Oh, that’s quite usual,” Justice Greenaway said. “Do that all the time, don’t we, friends?” He chuckled. “Have to take a few risks in this game, dear fellow. A form of gamblin’, really.”

“Yes, that’s all it is,” Dirk put in eagerly. “Like hazard or faro. Man makes a wager, lays down his blunt, and sees what comes of it.”

Hector regarded him with an expression close to dislike. “Except that in this case we could both find ourselves languishing in debtors’ prison.”

“Could do that at the tables,” Dirk said with an easy shrug. “Spent the night in the Fleet, m’self, once.”

“Mr. Rigby, you have the spirit of the true investor.” Thaddeus leaned over to refill his glass. “One must take risks to reap the greatest rewards. And I assure you, I’ve never lost yet. Neither have any of these gentlemen.”

He looked for corroboration around the table and received fervent statements of agreement.

“So shall we drink to the next phase of our project?”
Thaddeus raised his glass, smiling benignly, and Hector found himself wondering if he really had seen that hooded cobra behind the disfigured facade.

The men around the table all raised their glasses, Hector following suit with the barest hesitation.

“Well, I’ll write out my draft, Thaddeus,” the banker declared. “If that man of yours can produce paper and a quill.”

“Oh, I have that right here in the desk.” Thaddeus pushed back his chair and went to the battered oak desk. He drew out paper, ink stand, and quill pen and placed them in front of Banker Moran. “At your leisure, my dear sirs.”

Taking his seat again, he took up a long churchwarden pipe on the table beside him and busied himself with tamping and lighting his tobacco. Then he sat back, smoking peacefully while the writing materials circulated and banker’s drafts were pushed toward him with various expressions of satisfaction.

Dirk and Hector wrote their own documents, each pledging his share of Hartridge Folly, the property they still jointly owned because neither one of them had found good reason to buy out the other.

Thaddeus took the pledges with a smile of thanks. He held the candle over the signatures and, when a blob of molten wax fell on each paper, passed them back to Rigby and Lacross with another of his benign smiles.

“If you’d just affix your seals, gentlemen … and we’ll have Lord Justice Greenaway witness them for the record.”

“No one else has done so,” Hector pointed out.

“But they have given me banker’s drafts,” Thaddeus said silkily. “I must persuade my own bankers to advance me money based on your securities. A sealed and witnessed signature is necessary, as I’m sure you understand.”

After a moment’s hesitation Hector pressed his signet ring into the wax on his pledge. Dirk did the same. Thaddeus Nielson’s expression remained smoothly affable. Justice Greenaway with much murmurings of pleasure, witnessed
the signatures, and all the documents were once more in Thaddeus’s possession.

“Thank you, sirs. I must say it’s a pleasure to do business with you.” He folded the papers carefully and placed them in his desk, turning a large brass key in the drawer and pocketing it.

“Another glass of wine to conclude such a pleasant occasion.” He refilled glasses yet again.

Hector pushed back his chair, suddenly anxious to get out of this dark, dusty hole. The last thing he wanted was another dose of indifferent burgundy in a filthy glass, but just as he was about to make his farewells, the justice addressed a civil question to him on his experiences in Parliament, and he found himself drawn into conversation with a man whose stature and position in the world demanded the utmost respect.

Justice Greenaway was most flatteringly attentive as Hector waxed eloquent on the life and influence of a Whig member of Parliament for the pocket borough of Broughton. Dirk was drawn into conversation with the banker on the fascinating subject of horse racing and fox hunting and the rival merits of the Quorn and the Beaufort.

Thaddeus Nielson twirled the stem of his wineglass between finger and thumb and watched and listened, heavy lids drooping over penetrating gray eyes, as his quarry were soothed and smoothed with compliments, any possible qualms forgotten in the civilized company of eminent men.

Dirk glanced once toward his host and thought that his mouth had a rather sardonic quirk, but that, of course, was due to the scar. Poor man. It was such a ghastly disfigurement.

“Gentlemen, I must beg you to excuse me. But I have another urgent appointment,” Thaddeus said eventually, when there was a brief pause in the discussions.

He pushed back his chair. “Ned will show you out.” Going to the door, he opened it and bellowed for the old retainer.

“I’m acomin’. I’m acomin’. What’s yer ’urry?” Ned’s
creaky grumbles could be heard along the corridor as he shuffled to answer the summons.

“That jarvey out there says ’e won’t wait more ’an three more minutes. An’ he’d like his fare fer gettin’ ye ’ere, if you gentlemen pleases.”

Hector and Dirk rose to their feet. “Insolent dog,” Hector stated.

“Aye, I don’t know what the world’s coming to,” the justice agreed, nodding his head, smoothing down his crimson waistcoat. “And when Gordon holds his public meeting at St. George’s Field, there’s no knowing what will transpire.”

“His acolytes are expecting a crowd of thousands, I hear,” the banker said, moving to the door. “Turn that rabble loose on London, after listening to Lord George for an hour, and none of us will be safe in our beds.”

“Paint a ’No Popery’ sign on your door and you’ll be safe enough,” Thaddeus said with a poor attempt to conceal a yawn. “Good afternoon, sirs.”

He bowed as his guests filed out in Ned’s wake. The door closed behind them.

Rupert straightened and strode to the shuttered windows. He flung open the shutters and drew a deep breath of the warm, river-rank air, deciding that rotting weed and refuse made a relatively pleasant change after the fetid hothouse inside.

“Have they gone, Ben?” He turned back to the room as Ben came in with a crisp and spritely step.

“Aye, Nick. I told Will ye’d settle up with ’em all in the Royal Oak come Saturday.”

Rupert grinned and removed his embonpoint. “Superb actors, they are. I wouldn’t have believed it. Particularly Will and Thomas. Will makes an excellent Lord Justice.”

He chuckled and dipped a cloth into the bowl of water Ben held for him. “And Fred and Terence make a perfect pair of sleepy old men, happy to let the world bob past them.”

“Ye got what ye wanted?”

“Oh, yes.” Rupert scrubbed at the scar. “I have exactly what I want. In a couple of weeks our friends will receive a demand for payment on their note of hand. They will look for Thaddeus Nielson. But Thaddeus Nielson will have disappeared off the face of the earth.” His mouth twisted in a most unpleasant smile, and his eyes were as bleak and cold as the tundra.

“Sometimes I think y’are the devil hisself, Nick,” Ben said equably. “What’ve them coves done to ye?”

“Not to me, Ben.” He plucked the wig from his head, the kerchief from his neck, and threw off the ratty velvet coat and the moleskin waistcoat.

Ben handed him his own coat and waistcoat of dark-blue silk. He swallowed his curiosity and made no attempt to pursue the subject. Lord Nick had a look to his eyes and a curl to his lips that Ben knew meant he’d welcome no further questions.

“Have you been watching Morris?” Rupert asked evenly, fastening the buttons of his waistcoat.

“Seems clean as a whistle,” Ben said. “Goes nowhere out of the ordinary, speaks to no one unusual. Leastways not that I can discover. Why? Are ye thinkin’ of takin’ to the road again?”

“Possibly,” Rupert said, shrugging into his coat. “A personal matter.”

“Ye’ll take to the road on private business?” Ben’s surprise and disapproval was manifest.

“Just this once,” Rupert said, tying his stock. “I’ll need the cottage afterward.”

“Let me know when, then.”

“Aye.” Rupert took the large brass key from his britches pocket and went to the desk. He unlocked it and took out the two security pledges. Tomorrow Lacross and Digby would receive a request from his bankers for the deeds to the house to be lodged with the bank. It was a reasonable demand, and they would accede because they were in too deep to pull back.

He tucked the documents into his waistcoat pocket, then held the fake drafts from his confederates to the candle
flame. The play was almost completed. And when Octavia had lured Philip to the ambush awaiting him on Putney Heath, then it would all be over.

The paper ash fell in a gray curl to the table, and he brushed it away. When he looked up, a shiver prickled Ben’s spine. He’d seen Lord Nick at his most dangerous, but he’d never seen such bleakness on his friend’s countenance.

“I’ll leave you to lock up.” Rupert strode to the door, but the look was still on his face, something very like despair in those clear gray eyes, and it was still there when he pulled away from the steps to row across the river, raising a hand in farewell to Ned.

He left the scull with the waterman at the Waterside steps and retrieved his horse from the Angel Tavern. There seemed more refuse than usual in the streets, mute witness to the earlier passing of the crowd, and a sense of suppressed excitement in the lanes as he rode past the narrow row houses, their inhabitants clustered on doorsteps, hanging out of windows.

But Rupert paid little or no attention to his surroundings. He could derive no lightening of his spirits either from the success of the afternoon’s play, the crackle in his waistcoat of the papers that would return Oliver Morgan’s family home to its rightful owner. He could think only of Octavia in Dover Street, of how she would greet him when he saw her.