Chapter 2-1
1113 Words
Chapter Two
Octavius and his brother and his cousins each had their own residences in London. Octavius had a neat set of rooms in Albemarle Street, Dex was in Clarges Street, Sextus in Halfmoon Street, and Ned had taken a set at the Albany. But Quintus, as heir to the Linwood dukedom, had not just rooms but an entire house in Curzon Street.
Curzon Street was where they tended to congregate, and Octavius headed there on the afternoon after his misadventure in Vauxhall Gardens.
Quintus might be an old sobersides, but none of them stood on formality in his house. Octavius let himself in the door without plying the knocker, cast his hat and gloves alongside the others on the pier table in the entrance hall, and made for the sitting room and the low rumble of masculine voices.
Everyone was there, the full set of Pryors, drinking claret and discussing horseflesh. Ned had his feet up on the rosewood sofa table, philistine that he was.
Conversation halted as Octavius stepped into the open doorway.
“Otto,” his brother said, lowering his glass. “How are you?”
“Prime twig,” Octavius said, although it wasn’t exactly the truth. He’d been feeling out of curl all day, restless and bored. He crossed to the decanters, poured himself some claret, then leaned against the sideboard and looked at his brother and cousins, lounging in various armchairs and sofas.
His restlessness and his boredom merged into something close to anger. Not at Ned for the forfeit, not at Dex for abandoning him last night, but anger that Rumpole was walking around, a threat to women, and none of them was doing anything about it.
But what could they do? What could anyone do?
Octavius drank a mouthful of claret and thanked God that he’d been born male. He hadn’t realized, until last night, just how truly awful it was to be a woman.
“What about that roan of Weatherby’s?” Quintus said. “Got good movement.”
Dex shook his head. “Too short in the hock.”
Octavius topped up his glass, crossed to a sturdy sofa, and flung himself down on it. “I want to do something about Baron Rumpole,” he announced.
Conversation halted again. Everyone turned their heads to stare at him. He saw astonishment on all four faces.
“Define ‘something,’” Sextus said in that cool, aloof way of his.
“I want to stop him preying on women.”
“We can’t,” Quintus said reasonably. “Short of castrating the man, there’s no way to stop him.”
Octavius drank his claret, scowling at the glass, wishing he could castrate Rumpole and knowing that he couldn’t. But if he couldn’t castrate the man, perhaps he could scare him so thoroughly that he’d never touch another woman again?
The question was, how?
Imprisonment was a toothless threat against a man such as Rumpole. His pockets were too deep. Nothing less than hellfire would scare him.
Octavius sipped his claret, and eyed Dex thoughtfully.
After a moment, Dex noticed him watching. He put down his wine glass. “Look, Otto, I’m sorry about last night—”
Octavius waved the apology aside. “You could dangle him over a pit of flames.”
“Uh . . . what?” Dex said.
“Rumpole,” Octavius said. “You could dangle him over a pit of flames until he gives his word never to molest another woman.”
“Lord, are you still on about Rumpole?” Ned said. He swung his feet down from the sofa table and stood. “I must be off. See you tomorrow.”
Octavius glowered at his cousin as he left the room. Ned’s heavy footsteps echoed in the hallway, then the front door opened and closed. Octavius turned his attention back to Dex, who was still looking at him with a bemused expression. “Rumpole,” he said again. “You could do it, Dex.”
“Where would I get the pit of flames from?” Dex asked. He didn’t deny that he could do the dangling, because that was the gift Dex had chosen from their Faerie godmother: levitation. He could make any object—including himself—lift off the ground.
“You could dangle him over the Thames,” Octavius suggested. “Drop him in it, even.”
“What if he drowned?” Dex countered. “Can you imagine what Grandfather would say? Using my magic to kill someone?”
Octavius grimaced. He could well imagine what their grandfather would say. And even if ridding the world of Baron Rumpole wouldn’t be a bad thing, murder was.
He heard a muffled footstep by the sitting room door. He glanced over, but the open doorway was empty.
A floorboard creaked, and then another one.
Octavius exchanged a glance with Dex.
Dex rolled his eyes. “We can hear you, Ned.”
“Damn it.” Ned became visible just inside the doorway. He scowled at them, turned, and left without a word of farewell. Once again the front door opened and closed.
Dex gave one of his loud cackles of laughter. Quintus laughed, too, and even Sextus cracked his aloof façade and smiled.
Octavius didn’t laugh. He frowned, and turned his attention back to Baron Rumpole.
Men like Rumpole didn’t have consciences—and nothing Octavius could do or say would make Rumpole grow one. Leopards couldn’t change their spots, after all . . . but perhaps leopards could learn lessons? If the lesson was applied forcefully enough.
Could he teach Baron Rumpole a lesson so painful that the man changed his behavior?
Was that possible?
His ears caught a faint shuffling sound, followed by the groan of a floorboard. Octavius raised his voice: “We can still hear you, Ned.”
A pungent oath came out of the air. Ned’s footsteps thudded back down the corridor. The front door opened and then closed with a slam.
Even Octavius laughed this time.
* * * *
Octavius left not long after Ned and headed for Brooks’s, but he didn’t feel like claret and conversation at his club any more than he’d felt like claret and conversation at his brother’s house. Walking was good. It gave him time to think.
He did a circuit of St. James’s Square, then headed back to Piccadilly and up Old Bond Street, past the Albany, where Ned had his rooms. He traversed Mayfair, and then his feet took him in the direction of Brook Street, where Baron Rumpole had his London residence. The house was nothing out of the ordinary, four stories of gleaming windows and marble pediments, just one more elegant townhouse in a street filled with similar properties. Octavius turned into the mews at the rear of those houses and slowed to a stroll, examining the Rumpole residence from the back: the servants’ entrance, the coal cellar, the outhouse.
As he watched, a housemaid emerged from the servants’ door. She set off along the mews at a brisk pace.
Octavius followed her, noting the details of her appearance: the mobcap and the starched apron, the dress, the cuffs and the collar, the shoes.
When the woman reached the corner, Octavius stopped following her; he’d seen enough.
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