Uncle’s blue Rothwell eyes dulled. “I allowed the love of my life to slip through my fingers when I was twenty.”
Casper’s head lurched upwards. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea…”
“All before you were born. I was a fool. Her parents were forcing a match with some merchant and she…” Uncle grimaced. “She asked to elope, but I panicked, bodged my words. I was so young, had no money. Each of our families disapproved of the other… What I failed to admit to her or myself was that I adored her, loved her, that we’d cope somehow.”
Casper clasped his Uncle’s shoulder, never having heard this tale. Doubtless closeted in his study.
“I tortured myself by attending their wedding. That bloody Schofield fella looked like the cat who’d got the cream. And then I never saw her for years as he took her to India. Here,” he said, “shove a guinea on something.”
“Schofield?” Casper flicked the guinea to the baize and glanced up. “Isn’t your…paramour called Mrs Schofield.”
A glint lit Uncle’s eye. “Quite so, nephew. The old fellow died two years ago, and life gave me the chance to redeem myself. I’m like a green cub all over again.”
“Mrs Schofield is your long-lost love? The one you take to all those scandalous masquerades!” Casper reeled.
“Well, er…we like dressing up.” Uncle winked. “Now, my gizzards feel like my throat’s been cut so what we need are some breadcrumbed kidneys with devil’s sauce.” He squinted down. “I also appear to have re-lost all the guineas I’d re-won.”
Casper was likewise gutfoundered…as well as grimy, crumpled and–
“Red number thirteen,” shouted the croupier.
But at least he had enough to pay the Prince for a bed tonight…or what remained of it.
Chapter 29
Fanning the flames…
The breadcrumbed kidneys had made themselves known at five in the morning, the devil’s sauce at six.
Now a strong coffee and a bacon bun at a quarter after seven in the gambling hell’s dining room had somewhat restored Casper’s equilibrium. A borrowed set of clean togs and a fine shave had also aided his well-being.
“So, have you decided on your words for Miss Pearce?” ventured Uncle.
Casper had spent a goodly proportion of dawn pondering on how exactly to express his feelings to Evelyn, but all his words sounded mawkish. Clearly, he wasn’t a poet who could woo with stanza or an artist who could render his emotions upon canvas, but just an English nobleman who’d never encountered such feelings before and had absolutely no idea how to express them.
“Not as such, no.”
Perhaps he should invite Evelyn to take tea in the rear parlour. They could converse in a harmonious custom about her past and, if appropriate, voice their sentiments for one another in orderliness and without wayward emotion or confusing spontaneity.
With no trace of its owner, he and Uncle departed the hell via the games room. Decks of cards lay strewn across the green baize as though awaiting a croupier’s sleight of hand, chairs were pulled out in invitation and that enticing roulette wheel gleamed in avarice. A peculiar place by day, not grubby or dishevelled like other hells, but…expectant.
Chatter remained gruff beneath the overcast sky as they hurried back to Grosvenor on foot, conversation grinding to a halt in the face of too little sleep and too much whisky.
“What a confounded clatter,” murmured Uncle.
Indeed, despite the early hour, a racket ensued from some way ahead – shouts and commotion echoing in the streets, and Casper speculated if a hawker’s cart had been upturned or a doxy’s customer was refusing payment.
“And can you smell…smoke?” Uncle declared, nose in air. “Not coal but…”
Narrowing his eyes, Casper saw a curl of black above the roofs, the lack of breeze causing it to flatten and spread like a blanket melding to the grey sky, and he quickened his step, noting its direction.
“Casper?”
He began to run. “That’s coming from Grosvenor.”
They dashed along Mount Street, tore up Charles Street until they came to the south-east corner of the square.
Pandemonium.
