Page 65 of The Soldier's Scoundrel
Sometimes he forgot that Charlotte had gotten their father’s brains along with his eyes. “Turner is a friend. I would like to have an enduring friendship with him.” He couldn’t tell her the whole truth, but he hoped that little bit would get the point across. “He said he doesn’t want to be the most sordid thing in my life.”
“I see. And you took those words as a challenge to immerse yourself in other forms of sordidness?”
When she put it that way, it didn’t seem half such a good idea. “More or less.” He remembered Jack’s words: I should bloody well like to see you try to lose your good name. Well, he was going to lose it, all right. Then a thought occurred to him. “Charlotte, you’ll still receive me even if I sink below reproach, won’t you?”
She gave him a look that plainly told him to stop being a nodcock.
“Sweet, stupid Oliver. A confessed murderess is this very minute reading fairy stories to my son. I will always receive you.” She reached out and squeezed his hand. “If your friendship with Mr. Turner brings you happiness, then it brings me happiness as well. Let me see, then. You need to do the sort of thing that would earn the cut direct and get you barred from your club.”
By the time the sun set, they had formed a plan.
“It would only be for one evening,” Jack pleaded.
“That would be one evening too many,” Sarah shot back. She was draping a dress form in blue satin. “And why do you care what happens to this Wraxhall woman anyway?”
“She tried to do right by someone and it all went straight to hell. We can do this one little thing to help her.”
“Little thing, indeed,” she said, holding a pin in her mouth. “If any of them were to recognize me, I’d be finished.”
“They won’t recognize you. All they’ll see are the beads and the shawls. It’s all they ever see.” And that was because the costume was blindingly garish, which was the point of it in the first place.
She let out a sigh. “Let me think about it.”
“We don’t have time. It’s the end of the season and all the bloody gentry are leaving London. This soiree—or musical evening, or whatever the nobs call it—is tomorrow night and there won’t be another one like it until next year.” At least not one he could get Sarah into.
“You truly do care about this. I never thought I’d see you assist a lady in becoming fashionable, of all things. Not that I object on those grounds—a little less contempt for the gentry might do you good. It’s only that you’ve always hated the ton, and now you want me to stick my neck out to foist this woman upon them?”
“Maybe it’s the dishonesty of the plan that appeals to me.” He handed her a pin.
“I think it’s more than that.” She busied herself in adjusting the fall of satin, keeping her face hidden from Jack. “I think that once you started to hold one of them in esteem, you couldn’t hate the rest of them.”
She was right. He couldn’t love Oliver yet despise his friends and family. “It’s the thin end of the wedge,” he said softly. “Next thing I know, I’ll be doing the Duke of Devonshire’s bidding. Might as well go back to being a servant.”
“Don’t be a ninny. You’re too pigheaded for anything of the sort. All I meant was that the gentry exist, and you might as well be at peace with that. It’s exhausting to carry around all that hatred. Besides, I like Mr. Rivington. He has excellent taste in fabric. And he obviously is fond of you. You’d be a perfect fool to whistle that down the wind.” She looked like she wanted to say more, but instead snapped her attention back to the dress form. “What do I get out of it?”
“Mrs. Wraxhall will buy her wardrobe from you.”
Sarah’s hand stilled in between folds of silk. “How can you know that?”
“Molly Wilkins is her lady’s maid.” And Jack would owe Molly a favor that she’d surely cash in some ghastly manner.
“Fine,” Sarah agreed. “Help Betsy bring down Mama’s old trunk, and we’ll see what fits me.”
Jack took the stairs up to the attic two at a time.
Achieving a suitable level of disgrace was exhausting work. Oliver had spent the past six nights at Madame Louise’s, and not sitting peacefully in the kitchen this time either. Two of the women upstairs had been happy enough to let him pay for the privilege of sitting with them in a private bedchamber, where they played vingt-et-un for farthing stakes.
He then had to drag his weary body to a string of gaming hells—really, the quantity of cards and endless flights of stairs involved in ruining oneself simply beggared belief.
After all that, he had to get up in the morning and search for suitable lodgings. He had a lengthy list of requirements. The neighborhood couldn’t be fashionable but it couldn’t be seedy, either; it could be no more than one flight of stairs up from the street; it had to be small enough so that Oliver could manage with a single maid coming in daily. He wrote a letter of character for his valet, paid the man his salary for the rest of the quarter, and bought a pair of boots that he could remove himself, if things came to that.
He did not go to Sackville Street, not even once, despite the fact that he thought Jack might not turn him away. Oliver wanted to wait until his plan was completed, and then present his ruination to Jack as a fait accompli, no possibility of reversing the process.
So far his behaviors had only caused a few raised eyebrows, perhaps a slight dwindling of invitations. Gambling and whoring were not nearly bad enough to make him an outcast, which was what he needed to accomplish before going to Jack. Tomorrow he would cheat at cards, and at his club, no less. Or, rather, he would attempt to cheat. This, Charlotte assured him, would blacken his reputation to the precise degree he required.
To this end, he had enlisted the help of a person he suspected might be an expert.
“You want me to teach you to cheat at cards?” Georgie Turner said incredulously. Oliver had found him in one of the larger gaming hells, a notorious courtesan perched on his lap.
