Page 58 of The Ladies Least Likely
CHAPTER TWO
“ Y ou want to ship off to fight in the American colonies now? Who put this bugbear into your brain?” Viktor Vierling lowered one side of his morning paper to stare across the booth at his friend, Malden Grey.
Mal stared back. “It’s something to do.”
Something active and decisive, with a defined aim in mind. His life was badly missing definitive action at the moment.
“I could afford to buy a cornetcy in the cavalry when my quarterly allowance comes through,” Mal said.
“Sail out with Burgoyne and his Hessians to Quebec.” He pointed to the headlines on Vierling’s paper, the news borne on all the printed matter being passed about, and argued over, in the small, noisy coffeehouse.
“With your rotten luck, you’d be killed by some rebel patriot popping from behind a hedge to shoot at a redcoat. Or worse, by some camp disease that turns your guts to water. Who will support your aunt and uncle when you take a musket ball in the belly?” Viktor demanded.
“They could sell my commission, I should think.”
“Who would look after the ducal children?”
Mal shifted against the high, hard back of his bench seat, which separated their table from the one behind. “The duke’s children have a stepmother. She ought to be looking after them.”
Viktor turned a page of his paper. “It’s a month aboard ship to sail to Halifax. Have you forgotten Gibraltar?”
Mal winced. As a wild young lad he had signed up as a midshipman to fight in the Seven Year’s War. One voyage to the Mediterranean spent puking out his innards had put paid to the notion that he would ever become an able seaman.
“Are there any vacancies in your troop?”
Viktor was a member of the 2d Horse Grenadier Guards, part of the British Household Cavalry. Guarding the King’s interests at home was a noble enough duty, though many of Viktor’s German countrymen, as well as any other European troops the King could recruit, were being sent to the Americas.
Viktor lowered his paper again and considered Mal across the rough wooden table. “I could try. They like their guards tall and strong enough to heft the equipment, so you’d suit. Have you thought about the Corps of Engineers? You’d enjoy blowing things to rubble.”
“I considered it, and the training would be here in Woolwich. But it would be back to Gibraltar to work on the fortifications, and I’m not known for my sea legs.”
“You’ve given up hope of being called to the bar, then,” Viktor said.
Mal stared into the gritty dregs of his black, bitter coffee. His future looked equally dark.
Around them, the fellow patrons of the coffee shop carried on lively conversations about politics and military strategy.
One portly gentleman in a bright orange waistcoat and periwig, with a gold-tipped walking stick and a mongrel dog curled at his feet, shouted that the British victory in the Battle of Quebec would turn the tide against the pesky rebels.
The Battle of Bunker Hill last year had proven how costly it would be to bring the rowdy Americans in line, but the buzz of conversation was over what France would do, having lost a great part of their own American possessions to Britain in the last Treaty of Paris.
Every strategist in the coffee shop had a different, dire prediction.
Mal didn’t long for military action; he was a thinker, not a soldier. But his latest plan for supporting himself in the law, after a roster of other failed ventures, was not offering much in the way of advancement.
“The Benchers called that beef-witted Froggart to the bar before me,” Mal said.
“He’s not been in the Middle Temple nearly as long as I have, and I doubt he’s opened a single book.
But a barrister he shall be now, with his wig and robes, because he attends more meals and licks the boots of the judges. ”
“Which you won’t do.” Viktor shook his head. “Yours is the most dastardly luck, old man.”
Mal downed his coffee, all but the grounds, and signaled for another cup.
Malden Grey had grown up under the curse of bad luck. Indeed, he was known for it.
It began when his mother, the daughter of a Bristol haberdasher, allowed herself to be wooed to ruin by a silver-tongued gentleman traveling through the West Country on holiday.
She gave her hand and her virtue to the scoundrel and was left in tears when an irate duke came to recall his heir to his duties.
Marguerite died when Mal was young, and when the parish couldn’t produce any record and her kin could find no trace of her marriage lines, there was no recourse but to declare him illegitimate.
Malden lived his life under the cloud of being a bastard.
He had been raised by his aunt, his mother’s sister, who married an innkeeper, a jolly man named Littlejohn.
When Mal was a lad, Littlejohn was trampled by a neighbor’s bull and his broken leg taken off to save his life.
Mal had not been ill-treated in their home, but he worked hard for his keep, running for his uncle and their many guests, with little to look forward to in his future but a life of continued drudgery.
Then out of the blue, his father, the new duke, located Mal, acknowledged him, and paid his tuition at Winchester.
In rebellion to his father’s wishes Mal tried the navy, carpentry, and a post as a turnpike toll collector—all endeavors with unfortunate ends—before he agreed to take a degree at Cambridge.
Neither medicine nor the priesthood suited him, so he’d settled on the law, an occupation conducive to the life of a young gentleman at liberty in London.
But after his active, hardscrabble upbringing, Mal found he wasn’t built for a life of leisure.
He could drink himself under the table each night with his fellows, spend mornings in the coffee shops arguing politics and his afternoons in the Temple Hall hashing out finer points of law, then take himself off to the evening’s entertainments of theater, tavern, or gaming hell, but it all turned into a dreary round of sameness.
He had too active a mind to take pleasure in enforced idleness.
If only he could be called to the bar, he was determined to apply himself, rise quickly among the ranks of serjeants, and eventually find a place on a high court, perhaps even the King’s Bench.
His rulings would be just and fair and wide-reaching, like those of the newly created Earl of Mansfield.
But the Benchers had to call him first, and as always, Mal never knew if his bastardy advanced his cause or hindered it.
As the acknowledged throw of a duke he was accepted among the sprigs of the nobility, none of them much concerned about the niceties.
But to the moral principles of the gentry and the aspiring bourgeoisie, his natural birth was a stain on his character.
He might never be deemed worthy of carrying out the cause of justice.
“Some days I wonder if it is luck,” Mal said grimly, watching the poor serving boy acknowledge every other bid but his own. “Some days I wonder if it’s simply fate. Or if I’m under a curse.”
What he most needed was to prove himself a worthy guardian to his half brothers and sisters.
The three children of his father’s first marriage required a protector now that gout had carried off the 3d Duke of Hunsdon, and Mal didn’t trust Sybil, the current duchess, as far as he could throw a cat.
The children wanted a clear head and a steady hand to guide them, and Mal was determined to provide that hand.
He might speculate about shipping off to the Americas, or another theatre of war, but he’d never abandon his half-siblings.
They were his duty, his blood, and they were overall rather likeable people, though he hadn’t spent much time with them.
A commission in the Grenadiers suited his requirements. If he couldn’t become a barrister, a gentlemanly profession, then a military man could be trusted with the oversight of one young duke and the estate he had inherited.
Mal tapped the paper in Viktor’s hand. “I’m calling upon the duke’s banker to draw upon my allowance. Care to join me?”
Viktor glanced at his cup. “I haven’t finished.”
“I’ll come find you later, then.” After the coffee shop, Viktor would adjourn to his club for dinner and cards, and from there to whatever entertainment was on offer.
The duties of the Household Cavalry did not seem onerous, beyond presenting for drills and reviews, prancing about in public places, and keeping oneself in good trim for the uniform.
Mal, like Viktor, was tall, well-built, and pleasant to look upon. Surely his bad luck was about to turn.
He found out quite soon that was not to be the case.
Mal strolled down the Strand to Thomas Coutts & Co.
, nodding at the women who cast him appreciative glances from under their lashes, the young bucks and dandies who hailed him as their fellow.
He made his request and lounged against the counter, twirling his walking stick and imagining it a ceremonial sword.
The young banker returned from a back room, looking rather sickly, and coughed into a hand with ink-stained fingers.
“Mr. Grey. I regret to inform you that your allowance for the quarter has already been withdrawn.”
“I beg your pardon,” Mal said, “but this is the first I’ve presented myself to claim it.”
“Nevertheless, the entries indicate the monies have been collected.”
The clerk conducted Mal into a richly paneled room with plush carpet and a fragrant oil lamp lit in one corner against the dull grey London afternoon.
Bronze fixtures gleamed with polish. The head of the bank, Thomas Coutts himself, sat behind a large oak desk.
He was a neat and unpretentious man, known to be efficient and discreet.
He was also known, quite surprisingly, to have married a girl who had been nursemaid in his brother’s household, and the union was by all accounts a happy one.