Unbuttoning Miss Matilda. Lucy Ashford
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still had some of her loyal staff from the old days, though goodness knew how they put up with Fitz and his overbearing ways. Soon the maid was back to offer his mother the tisane and some soothing lavender water to dab on her brow while Jack moved away to gaze out of the window. But he wasn’t seeing the street full of carriages or the grand London houses. No, he was seeing the green countryside of Buckinghamshire and an old, pretty manor house just two miles from the market town of Aylesbury. He was picturing the house’s gabled roofs and mullioned windows, and the yellow-pink clusters of honeysuckle that climbed the walls.
Charlwood Manor. His childhood home.
He was remembering how his mother used to wander happily through the garden picking scented blooms for her parlour. How he, as a boy, used to climb trees or go shooting in the woods with the gamekeeper, or maybe roam for miles on his pony pretending to be a soldier, as his father had been.
Two years ago, while Jack was a prisoner of war in France, his mother had remarried. And Charlwood—the house, the gardens and the three tenanted farms—belonged by law to her new husband, Sir Henry Fitzroy, who was an old enemy from Jack’s army days.
When Jack had returned from France he was still physically weak from his long captivity, but straight away he’d gone to tackle Fitz. ‘Why did you lie to my mother, you bastard? There was no ransom demand!’
‘You can protest all you like, dear boy,’ Fitz had drawled. ‘Your mother agreed to marry me because I told her I could get you home. And—one way or another—you’re here.’
‘No thanks to you. You’re a liar and a cheat.’
Some of the colour had retreated from Fitz’s cheeks at that, but he’d merely shrugged. ‘You try proving your wild accusations. If I were you, though, I really wouldn’t bother. During your long absence she needed someone to look after her and she chose me. Charlwood is mine now, Jack. Stop fantasising over the place—it’s time to face up to a new reality, just as your mother has.’
The real irony of it was that Fitz had no taste for country living—in fact he preferred to spend most of the year in this Mayfair mansion. Indeed, Jack thought grimly, its garish opulence suited Fitz right down to the very last crystal chandelier.
The maid had left now and Jack went back to sit beside his mother.
‘Oh, Jack,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so tired.’
‘Rest, Mama. I’m here. Rest.’
Soon her eyes were closed and Jack took her hand to stroke it very softly, though inside his thoughts were ablaze. She’s been married to Fitz for less than two years. But he is destroying her.
Yet what could he do? His mother really believed she’d saved her son’s life by marrying Fitz; but what she didn’t know was that Jack’s freedom owed nothing at all to Fitz—for there had been a secret exchange of prisoners, carefully negotiated between the French and English governments. Fifty French officers were released from prison camps in England in return for fifty English ones, and Jack remembered anew how he and his fellow officers had been told about it one morning in their prison near Lille. Shackled and half-starved, they’d been lined up and told that they were going home.
Only Jack found out soon enough that he had no home to go to.
Suddenly he heard voices in the hall below: the sharp words of an order followed by some servant’s meek reply. After checking his mother was still asleep, Jack left the room, straightened his coat and headed downstairs.
It sounded as if Fitz was back.
* * *
Sir Henry Fitzroy was fifty, twenty-four years older than Jack. He’d been with the British army in Spain for a year and had briefly been Jack’s superior. He had proved himself an atrocious officer.
And now, as Jack descended the stairs, he saw that Fitz was reprimanding poor Perkins about something or other. There was no trace of the army officer about Fitz now—indeed, with his carefully coiffed pale hair and his expensive blue coat with its padded shoulders, he looked more like a city fop than a man of action.
Something must have alerted Fitz to Jack’s presence, perhaps the servant’s straying glance, because Fitz turned round in irritation, only to flinch slightly on seeing who it was. But he recovered quickly enough, waving his hand at Perkins in an impatient gesture of dismissal. ‘Well, well,’ he said, facing Jack full on. ‘I only wish I could say this was a welcome surprise.’
Jack walked towards him. ‘You,’ he said, ‘are a despicable excuse for a man. My mother is not well. She wants to return to the country. She needs fresh air and peace.’
Fitz drew out his snuff box to take a leisurely pinch. ‘My God, Rutherford. Still harping on about Charlwood? The house became mine on my marriage to your mother—do I really have to keep reminding you of the fact?’
‘She only married you,’ Jack stated calmly, ‘because you forged a ransom demand and told her you would pay it.’
Fitz laughed. ‘As I said before—prove it.’
Jack clenched his fists. It just might be possible to extract some evidence of the secret prisoner exchange from the War Office, but his mother had agreed to marry Fitz because of the faked ransom letter. How could Jack prove Fitz’s trickery, when Fitz would surely have destroyed the letter long since? Jack’s mother was no doubt the only person who’d seen it—to force her to bear witness to her new husband’s lies without physical evidence of the forged document could quite possibly destroy her.
‘I will find proof,’ promised Jack. His voice was harsher now. ‘I swear I will. Even if I have to rattle every bone in your body to do it.’
Fitz looked a little pale again, then recovered. ‘Get back to your drinking and gambling dens,’ he tried to scoff. ‘That’s all you’re good for these days—’
He broke off as Jack moved closer. ‘I’m good at fighting,’ Jack said. ‘I’m really very good at that, Fitz. Never forget it—do you hear me? Never.’
Fitz was perspiring now. ‘You lay one finger on me and—’
‘No need to panic.’ Jack took a step back. ‘You’ll be relieved to hear that I’m leaving. But I’m going to prove that it’s you who’s the liar and the cheat. You wait. You just wait.’
* * *
He took a cab back to Paddington, which was stupid of him because it was an unnecessary extravagance. Should have walked, you idiot. It was almost six o’clock by the time he unlocked the door of what was currently his home and he looked around the cluttered shop in mingled exasperation and gloom. That girl dressed as a boy had been absolutely right. He was completely hopeless at running this place.
He ran his fingers over some vases and heard her scornful voice again. ‘They were most likely made last year, not in Holland but in Stoke-on-Trent.’ For heaven’s sake, he’d been mad to even think he could make money from this venture—and now the place was even more of a wreck thanks to those villains who’d paid him a visit this afternoon! Pieces of broken pottery still lurked in every corner.
And so, surrounded by fakery and memories, he sat there with a large glass of cheap red wine for company and steadily drank his way through it while playing with a well-worn pair of carved wooden dice, left hand versus right. That way, a soldier friend once told him, you never lose. You could also, Jack reflected, say that you never won, either.
That particular friend had died in the French prison. Jack had survived, but he’d been wasting precious time ever since. He rubbed his hand tiredly through his wayward black hair, acknowledging that he had to pull himself together.
After returning from France, he’d taken lodgings with some old soldier friends and started playing cards for money in various disreputable gambling dens. He had an excellent memory and the card sharps avoided him because he could always detect their cheating—but by God, it was a risky way of