reply to that. The man’s patronising air was enough to set your teeth on edge, he thought.
‘Plenty of that on offer—if you know where to look for it. Shoot, do you?’
‘A little,’ lied Cobie, who was a crack shot with every kind of weapon, but for some reason decided not to confess to that. There were times when he wondered whether he would ever be permitted the luxury of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!
‘A little, eh? Don’t suppose you get much chance to shoot anything in Wall Street, hey! hey! Or anywhere else for that matter.’
‘Exactly,’ drawled Cobie, suppressing a dreadful urge to tell the languid fool opposite to him that there had been a time when Cobie Grant, then known as Jake Coburn, a six-shooter in his hand, had been a man to fear and to avoid.
On the other hand, if Sir Ratcliffe chose to think him a soft townie, then it was all to the good. It usually paid to be underestimated.
At breakfast that morning, Susanna explained why Sir Ratcliffe disliked him so much.
‘He saw Violet was taken with you, didn’t he? She was looking at you as though you were a rather delicious meal laid out for her to enjoy. He’s been after her for months—with no luck. He’s made an ass of himself over the Prince’s favouring her. On top of that, the rumour is that he’s in Queer Street financially, and there’s you, an enormously rich Yankee, fascinating Violet without even trying.’
Of course, Sir Ratcliffe had been right to be jealous—and so had Susanna, which was why she was reproaching Cobie for being the man he was and not the man he had been.
Susanna had been only too well aware that Cobie would take up Violet’s two o’clock invitation at the earliest opportunity—which he promptly did, that very afternoon. At the Kenilworths’ town house in Piccadilly he enjoyed, for what it was worth, what a famous actress and beauty had once called the hurly burly of the chaise-longue rather than the deep peace of the marriage bed. One disadvantage being that one remained virtually fully clothed.
He also, a little reluctantly, agreed to visit Moorings several days before the rest of the guests arrived. Violet had smiled at him confidentially, and drawled, ‘As early as you like so that we can enjoy ourselves in comfort.’
Cobie was not sure that he wished his affair with her to be more than a passing thing. Violet had not improved on further acquaintance, and to some extent he was regretting having pursued her at all—but he could not refuse to visit Moorings without offending her—and he had no wish to do that. It was plain that she saw him as a trophy, and was determined to flaunt him before the rest of society. He wondered a little what the Prince of Wales would think of Violet taking a second lover, but she made nothing of that.
‘I understand that your nickname in the States is The Dollar Prince,’ were her final words to him, ‘which means that I now have two of such name.’
He was tempted to say, ‘No, Violet, you certainly don’t have me,’ but he was well aware that it would be unwise to make an enemy of her, so he merely bowed in acknowledgement of her mild witticism when taking his leave before the bores arrived at four o’clock.
Well, at least he would be able to enjoy living for a few weeks in one of the most spectacularly beautiful country houses in England, even if he did have to pay for it by pleasuring Violet!
It was for that reason, but not for that reason alone, that two evenings later he left the ball which she and her husband were giving at Kenilworth House long before Violet wished him to. He had bidden her ‘goodnight’ with all the charm which he could muster, but it was not enough to mollify her.
‘Leaving already!’ she had exclaimed, her beautiful brows arching high. ‘The night is yet young, and many who are years older than you are will not be giving up until dawn.’
‘Alas,’ he told her untruthfully, ‘I have been busy in the City all day, and such a concentration of effort carries its own penalties—I am sure that Kenilworth will have told you that.’
Cobie had always wondered at the workings of chance, and that it might be unwise to ignore them. Chance had led him to overhear something odd that night, something which had stayed in his memory. It was for that reason only that after leaving Kenilworth House, he did not go straight home to the Winthrops’. Instead he dismissed his carriage and walked down the Haymarket, which was so brilliantly lit that it might as well have been day.
The usual stares at his splendid self from both men and women followed him: he ignored them all and carried on his solitary way until he came to an alley about a hundred yards beyond the Haymarket Theatre. Looking down it, he could see a group of top-hatted men of fashion standing and smoking under a swinging lantern over an eighteenth-century doorway.
It must be Madame Louise’s: the brothel where the quality went, where discretion and high prices reigned. The conversation which he had overheard at the Kenilworths’ ball had him intrigued enough to consider going in. He had been leaning against a pillar, half-hidden, tired of the nothingness of the whole business, when he had heard two men approach and, quite unaware of his presence nearby, begin a muffled conversation.
‘Deadly boring tonight, eh, Heneage? Not that these pre-Season dos are ever anything else.’
Heneage—it must be the pompous dandy whom Cobie had met at Susanna’s equally boring thrash.
He was answering his companion in an amused knowing voice. ‘I know a better way of entertaining one’s self, Darrell, and it’s not far from here. Madame Louise’s place, in short. You can only visit there if you have the entrée—and I have. We could move on when I’ve done the pretty with dear Violet.’
Darrell—that would be Hubert Darrell, one of the hangers-on to the coat-tails of the great. They were rather like those extras in a play who are always shouting ‘Rhubarb, rhubarb’ at the appropriate moment. From the turn the conversation had taken Darrell was about to be introduced to some vicious inner circle.
‘Bit dull, though, isn’t it, Heneage? Just the usual, I take it.’
Heneage laughed patronisingly. ‘Oh, you can always find variety at Madame’s if you’re in the know, are discreet and have plenty of tin. You can have anything you fancy—anything—no holds barred. But mum’s the world, old fellow. Are you game?’
‘Game for anything—you know me.’
‘Then we’ll do the rounds here first, and sample the goods afterwards. I heard, don’t ask me how, that Madame has some new stuff on show tonight, very prime.’ Sir Ratcliffe’s voice was full of hateful promise.
They moved out of Cobie’s hearing, leaving him to wonder what exactly was meant by ‘no holds barred’ and ‘good new stuff’—and not liking the answer he came up with.
Curiosity now led him to enter Madame’s gilded entrance hall and to bribe his way past the giants on guard there since he came alone and unrecommended. This took him some little time. He thought, amusedly, that he might have been trying to enter a palace, not a brothel, so complicated was the ritual.
He agreed to hand over his top hat and scarf to a female dragon at the cloakroom, but insisted on carrying in his all-enveloping cape—which cost him another tip for a sweetener. There were reasons why he wanted to retain it. He then made his way into an exquisitely appointed drawing room.
Everything
