“Ah, the younger brother,” Lance murmured, making his bow.
Denny laughed. “When Smithson said that Liswood had inherited, Harry, it crossed my mind that I might have been mistaken in thinking I saw you on St James’s Street, and perhaps it was Arthur instead. You are rather alike, you know.”
“Lance Chamberlain? The painter?” Tuffnell said. “And how do you come to know our reclusive friend, then, Chamberlain?”
“For the past seven years he has been my valet, using the name Denzil Pendleton,” Lance said.
The entrance of the footman bearing a tray of decanters and glasses, followed by another with pastries, muted the effusions of surprise, but as soon as they had gone, and Mannerdale and Tuffnell had begun to ask more, Lance said, “Never mind about that. Let us start at the beginning, with the thrust to the heart.”
“Oh, it started long before that,” Mannerdale said, filling a plate with pastries and tucking in. “It started at Adderby. Tell him about Adderby, Julius.”
“Certainly, but I think my brothers should be here,” Denny said. “Augustus and Marcus are in the coffee room, and Augustus was my second, just as Arthur was yours.”
A footman was dispatched to the coffee room, and after a few minutes, two men, showing a marked similarity to Denny, entered.
“I knew it!” the elder said, as soon as he set eyes on Julius. “I was sure you were not dead and would turn up like a bad penny one day.” Laughing, he wrapped Denny in a tight embrace, then held him at arm’s length. “You look well,” he said in surprised tones. “Very well. Dear God, Julius, but it is good to see you again. You cannot imagine… ten years thinking you were dead! How could you stay away for so long, and not a word to anyone? We have been…” His voice wavered. “Dammit, it is good to have you back!”
“Why on earth did you imagine me dead?” Denny said. “You saw me onto the packet ship yourself, after all.”
“No, no, no! Not so fast!” Lance said, laughing. “Begin at the beginning, gentlemen. We will get to the packet ship in due course. Adderby… it started at Adderby, you said.”
“Adderby Hall,” Denny said. “The ancestral home of the Wyatts in Kent. When I went up to Eton and met Harry there, we became friends, for some unfathomable reason—”
“One of life’s great mysteries, old boy,” Mannerdale mumbled, through a mouthful of pastry.
“Indeed. However it was, I visited his home and he visited Adderby, and so inveigled his way into my family’s hearts.”
“Can I help it if they adored my charming and amiable self?” Mannerdale said, with a wide grin, accepting a glass of wine from his brother. “And that was how I met Dorothea.”
“My cousin,” Denny said. “An orphan and heiress, and since my father and Harry’s were the best of friends too, they concocted a match between Harry and Dorothea.”
“We were just children, then,” Mannerdale said, “but when we grew up and Dorothea came out, I dutifully offered for her and she dutifully accepted.”
“Duty!” Denny said sharply. “It was rather more than that on her side, Harry. You broke her heart when you jilted her.”
“You might think so, but it was not the case. She accepted me because she was beset by fortune hunters, and since she had to marry, I was the least hideous prospect on offer. But she never loved me — she was in love with a man called Robert Barker.”
“I saw on the family tree that she married an R Barker, not even given the courtesy of an Esquire after his name. Who the devil is he?”
Mannerdale laughed. “A yeoman farmer, would you believe? A very prosperous one, and in no need of her dowry, but he would never have been accepted as a suitor by her uncle.”
“No, my father had ambitions for her,” Denny said. “If you had not come up to scratch, he had a long list of sprigs of the nobility to press on her. He would not have looked so low as a yeoman farmer, no matter how prosperous.”
“Precisely. But when she came to me and explained how it was… Julius, I had to help her, you must see that.”
“Helpher? You have a strange idea of helping!” Denny said wrathfully. “You ruined her, Harry! Andthenyou jilted her!”
“No! I never touched her, I give you my word.”
“Then… what was that all about? You let me call you out, even though—? You have always been an idiot, but that makes no sense, even by your low standards, Harry.”
Mannerdale laughed. “I can see why you might think that, but the original intention was to start a rumour thatsomeonehad ruined her, and then I would jilt her when I found out. That way, no one else would want her either. She would go home in disgrace and her farmer would step forward to scoop her up. But somehow the rumour got mangled, and I was blamed. I was not at all surprised you called me out, but did you have to be so damnably good with a blade? If you had just pinked me… but the grass was wet, I slipped and there we are. One Harry with a blade to the chest.”
“So much blood…” Denny said softly. “I cannot believe you survived.”
“No one could,” Tuffnell said. “The useless sawbones said he was done for, took his fee and rode off. You and Augustus were making your own escape before the constables got wind of it, and it was left to the coachman and me to get Harry into the coach. Have you any idea what a dead weight a grown man can be? Ha! Dead weight! What a good joke, eh? We had wrestled him half into the carriage when he informed us he was not quite dead by screaming fit to raise the dead. Ha! Raise the dead! Honestly, I would have laughed if it were not so terrifyingly awful. Old Thomas, the coachman, was trying to shush him, Harry was screaming his head off, and I kept dropping arms and legs because there was so much blood… such a nightmare. And then we had to drive like the devil to find a sawbones — a decent one, that is, to patch him up.”
“He did a good job,” Denny said.
