The Ruthless Rake Read online

  “What is it?” Syringa asked.

  “Ninian has found a new fortune-teller,” Lady Elaine explained. “And she is not only a fortune-teller, but extremely clever at telling someone’s character.”

  “I don’t want to have my fortune told,” Syringa replied, “I don’t want to know the future – I am quite content with the – present.”

  “Oh, you cannot spoil our fun!” Lady Elaine protested. “We have all consulted Madame Zelobia. All you have to do, Syringa, is to write something on a piece of paper. She can tell from your handwriting not only your future but your past and all the characteristics that make you what you are.”

  “It’s a very old science as a matter of fact,” Ninian said.

  “I would much rather – not do it,” Syringa persisted.

  “How could you be so unkind to Ninian when he has gone to so much trouble and persuaded her to do you,” Lady Elaine enquired.

  “To do me! Why me?” Syringa asked.

  “Because we want to test Madame. You see she knows too much about me, too much about Ninian, too much about Ancelin! We are talked about and we are written about in the newspapers. People know all our secrets.”

  She made a wide gesture with her white hands.

  “But you are new and, if she is right where you are concerned, well we shall know that she is not a fraud. Can you not see that?”

  “Yes, I – understand,” Syringa said slowly.

  “Mrs. Fitzherbert has promised that she will go to her and that means the Prince of Wales will go too. So you see, Syringa, we have to be very careful not to recommend anyone who is not absolutely honest and above board.”

  “Of course not,” Syringa agreed.

  “Then do what Ninian asks,” Lady Elaine said.

  Ninian Roth produced a plain piece of paper.

  “All you have to do,” he explained, “is to write your name. It’s not very difficult is it?”

  “Not – really.”

  She did not know why, but she felt curiously reluctant to do what they asked.

  ‘It’s stupid of me,’ she thought, ‘but I don’t want to be mixed up with fortune-tellers where Lady Elaine and Ninian Roth are concerned.’

  She felt that there was some ulterior reason why they wanted her to be involved. They had never seemed anxious for her company or been interested in her before – so why now? But it was impossible to extricate herself without being positively rude.

  “Just sign your name here,” Ninian Roth said pointing to the centre of the white parchment.

  He walked as he spoke to the secretaire that stood in the corner of the drawing room. Sitting down in the writing chair, Syringa picked up a white quill pen.

  She hesitated.

  Ninian Roth was waiting and she had the absurd feeling that he was willing her to do what he wished.

  Slowly in her small exquisite writing Syringa wrote her name.

  “And now I have a splendid idea!” Ninian Roth exclaimed. “Write another name and the fortune-teller will think it is another person. We will not tell her if is you and if she describes two entirely different characters, then we shall know she is a fraud!”

  “But, of course!” Lady Elaine cried. “How brilliant of you, Ninian!”

  Syringa sat with the quill pen in her hand staring from one to the other.

  “Go on,” Ninian Roth prompted. “Write a name. Any name at the bottom of the page.”

  “I cannot think of one!” Syringa said stupidly.

  “Then let me think for you,” he said. “What about Elizabeth Witheringham? It sounds very different to Syringa Melton does it not?”

  Slowly Syringa wrote ‘Elizabeth Witheringham’ at the place he indicated.

  “Now this will be a real test,” Lady Elaine said. “They say that the Prince of Wales is very credulous and I would not like him to be misled by a charlatan. Some of these seers into the future are, I am told, completely unscrupulous.”

  “That is why I would rather not go to them,” Syringa pointed out rising from the secretaire.

  “We will never bother you to go to another one,” Ninian Roth asserted.

  There was something in the way he said it that made Syringa quite inexplicably feel afraid.

  “I would much rather not go to – this one,” she said quickly. “Please let me tear up the paper.”

  “I am sure that would be very unlucky,” he replied. “You are committed now to help us, you cannot draw back.”

  “But why? It’s not really too late, is it?” Syringa said.

  “Oh, really you are being too nonsensical!” Lady Elaine exclaimed. “You are frightening the child, Ninian. It is after all only a game. Fun for us all. Don’t be a spoilsport, Syringa, I am sure that Ancelin will think it most amusing.”

  There was nothing else Syringa could say and yet, as she went upstairs to her own bedroom, she was worried.

  She did not know why, but she had a distinct presentiment of evil.

  Chapter Seven

  The Prince of Wales was getting foxed and the Earl thought that it was not surprising considering that the Duke of Norfolk was his host.

  Had the Earl known that after dinner at Carlton House the evening’s entertainment was to be provided by the Duke of Norfolk, he would not have accepted the Prince’s most pressing invitation to be present.

  The Duke of Norfolk was sixteen years older than the Prince and had been a celebrated drunkard since he was a boy.

  A very ill-educated man, he had, however, a native intelligence and a biting wit which made him heartily disliked by a large number of his contemporaries. But to the Prince he was an intimate friend.

  The dinner at Carlton House had been a replica of innumerable dinners the Earl had attended in the last three years.

  No ladies were invited and the guests consisted of the Prince’s more riotous and ill-famed friends whose company caused him to be parodied continually in Gillray’s caricatures.

  The fourth Marquis of Queensberry was a very much older man, yet the Prince seemed to enjoy his company as well.

  Immensely rich and selfish he was short of stature, sharp-looking, very irritable and swore like ten thousand troopers.

  He was also a dedicated whoremonger and it was said that there was not a Lady of Quality in the whole of London who had not at some time been the object of his advances.

  The Marquis received a lot of rebuffs, it was true, although, as he said himself, he also enjoyed a great many successes.

  He was at the same time one of the most polished gentlemen of his day, he had a passion for music and a taste for literature and the fine arts. There was in fact some justification for the Prince’s partiality for him.

  In the company of these Noblemen it was natural to find the wild Barrymore brothers and all three of them were seated round the vast table in the dining room of Carlton House with its silver walls supported by columns of red and yellow granite.

  The seventh Earl of Barrymore was doing his best to dissipate a fortune worth over forty thousand pounds a year. He was so depraved and so dissolute that he was known to all and sundry as ‘Hellgate’.

  The stories of the escapades of his friends were whispered in every London drawing room and embellished in every tavern, while the newspapers found him an inexhaustible source of scandal with which to fill their columns.

  The Earl’s elder brother, the Honourable and Reverend Augustus Barry, was a compulsive gambler, forever on the edge of being sent to the debtor’s prison and was inevitably known as ‘Newgate’. The younger brother, who had a club foot, was dubbed ‘Cripplegate’.

  The three brothers had a strange sense of humour.

  One of their jokes was to race down to Brighton in their coach, stopping to uproot or displace signposts or to scream, “Murder! Rape! Unhand me, villain!” to all who would listen.

  When their coach was overtaken and stopped by travellers who believed a murder was really being committed, they would jump out to insult and physically ass
ault the good Samaritans.

  When they stayed in Brighton, the three brothers called themselves ‘The Merry Mourners’ and, carrying a coffin at night, used to knock on the doors of respectable citizens and tradesmen and tell the terrified maidservant who opened the door that they had come to remove the corpse.

  ‘Cripplegate’ on one occasion rode his horse up the staircase of Mrs. Fitzherbert’s house right into the attic, where he left it to be brought down by two blacksmiths.

  On another occasion ‘Hellgate’ dressed up in the clothes of his cook and sang a serenade at three o’clock in the morning underneath Mrs. Fitzherbert’s bedroom window.

  It was strange that after such behaviour the Prince should still go on calling the brothers his friends, but they amused him although the Earl of Rothingham found them oafish and at times repugnant.

  Another guest at the Prince’s table was Sir John Lade, a disreputable man who, however, had an amusing wit. He had inherited a huge fortune from brewing and he advised the Prince on the management of his racing stables.

  He was married to an attractive but loud-mouthed courtesan named Letitia who had numbered the Duke of York among her lovers.

  Besides these notorious characters there was at the party a collection of the Prince’s hangers-on and toadies, who flattered him to his face and sniggered at him behind his back.

  ‘It’s a pity,’ the Earl said to himself, ‘that the Prince’s unerring taste where works of art are concerned is not extended to his choice of friends.’

  He had only to look at the walls of Carlton House to confirm the truth of this observation.

  The Prince’s flair for the Dutch Masters he had collected, his patronage for modem artists like Lawrence, Reynolds and Gainsborough would, the Earl was convinced, be acclaimed by posterity.

  But his Royal Highness’s companions would go down to history as parasites, drunken reprobates and licentious libertines.

  ‘I wish I had not come!’ the Earl thought to himself at Carlton House as the drink flowed too freely and there would inevitably be too many over-rich courses.

  And he said it to himself again when the Prince insisted that they must all proceed to the party that the Duke of Norfolk was giving at The White House.

  This was the most famous and the most exclusive brothel-cum-gambling house in the whole of London. Its shrewd proprietor was clever in providing everything that a Gentleman of Fashion needed for a relaxed and pleasurable evening.

  The place itself was attractive, well decorated and well managed.

  The private rooms had a charm of their own. There were murals of half-naked nymphs pursued by satyrs and each room had a special motif to make it distinguishable.

  There was the Silver Room, the Gold Room, Persephone’s Bower and innumerable others, each served by powdered and gold-laced flunkeys and provided with the most alluring women if also the most expensive.

  The Silver Room where the Duke was giving his party, was octagonal in shape. There were gaming tables for the Prince and a number of soft-cushioned couches arranged in alcoves for those who had other ideas of enjoyment.

  The wine was of the best and by the time the Prince and his friends arrived somewhat unsteadily from Carlton House the theatres were over and a number of the Corps de Ballet were at the Duke’s invitation already present.

  The Earl was relieved to see that Michelle was not amongst them.

  However, there was, he noted, the little redhead whose acquaintance he had planned to make when he returned from the country.

  He vaguely remembered telling someone that he was interested in her and he was surprised to realise that the Duke had taken more trouble than usual to pander to the taste of his guests and of himself in particular.

  He might have thought such an idea was too far-fetched had not the Duke immediately on their arrival brought the pretty redhead up to him and said,

  “Here is someone who is very anxious to meet you, Rothingham. May I present Lottie Strasner, who, as I am sure you can guess, comes from Vienna,”

  Lottie, without making any pretence of formality, slipped her arm into the Earl’s and drew him aside to sit with her on one of the couches.

  “I have wanted, oh so much, to meet you for a long time, my Lord,” she began.

  She had a rather attractive voice with just a trace of a broken accent.

  “May I ask why?” the Earl enquired good-humouredly.

  She fluttered her eyelashes as she replied,

  “I am told you are generous, my Lord, very generous to those you like.”

  It was an answer that the Earl might have expected and yet it jarred on him.

  Only that afternoon Lady Elaine had attempted to persuade him to give her a ruby bracelet that matched the necklace on which he had expended quite a considerable amount of money.

  “I would not press you if I was not so afraid that it will be sold to someone else,” she pleaded. “It’s in the window of a shop in Bond Street and I am sure that you would wish to give me something that would delight me more than anything else!”

  The Earl was extremely generous when it pleased him, but like most other men, he disliked being forced into a generosity that did not come naturally.

  He had not made love to Lady Elaine since he had returned to London and he could not help feeling that she was being exceedingly greedy.

  He knew that waiting on his secretary’s desk for his approval were an abnormal number of bills for gowns, hats and other articles of clothing.

  “I will think about it,” he said.

  “How kind you are, how sweet!” Lady Elaine had replied, putting her arm round his neck to draw his head down to hers.

  When almost unwillingly his lips were near, she said softly ,

  “You have been neglecting me, Ancelin. I have been waiting for you. Waiting every night this week.”

  “I have been busy,” the Earl said evasively.

  “With your little protégée?” she asked and somehow it was like the hiss of a snake.

  The Earl had removed her arms.

  “I hope you will be kind to Syringa,” he said sharply. “She knows no one in London and I wish her to enjoy herself.”

  “But, of course,” Lady Elaine replied, “and we must enjoy ourselves too. I miss you, Ancelin.”

  The Earl looked at his watch.

  “I have an appointment at White’s Club,” he said coldly, “so I am afraid that you must excuse me.”

  “And you will think about the bracelet?” Lady Elaine asked softly.

  “I will think about it,” he replied.

  Now sitting on the sofa at The White House with Lottie Strasner’s face upturned to his, the Earl wondered if all women were so avaricious. Were gowns and jewels all they really wanted from a man?

  Then he heard a little voice saying hesitatingly,

  “Perhaps – they are able to give you – something in return. But I can give you – nothing – ”

  Syringa was different from the others and he thought too that, because she was so fragile and gentle, she made every other woman seem coarse and hard.

  She was like a drawing and only the soft lines of a Master hand could do justice to the spirituality of her face and her large eyes.

  Only a pencil could portray the strange magic of her shadowy hair or the sensitive curve of her lips.

  Lottie, with her red hair, mascaraed eyelids and crimson mouth, looked somehow grotesque in comparison, while Lady Elaine’s beauty, outstanding though it was, had no subtlety about it.

  The Earl glanced towards the gaming tables.

  Charles James Fox, the brilliant politician and compulsive gambler, had joined the Prince. It was surprising that the young Prince admired him so much.

  Paunchy, untidy, graceless, with a swarthy skin, a double chin and black shaggy eyebrows, Mr. Fox was a hard drinker who had taken over two of the Prince’s former mistresses.

  But he was also a man of amazing charm and brilliant intellect. His conversation was
entertaining and his friendship for the Heir to the Throne, thirteen years younger than himself, was not merely useful politically, it was sincere.

  But with Fox at the party the Earl knew that the gaming would go on until dawn.

  It was a mistake for the Prince to gamble. He was already heavily in debt and he seldom won at cards.

  The Earl knew, however, that there was nothing he could do to prevent the Prince staying up all night with his friend Charles Fox, both of them throwing money they neither of them could afford on to the green baize tables.

  A band was playing romantically in a minstrel’s gallery screened with rose covered trelliswork, so that they could not be seen.

  Those of the Duke’s guests who could still stand on their feet were dancing with the ladies who appeared to be shedding quite a number of their diaphanous garments as they twirled around the room.

  Others on the couches were behaving with a voluptuous indiscretion that was growing more abandoned every moment.

  Two pretty members of the Corps de Ballet astride a couple of gentlemen were racing them across the floor to the accompaniment of a horsey commentary from those who had placed a wager on the event.

  It was an exhibition that the Earl knew would be repeated again later in the evening, when the participants would wear far less clothing.

  Whips would then be carried by the riders and spurs attached to their busy little heels.

  Flunkeys with trays of crystal glasses filled to the brim with champagne or burgundy kept passing amongst the guests so there was never a moment that their thirst might not be assuaged.

  “You like me – yes?” the Earl heard Lottie say and realised that she was still clinging closely to his arm, her red head resting against his shoulder.

  He brought his eyes back to her and noticed that she used a perfume that was popular amongst the members of her profession, but was one he had a strong dislike for.

  It was over-pungent and it reminded him all too forcibly of several unfortunate episodes in the East that he had hoped to forget.

  He straightened himself on the sofa moving away from Lottie, feeling her proximity was too close and too familiar. He decided that he was definitely not interested in her.