Page 42 of An Enchantress for an Earl

“George, is it? Come and sit down. It’s time for that private conversation I promised you. Please, help yourself to coffee.”

He gestured to the tray on the small table between them. The man limped forward, and lowered himself into a chair, regarding Lord Setford with an uncertain expression.

“George Martin, my Lord. I… I don’t understand. Why am I here, and not in Newgate, waiting the hangman’s noose?”

“I’ll explain in a moment – but first, I’d like you to tell me about you – and how you came to be making forged bank notes for Lord Villeham.”

The man sat for a moment, then reached out and poured himself coffee from the tray.

“I might as well savour this while I can. I’ve rarely had coffee, let alone quality coffee. I don’t know why you want to know about me, but I see no reason not to simply tell you the truth about everything. Under the law, I’m already doomed to die. There’s an odd sense of relief in speaking about it, like a confessional, almost, if you take my meaning.”

“I do. And I appreciate honesty.”

“I was a fool of a boy. As soon as I was old enough, I signed up to go off to fight Napoleon. I was lucky. Lucky because I got injured fairly early in my service. With the limp, I couldn’t easily keep up, or fight – but I’d always been good with my hands, and as a child I’d thought maybe I’d be a blacksmith. I could fix things – fix weapons, to be precise – and that skill was worth a lot on the battlefield. So they gave me a spot on the supply wagons, and scavenged me a set of tools.”

“And that was lucky?”

“It was. If I’d been with my unit only a few weeks later, I’d be dead, like the rest of them. But the regiment wanted my skills, so people looked after me. In return, I fixed their other things too – cooking pots, anything like that, and bits of harness – whatever needed it. But what I did to entertain myself was make jewellery – out of the metal twisted bits of weapons that couldn’t be repaired. I learnt to engrave, and to shape it into delicate things. It was soothing, making something pretty out of something that had wrought destruction. Men paid me for them, so I could afford to live a bit better than just my army pay. And I needed that, when the letter came telling me my father was dead – got caught up in the wheels of one of those new-fangled threshing machines, and crushed. So I sent money back for my mother, so she could pay her rent and stay on in the cottage on Lord Villeham’s land.”

“Ah, I see. But how did you go from that to forgery?”

“The war ended, didn’t it? I had enough money from making things to get home, quicker than most of the men, but once I was here, there was no work, was there? Too many men had come back from war, and me with a limp and all – even the able-bodied ones had trouble getting work, I had no chance. And the money I’d saved only went so far. I could see the end of it coming, and Lord Villeham had warned me that if we couldn’t pay rent, he’d toss us out of the cottage. I got desperate, to save my mother and my sister, so I turned to forgery. Making the plates wasn’t so hard, not with the skills I’d learnt. The printing machine was harder, but the blacksmith let me use his forge if he wasn’t busy – he remembered me as a boy – and never asked what I was making. At first, I printed just enough for us, and I was very careful about where I spent those notes, so I got coin to spend in the village close to home. For a while, it worked.”

“And then?”

“Then Villeham got suspicious. Followed me one day, and found the press I’d set up in the old charcoal burner’s hut in the woods. He offered me a bargain – the kind a man can’t refuse. Either he’d turn me in, and I’d go to Newgate, and my mother and sister would be cast out and destitute, or I could keep making the notes – for him. He’d set me up somewhere safe, and give me enough every few months that I could go home for a while, and that my family wouldn’t starve. Of course I agreed – what choice did I have?”

“None. Which is what I thought might be the case.”

“So, my Lord – why are we having this conversation?”

“Because I’m going to offer you another bargain you can’t refuse. I think that you’ll find this one more palatable than the last however.”

George had flinched at the start of those words, then relaxed a little.

“And what would this bargain be, my Lord?”

“I’ll be blunt, George. I think I can trust you. You’ve proven that you can keep secrets, and I’ll forgive your attack on Merryfield as the act of a desperate man facing the loss of everything. It’s simple – apart from my daily life as one of the ton, I have another role – I am the King’s Spymaster. And part of what I do is attempt to prevent treason.”

George had paled rather dramatically at the mention of the King, but now he drank some more of his coffee, obviously thinking.

“And… forgery is officially treason? So you want me to… do something to help stop it?”

“Exactly. I want to recruit you to the King’s service. I want you to teach my men how to identify forged notes, and how they are made, and I want you to work with the engravers who make the plates for the real Bank of England bank notes, to implement whichever anti forgery technique the House of Lords decides to adopt. In return, I’ll pay you a good wage, and give your mother and sister a decent cottage on my estates. I know that it will be hard for them to leave the place that has always been home, but once Villeham’s disgrace comes out, they’ll be better away from it. You can spend time there, but I’m afraid you’ll need to be in London much of the year. In London, I’ve a small house you’ll live in, sharing it with another of my ‘specialists’. There’s a cook, a maid, and a footman, so you’ll not have to worry about daily chores. Will you accept?”

George regarded Lord Setford with astonishment.

“You’d give me so much, just to teach others about these things? I’d be a fool to say no, wouldn’t I? I never meant to do anything but survive, and keep my family alive, despite where I ended up.”

“Then you’ll do it?”

“Yes.”