London - Edward Rutherfurd [465]
“He looks just like Sam.”
“I couldn’t leave him to die.”
“’Course not.” She shook her head, then grinned. “I must’ve had twins, Harry. Just never noticed.” And from that moment, with never another reference to the subject, Sam had a twin brother. The other children, if a bit puzzled, soon forgot. A few neighbours laughed about it, but then passed on to other gossip. Nobody could afford to enquire too closely about children in Seven Dials. When, a few days later, Harry took the baby to the vicar to be baptized, the clergyman, who knew his flock only too well, far from scolding the father thanked God in his providence that the child had a home. Upon learning that Harry had no particular name in mind, he suggested with a laugh:
“Why not call him Septimus? It’s Latin for ‘Seventh’ – and you found him by Seven Dials!”
Within a day, in the Dogget household, the name had contracted to Sep. And Sam and Sep grew up together. As for Harry and Mrs Dogget, the incident only sealed for ever the affection he had for her. So that now, even though she was red-faced, unkempt and minus the shilling he had entrusted to her, the costermonger looked down at her lovingly and said cheerfully:
“You’re a good old girl. That’s what you are.”
At a little before eight o’clock that evening, Captain Jack Meredith came out of the door of White’s Club in St James Street and started up towards Piccadilly.
It was only in the last few years that some of the smarter coffee-houses had turned into gentlemen’s clubs with restricted membership, but already White’s had established itself as the one with the most dashing style. Too dashing for some. For gambling was the thing at most of these clubs, and at White’s they played high. Very high.
Captain Meredith was certainly dashing. As for gambling – he needed to win. He needed to win a great deal. His grandfather, a clergyman like old Edmund, had done very well and put by a tidy fortune. His father, having served under Marlborough, had married a well-endowed widow and left Jack a rich young man. Rich enough to lose five thousand pounds in a single evening at cards. Twice. But not three times, as he had finally done. Dashing Captain Jack Meredith kept a house in Jermyn Street, where the servants had not been paid for six weeks and he owed tradesmen a total of over a thousand pounds. And his regimental captaincy – for military commissions were bought and sold in the British army – had already been mortgaged to a moneylender who lived in an alley near Lombard Street.
Only one friend, a cynical fellow-member of the club, knew about the true state of Captain Jack’s affairs and his advice had been blunt.
“You play well enough if you drink nothing and keep your head. We need to find you a victim to fleece. Some young fellow just up from his country estate who wants to cut a dash with us men of fashion. Come to the club each day and I’ll keep my eyes open.” Had they found their sacrificial lamb that day, Meredith would even have been ready to miss his appointment with Lady St James.
“I wouldn’t take his estate off him,” Jack had sworn. “Half would do.”
As he walked calmly up St James Street however, on his way to the rendezvous with his mistress, no one would ever have guessed the state of his affairs. In the first place, Captain Meredith had a remarkable talent for putting aside distractions and concentrating his whole mind on the matter in hand. It made him a wonderful lover, and also one of the finest swordsmen in London. In the second place, he had simply too much style.
You could not say that Jack Meredith was vain. He was too manly for that. He was a good officer as well as being a fine sportsman. He looked after his men and could enjoy a broad joke with the best of them and out-box almost any man in the regiment. Splendid with men, tender with women, he was a successful and considerate lover, all the more devastating because, at all times, he knew exactly what he was doing. His relationship with Lady St James, however, went beyond the others. It had a special quality all its own. At times,