The Odious Duke

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1824-2

“God, yes!” Harry Sheraton laughed. “Remember Wellington’s fury when he had to send troops mule hunting? Thought it might delay the advance.”

“He would have been that much more furious if there had been no animals to move the guns.” the Duke remarked drily.

“Know what, Theron?” Harry Sheraton said more seriously. “Often wish to God that war was not ended. Sick to death of being a ‘Hyde Park Soldier’!”

“So you know that is what they call you in the Clubs?” the Duke said with a twinkle in his eyes.

“Blast their impertinence! I do wonder how those fops would enjoy turning out at moment’s notice to quell a riot in Hyde Park, disperse a mob hooting and throwing stones at the Houses of Parliament or catch some blasted fellow with the ingenuity of a rat in avoiding the gallows!”

“A soldier’s life is a hard one!” the Duke said mockingly.

“Damned hard when I have to do that sort of thing,” Harry Sheraton agreed. “Hear talk of special force for just such jobs. What that chap’s name always spouting about it in House of Commons?”

“Sir Robert Peel,” the Duke replied.

“That’s the fellow! Sooner he introduces a Police force or whatever they are called, better pleased I shall be. Another flap-doodle on today, it was why I was late.”

“What is it about this time?” the Duke asked.

Captain Sheraton did not answer at once, he was intent on taking a glass of Madeira from the silver salver and raising it to his lips.

“Damme, Theron, if you don’t offer your guests better Madeira than anyone else! Who is your wine merchant? Could do with a few bottles of this nectar.”

“You cannot buy it, dear boy,” the Duke answered. “I put it away in the cellars six years ago and it is only now that my Wine Steward has permitted me to drink it”

“Will have another glass. Hope you have several pipes of it”

“Enough to keep you drinking for a year or so at any rate,” the Duke smiled. “But you were telling me what made you late.”

“Colonel called sudden conference of Officers to inform us that the Prime Minister is taking a serious view of Bullion robberies”

“What are those?” the Duke asked.

“Do you never read the papers?” Headlines about them for weeks!”

“Oh, yes I do remember now. You mean the ambushing of coaches carrying Bullion from the Bank of England to County Banks?”

“That’s the cannonball!” Harry Sheraton added. “Think the whole operation damn well planned, if you ask me. Must be a brain behind the robberies. Not work of ordinary highwaymen.”

“I am afraid I did not pay much attention to the reports.”

“Powers-that-be getting a thick head over it. Two big robberies last week. Both cases guards shot dead, coachmen trussed up and left on the floor of the coach. Last couple, poor devils, there for five hours before anyone found them! When questioned, their information of little use.”

“They must have seen who had tied them up,” the Duke remarked languidly without showing much interest.

“Wore masks, coachmen hit over his head with bludgeon, rendered unconscious within seconds! In flurry of pulling in horses and hearing the shots too flustered to be reliable eye-witnesses.”

“Well, what are the intrepid Military going to do about it?” the Duke wanted to know.

“Commanders can think of nothing except to double guard on Bank of England. No clodhead would attempt to raid that stronghold.” Harry Sheraton said in disgust. “Would have thought from the way Colonel was spouting, a revolution had broken out!”

“If it does, I will put on my uniform and come and help you,” the Duke commented with a smile as the butler announced dinner.

The dining table had no cloth in the fashion introduced by the King and on its polished surface there were gold ornaments that had been in the family since the reign of King Charles II.

Trails of green orchids were arranged around them and encircled the base of the big gold candelabra, which each held six candles.

The two gentlemen settled down to a long and exceptional meal, the Duke’s chef being considered the best in the Beau Ton. The wine was superlative and, when the third remove left the table, Harry Sheraton lay back in his chair and then waved away a Sèvres dish of peaches soaked in brandy and sprinkled with roasted almonds

He then remarked,

“I regret, Theron, that I can no longer do justice to these culinary specialties. Heaven knows that if I ate in your house every day I should soon be stout as our most beloved Monarch.”

“I think chef is on his mettle tonight,” the Duke replied. “I sent a message to the kitchen two nights ago to say that I had not found the dinner to my satisfaction.”

“Good God!” Harry Sheraton ejaculated. “If you find fault with food like this, there must be no satisfying you.”

The servants had left the room and the Duke answered with a smile,

“I was keeping the man up to scratch, if one is too easily pleased, people get lazy!”

“Of course, forgot – ‘His Most Noble Perfection’.”

“Damn it all, don’t you talk that sort of fustian at me!” the Duke exclaimed, “or I swear I will not invite you here again!”

“Stuff!” his friend replied. “Know well as I do that I am the touch of spice in your epicurean life that brings you savour you get from no one else. Have known you too long, Theron, to be subservient! Not saying that you are not a remarkably impressive chap. But have seen you in two many undignified situations to be stupefied into state of admiring idiocy like the majority of your friends, staff and envious acquaintances!”

“Your compliments do overwhelm me!” the Duke drawled. “At the same time, Harry, you are right! I would hate to lose you.”

“Want another war,” Harry Sheraton sighed. “Do you good, Theron, rough it as you were doing ten years ago on the Peninsula. Ever forget the excitement of routing Frenchies after the Battle of Vittoria and then capturing King Joseph’s baggage train?”

“No indeed,” the Duke laughed. “Wyndham’s Dragoons acquired from it the King’s lordly silver pot de chamber.”

“Could never forget it! Christened ‘The Emperor’, we all then drank champagne out of it!”

“When I then got through the medley of horses, mules, bullocks and donkeys, pet monkeys and parrots,” the Duke said, “I found the Tenth Huzzars had split open the treasure chests and the ground was littered with doubloons, dollars, watches, jewels and trinkets.”

“So many females among the French camp followers that our troops then called it ‘a mobile brothel’,” Harry Sheraton said. “But Wellington’s booty was what counted, one hundred and fifty-one cannons, two million cartridges. Those were the days, my boy!”

He raised his glass to the memory before he exclaimed,

“God, but we are getting old! Next year 1825, will be ten years since the Battle of Waterloo!”

“Yes indeed and that means, Harry, that I shall be three and thirty next month, as my uncle Adolphus pointed out to me a few days ago in no uncertain terms.”

“I’ll wager that his Lordship came round with the Family Tree in his pocket,” Harry Sheraton said knowingly.

“He did indeed,” His Grace replied. “He went through the whole genealogy of the Royds from the one who served under Ethelred the Unready to the Royd who cuckolded Henry VIII with one of his wives, I forget which one, and the Royd who beat Casanova to the bed of some Princess or other!”

“Which led your Uncle Adolphus up to just the one demand,” Harry Sheraton mocked.

“Exactly!” the Duke agreed. “That I should get married at once! Otherwise Cousin Jasper will inherit.”

“Never been able to understand how Jasper comes into it,” Harry Sheraton remarked. “More yellow-livered outsider who I have ever met! Pardon, Theron, if plain speaking distresses you.”

“It does nothing of the sort,” the Duke said, “and I said far worse to Jasper himself only three months ago when he approached me for the one hundredth time, or was it the one thousandth, for a ‘small loan’.”

“The smallness being, of course, relative!”

“You are right. This time it was for just fifteen thousand pounds. He thought he must be improving as the time before it had been for twenty thousand!”

“What did you do?”

“I gave him ten and told him that, if he ever came whining for more, I would personally kick him into the street, even though it would damage my Hessian boots.”

“Heard he was gaming too high and only a question of time before he would be at you again!”

“This is really the last time!” the Duke said firmly. “But he is a cheesemonger of the worst description and Uncle Adolphus is convinced that he is now borrowing on the possibility of stepping into my shoes.”

“How happens he has any claim at all?” Harry Sheraton asked.

“It is quite easy,” the Duke replied. “My grandfather had five sons. The eldest had one child, Sylvester, who was killed at the Battle of the Nile, the second son, my father, produced me, the third, Uncle Cornelius, who died last year, had eight daughters!”

“Poor devil!” Harry Sheraton expostulated.

“Then came George Frederick,” the Duke continued, “an extremely unpleasant man who died some years ago and had one son, our friend Jasper, and lastly Uncle Adolphus who has never married.”

“So Jasper’s father as nauseating as he is?”

“According to Uncle Adolphus, George Frederick was smuggled in to the family in a bedpan! Personally, I don’t believe a word of it, but he was very unlike the rest of his brothers. He had no sense of propriety, he was a mad gambler and had a partiality for the lowest type of strumpet!

“Anyway, his wife, an innkeeper’s daughter, went to an early grave and Jasper was dragged up amongst women one would not trust with a dog let alone a child. At times I am almost sorry for him!”

“To stay in your attic!” Harry Sheraton exclaimed. “Done more for your importunate relative than anyone could credit! What has he given you in return – a word of honour that he has broken too many times to enumerate and blackguarding you behind your back that has nearly got him into a dozen duels with your friends?”

“There is no need for anyone to be in a miff over Jasper,” the Duke said, “but I think that Uncle Adolphus is right, Jasper must not under any circumstances inherit and therefore, Harry, I am to be married.”

“Congratulations!” his friend crowed. “Announcement sudden, but not unexpected. Who is the bride? Do I know her?”

“I have not decided on her as yet,” the Duke replied.

“Not decided!” Harry Sheraton began incredulously and then burst out laughing. “You are roasting me!”

“No indeed,” the Duke answered. “I have given full consideration to Uncle Adolphus’s impassioned pleas combined with those of my sister, Evelyn. She came with him and was even more insistent than my uncle that Jasper should cease his pretensions of being the Heir Presumptive. Apparently he insulted her at some Assembly or another! Anyway, she has compiled for me a list of eligibles for the position of my Duchess.”

“Good God, Theron, not serious? Not contemplating marrying some chit for whom you have no affection whatsoever?”

“That is of no consequence!” the Duke replied.

“Doing it a bit brown!” Harry Sheraton retorted. “Not saying need go in for heartthrobs with an orchestra wailing under full moon or should throw dramatics like that wearisome chap, Byron, whose poems bore me to distraction, but must be some female with whom you have a slight – ”

“There is no one,” the Duke interrupted. “As you well know, Harry, I have not paid much attention to unfledged girls.”

“Suppose that is true,” Harry Sheraton agreed, “but you have stood up with a few for a dance at Almack’s. Must have encountered one or two staying in the houses you visited.”