This time it was she who had to sit, looking up at him with a hero-worship that was agreeably gratifying for an older brother.
“You’re famous, then,” she said, in hushed tones. “Mama, Thomas is a hero. He’s going to be talked about and-and …”
She stopped, at a loss to put into words that now there was a Kydd who would tread an inconceivably larger stage.
CHAPTER 2
CROSSING BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE and walking on to Fleet Street, Renzi brought to mind the outcome of his previous interview with the publisher John Murray: the summary destruction of his hopes of publication of his ethnical treatise. It had been done in the politest and most gentlemanly way, yet with finality, along with the offhand suggestion of an alternative course-a novel.
The office was further along, the polished brass plate still on the door.
This was now a matter of the gravest import. If the book had met with success … If, however, what he had seen was a scandalously copied version …
He hesitated, then knocked firmly.
The door was opened by the same old gentleman in half-spectacles who had wished him well before. “Why, sir! How kind of you to call again. Do come in. I’ll tell Mr Murray you’re here-I won’t be a moment.” He hurried up the stairs, leaving the lowly clerks glancing at Renzi with curiosity.
Shortly a call came from the next floor. “He bids you join him, sir, and you are welcome!”
Renzi entered the book-lined office.
“Come in, come in! Sit yourself down, man,” Mr John Murray said, showing every evidence of interest and politeness.
Renzi perched on a carved chair of another age.
The publisher leaned forward. “What’s your tipple?”
“Thank you, no.”
“Well. We’ve things to discuss, I believe, as bear on your future with us, sir.”
“My future?” Renzi responded carefully.
“Why, yes, as an author of the first rank, sir.”
Renzi held back a surge of hope. “Oh? Pray do enlighten me,” he said politely. “I’ve been out of the kingdom for some years now and am unaware of any … developments.”
He managed to remain cool.
“Of course! Mr Renzi, let me be the first to tell you, your excellent Il Giramondo tale has captured the hearts of the nation. We have booksellers crying for stock faster than we can print it.”
“That is gratifying, of course, Mr Murray. Might I be so indelicate as to enquire if there are proceeds from this that might, shall we say, accrue to myself?”
“Royalties? Why, of course, dear sir! Should you wish to sight a statement of account?” He rang a silver bell on his desk and the clerk appeared suspiciously quickly.
“Mr Renzi’s ledger, if you please.”
It was produced with equal promptness. “Let me see now,” Murray said, peering down the columns. “To the last quarter I find we have a most respectable sum in your name. I rather fancy you will not wish to maintain your present employment situation for very much longer.”
He passed across the ledger, pointing to a column total.
Renzi looked down-and it took his breath away. “May I be clear on this? The figure I see is in credit to myself?”
“Mr Renzi, you have earned this entirely on merit. It is yours, and should you desire it, I shall present you this very hour with a draft on our bank to that amount and you shall walk out of these offices a man of consequence.”
His mind reeled. “B-but it’s so …”
“On the other hand, you may understand public taste is fickle and the work may drop from fashion as rapidly. Nothing is sure in publishing, sir.”
Renzi slumped back, dazed. A vision of Cecilia, his cherished love, flooded in. His eyes pricked while the publisher prattled on.
“This is why we must settle matters at this point, the chief of which is agreeing a date for the delivery of the manuscript of your second piece.”
He would post back to Guildford and lay his heart before her and-
Murray continued, “It is of the first importance to keep your good self in the public eye to sustain sales of the first and at the same time establish your reputation as an author of worth.”
If she was reluctant he now had the means to dazzle her with prospects, even if she must never know their origin.
“Mr Renzi? Can you not see this, sir?” Murray said, looking at him with concern.
“Oh? Yes, of course.”
“Then you’ll be looking to something along the lines of a sequel, no doubt. The same characters the public have come to take to their hearts? Or is it to be a darker treatment, a cautionary tale, which-”
“I will think on it, Mr Murray.”
Then he suddenly recalled what he had come to secure. “But be aware, sir, that I value my privacy above all things. I would wish that you keep my true name in this entirely confidential. If it should find its way into public knowledge then I’m obliged to say, sir, that I would look upon it as a final breach in our relationship.”
“Oh, of course we will, be assured it will be done,” Murray hastened to say. “All your works will be published under what we call a ‘pen name’-Il Giramondo is an excellent device.”
He leaned back and smiled. “And it has its advantages. Who is the man of mystery behind the sobriquet? Just who was it around us who wrote these revealing tales-this beggar on the street brought low by his debauchery or that noble lord who is now anxious to conceal his sordid past? Or-”
“Mr Murray,” said Renzi, dangerously, “you may not sport with the world as to my origins. Merely refrain from releasing my name, if you will.”
“Yes, yes, it will be so, Mr Giramondo.”
“Thank you, sir. Now in a related matter, might I enquire this of you-is there a form of transaction whereby the proceeds may be remitted into an account anonymously?”
Outside, Renzi blinked in the wan sunlight. Every instinct screamed at him to fly to Guildford and seek Cecilia’s hand that very day.
For him everything had changed-his future was as a gentleman of comfortable circumstances, and if Cecilia accepted him, he was about to be made the happiest man alive. But what of Kydd? He remembered his friend’s drawn face, the piteous attempt at normality in the face of the worst. After Trafalgar the public had become accustomed to victory and nothing less. A humiliating defeat would demand scapegoats, whom an uneasy government would surely find.
Would his friend be cast into exile from the sea he so adored?
It was so unfair-but life had to go on and he had arrangements to make. As he hurried to his cheap lodgings, he tried to unscramble the racing thoughts.
So, if he was to be married the usual course was for the new wife to cleave to her husband and his establishment-but he had none.
Item: get one.
He had no decent attire, certainly none that could be considered seemly for a proposal of marriage.
Item: find a tailor, expeditiously.
His financial standing did not run to a bank account, let alone an amicable relationship with a bank manager for the establishing of standing and credit and so forth.
Item: use the cash draft nestling in his waistcoat to start one.
He was not a regular attender at any church-how could banns be called, a wedding arranged?
Item: er, ask Cecilia.
Then there would be whom to invite and …
But a dark pall slowly gathered, dominated by the image of his father. The Earl of Farndon.
For an eldest son a marriage contract in the aristocracy was the stuff of lawyers, of negotiation, of delicacy in the settlement with the bride’s noble family. But a moral confrontation with his father had resulted in a titanic rage and the threat of his disinheriting.
His brother in Jamaica had sorrowfully confirmed that his father had taken the legal steps necessary. Although he could not prevent the title passing to Renzi, Eskdale Hall and the large estate would now go to his younger brother, Henry.
His title would be therefore an empty mockery, and he would never put Cecilia to the humiliation of maintaining a sham. She would never know, and would be Mrs Renzi to the day she died.