Page 14 of The Ruin of a Rake
By the time the fish plates were removed from the dinner table, Julian knew he had grossly misjudged Courtenay’s abilities. The man was charm in human form.
Julian made the most perfunctory conversation with the lady sitting to his left, all the while keeping the bulk of his attention on Courtenay. He wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that the other twelve dinner guests had their attention on Courtenay as well. They were leaning toward him like plants toward the sun. Julian, who had spent the entirety of his adulthood studying the ways of theton, still couldn’t quite put his finger on what Courtenay was doing to exert this magnetic pull on their attention. It wasn’t just his notoriety—that would have been plain enough to see in people’s narrowed gazes or inquisitive stares. Nor was it his good looks, for while preposterously handsome, he was hardly the only attractive gentleman to grace a London hostess’s dinner table this season.
It had something to do with how, when he turned his sea-green eyes on you and paid attention to what you were saying, you felt like you were at the center of the universe. He seemed to genuinely like each person he spoke with. It was the same thing he had done to Lady Montbray’s companion at the opera, only to the entire table. And it wasn’t only the ladies—the gentlemen seemed equally under the influence of his charm.
Julian couldn’t look at Courtenay without the memory of strong hands on him in the darkness of the opera, of forbidden pleasure and—
His mind stuttered overpleasure,and instead of seeing the china and crystal on Mrs. Fitzwilliam’s dining table, all he could think of were balloons straining at their tethers and loose-limbed provocateurs.
Watching him, Julian had the sense that he could catch glimpses of the man Courtenay might have become if he hadn’t been dogged by scandal and shame. He was intelligent and articulate, and when he wasn’t deliberately trying to be provoking, he had effortless good manners.
The realization hit him like a blow: Courtenay could have been a man Julian might have admired.
After the ladies withdrew, the conversation turned to the blasted Poor Laws. Julian suppressed a scowl. As far as he could tell, some members of Parliament had realized that with two consecutive bad harvests and the vast number of unemployed soldiers returning from the recently ended wars, the two-hundred-year-old Poor Laws were increasingly useless. But instead of fixing them in a sensible way, they wanted to eliminate them entirely. Julian would have liked to ask the gentlemen at the table precisely what they had expected to happen to the poor after passing a series of laws designed to inflate the price of bread, and another series of laws designed to increase the rights of landowners and, necessarily, make it harder for country people to make ends meet. Junior clerks at his shipping firm could have puzzled that one out without too much trouble. But this was just the sort of topic he could never speak a word of in public lest people be too forcibly reminded of his origins and how he came by his knowledge of money and trade.
Julian caught Courtenay’s eye and shook his head ever so slightly as a reminder for Courtenay to hold his tongue. Earlier this evening, he had told Courtenay all the things he was not to discuss. “Do not mention debt, radicalism, duels—”
“Why the devil would I want to talk about duels?” Courtenay had protested.
“Why the devil would you want tohavea duel, but that’s just what you’ve done. And on numerous occasions, no less.”
“Fair point,” Courtenay had conceded.
“Talk about the weather, the theater, and horses. Compliment a lady’s attire, but not her appearance, and not overmuch. Praise the food and wine, but not in such a way as to make you sound as if you consider civilized refreshment a novelty. That’s it.”
But now Courtenay’s mouth was twitching as if he had thoughts that were ready to spill out.
Don’t you dare, Julian mouthed silently, fixing Courtenay with his sternest glare. Courtenay’s only response was a dangerous smile, which Julian somehow felt on his person like a shivery caress.
“Shall we join the ladies?” Julian tried, attempting to forestall the calamity he foresaw. But the gentleman had only started their port and weren’t apt to abandon it so soon.
“Can’t just feed and house the blighters, otherwise why would they ever want to work?” said Fitzwilliam.
Julian reached blindly for his glass of port and drained it so he wouldn’t be able to point out the incongruity of gentlemen, who by their very definition did not work, accusing the poor of laziness. They seemed to be under the distinct impression that the only reason people would work was if they absolutely had to.
“Wouldn’t want to encourage them,” Courtenay murmured in evident agreement. But something about the malevolent sparkle in his eyes told Julian that this was only the beginning. “Best to leave that to charities,” Courtenay said slowly.
Wrong!Julian wanted to shout. Utterly wrong! Unless you wanted to raise a generation of men without a trade or the skills to acquire one, that is. In which case, sally forth with that scheme.
There was a general murmur of approval. When a footman filled his glass, Julian drained it again.
“I mean to say, who the devil are these upstarts who want to pass a bill forcing all the poor into workhouses, anyway?” Courtenay swirled the port in his glass. “I daresay they mean to line their pockets.”
Julian gritted his teeth. The current, antiquated Poor Laws were administered by each individual parish; some gave food and money to the poor in their own homes, others required all the poor to relocate to workhouses. These institutions were generally considered an enormous favor to the poor, even though they were little better than prisons. Some men had the crackbrained belief that even workhouses were unnecessary, and that absent charitable relief, the poor would simply stop reproducing or somehow find work.
He wouldn’t have thought that Courtenay, who surely didn’t number chastity or diligence among his virtues, would harbor such a notion. Then again, Courtenay, despite being Christendom’s greatest scoundrel, had a pedigree stretching back to the Conquest. Julian knew that aristocrats and gentry looked on the rest of humanity as a different species, one that could be managed in the way of livestock.
There were the predictable sounds of assent from the half-drunk men around the table. Julian drained his own glass yet again, thinking at least he would keep his mouth too busy to tell them all how demented they were.
Courtenay then caught his eye, and Julian saw in it a glint of pure devilry that had nothing to do with workhouses. “The wife selling, though. That can’t be right. Not sporting.”
“But that’s hardly common,” said one very young gentleman. “I think it happened only that one time, in what was it, ‘fourteen?” He was referring to an incident in which the workhouse governors had insisted a man sell his wife and children rather than have them supported by charity.
“No, Edwards, been going on for centuries. But no legal basis for the practice at all,” said a gray-haired gentleman.
“If the fellow can’t provide for a wife, best give her to someone who can,” said a third, and based on the dark gleam in Courtenay’s eye, this fellow had better keep his back to the wall.
“That’s the part that bothers me,” Courtenay said mildly. “The lass must have had some say about who she married the first time around. Letting her be sold to whoever pays the price doesn’t seem English. Seems a bit like rape, to be quite honest. Not to mention bigamy and prostitution.”
