Page 6 of How to Ruin a Duke
A brisk young man, diddle diddle,
Met with a maid,
And laid her down, diddle diddle
Under the shade…
Chapter Two
“Do not take a duke to partner!He will draw you astray and then run off with the spoils while you are trying to discover where he has led you.”
FromHow to Ruin a Dukeby Anonymous
By night, Simon Thorn saw Vauxhall as it was intended to appear: a wonderland of glowing lights and whirling music and secret whispers.But during the day, he couldn’t help but notice the flaking gilt and pasteboard that made up London’s favorite pleasure garden.
The orchestra pavilion where the musicians practiced and played was a half hexagon of white scrollwork at the center of the park’s Grand Walk.The pavilion was boosted above the ground and festooned with lamps, lit at night to make it look like a jeweled crown.The effect was probably striking, but at all hours, the musicians were left cramped and crammed.Their stage had them elbow to elbow, and the red wool jackets they wore while performing were as hot as fur blankets.
Still, it was steady work.And with the loss of Lord Farleigh’s son as a student, this was the only source of income left to Simon.He’d have to find other employment, and soon.The vicar from Market Thistleton—his sole source of news on the people Simon had left behind—had broken the silence Simon had requested on Elias Howard to mention that Howard was having trouble with his hand again.This time he was contemplating the desperate move of an amputation, the poor devil.
And it was all Simon’s fault.He’d been a fool of a boy, more eager than careful as a tinworker’s younger apprentice, and he’d caused the accident that left the older, wiser, better Howard—a much more skilled apprentice—injured and ruined.
For thirteen years, he’d sent whatever money he could, but dribs and drabs of coin were no better than a droplet of laudanum on a grueling pain.It didn’t fix the problem; it didn’t soothe the ache.Only a grand dose, a grand investment, would do that.And playing a horn didn’t pay Simon enough, just as training horses hadn’t, working as a law clerk hadn’t, selling vials of gin labeled as cures for baldness hadn’t.And a dozen other jobs he had tried over the years, always moving toward London, always away from the place he’d once called home.
Rehearsal stretched on under the watery afternoon sun.Simon settled his horn in his lap and picked at the peeling paint of the railing surrounding the orchestra pavilion, waiting for the conductor to finish squawking at the fiddles.One of them—Hawkins, as usual— was horribly out of tune.Just as usual, Hawkins was blaming the fiddler next to him.
“Hawkins wouldn’t have this job for a minute if he wasn’t married to the conductor’s daughter,” muttered Botts, the other horn player in the Vauxhall orchestra.
“Right you are,” Simon agreed.“I met a luthier today who could set Hawkins straight.”
“Wish he’d come by and do it,” Botts replied.“Then we’d get through our rehearsal and I could get home for a bit of sleep before tonight’s performance.”
Simon decided not to correct the pronoun Botts had applied to the luthier.It wasn’t as if Miss Fairweather was his personal discovery, but somehow he didn’t like the idea of Botts making light of her.Or worse, pursuing her with one of his tawdry notes.
Like Simon, Alfred Botts was a bachelor; unlike Simon, he had no other financial obligations.Playing at Vauxhall paid the bills during the Season.Botts confided that when Vauxhall closed for the year, he planned to try his luck with a few orchestras on the Continent.
“Might as well learn what French women are like,” Botts gloated.“Or Italian women, or Austrian women.M’time’s my own.”
“Your time,” Simon reminded him, “is also Violetta’s, and Frances’s, and Mariah’s, and Bertha’s, and…who else have you sent love notes to in the last few weeks?”
“All right, so I’ll leave a few fluttering hearts behind me.”Botts winked.“None of ’em have to know about the other ladies, do they?”
“Horns!Quiet!”The conductor, a well-padded man named Clarke, slapped a flat palm onto the music stand before him, sending his papers into a disorderly shuffle.
Botts lifted his hands in a gesture of apology.Simon picked another fleck of white paint from the railing.Since he wasn’t giving lessons to Lord Farleigh’s son anymore, maybe he could get work repainting some of the faded buildings at Vauxhall.
As Clarke grumbled and rearranged his music, a messenger hared across the quadrangle of the Great Walk.The youth tramped up the pavilion steps and thrust the paper at the conductor.“His lordship said I wasn’t to wait for a reply, but that you’d best obey.”
When Clarke unfolded the message, his thundercloud expression turned yet grimmer.He darted a look at the horns.“Very well.Thank you.”
And Simon developed a bad feeling about what was written in that note.
The messenger left the way he’d come.Crumpling the message, Clarke said, “We’ll end rehearsal now.You’re all dismissed.Be back half an hour before the park opens tonight.”
Amidst the chaos of people rising, of instruments being stowed in tight quarters, the conductor’s voice floated above: “Thorn.A word, please.”
And Simon’s feeling went from bad to worse.
He didn’t inhabit lofty circles of Society.So if a “his lordship” was involved in the note, and obedience, and Simon too, there was a non-zero chance that Lord Farleigh was involved.
