Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore
Chapter 9
Aline by Trollope crossed Lucian’s mind while he walked away from Greenfield’s fine town house: “There seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable.” Since the early seventies, a growing number of common men had been accruing wealth beyond measure with well-placed investments and a lucky hand at trading. It provoked envy and suspicion from the peerage and the working classes alike since the brutal financial crisis of ’57 was still on people’s minds, and enough crooks continued to build investment schemes that left them either rich or, more likely, ruined alongside the countless poor sods whose savings they had lost. The few who successfully secured their fortunes planted their flags in the hearts of old-money strongholds: Belgravia, St. James’s, the Cots-wolds. Such injuries to the rigid British social hierarchy inspired authors to churn out novels featuring newly monied men as The Villain. Wealth, it seemed, was morally above reproach only when it was made on the backs of other people tilling one’s long-inherited lands. Being a reprehensible self-made man himself, Lucian knew there was some truth to the moralizing—when he strode through any of his splendid houses, where Bohemian crystal sparkled alongside gilded fittings and polished ebony wood, he felt no shame. Whenever he stretched out on a clean, soft mattress after a good meal, he regretted none of the things he had done to become filthy rich. But contrary to Trollope’s concerns, Lucian had never reframed his misdeeds. He remembered all the violence and theft, blackmail and fraud, he had committed during the early years and knew it exactly for what it was. He simply couldn’t find it in him to care, not when so many pigs stood there lazily feasting at the trough thanks to a simple accident of birth.
He had never, however, stolen a woman. That was wholly of the old world. His ancestors might have secured a bride that way when the clans had still gleefully raided one another’s cattle herds. Of course, they would have taken their equals for a spouse. He had snared himself a Sassenach princess. He should be reveling in cold satisfaction, he realized as he passed the weathered redbrick façade of old St. James’s Palace, but he wasn’t. At the back of his mind buzzed the fact that he was soon to be a married man. He would have a wife to provide for. Judging by her wan face and requirements list—pretty hands! hot chocolate!—his intended felt rotten about the prospect of becoming that wife. Shouldn’t have played with fire, then, if she didn’t want to get burned.
Back in his own residence, he called for Matthews and informed him that he would marry Greenfield’s daughter and that he needed the rooms adjacent to his private chambers prepared. Since his usual perceptiveness was blunted by his preoccupation, he missed the expression of keen disapproval flashing across Matthews’s face.
She now knows the name your mother gave you, he thought as he made his way to his study. Even Aoife only knew him as Luke. Apparently, the dirty, ignorant boy from several lives ago wanted to be a part of their union.
He collected his special marriage license on Wednesday. On Friday, the Times announced the date and venue: the Saturday after next in a chapel in St. James’s. It wasn’t St. George’s at Hanover Square, but it would do, and Saturday after next meant he had four days to settle Harriet in his Belgravia house before traveling up to Drummuir.
He was at his desk analyzing last week’s movements of the New York Stock Exchange when Matthews delivered the weekend mail. A letter plastered in Scottish stamps from Mr. Stewart, the man he intended as the new mine manager for Drummuir.
“What’s this?” he asked, nodding at the slip of paper remaining on the silver tray as he sliced open the envelope.
“A telegram from Italy,” said Matthews. His voice was bright, his complexion glowing. His eyes, however, were rimmed red. He must have drunk and gambled deep last night in his chosen den of iniquity, and won. He’d have a new pocket watch soon, or a new suit, or be off to the racecourses to bet on a losing horse. Or perhaps he’d install a new woman in his personal flat in Camden. The women never stayed long.
“Italy,” Lucian said. He had no active contacts in Italy, so he set the telegram aside and told Matthews to go and supervise the airing and refurbishment of Harriet’s rooms.
Stewart’s letter was to the point: all required rooms at the Drover’s Inn had been successfully booked for the dates Lucian had requested; the conditions in Drummuir’s collieries were dire; the spirit in the mining community was low. One could expect no less from a mine that had been in the Earl of Rutland’s neglectful hands. Resentment washed over Lucian; he had to physically shake it off before he could continue reading.
He picked up the telegram, which had been sent from Naples.
Blackstone old boy STOP Heard you are to marry Miss Harriet Greenfield STOP Congratulations STOP May I humbly recommend “The Art of Begetting Handsome Children” to ensure connubial bliss STOP In emergencies and I cannot stress this enough say it through flowers STOP Yrs Ballentine
He gave a grunt of disbelief. The arrogance. He read the lines again just to be certain. No, it still sounded as though his lordship was trying to instruct him in how to fuck. Lucian crumpled the telegram in his fist. Ballentine had effortlessly seduced men and women by the dozen before he had settled down with a fiancée last month; he was good counsel for any man in need of carnal performance advice. But the viscount knew that Lucian wasn’t an untried lad. No, this message implied he needed help with approaching his bride because Harriet Greenfield was a gently bred virgin, while Lucian was anything but.
He loosened his cravat and tugged his shirt collar away from his throat. He had thought about it yesterday when they had delivered her new bed. Yes, he was aware that he had never shagged a virgin before. He knew that she and her ilk wouldn’t deem his bastardly hands fit to touch one silky inch of her. She was still a woman, and he a man, and the mechanics would be the same as always. Ballentine’s telegram didn’t merit so much as a vaffanculo, and he returned to his stock exchange data table. For all of two minutes. Visions of Harriet Greenfield’s naked, softly rounded body made the figures swim before his eyes.
He leaned back in his chair, uncomfortably aroused and distracted. First impressions mattered, and he wanted her to like it. Needed her to like it, for he had been serious about honoring his wedding vows. It was common for upper-class husbands and wives to romp around outside the marriage bed, but he wasn’t in the habit of whoring, and he’d grown up thinking of men who strayed as weak. He’d seen the troubles it caused in small communities and the bastard babies it inevitably left scattered around. Now, a saintly husband would probably resign himself to a life of tepid couplings, while a polite one went to a brothel for his pleasure. He was neither saintly nor polite. He wouldn’t approach her with his more deviant preferences, but he sure as hell wouldn’t spend the rest of his life joylessly rutting over an appropriately martyred woman in the dark. He’d find a way, as always.
The next morning, he undertook the four-mile journey to Aoife’s town house in Shoreditch for their fortnightly appointment. When he entered her reception room, his informant rose from her divan with the lazy grace of a cat, her blue eyes sparkling. The actual cat, a floofy, flat-faced thing, lounged on the divan’s whorled armrest and dismissed him with a swish of its thick tail.
“A Greenfield daughter?” Aoife’s throaty laugh said she was highly amused. Her cropped curls were positively bouncing round her ears. “By what dark sorcery did you accomplish that!”
“The usual,” he said. “Luck meeting preparation.”
“I hadn’t known you were in the market for a wife. Not for a Sassenach, in any case.”
He settled in the Chesterfield armchair across from her divan while she went to the drinks cabinet to pour him a Scotch. She wore skirts today, made of soft blue cotton that moved fluidly with her slender figure as only an exquisitely well-tailored garment would. Her face had the hard features inflicted by life in the gutter, and she spoke a soothing blend of monotone Limerick inflection mixed with Cockney, but her taste was distinctly toff.
She handed him the tumbler. “What’s she look like—is she pretty?”
“I don’t know.”
Her brows rose. “You don’t know? You must’ve seen her—the papers say you were caught in the act.”
Aoife was acting strange, and he didn’t know what to say. He found himself respecting Harriet Greenfield’s quick wit and her grit—that she had tried to negotiate with him, unexpected in a woman so spoiled and young. He liked the generous curve of her hips and that she looked sturdy enough to take him.
He crossed his legs. “Her looks are of no consequence,” he said.
“How boring you are.” Aoife sprawled back down onto the divan. “I’ll just have to find out for myself, then. I did sometimes wonder what sort of woman would suit you, you know, and I couldn’t fathom a good fit—a hard-nosed one who favors coin and doesn’t give a damn about tender feelings would thrive best by your side. But you’d probably prefer someone soft and sweet for your bed—sadly, such a sweetheart will wilt away.”
He shook his head. “What is the news on Rutland?” he said, pretending he hadn’t heard the inanity.
“There’s some news on your sniveling assistant,” she replied.
“Matthews?” He recalled his assistant’s blood-rimmed eyes earlier. “What’s he done?”
“He needs to watch himself,” Aoife said. “I saw him with my own eyes in Ritchie’s den in Covent Garden the other night, losing money he doesn’t have. And Ritchie’s people—you don’t mess with them. They take an ear as a warning, rather than giving a warning before taking an ear.”
That was a nuisance—he wouldn’t tolerate having his staff maimed by gambling kingpins. “I’ll settle his accounts in time,” he said.
“Wish you’d just cut him loose,” Aoife muttered.
“He owes me. Owning people helps them to be loyal.”
She gave him a mean look. “I’m loyal to you and I don’t owe you a bloody thing.”
His glanced at the room, the lush drapes and costly paintings and the cabinet with gilded inlays that had almost certainly been imported from France. “I’m paying for this house,” he said.
Aoife’s smile showed crooked teeth. “Because I give you permission to do so,” she said. “So you don’t feel you owe me—for the intelligence you get off me so cheaply. Or for when I kept you alive and unmolested on the streets.”
“Fair enough,” he allowed. “What news of Rutland?”
Her expression darkened. “I don’t like that my Susan has to bamboozle his chinless wonder of a son. Lord Percy is a spineless brute.” Her gaze lingered on the scar on his lip. “When will you feed the son to the fish? I hear the Thames crying his name lately, Lord Percy, Lord Percy.”
He tasted his drink. Very smoky, a good-vintage Talisker he guessed. “It’s the father I want,” he said. “To the son, I owe a debt of sorts. You know that.”
She grimaced. He didn’t expect her to agree. She didn’t understand vengeance the way he did, for she was quite content and settled now, at leisure to pose for painters and trade in information instead of being in the thick of a smuggling ring to make coin. It was more complicated for him, perhaps because his revenge wasn’t just for him but for other people. He couldn’t just say, Enough is enough now. It wasn’t for him to decide. As for Rutland’s son, Percy, he hadn’t crossed paths with his lordship since he had been thirteen and stupid, creeping around the grounds of Rutland’s vast Norfolk estate. That day, a late, wet afternoon in autumn, was still as fresh in his memory as though it had happened last week. He had learned the address from Master Graham by way of an innocent conversation. He hadn’t meant to murder the earl just yet, but he had been keen on information about the man who had killed his family, had wanted to see how he lived. His sgian dubh had been tucked into the elastic of his right sock, but such a small knife could have been there for any purpose. He had felt breathless upon seeing the manor house rise from the evening mist, hating that he found the sprawling, indomitable splendor both threatening and alluring. The gamekeeper had discovered him near the rose garden and had promptly dragged him to the kitchen by the scruff of his neck. Rutland had been in London for the season—he hadn’t known about seasons then—but his son had been in residence. Young Lord Percy had swiftly been summoned down to the kitchen.
“Poaching?” his lordship had asked the gamekeeper.
“He had nothing on him, my lord, no snares or slings, no bounty.”
“I just got lost,” Lucian had said.
The lordling had looked at him, astonished. “It speaks.” He had leaned closer. “Say, should I report you for poaching, and have you sent to the jail?”
“No, sir.”
“That would be no, my lord to you.”
Lucian had said nothing.
“Hold him.”
The gamekeeper, with some reluctance, had shoved his arms up behind his back and gripped him tight. Lucian hadn’t struggled; he had known what was coming but he hadn’t wanted to go to the jail. Rutland’s son had punched him in the mouth so hard he had heard the crack of his tooth inside his skull. He hadn’t felt the blows to his gut until he had come to, curled up and wheezing on the kitchen floor. The gamekeeper had given him a tea towel to mop up the blood, then he had marched him all the way to the gatehouse and told him not to lurk on his betters’ property. Back in London, Master Graham had been very disappointed in him for brawling and ruining his shirt and had told him to work at the back of the shop until he didn’t look a fright anymore. The cut on his lip hadn’t stayed closed, so the payment for the stitches had been taken out of his meager wages. Nothing could fix the broken tooth.
In the days after the beating, while he had swept the shop floors and carried antiques in and out the back entrance, his daydreams of revenge had morphed from a boy’s naïve idea of justice to something more systemic and vast. He wouldn’t just kill Rutland—he would wound him in the only place that truly hurt a man: his coffers. It required him to become wealthy and powerful, too.
“How does a man become rich?” he had asked Graham when his mouth had healed.
“Well, he must be born rich,” Graham had replied, visibly puzzled by the question.
“And what if he isn’t?”
“Then he must employ other men and have them earn money for him, while he’s working on another enterprise, and so on,” Graham had explained.
Lucian had watched him suspiciously. “If you know all that, why are you doing this?” He had waved at the menagerie of frivolous, broken things crowding the room. Graham had shaken his head as though Lucian had said something stupid. He had run his age-speckled hand over the winged back of a French divan, as if to soothe the piece. “Why would I make money for the sake of money, if I can spend my life working with beauty? History? Things that require care?”
Lucian had thought Graham stupid then, at least on the matter of money. The next time he had been sent to fetch a damaged side table from a fancy house, he had stolen his first valuable. Then he had enrolled in evening and Sunday classes to improve his writing, arithmetic, and rhetoric. He began reading trade journals and the finance section in Graham’s newspaper, and Graham, delighted by his apprentice’s effort to better himself, had offered him the spare room above the shop for a shilling a week. This had saved Lucian time, and he soon learnt that time was money, too. Had Lord Percy not split his lip with his signet ring, he might’ve done something brash and ineffective instead of using his brains. No, he wouldn’t feed Lord Percy to the Thames. Yet.
“Lord Percy intends to bid for a majority share in that textile company that fell apart last month and is being set up anew, together with Rutland,” Aoife said. “Bragged about it to Susan when he was in his cups—an opportunity for easy profits. God knows he needs those.”
“Mill and Cloth, down in Bristol,” he said absently. “I believe their securities are traded through the Bristol stock market.”
Aoife shrugged. She only delivered the intelligence. “That a good thing?”
He smiled. “I know the secretary who gatekeeps the trading.”
She was smiling, too. “I s’pose Rutland and ol’ Percy won’t get their profitable shares, then. May I call my Susan back now?”
“By all means.”
“Good. Where are you taking her for the honeymoon?”
He blinked. “What?”
“Your wife.”
He finished his drink. “I won’t. I’ll be in Fife right after the wedding.”
“At the mine? Drummuir?”
“Aye.”
“What a rotten groom you are to not give her a honeymoon.”
He gave a shake. “She’ll be glad enough to be shot of me. She doesn’t favor my type, judging by her wish list.”
“All right,” Aoife relented. “Must be bad in the mine, if you go to see for yourself.”
“The reports weren’t good.”
“But you don’t like going up North and beyond.”
“I don’t, no.”
Her face softened. “Still trying to change the ways of the world, are you?”
“I’ve just made headway,” he said curtly.
She gasped when understanding dawned. “Your new father-in-law?” She barked a laugh, startling the dozing cat on the armrest. “Luke, no single man can turn politics. It’s a cesspool and they’re all drowning in it, Greenfield, too.” She ran her hand over the cat, and the animal stretched and kneaded air with clawed paws.
“Enough influential peers are Greenfield’s clients,” Lucian said. “He could enforce private loan contracts, but for a select few, he doesn’t. If he did, the card houses would come tumbling down. At the very least, he’ll get me the right dinner invitations.”
“You think he’d do all that for a daughter?” Aoife mocked. “He’s got several, hasn’t he? He can well spare one.”
“From what I can tell, her family sticks together like lemmings.”
“They can’t love her too much if they gave her to you, that’s for certain.”
Her impertinence was habitual, so he ignored it. “He’ll want his grandsons,” he said.
Aoife’s mouth formed a perfect O. “So it’s not even her you’re after but the children,” she said. “Bloody hell. When’s the wedding, you said?”
“Next Saturday.”
She cackled. “You have less than a week to become charming, then,” and, at his blank expression, “To woo your wide-eyed bride, of course. Babes don’t grow on trees.”
“Not you, too,” he muttered, thinking of Ballentine’s bloody telegram.
“What?”
“Never mind,” he said. “In any case, I always begin as I mean to go on.”
“Not counting your staff, you haven’t even shared lodgings with anyone in over a decade,” she said. “Will be a change.”
“My houses are big.”
“You should’ve taken my advice to get a dog.”
His brows rose with acute displeasure. “Are you likening pets to my wife now?”
“No,” she said with a faint smile, “I’m saying you’ve never cared for another creature.”
He shook his head. “There’s no point in keeping a dog.”
“Why not?”
“Their lives are short. They die.”
Aoife made to reply something cynical, but then an understanding passed behind her eyes and she resumed stroking the cat. “I hope you know that if you ride the likes of her too hard, they break before you get much use out of them.”
Back in Belgravia, Matthews had refilled all the vases with fresh hothouse flowers, and the scent of roses followed Lucian down the corridor all the way to the study. His work progressed unusually slowly, and he finally closed his folder. Perhaps he should have informed Harriet that there’d be no honeymoon. It hadn’t been relevant to him, so he hadn’t thought of it. But he never left his business commitments unattended for more than a day; besides, where would he take her? Italy? Then what? He hadn’t time, not for the trip nor the planning. He needed to prepare his stock portfolio and thoroughly instruct his men of business so that his affairs remained in sound condition during his week in Fife.
Ride the likes of her too hard, and they break …
He cursed softly and rang for Matthews.
“Matthews. I need you to find me a book about flower language.” His assistant looked puzzled but began taking notes. “And a book, or perhaps it’s just a pamphlet, called The Art of Begetting Handsome Children.”
Matthews’s brows flew up.
“I need it on my desk within the next three days,” Lucian said stonily.
“Of course,” Matthews said. “I shall try my best. Sir.”
He nearly added a current etiquette guide for gentlemen to the list, but he could probably procure that himself quickly enough. His mood darkened. He hadn’t touched an etiquette manual in years.
Matthews delivered the requested reading material the evening before the wedding. By then, Lucian’s suit and hat were brushed and Harriet’s rooms were prepared. It left him with plenty of time to settle behind his desk to study The Art of Begetting Handsome Children, which turned out to be a thin pamphlet, first printed in 1860, written by Anonymous.
The first page began with frank discouragement:
It is not unheard of for a new bride to wait months before she feels inclined to consummate the marriage ….
“What?” He flipped through the pages in search of something useful.
When the husband cometh into his wife’s chamber, he must entertain her with all kinds of dalliance, wanton behaviour, and allurements …. But if he perceive her to be slow, and cold, he must cherish, embrace and tickle her ….
Tickle her. Sounded right idiotic.
… and shall not abruptly break into the field of nature, but rather shall creep in by little and little, intermixing more wanton kisses with wanton words and speeches, mauling her secret parts …
Maulingthem?
… so that at length the womb will strive and wax fervent with a desire of casting forth its own seed. When the woman shall perceive the efflux of seed to approach, by reason of the tinkling pleasure, she must advertise her husband thereof that at the very same instant or moment he may also yield forth his seed, that by collision, or meeting of the seeds, conception may be made …
He threw the pamphlet in the bin under his desk. Kiss her, kiss her quim, take her slowly—he’d have done so all without the help of a manual. No, his approach wasn’t the trouble—it was him: scarred, blunt-fingered, lowly bred. And there was nothing he could do about that other than get on with it. On second thought, he dove under the desk to retrieve the pamphlet because it said it there, black on white in fancy speech, that a woman should get some tinkling pleasure from the act rather than just suffer it if she wanted to get with child. If Harriet wasn’t open to enjoying his attentions out of modesty, then perhaps impartial scientific advice could change her mind. He’d find out tomorrow night.