The whole sad story slowly emerged: she could not bear the notion of marrying Victor, he was repulsive to her, but what would become of Ned if she refused? It was all too much—particularly since Sir Hart would almost certainly disinherit Ned if he should ever find out the truth.
‘Indeed!’ said Alan grimly. ‘Quite understandable if he did. Is this the whole truth, Ned?’
Ned lowered his head, mutely agreeing. Alan’s rage drained out of him and he flung Ned away so that he ended up against the wall.
‘Victor Loring! You were proposing to sacrifice your sister to that gentlemanly piece of filth who can’t so much as treat a horse decently! He has your IOUs?’
Ned fingered his damaged throat and nodded a yes.
‘Will you leave him to me?’ The rage reared again inside Alan. It demanded satisfaction, was cold, not hot—which made it the more terrifying.
‘What will you do?’ quavered Ned.
‘I don’t know yet. Something.’
‘Oh, God, Alan, if you could save me I’d be so grateful.’
That you would sell Eleanor to me instead, thought Alan disgustedly, but he did not say so aloud, wondering what all this had done to his growing rapport with her.
She stood up, drying her tears. ‘Oh, Alan, please be careful. There is something else you ought to know. However tempted I might have been, I would never have obliged Ned in such a way—not even to save him.’
‘But he asked you. I have no doubt, too, that Loring suggested the whole rotten scheme to him. No, you need not answer me, Eleanor, I know the truth now, about you and Ned both, and further talk will only cause you pain.’
You’re the only man in the family, he thought, barring the unknown Sir Hartley Hatton, that is. He could not help comparing her favourably with feckless Ned. Likeable and charming he might be on the surface, but there was nothing to him, and by all accounts his grandfather, the poor devil, had no one who might be the family’s saviour, given that Beastly Beverley was the next heir!
Below-stairs the duty footman from the entrance hall dashed into the kitchen where the staff, Staines included, were drinking tea.
‘It’s all gone quiet in the study,’ he reported excitedly. ‘I thought that young Dilhorne was going to murder Master Ned, that I did. One good thing—poor Miss Eleanor won’t be marrying Victor Loring after all.’
‘Listened at the door did you?’ said Alan’s servant Gurney, putting down his teacup. He did not expect an answer. ‘Put things right, has he?’
‘What I want to know,’ said Staines magisterially, ‘is how he does it? Young Dilhorne, I mean.’ He looked expectantly at Gurney.
Gurney shrugged his shoulders. ‘I dunno. I only know that he puts things right, does Golden Boy. Put things right for me, didn’t he? When Lord Gresham couldn’t. Put them right at Dilhorne’s—and more beside.’
Golden Boy was his nickname for Alan, one which his hearers delightedly seized on.
‘One thing,’ said Gurney, hopefully holding out his cup to Cook for more tea, ‘I wouldn’t advise anyone to cross him, or get on the wrong side of him.’
‘Handsome, though, isn’t he? And he always speaks polite to me, too,’ said one of the parlour maids dreamily.
‘Polite to everyone,’ said Gurney, ‘except those he don’t like, of course.’
‘He didn’t like Master Ned much this afternoon,’ sniggered the footman. ‘Good idea of yours, Mr Staines, to steer him into the study.’
Staines put a finger by his nose, and murmured, ‘A good servant looks after the best interests of his masters.’
‘Aye, aye,’ said Gurney, and drank his tea down before conversation moved on to other upstairs gossip.
He wondered privately how Golden Boy was going to trick his way out of this mess and put things right for flighty Ned Hatton.
Chapter Five
Pushing Ned Hatton further and further into debt had seemed a good idea to Victor Loring. After that, piling pressure on him to persuade Eleanor to accept him had seemed an even better one. It appeared, however, that his plan was not working as well as he had hoped.
Eleanor was now avoiding the Lorings. She was not at home when they called, although an unhappy Caroline had discovered that she had been at home to others on the days when she had been refused. She had also ceased to visit them. She had deliberately avoided the whole family when they had seen her in Hyde Park and, all in all, it seemed that stupid Ned Hatton was living up to his name. He couldn’t even persuade his sister to save him.
So Ned would have to be pushed even harder. He could threaten to write to Sir Hart, demanding that he pay Ned’s debts of honour, or he could run him even deeper into the mire by persuading him to gamble at Rosie’s yet again, with the bait that this time luck would be with him and he could recoup some of what he had lost.
The trouble was that Ned, strapped for cash, was now dodging him as well.
Alan was doing some planning of his own. Several options were open to him. He could pay Ned’s debts himself, but that would merely serve to destroy Ned even further, by making him think that all his scrapes could be easily solved by the actions of others, not his own.
On the other hand he had promised to extricate Ned from this pit of his own making, but how? And by what means? And when—and if—he had done that, he might then try to steer Ned on to the straight and narrow path of virtue, by threats as well as bribes.
One ploy he could use was his strange resemblance to Ned, but Victor might be on the look-out for that, so it could be dangerous. On the other hand Alan knew that he was a better mimic than he had already revealed. It was not only voices which he could master, but body movements, too, and he was prepared to take the risk if Ned was. Ned, though, would always be the weak link. He would have to trust him to play his part correctly, and pray that his trust would not be misplaced.
His plan of action decided, Alan outlined it to Ned, and with all the foolish optimism which made him such a bad gambler Ned was mad to adopt it immediately, without even examining it for possible weak links.
Alan told him severely, ‘Think it over. It might go wrong. You might end up in even greater debt to Victor, if, as I believe, he is rigging the cards.’
‘Never,’ said Ned with the sublime innocence of a pigeon ready for yet another plucking, ‘not Victor. He wouldn’t cheat, he’s a gentleman.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Alan sardonically. ‘That makes him pure in heart, I suppose. Do you think that a man who would blackmail another man’s sister into marrying him wouldn’t stoop to cheat at cards?’
Alan was sure that Victor was a cheat. The Patriarch had spent many happy hours warning his sons of what cardsharps might get up to. He had shown them all the tricks of the professional gambler’s trade, including rigging and marking the cards, false shuffles, false cuts, sleight of hand, how to cheat at Find the Lady as well as the cogging and switching of dice.
‘I am telling you this,’ he had said sternly, ‘not so that you shall do it yourself, but so that others can’t do it to you. Watch for the warning signs, and the moment that you see them make an excuse to leave the game at once.’
Alan had watched Victor at play, and had seen all the signs for which his father had told him to look.
It was Eleanor who almost prevented him from carrying out his daring plan of rescue for Ned. He had been working in the City and arrived at Stanton House in the late afternoon to find Ned was visiting Hyde Park but that Eleanor was in.
She had spent her day with Charles in the schoolroom and then in thinking about herself, Ned and the Hattons generally. She was compelled to acknowledge that her affections, even though she had known him for such a short time, were fixed on Alan.
Something in his manner, the affectionate way in which he teased her, as though he was the ideal brother whom she now knew that she had never had, encouraged her to think that he might have something of a tendre for her. The trouble was that she had seen little of him recently because he was so occup
ied by his responsibilities to Dilhorne’s, and now by this wretched business of Ned’s. But she was sensible enough to admit that the world was not only made for love and pleasure, however much the novels which she read might suggest.
She sighed. She also had to admit that men had the whole world to rove in. Alan, yes, and even Ned, had occupations and business to fill their days as well as a range of other interests. She, on the other hand, had had to fight in order to spend a few serious hours a week with Charles’s tutor instead of spending her life talking about balls and bonnets, giggling over young men and engaging in the vapid world of making a good marriage where she would most likely be neglected in favour of horse and hound.
It might have been better for her to have been born a boy—until she thought that she could have turned out like Ned and, much though she loved her brother, that thought filled her with horror.
She was seated, trying to read, when Alan arrived. She put her book down and said in her pleasant and straightforward manner, which contrasted so strongly with that of most of the other women whom he had met in London, ‘You always come at the right moment, Alan. Ned is still out, which is fortunate since I wish to speak to you privately—whatever the conventions dictate.’
The stigmata of tiredness were on her face, but somehow Eleanor seemed more beautiful in her worry than other women in their vapid serenity.
‘Firstly,’ she continued, ‘I will ring for tea, so as to make things a little more proper. I know that men and women should never talk seriously to one another. Tea will confer frivolity.’
Alan laughed at that. ‘Dinner, I suppose, being a stage further on, allows us to rise to higher things.’
‘Quite so. Slightly weightier matters may be discussed. Tea is for bonnets and balls,’ she finished, echoing her own thoughts of a moment ago.
‘I must remember that,’ he told her. ‘What is this serious matter you wish to raise with me?’
Eleanor put her finger to her lips: Staines and the parlour maid were arriving with the tea-board. She was not surprised that Alan’s answer had been a straightforward one. Most men would have responded by murmuring, Do not worry your little head about such serious matters, my dear. Leave that to us.
The servants gone, she began to pour the tea, saying, ‘I am troubled that you might put yourself at some risk by attempting to help Ned. Whilst I want to save him from Sir Hart’s anger, I do not wish it to be done at your expense. Pray do not think me forward in raising this matter with you—and alone. After all, Ned involved me, and then we both involved you—to my regret.’
Alan put his cup and saucer carefully down. He had not yet learned the art of talking whilst trying to balance tea, bread and butter and cake.
‘I’m flattered that you should care enough to wish that I may not find myself at a loss. But I owe Ned a great deal, you know, and I would like to do him a good turn.’
‘You owe Ned?’ Eleanor was surprised.
‘Yes. Oh, I suppose it happened through the chance resemblance, and Frank Gresham mistaking me for Ned, but after that Ned chose to introduce me to his world, where I met his family and friends—and you. My life in England has been made pleasant and easier by his kindness.’
‘That may be so, but still—’ She looked at him, her eyes troubled.
His answer was swift and considered. ‘I’m sorry to appear to rebuff you when you have done me the honour of considering possible consequences for me so carefully. Of course, you are right to be worried. I have warned Ned that matters might go awry. But…’
It was his turn to pause.
Eleanor finished the sentence for him. ‘But Ned is foolishly optimistic, as usual. Tell me, Alan, why is it that although you are little older than Ned, Frank and the rest, you seem to be so much more worldly-wise and…harder? Forgive me for calling you that, but no other word will suit.’
This amused Alan, as well as revealing to him that Eleanor was showing a shrewdness foreign to Ned. They might be brother and sister but they could scarcely be more different in character. He decided to tell her the unacceptable truth. She seemed to be able to take it.
‘It is because none of you have genuine occupations or responsibilities. You are all idlers for whom other people do the real work. I was not brought up as a rich man’s son, Eleanor. When I was sixteen years old I was made to work at Campbell’s Wharf as a common labourer, lifting freight. After that I did a stint in the brickfields my father owned before I was promoted to hauling goods between Sydney and Paramatta for him.
‘At night I was made to study, not only Latin and Greek, but book-keeping and mathematics. When I had mastered them I became a junior clerk in my father’s counting house, no favours granted. My brother Thomas followed a similar path. I was resentful of such drudgery, but he was not. Thomas was always steady and serious whilst I was wild.
‘I spent one summer as a deck-hand on the Macao run and back, and saw the world with nothing in my pocket but a deck-hand’s pay. It makes a man see true to do that. There were times I hated the Patriarch, when he allowed his workmen to bait me on the wharf as though I were any chance-hired boy—and for other humiliations, too. What was I a rich man’s son for if I were to suffer as though I were not?
‘But now? Now I cannot properly describe my gratitude for what he made me do—and I know that I had it easy compared with his life at my age. So, when I look at Ned and the rest…’
He fell silent, but he did not need to finish.
‘I see,’ said Eleanor quietly. ‘Yes, that explains a great deal.’
That Alan had been wild surprised her, he seemed so steady—until she thought of the way in which he had dominated Ned. Her understanding of his difference from all the young men she knew was heightened by what he had told her. It would have done Ned good to live like that, she thought, but the impossibility of it almost made her smile.
She said no more. Alan’s plan to deal with Victor would go ahead.
Alan, drinking his tea and admiring her calm self-control, thought of all that he had not told her of that bygone summer on the sea. Of the hard work and the comradeship, the fun and the fighting and drinking in the ports they had visited. He remembered the rich man’s widow in Macao who had taken the eager boy he had been into her bed.
He thought, too, of how he had argued and fought with the Patriarch to avoid going, before he gave in and finally consented. On his return, bronzed and muscular, a man among men, he had said simply to him, ‘Thank you, Father,’ because in some ways it had been the finest experience he had ever had, despite the hazing and the back-breaking work.
Dealing with Ned and Victor was child’s play after what the Patriarch had put him through!
The plot against Victor Loring depended for its success on two things—making a successful switch between himself and Ned at some point in the evening, without Victor detecting it, and Alan’s own ability to defeat a man who was cheating without being caught himself. One advantage was that if Victor thought that he was playing stupid Ned Hatton he would be careless.
Victor, determined to turn the screw on Ned, was delighted to find him willing to be friendly again. He was not to know that Ned was following Alan’s instructions. So friendly was he that Victor found it easy to persuade him to indulge in yet another night’s play at Rosie’s, where he would consign Ned to a ruin so dire that even Eleanor’s resolve might be broken.
‘Time for you to try to get your revenge,’ he said generously. ‘Piquet shall be our game, and to give you a chance to recoup, let the winner take all.’
He was a little surprised that Ned agreed to these terms immediately—he must be even more desperate than Victor had thought he was.
He arrived at Stanton House to collect Ned, to find that that colonial savage Dilhorne was there: he had no wish to have him watching over Ned like a bear leader with his charge. He was only too relieved to learn that Dilhorne was going on to the Palmerstons’ reception that night—every dam’d fool in London seemed to have nothin
g better to do than make a pet of him.
Eleanor was there, too, and greeted him so pleasantly that Victor’s hopes rose again. She was not accompanying Alan to the reception—she said that she had a migraine coming and consequently Almeria would cancel also. Almeria was not in the plot, but had taken Eleanor’s explanation at face value. Ned having cried off as well, Alan would have to go on his own.
Ned rapidly consented to visit a dive near the Haymarket before they went on to Rosie’s, where they both drank heavily. At least Ned drank heavily, on Alan’s instructions, and Victor was more careful. Rosie’s was crowded when they finally reached it.
Several of the habitués shrugged knowingly when they saw Victor steering his unsteady pigeon towards the table of drinks whilst loudly promising the half-cut Ned a good game. The light in Rosie’s was not good, a fact that had influenced Alan in his plan to change places with Ned before he began to play with Victor.
‘Must go outside,’ said Ned shortly afterwards, ‘can’t play you in this state.’
He stumbled into the smelly yard at the back, where a privy stood. Alan, having earlier shown his face at the reception, had already arrived there after scaling a low wall. He was waiting for Ned to appear.
Fortunately the night was fine, and they changed places as quickly as they could in the shadow between the wall and the privy. Ned was wearing a ruby stick-pin, distinctive rings, and a gold hunter given to him by Sir Hart. He pulled them all off and handed them over to Alan, whose clothing was identical to his own.
They had originally intended to change coats, but Alan’s more massive shoulders had prevented that. Fortunately Ned’s rings fitted Alan, just. Alan found that the seal ring with the Hatton eagle on it was the most difficult to force on to his finger, but he finally managed to make it fit.
Impatient Ned swore a little at the delay, but Alan was coolness itself. He hoisted Ned over the wall after he had promised to go home immediately by way of various back streets: it would not do for him to be seen.
A Strange Likeness Page 9
