“No, Brandon, Monteith does not, to the best of my limited knowledge, resort to such subtle tactics as cheating at faro. However, what he is I have yet to determine.”
Jason turned to look at the newcomer, Mr. Scuddimore. “I trust, Scuddimore, that your parents are well? Your father has recovered from his hunting accident? They survive without your presence?”
Scuddy bowed deeply, cognizant of his grace’s signal honor of speaking to him. “So kind of your grace to inquire. No problem there, your grace, my father goes along quite well now. They haven’t said that they miss me overly.”
The marquess merely nodded, saying now to Harry, “Brandon, give my regards to your charming sister and Julien. I shall call upon them presently. As for you, Lord Harry, doubtless we will chat again. Mind what I’ve told you, lad. Think before your mouth leads to your demise.” He flipped his hand in an indifferent salute and strolled away.
“What was that all about?” Sir Harry asked, looking after the marquess.
“Nothing at all. Now, tell me how much more champagne have you consumed for my celebration? I won only twenty guineas at faro. Ah, but let’s drink it down. Lead on, MacDuff.”
“MacDuff?” Scuddy said. “Don’t know him. Does the fellow like champagne? It wouldn’t do to bring him along if he don’t.”
Chapter Twelve
Jason Cavander stirred a cube of sugar into his rich Spanish coffee and savored the pungent dark aroma before swallowing. Although it was after nine o’clock in the morning, it promised to be another dreary winter day, and the marquess wished he could have stayed abed. A howling wind was battering noisily against the long French windows in the small breakfast room, and heavy pellets of rain blurred the triangular park just opposite his town house in Berkeley Square.
A damned depressing day it would be, he thought, pouring himself a second cup of coffee. Poor Spiverson. He could picture his stooped gaunt man of business, walking hunched forward against the rain and wind, presenting himself to Lord Oberlon in a dripping shiny black suit, his sparse gray hair plastered about his small square face. He paid an extraordinarily generous fee to his man of business, yet Spiverson would sooner risk an inflammation of the lung than part with a few shillings to take a hackney.
The marquess cupped his hands about the coffee cup, rose from the table and strolled to the fireplace. He controlled the urge to inform his butler to send Spiverson away when he arrived. Although such caprice from a wealthy master wouldn’t be blinked at, the marquess had no desire to emulate his late father, who, with a snap of his fingers, blithely canceled appointments, leaving his house in chaos whilst he went off to drink with one of his cronies or inspect a new hunter. The marquess had returned order to the house, and he had no intention of allowing himself to slip into indolence at the sacrifice of his responsibilities. This once, though, he was sorely tempted, for his head ached from too much revelry the previous evening. The rest of his body was none too pleased either, for following a not-altogether-steady walk from White’s to Melissande’s apartment on Pemberley Street at two o’clock in the morning, he’d roused his sleeping mistress and turned her bed into a shambles before pulling on his clothes and staggering out into the dismal cold dawn back to Berkeley Square.
He knew in more objective moments that such orgies of excess could be viewed as an opiate, a not altogether satisfactory manner of burying unpleasant memories, but, perhaps, still better than nothing at all. It really was a pity that one couldn’t learn wisdom, maturity, and temperance without causing exquisite pain in the process. It was a pity that one couldn’t make the pain and the blackness simply disappear.
He turned at the tread of his butler’s catlike footsteps outside the breakfast room door. He could even hear Mrs. Gerville’s wheezing breathing before she got within ten feet of a closed room he was in. It was at times like this, attuned to every sound in the house in which he had reached manhood, that he was most aware of his aloneness. None of his friends or family knew what his short marriage had meant to him, and he, of a certainty, hadn’t talked about it. If they believed his abrupt departure to Italy after his wife’s death had shown he was distraught, that was fine with him. He knew that was what most of them had believed.