Page 75 of Too Scot to Handle
He belched, beery fumes wafting about the table.
“So you are,” Twillinger agreed, patting Pierpont’s hand. “Montague, why so silent?”
“I’m thinking.”
Pierpont and Twillinger smiled and ordered another round of ale.
“I do so love it when you think,” Twillinger said. “Spares me the trouble. Think me up a way to earn some blunt, would you? Not earn-earn it, but come into it, proper-like.”
“Lord Colin would tell you to rent out your phaeton.” Win was jesting, though Twillinger appeared taken with the idea. Twilly was half-seas over, as usual.
“I would tell Lord Colin to put Twilly’s vehicle up his strutting Scottish—”
A waiter bearing three glasses of ale interrupted Pointy’s musings. “Separate accounts, gentlemen?”
“Please,” Winthrop said, before either friend could send him a hopeful look. They’d put their whole afternoon’s drinking on his account, and that would not do.
When the waiter had gathered up empty glasses and departed, Win set his ale to his right, away from Pierpont. Pointy was notorious for drinking out of the “wrong” glass as his own grew empty.
“I’ve been thinking,” Pointy said, using the back of his sleeve to wipe his mouth this time. “What if the card party is a failure? Not much blunt donated, for all we waste a fine evening at the tables?”
“Then the orphans go hungry,” Twillinger said. “Which I thought orphans did most of the time anyway.”
“Quiet,” Win said as Jonathan Tresham walked by. The damned man had no title at all, not even a courtesy title, but he was some sort of nabob, and heir to the Duke of Quimbey. Worse, Mrs. Bellingham professed to like him.
“He’ll be there,” Pointy said, following Tresham with his gaze. “And if Tresham is there, Quimbey will likely be as well. With Moreland and Wellington, that’s a three-duke card party. It can’t fail. His Grace of Anselm will doubtless put in an appearance, and that’s four dukes.”
Win waited until Tresham had chosen a table across the room. “Pointy, I hadn’t realized you’d been working on your counting skills. I’m impressed. The card party will be a great success, which can’t be helped. It’s not Lord Colin’s card party, though, it’s Miss Anwen Windham’s, whom we all esteem greatly.”
They drank to that sentiment.
“Lord Colin dances with Miss Anwen,” Twillinger said. “M’sister has remarked it.”
“Lord Colin dances with the lot of them,” Pointy countered. “All the red-haired spinster Winsters. Windhams, I mean. Has to. Family, you know. I dance with my wife for the same reason.”
“Or she dances with you,” Win said. “The challenge is how to bring Lord Colin down without letting the scandal touch Miss Anwen. The card party itself must go smoothly.”
“The Duchess of Moreland’s affairs always go smoothly,” Pointy said. “Spinster-winsters. I rather like that.”
“We had a bit of trouble at the orphanage a few weeks back,” Win said as ideas began to mix with excellent ale. “One of the boys got loose and pinched a purse.”
Pointy took a sip of Twilly’s ale. “Stole goods from a man’s very person? That’s a criminal act, plain and simple. Such a boy should have been bound over to Newgate, not given a soft bed, three meals, and a hymnal.”
Win kept a hand on his own tankard, for the summer ale at the club was superb—for ale—and by no means free.
“Lord Colin, without any authority whatsoever, decided the matter could be informally resolved. The boy returned the purse, apologized, and has been a model citizen ever since. The headmaster keeps me informed of these things.”
“Why did you ever involve yourself with that place?” Twilly asked. “Sounds like a cross between Eton, Bedlam, and Newgate.”
“My father offered to increase my allowance if I undertook participation in management of a charity. Somebody suggested the House of Urchins, and I’ve been regretting it ever since.”
“Paters are like that,” Pointy said. “My own promised an increase when the wife dropped another calf. Pater forgot to remind me the little fellow would need a nurse, nappies, dresses, rattles…Sending my heir off to Eton will be a savings at the rate the boy runs through blunt now.”
They drank to dear old Eton, where nobody had learned much of anything except how to drink, smoke, and commit the sin of Onan.
“You’ll see that Lord Colin is ruined?” Twilly asked.
“Somebody should,” Pointy agreed, taking a second sip of Twilly’s ale. “Principle of the thing. Got well above himself, putting on airs and so forth.”
