Chapter One
London—December 26th, 1818
It was one day past Christmas.
That thought made Nicolas smile. He had forgotten the celebration for so long in the Americas that the presence of it here in London was somehow comforting. A continued and familiar tradition, a belief that transcended all difficulty and promised hope for the likes of himself? Or would it tender despair? He could not imagine any church exonerating his sins should he be foolish enough to confess them.
The age-old music of carols could be heard as he left the narrow service alley behind the club of Vitium et Virtus in Mayfair and came around to the front door. Here the only sound was that of laughter and frivolity, a card game underway, he guessed, in the downstairs salon. High stakes and well funded. The few coins he had left in his own pocket felt paltry and he wondered for the millionth time whether he should have come at all.
The late afternoon lengthened the shadows. He could slip away still, undetected, and make his way north. Boxing Day kept most people at home enjoying the company of family. There would be few around to note his progress.
He swallowed as he looked up and saw the sky was stained in red. Blood red. Guilt red. A celestial nod to his culpability or a pardon written in colour?
Digging into his pocket, he found a silver shilling.
‘Heads I stay and tails I go.’ It was all he could think of at this moment, a choice that was arbitrary and random. The coin turned and as it came down into his opened palm the face of George the Third was easily visible. The thought crossed his mind that had it been tails he would have tried for the best of three.
His knuckles were against the main door before he knew it, the polished black lacquer of the portal attesting to great care and attention and a certain understated wealth.
When it opened a big man he did not know stood there, dressed in the clothes of a footman, but with the visage of one who knew his intrinsic worth.
‘Can I help you, sir?’
Nicholas could feel the condescension. His clothes from the long voyage were dirty and they had not been well looked after. His beard was full and his hair uncut. He was glad there was no looking glass inside the door to reflect his image over and over again.
‘Are any of the lords who own this place present inside this evening?’
He tried to round his vowels and sound at least halfway convincing. It would not take much for the man to bid those who guarded the front door to throw him out. He knew there was desperation in his eyes.
‘They are, sir.’
‘Could you show me through to them?’
‘Indeed, sir. But may I take your hat and coat first and could you give me your name?’
‘Bromley. They will know me.’
‘If you would just wait here, sir.’ The footman snagged Nick’s attire across a series of wooden pegs carved into the shape of a man’s sexual parts inside the front door. The sheer overtness of the furnishings shocked him now, where once it had not.
A further confusion. Another way in which he had changed. He swallowed and as dryness filled his mouth he wished he’d thought to bring his brandy flask.
Then there was the sound of chairs scraping against the floor and the rush of feet, a door flung back against its hinges and three faces he knew like his own before him. Astonished. Disbelieving.
‘Nicholas?’ It was Jacob who came forward first just as he knew it would be. Rakish and handsome, there had always been an undercurrent of kindness within him, a care for the underdog, a certainty of faith.
Oliver and Frederick followed him, each one as bewildered as the next.
‘You’ve been gone for more than six damn years...’ It was Oliver who said this, the flush of emotion visible across the light brown of his skin.
‘And to turn up like this without any correspondence? Why would you not let us know where you were or how you fared at least?’ Fred’s voice cracked as his glance took in Nick’s cheek and the bandage on his left hand holding the deep wound safe from further damage.
Twenty-five days at sea had not helped the healing. It ached so much he had taken to cradling it across his body, easing the pain and heat. He released it now and let it hang at his side, taking hope from the bare emotion of his friends even as his fingers throbbed in protest.
‘Thank the Lord you are returned.’ Oliver stepped towards him and wrapped his arms around all the damaged parts of his body. It had been such a very long time since someone had touched him like this that he stiffened. Then Fred was there and Jake, enveloping him so tight in an embrace he hardly knew where one of them stopped and another one started.
Safety. For the first time in years Nicholas took a breath that was not forced. Yet despite this, he himself reached out to none of them. Not yet. Not till it was over. Protecting each of them from harm was the only thing he now had left to offer.
He should not have come. He should not have been so selfish. He should have listened to his inner voice and stayed away until he knew where the danger had come from. But friendship held its own beacons and the hope of it had led him here, hurrying across the seas.
‘This unexpected reunion calls for a celebration.’ Fred spoke as he hauled Nicholas back into the private drawing room at the end of the corridor, the others following. A table set up for poker had been dismantled in the rush of their exit, the cards fallen and the chips scattered. Just that fact warmed him and when Oliver chose an unopened bottle from a cabinet in the corner and poured them each a drink, Nick took it gratefully.
He waited till the others filled their glasses and raised his own.
‘To friendship,’ he said simply.
‘To the future,’ Jake added.
‘May the truth of what has happened to you, Nicholas, hold us together,’ Fred’s words were serious and when Oliver smiled the warmth in his green eyes was overlaid by question.
The cognac was smooth, creamy and strong and unlike any home-brewed liquor Nick had become so adept at dispensing in the cheap bars of the east coast of the Americas. The kick in it took his breath away. The flavour of his youth, he thought, unappreciated and imbibed in copious amounts. Today he savoured it and let it slide off the back of his tongue.
When Jacob motioned to the others to sit Nick took his place at the head of the table. This was where he had always sat, his initials carved into the dark mahogany of the chair. The first finger of his right hand ran across the marking, the ridges beneath tracing his past.
‘We never erased anything of you, Nicholas. We always believed that you would be back. But why so long? Why leave it for so many years before returning?’ Jacob voiced just what he imagined the others were thinking.
‘I had amnesia. I could not remember who I was or where I had been. My memory only began to function again in the Americas five weeks ago after encountering a man who wanted me dead.’
‘He nearly succeeded by the looks of it.’
‘Nearly, but not quite. He came off worse.’
‘You killed him.’ The soldier in Fred asked this question and there was no room in his answer for lies.
‘I did.’
‘We found blood in the alley behind Vitium et Virtus the morning after you disappeared.’ Jacob stood at that and walked over to the mantel to dig into a gilded box. ‘This was found, too.’
His signet ring surprised him. He had always worn it, but had forgotten that he had. The burnished gold crest caught at the light above. Servire Populo. To serve the people. The irony in such a motto had been humorous to him once given his youthful overarching ability to only serve himself. Reaching out, he took the piece between his fingers, wincing at the dirt under his nails and the scars across his knuckles. He swallowed back the lump that was growing in his throat.
His old life offered back with such an easy grace.
‘I can’t remember what happened in the alley.’
‘What was the last thing you remember then? Before you disappeared?’
‘Arguing at Bromworth Manor with my uncle. It was hot and I was damnably drunk. It was my birthday, the fifteenth of August.’
‘You disappeared the next Saturday night then, a week later. That much at least we have established.’ Fred gave this information.
‘Did you know that your uncle has taken over the use of the Bromley title?’ Oliver leant back against the leather in his chair and raised his feet up on an engraved ottoman, his stance belying the tension in his voice. ‘He wants you declared dead legally, given the number of years you have been missing. He has begun the procedure.’
‘The bastard has the temerity to call himself your protector,’ Jacob snarled, ‘when all he wants is your inheritance and your estates.’
Nicholas took in the information with numbed indifference. Aaron Bartlett had never been easy but, as his late father’s only brother, he’d had the credentials to take over the guardianship of an eight-year-old orphan. Nicholas remembered the day his uncle had walked into Bromworth Manor a week after his parents’ death, both avarice and greed in his eyes.
‘He’s a charlatan and everyone knows it and I for one would love to be there when you throw him lock, stock and barrel out of your ancestral home.’ As Oliver said this the others nodded. ‘Do you think he had any part in your disappearance?’
Nicholas had wondered this himself, but without memory or proof he had no basis on which to found an opinion. Shrugging his shoulders, he finished the last of his cognac and was pleased when Jacob refilled the glass again.
He held the signet ring tight in his right hand, a small token of who he was and of what he had been. He did not want to place it on his finger again just yet because the wearing of it implied a different role and one he didn’t feel up to trying to fill. He had walked under many names in the Americas, but the shadow of his persona here was as foreign to him now as those other identities he had adopted.
Jacob and Fred each wore a wedding ring. That thought shocked him out of complacency and for the first time he asked his own question.
‘You are married?’
The smiles were broad and genuine, but it was Jacob who answered first.
‘You have been gone a long time, Nicholas, and dissoluteness takes some effort in maintaining. There comes a day when you look elsewhere for real happiness and each of us has found that. Oliver may well be wed soon, too.’
‘Then I am glad for it.’
And he was, he thought with relief. He was pleased for their newfound families, pleased that they had managed to move forward even if he had not. ‘Can I meet them? Your women?’
‘Tomorrow night.’ Fred said. ‘We have a function at my town house with all the trimmings and a guest list of about eighty. You look as though you could do with a careful introduction, Nick, and such a number would not be too daunting for a first foray back into English society.’
‘You will need the services of a barber and a physician before others see you. Fred is about your size so with a tailor to iron out the differences you could get away with wearing his clothes.’ Jacob watched him carefully, his blue eyes sharp on detail. When his glance ran over his face Nick knew he would have to say something, his good hand going up to the ruined cheek as though he might hide it a little.
‘If someone still wishes me dead, perhaps it would be better not to involve any of you in this. I should not want...’
Fred shook his head. ‘We are involved already as your friends. There is no way you could stop any of us helping you.’
Oliver placed his hand on the table palm up in the way they had since their very first meeting and the others laid theirs on top. It took only a second’s hesitation before he found his own above theirs joined in the flesh and in promise.
‘In Vitium et Virtus.’ They all said the words together. In Vice and Virtue. The motto seemed more appropriate at this second than it ever had before.
‘We should retire to my town house for a drink. There is more of this cognac there and the occasion calls for further celebration. You can stay with me for as long as you need to, Nick, for I will have a room readied for you.’
Jacob’s invitation was tempting. ‘The offer is a kind one, but I’m reluctant to place you in danger.’ He needed to say this to allow Jacob the chance of refusal at least.
‘I think I can take care of myself and my family. Let’s just worry about getting to the bottom of this mystery, to help you recover the final bits of memory you seem to have lost. If you can start to remember the faces of your assailants in the alley that may lead us to the perpetrator.’
‘How does amnesia work, anyway?’ Oliver asked this question and Fred answered.
‘In the army many people lost their memories for the short term. A day or two at the most due to trauma, though I knew of a few chaps who never recovered theirs at all.’
‘I don’t think Nick wants to hear about those ones, Fred.’ When Jacob said this they all laughed. ‘At least he remembers us and the club.’
‘It would be hard to forget.’ Nicholas gestured to the excess and the luxury. ‘But it is the friendships I recall the most.’ His voice cracked on the last words and he swallowed away the emotion. He was not here for pity or sympathy. He knew he looked half the man who had left England, with his filthiness and his wounds but it was the hidden hurts that worried him the most. Could he ever trust anyone again? Was he doomed for ever to hold himself apart from others, all the shadows within him cutting him off from true intimacy?
He could see in each of his friends’ eyes that they found him altered, more brittle. But the lord who had cared not a whit for social convention was long gone, too, that youth of reckless pleasure seeking debauchery and high-stakes gambling. If he met a younger version of himself now he doubted he would even like him very much.
The uncertainty in him built. He did not respect his past nor his present and his future looked less rosy than he imagined it might have on returning to England. Each of his friends had a woman now, a family, a place to live and be. His own loneliness felt more acute given the pathway they had taken. He had missed his direction and even the thought of confronting his guardian in the large and dusty halls of Bromworth Manor had become less appealing than it had been on the boat over.
Did he want it all back, the responsibility and the problems? Did he need to be a viscount? Such a title would confine him once again to society ways and manners, things which now seemed pointless and absurd.
Even the club had lost its sheen, the dubious morality of vice and pleasure outdated and petty. The overt sexuality disturbed him. From where he sat he could see a dozen or more statues of women in various stages of undress and sensual arousal. The paintings of couplings on the wall were more brazen than he could ever remember, more distasteful.
In America he had seen the effects of prostitution on boys, girls and women in a way he had never noticed here, the thrill of the fantasy and daring dimmed under the reality. For every coin spent to purchase a dream for someone there was a nightmare hidden beneath for another.
‘You seem quiet, Nicholas? Are you well?’ Jacob had leant over to touch his arm and the unexpected contact made him jump and pull away. He knew they had all noticed such a reaction and struggled to hide his fury.
Everything was wrong. He was wrong to come and expect it all to have been just as it was. The headache he had been afflicted with ever since his recovery of memory chose that moment to develop into a migraine, his sight jumping between the faces of his friends and cutting them into small jagged prisms of distortion.
He wished he could just lie down here on the floor on an Aubusson rug that was thick and clean and close his eyes. He wished for darkness and silence. He hated himself as he began to shake violently and was thankful when Oliver crossed the room having found a woollen blanket, tucking it in gently around his shoulders.