The Penniless Lords

Frank Richardson had visited Friar and Clements, too. He had stayed over at the Whitehorse Tavern with John Goode, his cousin.

Four of them now. Gabriel knew there were six, because Henrietta Clements had told him so. She had been so angry she could barely talk when she had come to him at Ravenshill, that much he did remember.

‘My husband is here,’ she had said simply. ‘Right behind me, and I know for certain his political allegiances lie with France and Napoleon’s hopes. Take me away to the Americas, Gabriel. I have an aunt who lives there. In Boston. We could be free to begin again...together, for I have money I can access and much in the way of jewellery.’ Her arms came around him even as he tried to move away.

Then there was blankness, an empty space of time without memory. He had been trying to fill in the details ever since, but the only true and residing certainty he’d kept was the pain.

The knock at the door was expected, but still he stood to one side of the jamb and called out, ‘Who is it?’

‘Archie McCrombie, sir.’ The reply was firm.

Sliding the latch downwards, Gabriel ushered the small red-haired man inside, the cold air of evening blowing in with him and his coat lifting in the wind.

‘Friar is residing at Beaumont Street, where he has spent most of the last week enjoying the charms of Mrs Fitzgerald’s girls. I left Ben there to make certain he stays put.’

‘Did he meet anyone else?’

‘Frank Richardson, my lord. I did not recognise the others who came and went. Someone tailed me as I left, but I shook him off. Tall he was and well dressed. He does not seem to fit in around this side of town. He was armed, too, I would bet my life on the fact.’

‘Expecting trouble, then, or about to cause it?’

‘Both, I would say, sir. I’d have circled back and tailed him, my lord, if I wasnna meeting you.’

‘No, you did well. Give them some rope to hang themselves; we don’t just want one fish, we want all six of them.’

‘Yes, sir.’

After McCrombie left, Gabriel stood and walked to the window. It was raining outside and grey and the cold enveloped him, his life worn down into a shadow of what it had previously been.

His finances were shaky. He had gone through his accounts again and again, trying to find a way to cut down his spending, but his country estate of Ravenshill was bleeding out money as was his London town house. He wasn’t down to the last of his cash yet, as Daniel Wylde had been, but give it a few more years and...

He shook that thought away.

Once he had those associated with Clements he could leave London and retreat to Ravenshill Manor. Then he would sell off the town house. The new trading classes were always on the lookout for an old and aristocratic residence in the right location and he knew it would go quickly. In Essex he would be able to manage at least until his mother was no longer with him. He shook that thought away and swore softly as he remembered back to their conversation at dinner the night before.

‘You need to find a wife who would give you children, Gabriel. You would be much happier then.’

The anger that had been so much a part of him since the fire burgeoned. ‘I doubt I will ever marry.’

The tight skin on his right thigh underlined all that he now wasn’t. No proper women would have him in the state he was in and even courtesans and prostitutes were out of his reach. A no-man’s lad. A barren and desolate void.

When his mother reached out to place her hand over his he had felt both her warmth and her age. Her melancholy was getting worse, but he did not mention that as he tried to allay her fears.

‘Everything will work out. We will leave London soon and go up to Essex. You can start a garden and read. Perhaps even take up the piano again?’

Tears had welled in the old and opaque eyes. ‘I named you for the angel from the Bible, you know, Gabriel, and I was right to, but sometimes now I think there is only sadness left...’

Her words had tapered off and he shook his head to stop her from saying more, the teachings of the ancient shepherd of Hermas coming to mind.

‘In regard of faith there are two angels within man. One of Righteousness and one of Iniquity.’

The Angel of Iniquity was a better analogy to describe himself now, Gabriel thought, but refrained from telling her so.

The sum of his life. Wrathful. Bitter. Foolish. Cut off. Even Alan Wolfe, the Director of the British Service, had stated that Gabriel could no longer serve in the same capacity he had done, his profile after the fire too high for a department cloaked in secrecy.

So he had kept on at it largely alone, day after day and week after week. A more personal revenge. Once he had thought the emotion a negative one, but now...?

It was like a drug, creeping through his bones and shattering all that was dull; a questionable integrity, he knew that, but nevertheless his own.

The veneer of social insouciance was becoming harder and harder to maintain, the light and airy manners of a fop overlaying a heavy coat of steel. The lacy shirt cuffs, the carefully tied cravat. A smile where only fury lingered and an ever-increasing solitude.

Adelaide Ashfield’s honesty had shaken him, made him think, her directness piercing all that he had hoped to hide and so very easily. But there were things that she was not telling him, either, he could see this was so in the unguarded depths of those blue eyes. And Friar was circling around her, his derogatory evaluation of England’s royal family and its Parliament as much of a topic of his every conversation as his need to make a good marriage.

Revolution came from deprivation and loss, and he could not for the life of him work out why George Friar, a successful Baltimore businessman by his own account, would throw in his lot with the unpopular anti-British sentiments of his cousin. They were blood-related, but they were also wildly different people.

Perhaps it was in the pursuit of a religious fervour he had come with, the whispers of the young prince’s depravities rising. America’s independence had the same ring of truth to it, there was no doubt about that, a better way of living, a more equitable society and one unhampered by a monarch without scruples.

Conjecture and distrust. This is what his life had come to now, Gabriel thought, for he seldom took people at their face value any more, but looked for the dark blackness of their souls.

Gabriel strained to remember the laughter inside the words of Miss Adelaide Ashfield as he poured himself a drink, hating the way his hands shook when he raised the crystal decanter.

She was the first person he had ever met who seemed true and real and genuine, artifice and dissimulation a thousand miles from her honestly given opinions.

But he did wonder just who the hell had hurt her.

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