ground, left there for their bodies to rot as the French stripped them of boots and weapons, food and ammunition, before abandoning the battlefield.
“When you see your papa,” he shouted as the wagon kept moving, “tell him I damn his eyes for what happened here today—and damn you for a bloody coward!”
He didn’t feel the butt of the French rifle slam into the side of his head, although when he woke, lying half in an icy puddle, it was with a headache that would come back to plague him for nearly a year.
Not quite two months after what would be his last real victory, Napoleon was finally forced to abdicate, and at last everyone could go home. Indeed, Gabriel Sinclair and his friends Jeremiah Rigby and Cooper Townsend were relaxing at White’s, sipping wine and shelling walnuts when the last of their quartet, Darby Travers, arrived to join them. He tossed a folded newspaper onto the table before dropping into a chair, his face dark with disgust.
“Read that, my friends. Myles Neville has just been honored by the Russians for indispensable services to General Olssufiev, Mother Russia and all God’s fair creatures, I imagine. It says there that they gave him a party and a bloody medal in Paris. Can you believe it? Not content to get his son back alive, that damned Earl of Broxley has somehow managed to turn piss-pants into a hero.”
Cranbrook Chase, August 1815
BASIL SINCLAIR, SIXTH DUKE of Cranbrook, was dying.
Or perhaps not.
One never knew with Basil.
Most anything could send him staggering to his bed, telling all who would listen (a diminishing number of ears), that he was not long for this world, about to shuffle off this mortal coil, stick his spoon in the wall, cock up his toes, be carried to bed on six men’s shoulders—et cetera.
He hadn’t always been this way. Twenty years past, he was a happily married fifth son, living the life of the pampered and heavily allowanced, traveling the world with his lovely wife, Vivien.
Vivien and Basil, Basil and Vivien, carefree, high-spirited, game for any adventure. And without a care in the world.
But then Boswell, the second duke, died within days of his sixtieth birthday. Fit as a fiddle, happy as a lark, drinking and carousing, mounting a mistress in the country, keeping a canary bird or two in the city. The picture of health (and the envy of many), he was heading toward the dance floor with a lovely young thing on his arm one evening when suddenly he stopped, said something very much like “Erp?” rolled his eyes heavenward…and dropped like a stone.
Unnerving, to say the least, but the fellow had certainly had a good run at life. All things considered, his wasn’t such a bad way to go.
Basil and Vivien paid their respects, mourned in their fashion (a trip to Africa to hunt anything with four legs and a tail), secure in the knowledge that their allowance would continue under Basil’s oldest brother.
Until Bennett, the third duke, just two weeks shy of his sixtieth birthday, whilst driving his new pair of matched bays in Hyde Park, his recently affianced and hopefully fertile bride-to-be at his side, uttered a rather surprised “Erp?” rolled up his eyes and toppled to the gravel drive. Luckily, the bays, being, as the saying went, “all show and no go,” were easily stopped before running the curricle and screeching fiancée into the Serpentine.
Basil, learning the news nearly six months later, gnawed on his bottom lip as his darling Vivien oohed and aahed at the sight of the Taj Mahal, unaware that a small seed of worry had planted itself in her husband’s brain.
Sixteen months later, when Ballard (the fourth duke, for those keeping track, and Basil most certainly was), having just finessed a mediocre hand into a five-thousand-guinea profit, reached out to gather in his winnings, he suddenly hesitated, then said something his fellow gamblers swore sounded exactly like “Erp?” At nearly the same time, his eyes rolled up in his head, and a moment later he was facedown in the chips.
Ballard had been eight days shy of his sixtieth birthday.
“Let me guess,” Jeremiah Rigby said, holding up a hand to interrupt his friend Gabriel as he told the story. The two sat on a bench in the Cranbrook Chase gardens. “Basil and Vivien were on the moon munching green cheese when they got the word?”
Gabriel smiled, because he wasn’t a man devoid of humor, even rather dark humor. “Not quite. They were somewhere in Virginia, visiting a distant relative of my aunt’s. She’s just home from there now, by the way, having had her reunion shortened by Uncle Ballard’s death.”
“Your uncle didn’t go with her, obviously, considering he’s upstairs dying.”
“Again. He’s dying again. But let me finish.”
“Yes, there’s another B in there somewhere, isn’t there? The first duke was a busy man, and his wife even more so. Bronson? Bundy? Baldric? Now tell me he erped in Prinney’s lap, and I’ll die a happy man.”
“Bellamy, and he was being fitted with a new rig-out when it happened. Word has it the waistcoat was to be striped orange satin, so at least Society was spared that.”
“He’d ordered new clothes to celebrate his sixtieth birthday?”
Gabriel stood up, smoothed down his cuffs. He was a tall man, much more so than his rather squat friend, so he was used to looking down at him whenever he spoke. He did so now, raising one expressive eyebrow in mock disapproval. “Who’s telling this story? Yes, he was four days from his sixtieth, and there was to be quite a large celebration at Cranbrook House in Portman Square scheduled for the night after that birthday. Uncle Bellamy was out to prove the curse wrong.”
Now Rigby was on his feet, all eagerness. “Oh, now that’s something you forgot to mention. There’s a curse? Keep going, please. Nothing like a good curse to liven an otherwise dull afternoon.”
“Picked up on that, did you? Uncle Basil thinks so, yes. The moment word reached him that he was now the heir—they were in Venice, I believe—he packed up Aunt Vivien and has been hiding here at Cranbrook Chase ever since. He’s convinced his father and brothers lived too high and too hard—rather in the way he and Aunt Vivien were living—and the jealous fates had exacted a price for their excesses. He’s given up traveling, wine, song, adventure. And women. According to Aunt Vivien—who unfortunately shares everything other than her age—that includes her. His major worry is that he left redemption too late and won’t even live long enough to, well, erp.”
“I see. Well, not actually, but go on. Wait. Before you do, how did your father die? And when?”
“That took longer than I expected, but thank you anyway for your concern. My father never reached sixty, either.”
“Aha! You live a fairly high life, my friend. Why aren’t you hiding out up there with your great-uncle, perhaps reciting Psalms?”
“Papa accidently shot himself in a rather personal area of his anatomy while out hunting with his friends, who said they’d honestly tried but couldn’t find a way to attach a tourniquet.”
Rigby politely coughed
