Chapter Eight
Tannehill House was an impressive brick and stone Georgian-style manse that faced Exeter Square. The entry was marked by massive black doors under a grand portico of a sort lacking on the other homes surrounding the green. Tannehill was built before the square came into being and as the initial property, retained room for a small garden and a carriage house that lay to the side and rear of the main house. It was the carriage house Reynard aimed for after the coach deposited him at the end of the drive; it was his prime residence—the space allotted to him by his miserly uncle.
But he was met in the central path of the garden by one of the footmen and redirected to the kitchen, where he encountered Bailey, his uncle’s majordomo. The look on the aging servant’s face was grave, almost regretful.
“He wants to see you, Master Reynard.”
“As soon as I wash and change—” Reynard turned toward the door.
“Immediately, sir. He was most emphatic about that.” The graying, but still rail-straight servant met his gaze briefly. “As soon as you set foot on the property, he said.”
The entire kitchen staff, from cook to scullery maid, stopped their work to watch his reaction, some with anxiety, others with sympathy.
Reynard drew a deep breath, nodded, and checked his vest, coat, and shirt collar to be certain he was presentable. He had no tie, but “immediately” was not to be ignored. He followed Bailey out of the kitchen, up the stairs, and into the main hall where he was met by Sir Harold Rowantree, solicitor and trustee of the Tannehill holdings.
Sir Harold, tall, silver-haired, and impressively mutton-chopped, was a welcome sight. He had been around as long as Reynard could remember and had always offered discreet friendship and guidance to Reynard, despite his loyalty to Reynard’s uncle. He was one of two people in Reynard’s life who genuinely cared for him and did their best to temper his uncle’s harsh and miserly treatment of him. But the lawyer’s presence here, now, presaged something important happening in his uncle’s affairs. Reynard braced for whatever was imminent.
“There you are.” Sir Harold offered a hand and clasped his shoulder.
“Good to see you, Sir Harold, as always.”
“We sent word to your club and discovered you had an ‘early morning engagement.’” The look on Sir Harold’s face said that he and Reynard’s uncle knew about the duel. Such news traveled fast.
“Yes, well, that went as hoped. Resolved without injury.”
Sir Harold clasped his forehead, relieved. “Thank the Almighty.”
“What are you doing here?” Reynard looked around, finding all the same in the entry hall and the grand parlor beyond: the unused and out of tune pianoforte, the collection of paintings now yellowed with a lacquer of neglect, the rugs that showed more fading than wear from the last decades.
The Boultons were not a prolific lot in any sense: no children, no social circle or business alliances, no music, no expressions of joy or creativity. Dogged attention to balance sheets, properties, and investments produced a significant income that lay moldering in the family vaults, but little else. Tannehill House, he had come to believe, was the shell of a long-dead promise of Family. He and his childless skinflint of an uncle were the last of the line. Not for the first time, he wondered if that might not be for the good.
“Your uncle has been taken ill,” Sir Harold announced gravely. “It seems to have been a stroke, yesterday morning. His left side was affected, though the physicians hold hope he may walk again . . . someday. He is not strong, but”—he looked down, avoiding Reynard’s eyes—“he is coherent enough to summon me for instructions.”
Reynard felt a spear of prescience run down his spine.
“What kind of instructions?”
“The final
kind, I fear.” Sir Harold sighed and waved a hand before him, ushering Reynard back through the hall toward his uncle’s study. “He wished to delay until the outcome of your ‘morning appointment’ was known before instructing me in his wishes.”
Reynard paused just outside the heavy mahogany door to prepare himself, and Sir Harold gave his shoulder a welcome clasp of support.
The large, book-lined study was dim from drawn drapes, overheated from a fire in the grate, and musty from the waning essence of its owner and sole occupant. Ormond Boulton, Viscount Tannehill sat in a wing chair before the hearth, covered with blankets and surrounded by ointments, elixirs, and medical paraphernalia. Reynard slowed at the sight of the old man’s worn robe and the sleeping cap over his balding head. He had never seen his uncle out of his customary black suit. It was something of a jolt.
“So”—the old man’s voice was changed, now damaged and hoarse with the strain of trying to speak—“I see you survived.”
“I always do.” Reynard moved closer and stopped near the old man’s footstool, clasping his hands behind his back, steeling himself.
“Like a cockroach.” The old man’s habitual look of disdain was made grotesque by his drooping mouth and half-closed eye. His words came slowly, drawn out by disability. “Who did you kill this time?”
“I have never killed anyone in a duel, Uncle. You know that.”
“Not that you hav-en’t tried,” the old lord growled, stirring uncomfortably beneath his covers. “What was it? Win-ning too much at cards? Mak-ing free with someone’s wife? Spread-ding gossip about the wrong peo-ple?”
“It was a matter of deceit and honor—the deceit, his daughter’s, and the honor, mine.”
“Hon-nor?” Ormond’s attempted laugh set off a round of coughing. Harold hurried to him and offered a handkerchief as he fought through the fit. Straightening at last, the old man glared at Reynard as if holding him personally responsible for it. “What would you know of hon-nor?”
He reached with a drooping hand for a glass of water on the table at his fingertips but could not secure a grip on it. His pale face became blotched with anger, and he struck out with that unresponsive hand, knocking the glass to the stone hearth where it shattered.
Reynard watched the impotent fury in his uncle, then picked up the pitcher from the medicine table to pour another glass, and offered it to him.
Ormond Boulton shot him a venomous look. Using the same stricken hand, he reached up and knocked the glass from Reynard’s grip, sending it to join its shattered mate on the hearth.
“Don’t pre-tend with me, boy. I know your true nature, your low asso-cia-tions and dealings, your under-hand-ed tricks. Don’t think a show of false con-cern will change your fate.”
“I am too experienced with your
true nature, Uncle, to expect anything from you but scorn. But no matter what you do to me, I will not follow in your vengeful footsteps. We are nothing alike. I have learned honesty, determination, and decency in spite of your example. And your opinion will not, cannot make me less than I am.”
The old man’s faded eyes glittered with awful clarity.
“You learned man-ners and fan-cy words to cover your sins. Pretend all you want, but the truth is, you’re more like me than you know. Alone. Friend-less. Trusting no one. And you hate me as much as I do you.”
Reynard stiffened, but refused to give the old man the satisfaction of seeing the impact of his words. He turned toward the door, but spotted Sir Harold’s aggrieved expression, paused, and turned back.
“I may indeed hate you, Uncle.” It was a shameful truth, but perhaps balanced by the raw honesty that followed. “But that does not mean I do not also pity you.”
As he reached the doorway, he was struck by the word that never failed to pierce his heart. The old man hurled it like a spear when he couldn’t penetrate Reynard’s fiercely guarded emotions any other way.
“Bastard!”
* * *
Reynard strode out through the hall and the front doors, turning into the garden. His hands were clenched, his shoulders were bunched with strain, and each step fell hard, as if he needed to punish the very bricks of the path he walked. He paced for a bit, barely seeing the lovely chrysanthemums, the fading asters, the shaggy boxwoods in need of a trim.
This was not his home. Not really. It was the place his father had grown up and the place he had been born. But he was never meant to stay here. He had thought often of leaving, of turning his back on all of this conflict and uncertainty. But the question that had been drummed into his core would only go with him if he did. He needed answers and was determined to stay until he got them, one way or another.
But right now, he had to spend the angry energy those few minutes with his uncle had generated in him. He realized where he had to go.
* * *
Mehanney’s Gym was little more than an abandoned warehouse near the docks filled with roped fight rings, a motley collection of spectator seating, and a plank-paved level in the rafters for more penurious or daring patrons. The place was hot and smelled of old sweat, burning tallow lamps, and the sour tang of men engaged in violent exertion. The high, horizontal windows were too filthy to admit much light, and the shouts, grunts, and thuds of men sparring contributed to a miasma of fierce, competitive energy.
Reynard paused to let his eyes adjust to the light and spotted several shirtless men in a separate area toughening their fists against weighted leather bags and repeatedly hefting iron weights. Training, they called it, making bare-knuckle fighters and “boxers” stronger, harder, and faster. He strode around the equipment cages and lockers, watching the fighters and prospects working their muscles, privately glad that he didn’t have to knock heads with any of them.
“Well, yer lardship, fancy seein’ ye here.” A scrawny, grizzled fellow with rolled-up sleeves and a hand-rolled cigarette tucked over one ear met him with a grin missing several teeth. “Slummin’, are we?”
“Apparently.” Reynard smiled. He and the enterprising fight manager went back a few years. “How’s the game, Mick?”
“Roight as rain, guv.” He cocked his head as he watched Reynard taking off his top hat, kidskin gloves, and coat. “Come to watch me make champeens o’ these benighted lovelies?” He gestured to the fighters in various stages of learning measured mayhem at his tutelage, and then his smile broadened. “Or mebee ye come fer somethin’ a bit more excitin’.”
Reynard’s grin matched Mick’s, and soon he was stripping to the waist and having his hands wrapped in cotton bands. He fell to and hammered one of the weighted bags with a vengeance.
“What’s ridin’ ye, lad?” Mick held the cylindrical bag for Reynard to hit with potent one-two combinations. “Ye lose a bet?”
“An argument,” Reynard spit out, panting, and dug in to punish the bag until more of his angry energy was spent. From there he did a bit of sparring. He got in a few good shots on a promising young fighter and took a couple of blows that rattled his teeth in their sockets.
“Out of practice,” he said, collapsing on a bench later, letting Mick tend his face and check his ribs to be sure the pain he felt didn’t represent true damage. He laid his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, feeling nicely depleted. Moments later, Mick chuckled and muttered he’d be back, and someone else settled on the bench beside Reynard.
“You should take it easy, old man,” came a voice marginally more cultured than that of the toughs that populated Mehanney’s.
Reynard’s eyes opened. “I won’t be old until I decide to be.”
“There’s the God’s honest truth.” Grycel Manse leaned back against the wall, copying Reynard’s posture. “Got a tidbit for you, Fox.” The fellow had a blocky face and bent nose that said he’d spent time at Mick’s Mehanney’s establishment, and a pin-striped suit that said he no longer needed to wield his fists to keep body and soul together. Manse had come to the same conclusion that Reynard had years ago: there was power and sometimes money to be had in the information trade.
“That Prussian bloke you asked about?” Manse said. “He’s no longer at Claridge’s. Movin’ in with a business associate as we speak. Word is, his host ain’t too happy, but didn’t have no choice.”
“And do I know this unfortunate ‘host’?” Reynard asked, glancing around and finding no one else within earshot.
“You met him just this morn, I hear. An’ he was so impressed, he fainted dead away.” He grinned at Reynard, showing the stalwart remains of what was once a very fine set of teeth.
“Tutty? The duke has moved into Tutty’s house?”
“Took it over’s more like. Word is, he’s bought up a bunch o’ Tutty’s debts. Now he owns Tutty’s hospitality as well as his business.”
By the time he left Mehanney’s, the Fox had acquired a few more tidbits, including a reliable report that Redmond Strait had not been seen at Beulah MacNeal’s gambling hall in more than a week.
The mention of Red immediately brought Frankie to mind and the mention of debts brought to mind her assertion that she had plenty of money. He should check with another of his sources to see just how far Red had sunk into debt. Not that he cared.
Glowering as unwelcome tension gathered in him again, he caught a cab for the steam room and baths at his club.
Not that he cared.
All his life, despite personal failings and difficult circumstances, he’d taken solace in facing facts squarely. Now, after one bloody week, she had him lying to himself.