The Desperate Duke

its diversions. The thought of spending the night alone in his bachelor flat was intolerable: Besides dwelling on his quarrel with La Fantasia and how he might have handled the matter differently, he was all too aware that he must give up the flat soon and take up residence in the town house that had been his father’s and his father’s before him. Having nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, he eventually ended up at White’s, where the Dukes of Reddington had been members since its earliest days as a chocolate house more than a century ago. His father, he recalled, had put him up for membership upon his leaving Oxford, and his unanimous acceptance into the exclusive club was one of the few occasions on which he’d had the satisfaction of knowing he had made the duke proud. Granted, the play in its card rooms tended to run a bit deep, and his pockets were to let, at least until the will was probated. Still, as he had told Fanny, his credit was good. Besides, he thought in a burst of optimism, he might even win.

He had not expected to find the club crowded, and nor was it; still, there were several gentlemen present who were old acquaintances of either himself or his father. Chief among the former were four young men very nearly his own age. They had all been at Oxford together, and all were heirs to titles of varying degrees of preeminence. With the callousness of youth, they had dubbed themselves the Lads-in-Waiting, and had sworn an oath (with much pricking of fingers and mixing of blood, which had lent the business just that degree of solemnity and high drama sure to appeal to very young men of seventeen) that each one, upon succeeding to his father’s honors, would treat the others to a toast with the club’s best brandy. Three of the group had already made good on this promise, so Theodore, not wishing to appear behindhand in the matter, was quick to follow the precedent that had been set for him. The famed bow window overlooking St. James’s Street was vacant upon this occasion, since Lord Alvanley and his set were absent from Town—Alvanley being, of course, the acknowledged leader of fashionable Society since Brummell had decamped for France four years earlier—and so the three young lords seized the opportunity of ensconcing themselves there. From this lofty position, they offered Theodore their condolences upon his father’s death, adding (in the same breath and without a hint of irony) their congratulations upon his coming into the title, along with caveats that the responsibilities of such a position posed a serious impediment to such pleasures as they had envisioned during their Oxford days. As this information merely confirmed the discovery that Theodore had come to London to escape, he was not sorry when one of the group (the only one whose father still lived, and thus the only one who could contribute nothing to the conversation) suggested they pop into the card room for a look.

Here they found a game of whist in progress, and when one of the participants was obliged to take his leave, Theodore did not have to be persuaded to take his place at the card table. Alas, it soon proved he was no luckier at cards that evening than he had been at love earlier in the day. He soon found himself punting on tick, but as the only alternative was to return to that lonely flat, he was easily coaxed into playing one more hand, and then another, and another. His losses did not trouble him overmuch; after all, this was nothing like that occasion some four years earlier, when he had been duped into playing hazard with a villain who only wanted some hold over his sister. For one thing, this was cards, not dice, and the game was as much one of skill as it was of chance. For another, he was not dependent upon his wealthy brother-in-law for the money to cover his losses, but would have the funds himself as soon as the duke’s will was probated. Until then, his credit was good.

Still, when the game broke up he was a bit taken aback by the sum he’d managed to lose in a very short space of time. He stammered something about seeing his banker in the morning, after which he would do himself the honor of calling upon his opponent for the purpose of redeeming his vowels.

“No trouble at all, your grace,” the other man quickly demurred, and upon this reassuring note, Theodore took his leave.

ALAS, THE FOLLOWING morning it became abundantly clear to Theodore that there was one place in London where his credit was, in fact, not good. It was his misfortune that this place happened to be the Bank of England.

“But dash it, man!” he expostulated with the stoop-shouldered clerk on the other side of a metal grill that gave him the appearance of a mouse in a cage. “You know who I am! You’ve seen me a hundred times!”

“Yes, your lordship—that is, your grace—and I’m sorry I can’t oblige you, but there are rules—”

“Never mind the rules! Is old Dorry in? I’ll have a word with him, if you please.”

The clerk, caught between offending a very influential client and angering his superior—for the personage whom Theodore had so cavalierly dubbed “Old Dorry” was, in fact, Mr. George Dorrien, Governor of the Bank of England—wavered only a moment before coming to a decision.

“Yes, sir—er, your grace—yes, Mr. Dorrien is here. I’ll fetch him directly, shall I?”

As it was he who had suggested it, Theodore raised no objections to this plan. The hapless clerk escaped from his cage and hurried across the marble-tiled floor, disappearing through a door in the rear where, presumably, the bank’s senior officers might be found. He returned a few minutes later, trotting along at the heels of a tall man whose stern visage