Finally, Malcolm was asked to provide them with entertainment. Someone produced a huge gleaming broadsword. A chair was brought in from the kitchen and Robert Walpole shouted: “Show us now, Stapleton, how you cleaved those highland scum. I’ll wager a hundred pounds he can break this thing apart with a single stroke.”
Brigadier Hawley maintained that was impossible. The chair was a stout piece of work. Malcolm might split the back but he would never get through the seat, which was solid oak. The bets flew around the table while Malcolm hefted the sword. He was as drunk as anyone in the room. Beside me, I heard Colonel Hartshorne, the man who had solemnly vowed never to make another bet, wagering two hundred pounds that Malcolm could do the job.
Planting his feet wide, Malcolm raised the broadsword until its tip vanished into the shadows of the ceiling. Down it came with a fearsome hiss and whack—the chair, back and seat, was in fragments on the floor. Malcolm stared at the ruins as if they were somehow repugnant to him. Robert Walpole staggered from place to place, collecting his winnings, and deposited a small mountain of guineas before Malcolm’s plate.
“’Tis yours, my friend,” he shouted. “Fairly won.”
There had to be two thousand pounds in the pile. I could scarcely resist counting it. Clutching the broadsword, Malcolm staggered back to the table. He gazed down at the money and began to weep. No one in the room, including his wife, knew what was going on in his head. He had told me nothing about his discoveries in Scotland.
With a snarl, Malcolm flung the back of his hand against the money, sending the coins flying across the table at the astonished Walpole and Prime Minister Pelham, who was sitting beside him. “A patriot,” Malcolm said, laboring out each word as if it were a ten-pound weight. “A patriot doesn’t fight for gold. He fights for his country.”
A hush fell over the room. To fling the word patriot in Walpole’s face was the greatest political insult imaginable. For twenty years the opposition had used it as a club to belabor his corruption.
“I think we can lay claim to that word, patriot, as well as anyone in England,” Pelham said.
“Can you, sir? Can you?” Malcolm said. “I wish to God I could believe that!”
For a horrendous moment, I wondered if Malcolm was going to slaughter everyone in the room with that broadsword. I saw myself hanging from a gibbet at Tyburn as a conspirator in the most sensational murders in English history.
Robert Walpole seemed oblivious to this possibility. He barely looked at Malcolm. Instead, he glared up and down the table. “If a word of this reaches the newspapers, we’ll spend ten thousand pounds of secret service money to track down the whisperer.”
“Twenty thousand,” said Prime Minister Pelham, whose face had acquired a grim cast.
Walpole ordered a servant to gather up the scattered coins and put them in a purse. He handed it to me. “Take this with my compliments, madam. You seem to be an intelligent woman. Tomorrow or the next day, when your husband regains his wits, talk some sense into his head.”
Colonel Hartshorne helped me half drag, half carry Malcolm to a carriage. “I fear this is my fault,” the colonel said. “I gave the lad these patriot notions when he was at an impressionable age. I never realized he would take them so seriously. In Oswego, in the middle of nowhere, patriotism was an easy note to strike. In London it’s another matter.”
“Don’t blame yourself. He’s always been inclined to see himself as a knight errant,” I said.
Malcolm said nothing. Slumped in the carriage, he stared out at London’s passing parade. The whores, the beggars, the gorgeously dressed gentlemen and their ladies were on full display everywhere on this warm spring night.
“What would Clara think?” Malcolm said.
“I beg your pardon?” Hartshorne said.
“What would Clara think of that dinner tonight? The plunderers of our country, gorging and swilling over the bodies of poor starving Scotsmen who had the courage to believe in a cause.”
“Now, now,” Hartshorne said. “You can’t let wild men like that run the country—any more than you could let the bloody Iroquois run New York. Right, Mrs. Stapleton?”
“Of course not,” I said. I still had no more idea than Hartshorne of the war that was raging in Malcolm’s brain.
On Piccadilly, as we approached the White Horse Inn, Malcolm saw a boy and girl selling flowers to the patrons who lurched from the taproom door. They were about ten years old and very emaciated. Business was far from brisk. “Fresh roses and daffodils,” they piped in pathetic voices.
“Where’s that purse Walpole gave you?” Malcolm said.
I handed it to him as we descended from the carriage and Hartshorne paid the driver. Malcolm staggered over to the flower sellers. “How much for the lot?” he said.
“For all of them?” the boy said. Each had four bouquets in wicker baskets suspended from their necks. “Three shillings, sir.”
“Here’s three pounds instead,” Malcolm said.
He poured a dozen coins from the purse into the basket. “Sir,” said the astonished boy. “That’s more than three pounds.”
“Keep it,” Malcolm said and stumbled upstairs and fell facedown in the bed, unconscious. I lay awake beside him, listening to his snores, trying to decide what to do. He was out of control and I did not know why. He had thrown away a chance to win preferment from the men who ruled England. One side of my mind thought it was madness. The other side thought there was a certain nobility to it.
Good God. I was thinking like Clara. The Evil Brother leered in the far corner of my soul, whispering: Worse is to come. Clara somehow helped me defy him. I began to see myself loving this reckless madman who flung defiance in prime ministers’ faces. We would somehow survive his outrages. I would make enough money for both of us.
As dawn greyed the windowpane, I pressed myself against Malcolm. “Husband,” I whispered. “You’ve barely looked at me since you returned from Scotland. You know how much I need your kisses.”
It began well enough. He caressed me sleepily. I took his hand and placed it on my mound. “There’s where I want you,” I said. “Where I belong to you, no matter what befalls us.”
I felt his lips stiffen. His hand lay there, inert. No fingers caressed my thighs, explored my creamy interior. For a moment or two he fumbled with my breasts, then turned away, leaving me with nothing but a view of his mountainous back and shoulder. “Some other time,” he said.
I was overwhelmed by rage and shame. All the memories of my Moon Woman days assailed me. “What is it?” I said. “Have you given your all to some Scottish slut?”
“No,” he said.
“Am I so repulsive?”
“No,” he said.
“What is it, then?”
No answer.
Two nights later we went to dinner at Chesley White’s house. He had explained in his invitation that he was giving a party for his daughter Elizabeth and her fiance and her friends. They were eager to display Malcolm as a catch that would make them the envy of London. Meanwhile, I entertained acid thoughts about my approaching encounter with Robert Foster Nicolls. As I expected, the fox was more than a little discomfited to discover his future father-in-law beaming at his former love.
“Mr. Nicolls and I are old acquaintances,” I told White. “We knew each other well in New York.”
“I hear he played a soldier’s part in more than one broil with your Iroquois,” White said.
“Really?” I said. “That must have been in my captivity days.”
The Whites and everyone else at the party immediately wanted to hear the story of Malcolm’s exploits at Culloden from his own lips. He declined to utter more than a few monosyllables, which only made them admire him all the more for his modesty. I sat beside Robert Nicolls at the table, and as the other guests reiterated Malcolm’s heroism, we gazed into each other’s eyes without illusions.
“I trust Miss White’s dowry is satisfactory,” I said in a low voice, smiling as
if we were chatting about the latest play in Covent Garden.
“Eminently,” Robert said.
“And of course you’re in love.”
“Eminently,” he said.
Beneath the table, he took my hand. “But there’s a part of my heart that remembers and regrets. Is that true for you as well?”
I trembled inwardly. It was amazing. I was still vulnerable to Robert’s charms. “I remember a great many things—and regret all of them,” I said.
Elizabeth White was a sweet, totally innocent young woman, with plaintive eyes and a face like a teardrop. She had been raised in a highly protected atmosphere which rendered her singularly susceptible to Robert’s poetic apostrophes. The thought of her hundred thousand pound dowry made me taste again the humiliation of the day Robert rejected me and my paltry fifteen hundred pounds. Out of old anger and shame, I suddenly conjured an exquisite idea for revenge.
Walking back to the White Horse Inn along the Strand, London’s most fashionable street, the masses of prostitutes that prowled this part of London by night assailed us, making lewd suggestions about three in a bed. Were they the reason Malcolm was shunning me?
“I’ve thought of a way to regain your estate,” I said. “If I threaten to tell Chesley White about the way Robert Nicolls seduced and abandoned me for want of a dowry, I think Robert might persuade his father to settle the lawsuit in your favor.”
“Do what you please,” Malcolm said. “Though it sounds like ill-gotten gains to me.”
He began comparing me to Walpole and the Pelhams in my lust for money and raved about his detestation of my mockery of patriotism and the sordid life I had forced him to live. Still unaware of the chaos in his soul, I let the bitterness he had already ignited in my heart burst into a wicked flame, all but consuming my love for him. I could hear the Evil Brother laughing in that dark corner of my soul. I only promised you your heart’s desire.
In the morning, I summoned Barrister McDuffie to discuss the Nicolls situation. The shrewd little fellow thought that my threat might very well settle the lawsuit and readily agreed to play the negotiator. Within the hour Robert showed up at the White Horse Inn for a parley. In the shadowy taproom, he looked sadly diminished, in spite of his stylish clothes.
“This is unworthy of you—of our love,” he said.
For a moment my resolution almost faltered. Was he right? I reminded myself of the mercenary way he had abandoned me and cold anger armored my heart. “The issue here is not love but money. All you have to do is persuade your father to help us regain Malcolm’s property. Get him to deny he and his secretary witnessed George Stapleton’s will. If the signatures are forged—the case is over.”
Robert fiddled with the watch fob dangling from the pocket of his mauve breeches. “I’ll see what my father thinks. May I say this only convinces me that my intuition of your money-grubbing soul was correct?”
“When it comes to money grubbing, you’re hardly in a position to cast stones.”
When Lawyer McDuffie visited later in the day, I told him our prospects looked favorable. “It’s a simple matter of computation,” the little Scotsman chortled. “Old Chesley White is probably worth a half million pounds, every cent of which will go to his daughter. That’s ten times what the Stapleton lands are worth.”
Malcolm joined us and McDuffie told him the good news. He sloshed down a tankard of rum and snarled: “How can the two of you sell that innocent girl into the arms of a whoremaster like Nicolls?”
“Damn you and your morality!” I said. “How can you be so high-minded when you’ve seen the true state of this country. Is there a scrap of morality visible anywhere?”
“There’s nothing I can do about that,” Malcolm said. “But I won’t be a party to selling an innocent girl to a rascal!”
“He’s no more of a rascal than any other fortune hunter she’s likely to encounter,” I said. I managed to convince myself this was more or less true. Robert could be charming when his financial needs were satisfied.
McDuffie, a total cynic about the English like most Scots, agreed with me wholeheartedly. But Malcolm declined to be persuaded. “Ill-gotten gains,” he said, sloshing down more rum. “I don’t know whether I can live with them.”
I had no idea how ominous those words would soon prove to be. “Show me some gains that aren’t ill-gotten, one way or another, in this great and glorious empire,” I said.
The following day, a note from Robert Nicolls was delivered by a panting messenger. The bargain was seated—and it only remained to work out the conditions. These turned out to be rather sticky, since mistrust and resentment were rampant on both sides. Would the lawsuit be settled before Robert married Miss White? Or would the wedding take precedence? I insisted on being first in line and the governor, after some grumbling, gave way.
Georgianna Stapleton was another sticking point. She was enraged by the whole negotiation. Not until Governor Nicolls’s lawyer pointed out that forgery was a hanging offense did she finally consent to signing an agreement which turned over the estate to Malcolm and his brother, to share equally. Jamey had already indicated his readiness to accept the settlement.
To soothe Georgianna’s temper—and no doubt to retain access to her person—Governor Nicolls persuaded the Duke of Newcastle to find her a sinecure in the royal household. She became a lady of the stole, with duties so nebulous she only had to appear once a year at the Queen’s Birthday Ball. This single attendance was worth four hundred pounds from the treasury annually. That was as much—possibly more—than Georgianna was getting from Hampden Hall.
A week later, Robert Foster Nicolls married Elizabeth White at St. Clement Dane’s church on the Strand. As a client of Chesley White, I had to go. Malcolm refused to join me. “Make an excuse for me with your forked tongue,” he said.
“Is this all the thanks I get for regaining your property?”
Again, there was no answer.
When I returned from the wedding, I found Malcolm in the taproom of the White Horse Inn with his friend Hartshorne. They were both somewhat drunk. “I’ve been trying to cheer up this fellow,” Hartshorne said, beaming at Malcolm in his asinine way. “I took him to one of London’s best entertainments, the Royal Cockpit. The cocks were in fine fettle and the lad was soon a match for’m. I’ve seldom seen a fellow as fond of bold wagers. ’Pon my word I had trouble matching him.”
“Did you win?” I said.
“I’m afraid not. Between us we must have lost five hundred pounds, eh, Stapleton?”
Malcolm glowered defiantly at his wife. “At least,” he said.
“Five hundred pounds!” I cried.
“From his Walpole wallet,” Hartshorne said, foreseeing my tantrum.
“We needed every penny of that to begin paying off his father’s debts!” I said. “What about your oath not to make another wager?”
“Oh, I’ve kept that promise long enough. Upward of six months now,” Hartshorne said. “A man isn’t a man, Mrs. Stapleton, unless he bets now and then.”
“Tonight we’re going to Almack’s,” Malcolm said. This was one of the most notorious gambling clubs in London. “I’ll win it back, never fear. You’ll see I’m not the only one who can make a fortune in this family, Wife.”
For the next week Malcolm went off with Hartshorne to Almack’s or some other gambling club or the Royal Cockpit every night and came home drunk, sometimes with hundreds of pounds of winnings which he flaunted at me, sometimes with empty pockets and copies of promissory notes for as much as a thousand pounds. I saw that behind his mad flamboyance, he wanted to lose all our money. Somehow that would purify him of the taint of corruption he associated with it. As for Hartshorne, he was as addicted to gambling as some men were to liquor. He was on his way to losing his second fortune.
In our room, I pleaded with Malcolm. But he remained beyond my reach, inside his perpetual drunkenness. He became even more unreachable when the government began executing the Jacobites at Tyburn.
He went to the beheadings of three noblemen (several others were pardoned) and returned declaring they had died like brave men and he wished he had taken their side.
I persuaded our innkeeper, John Williams, to pay one of his waiters to trail Malcolm to the gambling dens but his only value was the accurate reports he gave me of the latest losses. One night I carried little Hugh to the taproom, where Malcolm and Hartshorne, after a lucky run at Almack’s, were treating the whole establishment. “If not for my sake, will you stop this madness for his sake?” I pleaded.
Malcolm sat the boy on his lap and contemplated him mournfully. The child was half asleep. “I wish I could, I wish I could,” he said.
Chesley White summoned me to his office to show me a squib in the Public Advertiser.
A certain American hero is fast using up the credit he won at Culloden. Rumor has it that he’s now 50,000 pounds in debt at the gaming tables and no one in the administration is inclined to lift a finger for him. Worse rumor has it that his simple noggin has been infected by Patriotism.
White said he would find it hard to extend me credit if the story were true. “It’s nowhere near fifty thousand pounds, I can assure you,” I said, wondering if someone in the government who had not forgiven Malcolm for his outburst against them at the Old Lodge had supplied this information to the paper. It was hardly surprising to discover we were under secret service surveillance.
“Do you have money to pay these debts?” White asked.
“I have ample funds in Amsterdam, where I’ve traded for years,” I lied. “Philip Hooft of the Hooft Bank will vouch for me.”
Chesley White was impressed by the Hooft name. He let me go with renewed promises of friendship and credit which I was using to make extensive purchases of cloth and other goods for the Universal Store. Robert Nicolls and his bride were in Bath, London’s favorite resort, penning White letters full of gossip and good cheer. All I had to show for my scheming was George Stapleton’s debt-laden estate in New Jersey and his quondam son here in London, drunkenly gambling away its value.
Remember the Morning Page 35
