CHAPTER 10
DANIEL—THEGENTLEMEN
Too much prep for trials, too many meetings with solicitors consumed Daniel’s week, and indeed made him a very dull man. The hint from his friend Bridgetower about card play seemed as good an excuse as any for Finchely’s resident hermit to entertain.
Moreover, the buzz and gossip among his pals would keep him from responding to the notes the duchess and Mrs. St. Maur kept sending.
They disturbed his desk, broke into his office. He wasn’t in the wrong for avoiding them.
Still.
St. Maur’s paper smelled a little like jasmine. The duchess’s a mixture of lavender and coconuts.
With a shake of his head, he released thoughts of Mrs. St. Maur and his fear of her digging up rumors about theMinerva. The fellows, the friends who understood him, started arriving and taking spots about the dining table.
His sandy-colored pug, Maximillian snoozed at his side. The adorable thing barked as each man arrived, then flopped over in a drooling sleep.
Not exactly a watchdog, but Finchely was a house far from town, and there wasn’t much to see.
Daniel ran his hand along the fine mahogany surface polished to the highest shine. The striping of zebra wood inlays reflected the candlelight and mirrored the back of his thick paper cards.
The table and room were particular favorites of Daniel’s mother. The rare dinners she threw left all in amazement.
He was four, looking over the twisty stairs in the great hall, watching people arrive. The excitement was not all from her dishes or carefully planned menus. It was more so the curiosity that a London merchant’s daughter with family ties to the Black Caribs of Dominica could excel at white soup, white linens, and vanilla conversations. He so wanted to come home to Phoebe and discuss their days over a sumptuous meal and candlelight, just the two of them, or three with Hope’s addition.
The fellows gathering would fill the dining room with colorful talk, their take on mundane politics, movement on abolition, mistresses and marriage.
Not in that order, but the night wouldn’t be complete without at least onehuzzah,you fool, or awhat were ya thinkin’?
Well, this was sort of a family dinner for brothers. Didn’t quite honor his mother’s notions, but he knew she’d understand.
“Your turn, sir,” Mr. Anthon said as he took the place of the often late Bridgetower.
Mrs. Gallick came in with a new platter of sweet biscuits, these with currants and caraway seeds. “Love hearty eaters.”
From the sideboard, the Scottish woman removed the platters emptied of lobster and pheasant and the dish bared of roasted plantains.
His friends were the picture of politeness, not once bemoaning his choice of lemonade to their lust for rum or brandy.
Once alone, John Beef—the grandson of the famed Jack Beef, the man-of-all-work extraordinaire to Magistrate Baker lowered his goblet, the stem making awopsound. “It’s odd that you’d now call us together. Don’t mind me, I’ll always find time for a good meal and to take your money, Barrister.”
“I have no excuses, friends.” Daniel snatched a roll and smothered it in raspberry jam. “At least, none that are good. It’s been too long.”
Beef offered a slight sneer of agreement under his carefully trimmed mustache. His calloused brown hands slammed a winning set of vingt-et-un. “I win, outcounted Prinny’s brain.”
“Luck is with you tonight, Beef.” Daniel added to the man’s tally of six in a row. “I know I haven’t been a social butterfly in a while.”
“A butterfly?” Mr. Gerard, the butler at Sandlin Court, the Repingtons’ Town residence, laughed as he shuffled the deck. “More of a reclusive moth. I heard it’s been nearly two years since you’ve been social.”
Between work, Hope’s struggles, and his aunt’s gambits, he hadn’t the energy to entertain. It took chaperoning the Duchess of Repington and the slap-happy Mrs. St. Maur in a caper to gaming hells to remind him of life beyond the courts and Finchely.
He swept up his new cards, a three of diamonds and two of spades, very far from a winning twenty-one. “My apologies. Fellowship is important, and if you keep your voices low, my little Hope will not disturb us until it’s time to read a bedtime story at ten.”
Grinning, Mr. Gerard held his cards close to his eyes. “That seems a might late for a child? Maybe those law books told you the wrong way to raise a babe.”
The older gentleman wore his salt-and-pepper hair powdered. His sable skin held deep laugh lines about his mouth, suggesting he was given to humor. Yet, the tease pricked. Daniel constantly fought the feeling he was doing the fathering wrong.
Then Hope would call him Pa-Papa with her little stutter. It righted his world.
