Two assets had served Colin well in the military. The first was a certain natural soldiering ability. His aim was excellent, he rode well, he didn’t need much sleep, and what had smoothed his way more often than not was a capacity for a soldier’s jocular charm.
He’d instinctively known the right sort of humor, the right sort of warmth, to apply to any situation. He’d been able to jolly his superiors out of their tantrums and sulks, and cheer his men through the worst mud-marches. He’d defused arguments among the laundresses as easily as he’d broken up fights between the men, usually with a joke or some commiserating.
When detailed to the artificers, he’d known how to repair canteens, muskets, or haversacks without having been given instructions.
Perhaps being second in line among seven children had given him an ability to see what was wanting in a situation and to provide it.
His other asset, though, which surprised most who’d known him in the military, was a cold temper.
He fought, as his men and commanding officers had both said, in cold blood. The fury he directed at his enemies was as lethal as it was calculating, enhancing his aim, his stamina, his grasp of a strategic advantage. When the fighting ended, he was once again good-natured, friendly Captain MacHugh, but in battle, he was formidably detached from tender sentiments.
Staring at four little boys, their eyes glittering with defiance, their little chins tilted in stubborn pride, Colin’s temper flared like an arctic storm.
“Explain yourselves,” he snapped. “You—” He aimed the screwdriver at the biggest boy, Joe. “What are you about here?”
Silence, while Colin’s temper billowed to gale force.
“I want an explanation, gentlemen. The funds in this box are all that stand between you and starvation. Did you think to steal them?”
Anwen had gone as pale as Win Montague’s linen, though the boys still said nothing. They shuffled their feet, darted glances among themselves, and squared their shoulders.
Colin jabbed a finger at Joe’s chest. “Speak to me, or it’s my open palm that will be—”
“You leave our Joe alone!”
The smallest boy, Dickie, had spoken—shouted, rather.
“Joe can’t tell you anything,” Thomas added. “Joe can talk, but he doesn’t like to, and there’s nothing to tell.”
Anwen’s dismay was palpable, as was her inability to grasp that these children had betrayed her trust.
John, the most daring of the group, remained quiet. Shrewd he might be, but his loyalty to the others didn’t include taking blame for a shared crime.
“I cannot believe you’d steal from the younger boys,” Anwen said. “I know you, I know you to be gentlemen in your own fashion and you’re not greedy, not mean.”
John stared at the window as if he were contemplating a leap to the cobbles below.
“Why shouldn’t I summon the magistrate?” Colin snapped. “Why shouldn’t I have the lot of you charged with theft, conspiracy, lockpicking—?”
“We didn’t take nuffink,” John muttered.
“You took the screwdriver,” Colin said, brandishing the stolen item. “MacDeever will doubtless be looking for it. Another five minutes, and that box would have been empty as well, and apparently not for the first time.”
Anwen wiped a tear from her cheek, and the sight of her distress boiled through Colin as battle lust never had.
“My boys would not steal from their own home,” she said. “I will never believe it of them. They are good boys, and if you summon the magistrate, I will never speak to you again, Lord Colin.”
The boys goggled at her, as did Colin.
“Madam, we caught them red-handed. To ignore the matter only tempts them to steal yet again. Do you know what word of this mischief would do to the reputation of the institution? Bad enough we have a cutpurse putting his feet under the dining table three times a day. Now we have embezzlers multiplying in our midst.”
“All the more reason you cannot summon the magistrate. The details of this situation—of whatever has transpired here—cannot leave this room.”
Well, damn. She had him on that one. “Miss Anwen, I cannot in good conscience champion the cause of an organization that ignores criminal behavior twice in the same week.” He aimed a glower at John. “This is not a matter of first impression.”
Her chin came up at the same angle as young Tom’s. “Then don’t. Resign from the board before you’ve been officially appointed. Go back to making stupid wagers by the hour, waking up every day with a sore head, and playing whist until dawn. The boys and I will manage.”
Charm wouldn’t put this moment right, and Colin hadn’t any to command in any case. “These children have disgraced themselves. You ignore that not only at the peril of the rest of the organization, but at the peril of the boys themselves. They’ve done wrong, and they know it. To allow their behavior to go unpunished is not in their best interests.”
His point wasn’t moral, it was purely practical. The boys had no respect for authority, and if ever a situation called for an exercise of authority, this was it. To let them go merrily stealing and lockpicking on their way was unthinkable.
“Lord Colin, I admire your sense of justice,” Anwen said with terrible dignity, “but I cannot ignore what I know about these young men. They’ve had thousands of opportunities to steal, hundreds of chances to take what doesn’t belong to them. Why would they choose to break into a strongbox in broad daylight, and by the time-consuming method of dismantling the hinges rather than picking the lock? Why take something Hitchings is absolutely certain to note has gone missing? Accuse the boys of many things, but they are intelligent young men. Stealing from this strongbox wouldn’t be smart.”
Tom’s nose twitched. John’s gaze had gone thoughtful. Dickie was frowning mightily while Joe regarded Anwen as if she’d sprouted a halo and wings.
“Bloody hell.” Logic, ruthless and unassailable, cut through Colin’s temper. To snatch a purse from an exhausted, half-drunken reveler as he staggered home was simple. Breaking into a strongbox with Hitchings one floor down, taking money that would be missed by sundown…
“Language, Lord Colin.”
“Somebody had better tell me exactly what’s going on here,” Colin said, “or my language will grow much more colorful.”
More silence, more shuffling. Anwen put an arm around Joe, and his bony shoulders slumped.
“Count the t-t-take,” the boy said.
“Bollocks,” John muttered.
“Now you done it,” Dickie added.
“Now I’ve done what?” Colin asked.
“If you get Joey bletherin’ on, we’ll be here all night,” Tom said, “but he’s right. You never finish a job without counting the take.”
“What job?” Anwen asked, and Colin let her question hang in the air, because the boys might talk to her when they’d die rather than peach on one another to him.
“When you toss a house,” John said. “You never split up the haul before it’s counted. Everybody reports back, and you count up the take all fair and square before you decide what to do with it.”
“So nobody drops anything on the way home,” Dickie added. “Can get a man killed, dropping a bauble or two on the way home.”
“We were counting the take,” Tom said. “We do it regular, to make sure old Hitchings isn’t dipping his fat fingers in the till.”
“How would you know?” Colin asked, propping a hip on the table.
“’Cause he runs this place on a budget,” John said. “That’s when you don’t spend more than the same amount each month. Winter is more dear because of the coal, but we allow for that.”
Anwen retrieved a pencil and paper from the desk across the room. “Show us.”
What followed was…Prince Charlie bursting forth into a horsy rendition of a Mozart aria would have been less dumbfounding.
“You have the finances more or less to the penny,” Colin said, running a finger down a long list of figures. The boys had guessed high in some places, low in others, but by virtue of watching what went on in the kitchen, the mews, the classroom, and elsewhere, and by monitoring expenditures month by month, they’d come very close to auditing the orphanage’s finances.
Auditing, not embezzling.
“So why not simply pick the lock?” Colin asked, setting the figures aside. The boys were ranged around the table, and Anwen sat directly across from Colin. The unopened strongbox at the end of the table.
“You can bust a lock if you pick it too often,” Dickie said, shrugging. “You can also make it harder to pick next time. We figured there might come a day when we were in a hurry, and we’d need to pick the lock. Until then, unscrewing the hinges worked well enough, and old Hitchings would never notice a stray nick on the metal.”
They were boys—children—and capable of thinking more clearly than many grown men.
“How did you know how much cash was coming in each month?” Colin asked.
“Hitchings labels the packet when he puts it in there,” John said. “We can show you.”
“Be quick about it,” Anwen said.
Dickie brushed his knuckles over his sleeve, grinned at his fellows, and put his fingers on the lock. In less than a minute, the tumblers clicked and the box was open.
Tom was deep into an explanation of how much longer the available money would last when Joe grabbed Colin’s sleeve and pointed toward the door.
“Hitchings,” John whispered, putting the contents back into the box in the same configuration they’d occupied earlier.
Dickie slapped the lock into place just as footsteps sounded outside the door.
Anwen went to the door, while Joe and Tom silently repositioned the strongbox on the chairman’s desk across the room.
“Oh! Mr. Hitchings,” Anwen said, opening the door a few inches in response to Hitchings’s sharp rap. “You startled me. I beg your pardon. I don’t suppose you’ve come across my parasol? I’m almost certain I brought a parasol with me, but I don’t recall having it at the meeting. I grow scatterbrained when I’m peckish. Does that happen to you?”
She effectively blocked Hitchings’s view of the office for the few instants necessary for the boys to arrange themselves around Colin, peering over his shoulder at the budgets Hitchings had prepared.
“Um, er, yes,” Hitchings said. “I do tend to get a bit foggy when I’m hungry. I came to retrieve my—what are you lot doing here?”
Colin could feel the tension in the children, could feel them wondering how much of their behavior would be disclosed and with what consequences.
“Hitchings,” Colin said, shuffling the papers. “You write a very thorough budgetary report. The boys are developing a fine grasp of our financial posture as a result. You have my thanks.”
“But they’re supposed to be…Oh, never mind. I’m late for class. Miss Anwen, good day. Boys, I’ll expect to see you at dinner.”
“Yes, Mr. Hitchings.”
He withdrew, his footsteps faded, and a beat of silence went by, then Colin heard a snicker at his elbow. A chortle started at his right shoulder, a guffaw on his left. Anwen began laughing, and Joe—silent, stuttering Joe—joined in, until Colin was surrounded by merriment.
* * *
“I think his lordship was scared,” Dickie said, grasping a handful of greenery and yanking. “Ouch—blast it!”
“If it has thorns,” John observed, “it’s probably a rose or a raspberry. Something that belongs in a garden—not like us. Best leave it.”
“Never tasted a raspberry.” Tom sat back on his heels. “Lord Colin wasn’t scared of Miss Anwen. I think he was impressed.”
Every male in the room at yesterday’s odd gathering in the chairman’s office had been impressed. Miss Anwen had torn a strip off his lordship, when his lordship had been busily tearing strips off all four boys.
A fine sight, that. A fancy gent agog at the little miss, unable to argue with her because she was right, not only because she was a lady.
“I’m impressed,” John said, jabbing at a tangled mess of lily roots. MacDeever said they were lily roots, but Tom hadn’t been on the property long enough to know what might bloom along this wall.
They’d been at the books all morning, but after their luncheon, they were cast upon MacDeever’s mercy. He’d consulted a list Lord Colin had made, and declared the boys were to establish order in the garden.
Not in a day they wouldn’t. Not in a week, though when did a week pass in London without rain? Possibly not in a month.
“What do you suppose this is?” Dickie asked, holding up a sprig of greenery. “Smells good, and it’s tough.”
“Like Miss Anwen,” John said.
Dickie threw the plant at his brother, sending a shower of dirt from the roots. “If it weren’t for her, we might be at the Old Bailey instead of poking about in this dirt. Show some bloody respect.”
The four of them were poking about in the dirt, outside, beneath the sun, free from Hitchings’s lectures and glowers. The day was beautiful, and Tom was pleased as bloody hell to not be sitting on his arse in the detention room.
Joe looked up from spading a bed farther down the wall. His glance was enough to quell the bout of fisticuffs that might have erupted between John and Dick.
“Dickie’s right,” Tom said. “After what Miss Anwen did for us yesterday, I’ll not insult her.”
John sniffed the plant. “Saying she smells good and she’s tough is an insult?”
“Are ladies supposed to be tough?” Tom asked, taking a whiff of the plant and passing it to Joe.
Joe rubbed his fingers over the silvery green leaves and brought them to his nose. “L-lavender. F-french lavender. For soap.”
“We should change your name to Encyclopedia,” John said. “Do I put it back in the dirt?”
“I will,” Dickie said, retrieving the plant. He tore off a leaf, stashed the bit of greenery into his pocket, and gently tucked the roots of the lavender into a patch of soil Joe had spaded free of weeds.
“Think it will grow?” The poor thing looked lonely to Tom, all on its own in a garden that was otherwise rioting with weeds.
“If it’s as tough as Miss Anwen,” Dickie said, “I don’t think anything can stop it. It’s been growing here for years, without any attention from a gardener, and Joe says it’s a useful plant.”
Now that Joe had identified the shrub, Tom recognized it. In back gardens all over Mayfair, lavender grew in great billowy borders. Ladies made sachets out of it, and biscuits, and dried bouquets.
Tom fetched the watering can from near the downspout at the corner of the building and gave the lavender a drink.
“I think we should each take a wall,” he said, “once we get rid of the damned weeds. If it’s your wall, then you keep after the weeds and the watering and the whatnot.” He had no idea what else was involved in caring for a garden besides weeding and watering, but gardening was an occupation, so there must be work involved beyond the initial effort.
“That’s not fair,” Dickie said, getting back to his weeding. “The garden is a rectangle, not a square, so two fellows would have short walls, and two would have long walls.”
“Dickie’s right—for once,” John said, “and the short walls have either the door to the house or the back gate in them, so they’re even less work.”
Joe was turning over turf in a slow, steady rhythm, as if he’d done it many times before, though Tom didn’t see how that could be.
“Trade off.”
Leave it to Joe. “Take turns, you mean?”
Joe nodded.
“How about we put in a proper garden before we decide how to manage it,” John suggested. “It’s not like we’ll be here much past June.”
Dickie pitched a clump of weeds so hard against the stone wall that dirt exploded in every direction. “We might be here. Lord Colin has ideas.”
“We need blunt,” Tom said. “We could last through summer, but once the coal man starts coming around again, we’ll need money, not ideas.”
They all fell silent, and got back to work, when for once, Tom wished the other three would try to argue with him.
* * *
“Think of it as a jest,” Winthrop Montague said, sighting down the barrel of a Manton dueling pistol. “Officers were always getting up to pranks, you no less than anybody else. So the lads charged a few items to your accounts, or a few toasts to your health. That is a gentleman’s version of a prank.”
He aimed and fired. Birds flew from the surrounding trees in a cloud of indignation, but the clay pot he’d targeted remained sitting on a lower branch.
“Win, what sort of prank costs a man a fortune?” Colin retorted. “I’m not laughing, and I am considering pressing charges.”
He took aim with the second of Win’s matched pair of pistols, pictured the laughing, half-drunk pack of jackals Win called friends, and blasted the pot into a million pieces.
“Nice work, MacHugh.”
They passed the firearms back to Win’s groom, who reloaded while another groom set up more targets among the branches of the surrounding trees. Richmond Park was quiet this late in the afternoon, a good place for Colin to let his temper loose.
“Win, who did this to me? Or are the names too numerous to recall?”
Montague gestured for the groom to fetch him a drink. “Pointy was probably a ringleader. Pierpont is bored, his missus is lately a mother and likely hasn’t any time for him, and he’s none too bright. I confess I agreed to go along with the tavern bills.” He named ten other young men, exactly the crowd Colin would have suspected of such larceny.
The bill for drinks at the tavern was enormous. In Colin’s absence, the lordlings and younger sons he’d thought to make his friends had cheerfully directed the publican to put one drinking orgy after another on Lord Colin’s bill.
And why wouldn’t the tavern owner oblige them? Colin himself had given the man similar direction on at least three occasions.
The same game had been effected at a tailor’s, a glove shop, a bootmaker’s, and—thank God, only the once—at Tattersalls, among other places. Maarten was still sorting out the situation at Colin’s clubs, but more damage had been done there. If Colin had followed the typical English habit of paying the trades annually rather than monthly, he could well have ended up in real difficulties.
“You don’t buy a horse on another man’s credit,” Colin said. “If that’s how being a gentleman works, then I want no part of it.”
Win accepted a glass of wine from the groom, took a taste, and nodded. “That might be the point, MacHugh. You either pay up, or your entrée among the fellows will evaporate overnight. They won’t stand up with your sisters, won’t sit down to cards with you. Nobody will be rude, but you’ll have been weighed in the scales and found wanting. Have some wine.”
Colin did not want wine. He wanted a wee dram of the water of life, and he wanted to break some heads. Even in Spain, with the bloody French intent on murder, he’d not been this infuriated. The French had been doing what soldiers did—fighting, trying to hold territory for their commander, attempting to keep France’s borders secure.
While Win’s cronies were little better than well-dressed pickpockets. “The horse must be returned, with Pierpont’s apologies. A misunderstanding, a wager gone awry. I don’t care what story he concocts.”
Horses were bloody damned expensive, and if a man couldn’t afford to buy one, he might well be unable to properly keep the beast.
“I can’t recommend that course,” Win said, passing Colin a glass of wine. “Twenty years from now, when your daughter is making her come out, you’ll hear whispers that her papa has no sense of humor, that he values a penny more than the goodwill of those gracious enough to accept him into their ranks. The offers she’ll get, if any, will be colored by how you behave now.”
Rage and bewilderment racketed about in Colin’s mind, along with a sense of betrayal. The young men to whom Win had introduced him had seemed like good fellows. They were polite to Edana and Rhona, and greeted Colin with open good cheer on the street, in the clubs, and in the ballrooms.
Now this. Now dozens of fingers sneaking coin from Colin’s pockets, and he was supposed to call it high spirits, a lark, a joke.
“I feel as if I’ve intercepted a message in code.” Colin tossed back the entire glass of wine, though his behavior caused Win to wince. “The words seem to say, ‘Welcome to polite society, Lord Colin. Congratulations on your good fortune.’ The true message is, ‘Welcome, Lord Colin. How much can we fleece you for? We’re lazy, greedy, completely without honor, and you’re a Scottish fool who was better off mending harness or tending to his whisky.’”
Win refilled Colin’s wine glass. “May I ask how much you’re expected to pay?”
Colin named a sum that had sent him into a twenty-minute swearing orbit about the library desk that morning. Thank God that Maarten had insisted on tidying Colin’s affairs in anticipation of departing for Scotland.
“That is”—Win took another delicate sip of wine—“rather a bit of coin. If you pay off the sums owing, I’ll put a word in a few ears. A jest is one thing, but I hadn’t realized how far it had gone.” He passed his wine glass to the waiting servant. “I trust you can manage the sums due?”
The question was carefully casual.
“I’m tempted to not pay the damned bills,” Colin said, exchanging his wineglass for a reloaded pistol. “I’m tempted to remind the good tailors, haberdashers, glove makers, horse traders, and publicans of Mayfair that what a customer does not order or sign for, he is not obligated to pay for, gentlemanly pranks be damned.”
Win sighted down the barrel of the second reloaded pistol. “Again, MacHugh, such a tantrum would have repercussions you’d regret. Not only would those in on the joke learn of your parsimony, but the third parties involved would be bilked of needed coin. You can’t gather up the dozen men who might have drunk a few toasts to you, and assign each of them a portion of the resulting expense.”
Colin had been considering that very approach. Spread over twelve quarterly allowances, the amount in question was extravagant but manageable.
The grooms were busily arranging crocks and jars along a single branch, though the targets were small this time—jam jars from the looks of them.
“So what do you advise, Win? I’m to pay these bills, smile, and pretend it’s all quite amusing to have been robbed by your friends?”
That solution was so nauseatingly English, Colin considered scooping up his sisters and leaving the entire problem behind him. He could be sued for debt—he was a commoner—but these were not debts he’d incurred. They were debts landing in his lap because the tradesmen and merchants had no choice but to trust their betters.
Reneging on the bills would, as Win pointed out, simply widen the circle of victims to include people less able to bear the burden than Colin was.
“You not only pay the bills, smile, and pretend it’s all amusing,” Win said gently, “you publicly stand the perpetrators to a round in honor of their boldness.”
Good God, this was schoolyard politics. “Is that before or after I call them out, and dim their arrogant lights, one by one?”
The pistol was double-barreled, two shots being standard in most contests of honor. The weight was exquisite, the workmanship so elegant, the result should have been art rather than weaponry.
“MacHugh, your Scottish temper will not serve you in this instance. Take it in stride, smile, and consider it the cost of membership in a very worthwhile club. By June, you’ll be sorry to part from the same men you want to call out now.”
Colin had not expected to remain in London until June, and the delights of a London season had apparently paled for Ronnie and Eddie too. But he had the House of Urchins to consider, and the surprising realization that Anwen Windham had been willing to forego Colin’s kisses—his very company—to stand up for the boys.
She’d amazed him, and probably amazed the lads as well.
She’d amazed him again. Ladies didn’t kiss Captain Colin MacHugh and send him on his way. He kissed them and left them, usually smiling but not always.
Anwen had been in absolute earnest when she’d told him, in so many ladylike words, to either drop his accusations against the boys or take himself back to Scotland. She’d meant to send him packing, and he’d have had no choice but to go.
She’d been right too.
“Stand back,” Colin said, taking Win’s pistol from him. “I’ll pay the damned debts this time, but let your friends know that if this happens again, I’ll get up to a few pranks of my own, and they will not like the results.”
“Come now, MacHugh. There’s no need for drama. What could you possibly be planning, when none of the fellows have the—”
Colin took aim and fired all four barrels. The entire branch dropped amid a crash of clay and glass.
“I’ll think of an amusement that will give the lot of them nightmares, Win. I’m grateful you’ve been on hand to talk sense to me, and Pierpont and his cronies should be grateful too—very grateful.”
Colin passed the smoking pistols to the servants handle-first.
“These fellows are your friends too,” Win said. “Or they will be after this.”
“No, Win. They will not be my friends. Not ever.”
He left Win standing before his coach, sipping wine, while Colin climbed aboard Prince Charlie and headed back to Town at a smart canter.