Sweet Revenge lahm-1

by Andrea Penrose

  Their gazes locked.

  “No,” she responded. “You would have to take my word on it.”

  The floorboards groaned as Henning shifted in his chair.

  “You have to admit,” continued Saybrook, “it’s rather hard to feel completely comfortable in trusting a person who keeps changing like a chameleon.”

  Arianna picked at a thread on her raveled sleeve.

  “A master chef, a mathematical genius, a brilliant actress—have you any other hidden talents to reveal?”

  “I can sail a schooner single-handedly and I’m rather good at picking locks.” Lowering her lashes, she couldn’t resist adding, “And, of course, I’m a dab hand at leading men around by the nose. But then, you know that.”

  The earl stretched out his legs and crossed one booted ankle over the other. “I would imagine that your father found your mathematical genius very . . . useful.”

  Oh, what a team we would make, poppet. With our brains and your beauty, we could be very rich, indeed!

  Arianna looked away for an instant and fought to draw a ragged breath. “Yes. He would have been delighted to form a partnership.”

  “But?” The word was said softly.

  “But it wasn’t a life I wanted,” she replied, then quickly added a laugh. “As you see, the one I have chosen is ever so much more respectable.”

  “I’m simply trying to gather information, Lady Arianna, not make any moral judgments,” said Saybrook. “It would be helpful to know if you aided your father in constructing any business scams. That sort of information could be relevant.”

  “No,” answered Arianna tightly. “I did not. When I was a little girl, my father hinted that we might . . . profit from my talents. But when I expressed my feelings on cheating, he never raised the subject again.” She swallowed hard. “Though it must have cost him dear to hold his tongue. At the end, we were dancing on the razor’s edge of poverty.”

  “Thank you.” The earl carefully rearranged the folds of his coat. “Now, getting back to the numbers on the table—”

  “You believe me?” blurted out Arianna.

  “I didn’t say that.” The earl allowed a faint smile. “But we are straying from the subject.” A pause. “So it is your opinion that these equations indicate that the new company will seek a partnership with the government?”

  The tension eased inside her. “Given the size of the sums involved, it’s hard to imagine any other explanation.”

  “I possess no financial acumen, so what I’ve never understood is how did the South Sea Bubble expand to such mammoth proportions before it burst?” mused Henning.

  “Having just read a great deal about it, I shall try to explain,” responded Arianna. “The real turning point came in 1717, when the King admitted to Parliament that the country’s finances were troubled and that the national debt needed to be reduced. In reply, the South Sea Company presented a proposal to raise its capital to twelve million pounds by selling a new offering of stock.” She glanced down at the faded numbers. “Due to canny promotion by Sir John Blunt, the name of the South Sea Company was continually in the public eye. So, despite the fact that the company was earning virtually nothing from its South American trade, shares in the company were in great demand and the directors were eager to keep increasing the value of the company.”

  “And the public allowed the wool to be pulled over its eyes?” grunted Henning.

  “Part of the frenzy was fanned by what was going on in France, Baz,” pointed out the earl. “Your fellow Scotsman John Law had been invited to come in and revamp the entire banking system there, and as a result, the economy was booming. Emboldened by the success of his financial theories, Law established the Mississippi Company, a similar New World trading venture. Its stock was soaring, and the French—everyone from humble shopkeepers to princely lords—were growing rich on paper.”

  “The English watched and were jealous. Visions of unbounded wealth were now dancing like sugar plums in the heads of every man and woman. And the South Sea Company saw a way to profit from the frenzy,” said Arianna. “So in 1720, the directors presented a plan to the government that would virtually eliminate the national debt.”

  “They were not deterred by the expected failure of the Mississippi scheme, even though by then its flaws were beginning to show,” added the earl. “The gentlemen of the South Sea Company and the Sword Blade Bank were arrogant enough to believe they could avoid the faux pas of the French and stretch their loans out forever without default.”

  Arianna nodded in agreement. “Sales of the company’s shares on the stock exchange now reached fever point.”

  Neither man made a comment.

  “Sir John Blunt took every opportunity to talk up the price of the stock. Free-trade agreements between England and Spain were said to be imminent, and with them the promise that New World gold and silver, along with countless other luxuries, would soon be pouring into the country in exchange for English cotton and woolen goods. In short, the South Sea Company would grow rich beyond imagination, and every one hundred pounds invested in its shares would produce huge dividends each year to investors.”

  Closing her eyes for a moment, Arianna tried not to think of her father and his desperate longing for easy money. “The Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Aislabie, championed the South Sea proposal, while a few voices of reason, led by Robert Walpole, warned of its danger. Indeed, the Earl of Cowper compared the bill to the Trojan Horse, saying that though the country welcomed it as a fabulous gift, it actually held the seeds of treachery and destruction within its core.”

  “Which, it turned out, was essentially true,” said Saybrook.

  A sudden gust of wind rattled the window glass.

  “Er, correct me if I am wrong,” ventured Henning. “But wasn’t there some sort of law passed around the time of the South Sea Bubble prohibiting the creation of joint stock companies?” He pursed his lips. “The Royal Something-Or-Other Act.”

  “The Royal Exchange and London Assurance Corporation Act, passed in 1719,” clarified Saybrook. “Which required that any new company wishing to establish itself as a joint stock venture needed to be incorporated by an act of Parliament or by Royal Charter.”

  “Why?” asked Arianna.

  “Because on seeing how the South Sea Company parlayed naught but grandiose promises into actual money, a great many clever men began establishing companies and selling stock to a gullible public,” explained the earl. “Some of the ventures included making a wheel for perpetual motion and transmuting quicksilver into a fine, malleable metal.” He paused for a fraction. “And my favorite—carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, as yet undecided.”

  “You are joking,” she said.

  “Unfortunately not,” replied Saybrook. “This scheme showed, more completely than any other, the utter madness of the people at the time. The gentleman who concocted the venture stated in his prospectus that the required capital was a half million pounds, to be raised by selling five thousand shares of one hundred pounds each. By paying a deposit of a mere two pounds per share, each subscriber would be entitled to one hundred pounds per annum per share. How this immense profit could be made, he did not condescend to say.”

  Henning snorted.

  “The fellow did, however, promise that in one month the full details would be revealed, at which time the balance of the purchase price would be due. By three p.m. of the first day, he had sold one hundred shares—two thousand pounds in five hours. Deciding that was a decent profit, he fled to the Continent and was never heard of again.”

  “Is this Royal Exchange and Assurance Act still in effect?” asked Henning.

  The earl nodded.

  The surgeon made a face. “Then there seems little chance that our present-day conspirators can put their plan into action. I can’t quite see Parliament agreeing to establish a private stock company, not with Napoleon once again marching east.”

  For a moment there was silence, and then
. . .

  “PING.”

  Both Arianna and Henning shot the earl a puzzled look.

  “That,” he announced, “is the sound of the penny dropping.”

  A long moment of silence greeted the statement.

  Then Henning’s jaw followed suit. “Good God, you think that may in some way explain why the Prince was poisoned?”

  “When you look at it from that angle, it begins to make some sense,” said the earl. “If Prinny dies, the Regency falls to his brother, the Duke of York.”

  “Who last year was embroiled in that sordid scandal over selling military commissions.” Arianna smiled grimly. “No matter that it was his mistress who was likely the guilty party, someone seeking to buy influence would assume there was a good chance of success with York.”

  “All the King’s sons are profligate wastrels,” pointed out Henning. “Prinny is always in need of money, too.”

  Saybrook rocked back in his chair. “Seeing as Lady Spencer was his latest paramour, we can assume that she tried to coax a charter out of him, but was refused.”

  The surgeon made a face. “It’s possible,” he conceded. “But we have no proof, only conjecture.”

  “True,” agreed the earl. “And yet the vague specters we chase are beginning to take on some flesh.” Looking up at the ceiling, he pursed his lips in thought.

  Arianna mulled over what she had heard. Was such a scheme possible? she wondered. What asset could a private company offer to make the risk of poisoning a royal worthwhile?

  “Especially when we consider the shipping records obtained by Lady Arianna,” added Saybrook.

  She frowned. “How so?”

  The earl’s chair fell back down to earth. “Like you, Baz and I were busy last night. Acting on a tip from one of his friends, we visited the West India docks. The cargo of a certain ship had been off-loaded in unusual secrecy, so it seemed worth taking a look inside the warehouse.”

  “And was it?” she asked.

  “Perhaps,” answered the earl. “The goods were an interesting assortment—spices, cocoa, precious metals, a powerful narcotic. All goods that would generate a handsome profit if sold on a large scale. The curious thing was, none were in great enough quantity, save perhaps the narcotic, to have made the voyage worthwhile.”

  “They looked to be samples,” added Henning.

  Saybrook gave a small nod. “Perhaps,” he repeated.

  “I have a question,” said Arianna, after considering the information for a moment. Her head was beginning to swim. “The original South Sea Company’s targeted trading area was the Spanish colonies of the Americas, correct?”

  “That’s right,” replied the earl. “Including Mexico and the large expanse of territory in what now is the United States.”

  “So we are talking about an area that is fabulously rich in natural resources.” She frowned, unsure what it was that she was missing. “And yet the Bubble burst because the company and its stock was essentially worthless. They failed to make a penny of profit.”

  “The South Sea Company didn’t collapse because the riches weren’t there. It collapsed because it had no access.” Saybrook’s expression turned grim. “Regardless of the monopoly granted by the English government, the Navío de Permiso—the trading rights granted by the King of Spain—consisted of one ship per year. It was later increased to three, but that wasn’t exactly going to generate an armada of profit.”

  “Lady Arianna raises an excellent point,” mused Henning aloud. “Why go to all the expense and risk of creating another South Sea Company—assuming she is right in her mathematical speculation—when Spain is our enemy? Napoleon’s brother Joseph sits on the throne, so it seems rather absurd to think he would grant an English company access to the riches of Spain’s New World colonies.”

  “Access,” she repeated softly.

  “Let us keep speculating for a moment . . .” Saybrook straightened slightly in his chair. “Imagine that Napoleon is successful this time in his march east, and forces the Russian tsar to make peace. Our Eastern allies will be forced to do the same. And so will England, for we cannot fight him alone.”

  Henning grunted. “Peace at last, which as far as I am concerned would be a bloody good thing.”

  “You are not alone in thinking that,” said Saybrook. “Napoleon would also welcome an end to the unrelenting wars.” He paused, as if suddenly distracted by some other thought. A spider crept across the wood and he watched it disappear into one of the cracks before continuing. “So I imagine that he would be enormously grateful to anyone who could help ensure that the forces opposing him did not forge a more united alliance.”

  Arianna blinked. “The poisoned chocolate—”

  “Could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak,” finished the earl. “Not only would it offer a better chance to obtain a royal charter, but it would also earn a reward from a grateful Napoleon, for the Prince Regent’s death would throw our country—and our Eastern allies—into chaos.”

  “You think the conspirators behind this trading company have made a deal with the French?” asked Henning. “In return for weakening our government, and forcing a peace treaty, they have been promised a rich reward? But that would be . . . treason.”

  “It would also be a stroke of brilliance, and we know they are very, very clever. Think on it—if England makes peace, the Emperor would firmly control Spain and the rights to grant trading access to its New World colonies.”

  “Good God,” whispered Arianna. “The conspirators do away Prinny to put his brother on the throne. They bribe York for a royal charter, which makes their company legitimate, and then they turn to France . . .” She paused. “It all begins to weave together.”

  “Out of speculative threads,” reminded Henning. “It’s a cloth fashioned out of pure conjecture.”

  “Indeed,” agreed Saybrook. “But don’t forget we have a very real new clue, which may help us stitch together the truth.”

  “What clue?” demanded Arianna.

  “In addition to discovering the assortment of goods from the New World in the warehouse, we also found a waistcoat button wedged between the bales,” answered Saybrook.

  “A button?” She made a face. “How the devil is that going to help? There must be . . .” Running through a few quick mental calculations caused her frown to pinch tighter. “Suffice it to say, there must be millions of buttons in London.”

  “Not of this particular button. It has a distinctive design etched on it.”

  “I see.” She studied his face for a moment before adding, “I take it by your supremely smug expression that you recognized the marking.”

  His mouth twitched at the corners. “Correct.”

  “Bloody hell, Sandro, why didn’t you say so earlier?” growled Henning.

  “I wanted to be absolutely certain, Baz,” replied Saybrook. “As it turns out, the button belongs to the Marquess of Cockburn. He has them made up specially at a shop off Bond Street.”

  “It could have come from a servant’s cast-off livery,” pointed out Arianna, “or some such garment. No doubt the marquess has a large household, so there are any number of ways it could have ended up where you found it.”

  “I think not. This one is solid gold and the particular design is only for the earl’s personal use,” he said. “Indeed, I happened to overhear him showing it off to his friends at my club last week.”

  “You are sure?” pressed Henning. “We can’t afford going off on a wild-goose chase.”

  “This bird is quite unmistakable.” The earl took the button out of his pocket and held it up for them to see.

  Arianna winced as the flash of gold suddenly sparked a jumbled memory. A silk waistcoat, bright with fancy buttons. A watch chain hung with ornate fobs. Her father’s laughter. . . . But then, it was gone—so quickly that it must have been only a figment of her imagination.

  “Is something wrong, Lady Arianna?” asked Saybrook.

  “I was blinded by the
reflection for just a moment,” she murmured, rubbing at her eyes. “Please continue.”

  “As I was saying, the design is distinctive. It’s a strutting cock, for the marquess fancies himself quite a ladies’ man.”

  Henning cleared his throat and spit on the floor.

  “What makes it even more interesting is that Cockburn is a high-ranking official in Whitehall—involved in the ministry of trade,” went on Saybrook. “But that’s not all.” A pause. “His cousin was Major Crandall.”

  Henning emitted a low whistle.

  “Grentham’s top military attaché,” said Arianna, feeling a chill skate down her spine.

  “But it was Grentham who asked you to take charge of the investigation,” pointed out Henning.

  “Yes, me. A man by all accounts befuddled by opium,” responded Saybrook. “Then he and Crandall all but painted a bull’s-eye on the French chef’s back.”

  “Clever,” conceded the surgeon.

  “Very,” said Arianna. “I can see where having a so-called independent investigator go through the motions of tracking down the guilty party deflects any suspicion from the real villains.”

  “Yes, perhaps. And yet . . .” Saybrook’s gaze held hers. “There is something that is bothering me about all of this.” A pause. “Several things, in fact.”

  Something in his tone made her body tense.

  “Concord is a clever man,” he went on. “However, to me it feels like far too ambitious a plan for him to have put together.”

  “Well, in this case your feeling is wrong,” she retorted. “Of course it’s Concord.” Of course it’s Concord, she repeated to herself. “Remember, it was Concord who I overheard talking about sword blades and blunt.”

  “Was it?” asked Saybrook softly. “You were in the garden, and the voices were muffled. Maybe it was Kellton.”

  Loath to admit he might be right, Arianna remained stubbornly silent.

  “Grentham and Cockburn have far more influence in the government,” he mused. “Why would they be taking orders from Concord?”

  “It’s always smart for the head of a havey-cavey operation to appear less important than his minions,” insisted Arianna. “Concord is more than clever—he is cunning. Which explains why he keeps his connections well hidden.”