“Desperate enough to take even young Alan?”
“Fifty pounds in the right pocket in Portsmouth could put him on any ship of the line.”
“Preferably one going to foreign climes, the farther the better. And your friend can do this?”
“Most assuredly, Sir Hugo. Why, I recall in my last parish there was a young widow with a son who was—” the vicar reddened at the memory that Sir Hugo thought touched a bit too close to home “—at any rate, the Fleet is full of young lads who are not exactly welcome at home.”
“Shameful,” Sir Hugo said. “Well, please be so good as to have your nautical friend … Bevan, did you say? … attend me as soon as he can. And, just to clear this up as a legal matter, I wonder if I could prevail upon you to attest to what you witnessed this evening with my solicitor, Mister Pilchard? He is gathering statements in case we have to call the watch and have Alan imprisoned, should he prove to be intractable.”
“Mosht happy to oblige you, Shir Hugo,” the vicar said, barely able to bring glass to lip any longer. “I shall not keep you longer, Shir Hugo. I believe we have all shuf … suffered enough tonight.”
“Indeed we have, sir.” Sir Hugo nodded somberly.
Sir Hugo rose and bowed a courteous goodnight to the stumbling sermonizer as Morton held the door for him and took him in charge to the parlor, where Pilchard waited. Sir Hugo sat down and mused happily over his brandy. It seemed an age before the wizened solicitor stuck his head around the door, waving a sheet of vellum to dry the ink, much like a flag of surrender to his master’s temper.
“Is that sodden hedge-priest gone?”
“Just this minute, Sir Hugo. I saw him to the door myself.” Pilchard grinned, entering the room fully as Sir Hugo waved him forward. He laid the document before his employer like a great trophy. “Here it is, Sir Hugo. And considering his vulnerable state and the witnesses against him, I anticipate no problem there…”
“Excellent, Pilchard, excellent! Everything is in order, then.”
“All but young Alan’s signature, Sir Hugo.”
“I wish you to make an addition to this, Pilchard.”
“Sir?”
“Have a brandy and sit down, for God’s sake,” Sir Hugo ordered, irritated at the outré deference his solicitor always showed him but secretly still pleased that he could engender that sort of deference. Pilchard obeyed the instructions and took a seat on a settee, perched on the edge of the cushion with knees close together.
“The vicar came up with a most interesting suggestion, Pilchard. And a perfect excuse for Alan not to be present when this matter comes to its fruition.”
“And that is, Sir Hugo, if I may inquire?”
“Naval service, Pilchard, naval service!” Sir Hugo boomed it with a hearty chuckle. “The boy is not come to his majority, and is overseas, preferably far overseas, on the King’s business, when we enter the court. Write it up so that I am his guardian or whatever, so that his signature, which you assure me of, gives me total control over everything he is due, in the first instance, and hang the rest of what you had planned.”
“But if he survives to return to England, Sir Hugo, he is then heir, and can take you to court for all of it. I believe he should sign away all claims, as we initially laid out.”
“Now what are the odds of a midshipman returning?” Sir Hugo stood to refill his glass. “Off to the Americas, the Fever Islands, or the East Indies among all those pagan Hindoos?”
“Not good, sir, but not certain, I’m afraid.”
“But no problem until the war is over, at any rate. He knows nothing now, and can learn nothing thousands of miles away. It strengthens our appearance, does it not, safeguarding the interests of my … son, as he fights for England, his King? Oh, shout Harroo for England and St. George! And should he survive and return, it will be much too late to do anything.”
“He is a clever little devil, Sir Hugo. God help me, but I think he may tumble to it … eventually, that is.”
“Then the second part, the part you first suggested to me, shall be a secret agreement between him and me, obtainable for reasons you make clear, and only the first part of the document, concerning guardianship, shall be presented in court. Surely that shall suffice.”
“I believe that would suit, Sir Hugo. Though I still worry that asking him to put his name to so many documents will bring his suspicions up—”
“To the devil with his suspicions! The means of removal has to come up from Portsmouth, so we shall let that little damme-boy stew in his own skin for a few days. By that time I am sure he shall be most agreeable.”
There was a soft knock on the door, and Belinda entered the room, now dressed in high fashion and bearing a cloak, hat and muff for an evening out. She crossed to her father and planted a gentle kiss on his cheek. He put an arm around her.
“Off, are you?”
“Lady Margaret is giving a drum,” Belinda said calmly. “Now I shall be fashionably late for it. Did I do well, Father?”
“Excellently well, my girl. And you shall share in my gratitude and munificence once this is behind us.”
“I never doubted it, Father.” She beamed, then bade them both goodnight, leaving Sir Hugo humming to himself, and Pilchard fidgeting as he thought upon his new document’s form and content.
* * *
“Where’s the chamber pot, then?” Alan demanded as he was shoved into a dark and cheerless garret servant’s room at the back of the house.
“Criminals don’t deserve none.” Morton smirked.
“I’m sure you know about criminals, Morton, you were born one! Candles, too, and a bed.”
“An’ why not a bottle an’ some bird, an’ a servant girl while you’re askin’, young sir,” Morton jibed back. “Scandalous goin’s on, I swear to heaven. Rapin’ your own sister!”
“And you the innocent babe just down from the country. Goddamn you, fetch me light and some sort of bedding—”
“I’ll fetch ya a ticket to your own hangin’, and that’s all, you little bastard,” Morton said, shoving him back into the dark room with a horny fist and slamming the door. “Ye’r not the high an’ mighty little buck o’ the first head now, are you, young sir?” he crowed through the wood, then laughed his way down to the landing and out of hearing.
There was a thin slit of light under the door, which did little to banish the gloom of that tiny garret cell, and Alan sat down next to it, arranging his coat over his knees and chest as a makeshift blanket.
Now what the hell is this all about? he pondered again, now a bit more levelheaded than when the posse had broken in on him. Why should they all show up at the same time, as if it were arranged…?
There had, though, never been much sense in the household, from the way Sir Hugo ran his own affairs to the way he allowed Belinda and Gerald to run riot with their own pleasures and interests. Sir Hugo had never shown much discipline toward them, or much affection, either, too far gone in his own cares ever to notice his children. Alan had come into the house a three-year-old waif in rags, to a paradise of food and good clothing and the life of a moneyed scion of a great man, or so it seemed. Quite a change from the parish poorhouse he had known since birth and the death of his mother (at least they’d told him she’d been poor and was dead). He had been prepared to be grateful and loving, but there had been a vast gulf that he could never bridge, made of his father’s icy indifference. By the time he was breeched and off to the first in a long succession of schools he had stopped trying to bridge the gulf and only took advantage of the man’s largesse. He had wanted for nothing, had been allowed to run riot like the son of a titled lord with few warnings to correct his behavior. And now, suddenly, this…?