Page 7 of Once a Gentleman
Chapter Four
Hewlett was decidedly still his secretary, and nothing else, at dawn the following morning, though Andrew’s vague recollection of his dreams, rife with green eyes and soft moans, argued otherwise.
He had scoffed at Andrew’s word, for God’s sake. Hisword. Andrew seethed at the recollection. It was the sort of insult he could not forgive, and more than that, it showed clearly how little Hewlett thought of him. He wanted nothing more than a secretary, particularly when his secretary considered him a liar and a cad, and that was that, dreams be damned.
Darkness pressed in on Andrew’s bedchamber windows, and when he lit a candle from the embers of the fireplace he could see only his own frowning reflection, wavering and running in the condensation from the heavy fog outside.
He gave the bell-rope a jerk, then another, and then a third for good measure. Unlikely that any of the staff would be in the kitchen as yet to begin their duties, but Mattson often slept off his drink draped over a table. The butler would wake to the ringing, or he’d wake when Andrew stormed in and kicked him.
Several salutary experiences of the latter had trained Mattson to overcome his sore head before Andrew finished his morning ablutions and came downstairs. Mattson might be a slipshod, indifferent servant much of the time, and Andrew tolerated it far more than he ought, not wishing to expose himself to malice if Mattson wished to make trouble over his less-respectable and less-legal habits—such as his fondness for male company. But he had a limit, and Mattson understood that if Andrew were to go to gaol his inflated salary would go with it.
Andrew’s limit included a lack of coffee in the morning. Luckily, he had a sailor’s stoic tolerance of nearly any quality of food, or lack of it, for no amount of kicking would have produced anything really appetizing.
As expected, there was coffee and toast in the breakfast parlor some quarter of an hour later, although it wasn’t worth lingering over—also as expected. Andrew let himself out the front door and set off. A hackney rattled by as Andrew turned onto the main thoroughfare from his own quieter square, but he waved it on. Better to walk, to stretch his legs, to fill his lungs with the salty fog, redolent of seaweed and sand and rotting fish, that twisted and plumed through the streets of Portsmouth. In this part of the town there were few about at this hour; the dock workmen would all be streaming to their tasks, but they wouldn’t venture here. A few errand boys hurried past, and maids and footmen lurked in wait to receive deliveries.
It was not nearly distracting enough. Cannon fire, tacking against a high wind, keeping his footing as waves washed over the deck: those would be enough. Andrew walked faster, his boot heels striking ringing notes against the cobblestones. What he wouldn’t give to be away, safely aboard his ship and far distant from this dull, dreary bit of earth.
And his dull, dreary secretary. Well. Dull, at least. No one with a neck so long and slender could be properly considereddreary. His dull, decorative secretary? That had the advantage of continued alliteration, at the least.
Decorative he might be, and very clearly bent—if he could ever unbend, so to speak, sufficiently to act upon it—but he was as joyless as a medieval martyr, and clearly thought Andrew the sort to shoot a few arrows at one.
Andrew mounted the steps of his solicitor’s offices two at a time, pushing all thoughts of Hewlett’s pretty green eyes and delectable arse out of his mind. Hewlett could be William Wellesley Pole himself, and it wouldn’t matter a whit, so long as he read and answered the correspondence from Andrew’s various business associates, and most especially, paid the wine merchant and Andrew’s bloody nuisance of a French tailor.
Andrew turned the corner from the steep, damp-streaked flight of stairs and opened the door to Robinson’s outer office, a cramped space occupied by two sour-faced clerks at their desks and a prodigious number of shelves crammed with letters, memoranda, and papers of all other kinds. The place smelled of ink and irritation, and Andrew wrinkled his nose. Give him the clean salt of the sea any day, though it might come with more chance of loss of life and limb. All the more because of that, in fact.
“Good morning, Mr. Turner,” said the more senior of the two clerks, distinguishable as such by the threads of gray in his close-cropped hair. Andrew had never troubled to learn their names. “Mr. Robinson will be happy to see you at once, sir.”
Andrew’s uncle had probably paid for the lion’s share of Robinson’s country house and daughter’s dowry over the last several decades. Andrew suspected that Robinson would be happy to see his uncle’s heir even at midnight, much less at a quarter past seven—a time most fashionable people would have considered infinitely less civilized. But Andrew had been to sea, on and off, since the age of fifteen, and really only pretended to be fashionable.
At times he wondered if any aspect of himself while ashore was more than mere pretense. He had not remained at school long enough to be erudite, though he could hold his own well enough with educated men. His father had died when Andrew was only a small boy, and his few memories of the man were of short-tempered shouting, which left him with little by way of a model for a gentleman’s behavior. His mother had not enjoyed children, which gave him a rather sketchy portrait of the way families were meant to behave with one another. And he had never expected to be a wealthy man, with all the responsibilities attached to that.
All told, he knew very well how to be a sailor and an officer, but when not filling those roles he floundered about, unsure of his place in the world and in society. He took refuge in society that the world wouldn’t consider respectable, since the expectations in such company were low.
Which in its turn left him rather unfit for better company, and perhaps he always would be. That was an avenue of thought he preferred not to pursue, though it yawned before him most unsettlingly late at night when his bed partner had departed and the brandy bottle remained.
At least Robinson’s clerks were unlikely to find him wanting, since he behaved decently enough while in their office.
With a nod and a word of thanks, Andrew allowed himself to be ushered through into Robinson’s equally small but far less cluttered room. A single window behind Robinson’s desk tried to illuminate the space, though it couldn’t accomplish much in the face of the lowering, drizzling fog swirling against the glass and blanketing Portsmouth in gloom.
Robinson stood as Andrew entered, holding out one bony hand across the desk. His mane of wispy white hair, stooped shoulders, and the gold-rimmed spectacles perched on his long nose were always precisely the same. Despite his clearly advancing age, he showed no sign of retiring from his profession, and his eyes were as sharp as always.
“Mr. Robinson,” Andrew said, giving his hand a cordial shake. “Thank you for seeing me without an appointment.”
Robinson waved his hand and sank back into his well-padded chair. “Not at all, sir, not at all. Tea? In this weather I drink gallons of the stuff.” At Andrew’s shake of the head, he continued with, “I presume you’re here about that contract with the mill in Salford?”
“We could certainly discuss that,” Andrew hedged. Had he told Robinson he wanted to invest in a cotton mill? Damnation. It really was quite past time for someone else to muddle through such nonsense, which brought him to the real purpose of his visit. “But I’ve actually called to inform you I’ve hired a secretary, a Mr. Hewlett. He can look at the contract on my behalf once he’s familiarized himself with my affairs.”
Robinson sat back, eyebrows raised and fingers steepled. “Indeed? You’ve been very resistant to the notion up until now.”
And for good reason. Any secretary Andrew hired would necessarily learn a great deal more about Andrew’saffaires, in addition to his more appropriate affairs, than Andrew wished him to.
“Your advice is always admirable, sir,” Andrew said sincerely. Robinson did always give good advice, little as Andrew heeded it. A touch of judicious flattery might also sweeten the bitter pill of Andrew preferring not to hire Robinson’s atrocious nephew. “I’ve chosen to take it at last.”
Robinson nodded, his expression perfectly unchanged, either unoffended or willing to pretend to be. “If you brought his letters of reference, I shall be happy to look into them for you. My clerks can write to the gentlemen who furnished them directly.”
“Ah,” Andrew said, and shifted just slightly in his seat. “Hmm. No need to give you the trouble, sir.”
That earned him a narrow-eyed glare. “Mr. Turner, I greatly respected the late Mr. Allenby, your uncle, and when you inherited me, in a manner of speaking, along with his estate, I was pleased to have the opportunity to guide you in some degree, as well as being of service to you. Is it possible that I have so far failed you, to my great shame, as to have given you to think that employing a man to oversee your most sensitive financial affairs without any sort of reference would be wise?”
