“Rothwell! Expect you’ve come to haul your cub out by the scruff.”
Spinning, he came face to face with Scrope Berdmore Davies – a somewhat successful gamester who ran with the poetic set, and who had once held a vowel from Ernest totalling some two hundred guineas…which Davies had then lost to Lord Byron. For the Rothwells’ guineas to have passed onto that wild-haired debaucher so he could quill more romantic drivel still rankled.
“Perhaps. Where is he?” The sooner he could depart this den of thieves, the quicker he might be able to return to Evelyn. He disliked the way she’d run. Worried she’d thought their encounter an error of judgement.
“Losing heavily at the whist table,” Davies imparted, tipping his glass towards the corner, brow raised, viscous port slopping. “Us men are allured by our appetites to our own destruction.”
Casper sniffed. “A plagiarism of Jonathan Swift.”
The fellow grinned, brow still in flight. “An improvement, I’d say.” And he sloped off to the temptation of faro.
Declining to roll his eyes, Casper sauntered to the whist tables, dodging the flutters of lashes and goblets of wine.
He knew how these places functioned. In the soft glow of lanternlight, they appeared convivial. Fine grub, decent liquor and comely women induced a breezy atmosphere and young sprigs of fashion were lured in like trout to a worm.
They might win for the first few hours, be overwhelmed by the profuse banknotes and gold covering the tables, but then the losing would start…
Cursing, he sighted Ernest seated with the newly wed Harry as whist partner. But their opposition…
Oh hell, Coaxing Thomas and The Mathematician.
Did Ernest not realise he was up against two of the most superior Captain Sharps in London Town, or bastard cheats as Casper preferred to call such dishonest profligates.
Obviously not, as Mother’s sapphire necklace lay in front of Coaxing Thomas.
He hastened his way to the table and halted at Ernest’s side – an empty bottle of champagne lay discarded on the floor, a doxy half-sprawled in his lap.
“That will be all for tonight,” Casper drawled, flipping the woman a coin. “No more to be had here.” The flirt-gill winked and flounced off whilst Ernest slumped with head low.
Leisurely, the Mathematician stood and gave an impudent bow. A thin man with a foxy semblance, he’d a smug smirk that made Casper wish they were alone at his boxing club.
“Ah, Your Grace. I believe your sibling might have some vowels for you.”
A finger stroked the sapphire of their mother’s necklace as the chitty-faced Coaxing Thomas snickered. “Shame big brother has come to cart you home, eh, Brook? We’ve had such fun.”
“Ernest?”
His brother glanced up through bleary stricken eyes and Casper noted him tense, awaiting the embarrassment of a severe set-down in front of peers and friends. Not one sennight ago, Casper would indeed have hauled him home like some recalcitrant greenhorn or left him to sink in the mire, but…
Ernest had forever been warm-hearted and generous, and Casper had seen that as a weakness, seen a man easily duped. Now he wondered if instead of seeking to drive that warm-heartedness away, he should have welcomed it, encouraged it, but endeavoured to impart a shrewdness alongside.
Whilst Casper had been building a cage of gold to surround his brother from hurt, he’d left the doors wide open, his brother defenceless.
“The evening is still young, is it not, gentlemen?” He casually hauled the hapless Harry from the seat by his collar and plonked him at another. “I shall partner my brother from hence forth.”
And he called for a new deck.
“Er,Casp. Should we not go home now?”
Casper peered to the table – three thousand guineas, give or take; two gold snuff cases; a signet ring of inferior quality; a hunting lodge in Scotland; a token for Mrs Whipster’s services – Ernest could have that…or Uncle; and, last but by no means least, Mother’s sapphires.
A shaft of scarlet lit the room and Casper peered to the window – dawn was breaking, and hence he signalled a waiter for the bill. “Well, gentlemen…” He quaffed a celebratory brandy in one and stood. “I have a parliamentary petition to write, so cannot sit dallying with trumps and pin money all day.” He frowned. How did one take all this home? Did the establishment provide bags?
“I’ll ask one of the chaps to gather our winnings and deduct the bill,” enthused Ernest.
Deciding not to enquire how his brother knew the procedure of this establishment so well, he nodded to a sullen Tom and Mat, as he now liked to call them, and strode past the strewn bodies and desperate souls still under the impression they could win.
In the light of dawn, it all appeared rather shabby, requiring a new lick of paint and the carpet a thorough clean.
