Chapter Four
Tom found Lucas at Ned Howick’s lodgings in Duke Street, with two other friends from their schooldays. The men sat around a table, with a punch bowl and a pack of cards, but when Ned’s manservant ushered Tom into the room there was a scraping of chair legs as everyone stood hastily.
“Tom!”
“Matlock, old chap!”
He was clapped on the back, his hand wrung heartily, a chair drawn up to the table for him, a glass of punch poured, the cards shoved aside. Questions were pelted at him about the recent skirmishes in Portugal, the French defeat—and unavoidably, the Convention of Cintra.
“It’s a disgrace!” Rupert Banning said indignantly. “Those damned generals should be discharged from the army!”
“Burrard and Dalrymple certainly, but not Wellesley,” Tom sipped the punch. It was wa
