Meantime, he warned himself, he must watch his vowels—it wouldn’t hurt to appear to be a little drunk. Johnstone and his pal called in another man so that they could sit down in pairs to play piquet. Johnstone against Alan, and his friend against the stranger. Alan prayed that Ned would not return; he had said that he would not, but one thing was very plain: he was not reliable and said whatever pleased him at the time.
It soon became equally plain that, for Johnstone, Ned was a pigeon to be plucked. He assumed that Ned was both drunk and careless and his manner was lightly contemptuous. Well, he might be in for a surprise. Alan began by knocking over his glass of light wine and dropping his cards. He fell on to his hands and knees in order to pick them up, exclaiming, ‘The devil’s in them tonight.’
He heard Johnstone and his friends, Lloyd and Fraser, laugh while he continued to offer them the picture of incompetence which they both expected from flighty Ned Hatton. All three, indeed, obviously regarded Ned as little better than a fool. Lloyd even winked at Johnstone when Alan dropped his cards again.
By the end of a couple of hours, though, they were all frowning. Stupid Ned Hatton was having the devil’s own luck, and was far in advance of the game, having consistently won despite muttering and moaning, losing his cards and once depositing all his gaming counters on the floor.
‘Hands and knees business, again,’ he announced cheerfully. ‘Rising like Venus from the waves,’ he drunkenly told them all, before he began winning again. In his last hand, before he broke Johnstone completely, he even Rubiconed him—a feat rarely performed.
‘By God, Ned, you’ve got the cards tonight,’ exclaimed Johnstone, unable to credit that it was skill and not luck which was defeating him.
‘Fool’s luck,’ muttered Alan, picking up yet another of Johnstone’s IOUs with shaking hands. His father’s tuition and his own mathematical skills, honed by several years of running the money-lending side of his father’s business, gave him a good edge over most card players—even those as skilful as Johnstone, who was obviously unused to losing.
Towards the end Alan began to suspect that Johnstone’s friend was shrewd enough to guess that there was something odd about Ned Hatton that night, and when Lloyd’s game came to an end, with him as winner, Alan announced that he was too tired to continue. Since Johnstone had also had enough, they finished playing in the early hours of the morning.
Stone-cold sober, as he had been all along, Alan was careful to stagger out of Rosie’s some little distance behind Johnstone and his friends. The Haymarket was alive with light and noise—he was in the midst of the demi-monde about which his father had warned him. Chance and his strange resemblance to Ned Hatton had brought him here—and had also given him a strange opportunity.
He laughed to himself all the way to Brown’s. Not only would he be better prepared to meet Johnstone in the morning, but he was relishing the prospect of watching the other man’s reaction when someone with Ned Hatton’s face walked into Dilhorne and Sons’ London office.
And in the afternoon he was due to visit Stanton House off Piccadilly. It should be an interesting day.
Although perhaps not quite so surprising as the one just past!
‘You’re up early today,’ Eleanor Hatton commented to a yawning Ned, who had come down for breakfast in the middle of the morning and not at its end.
He took a long look at her and said inconsequentially, ‘I still can’t get used to how much you’ve changed.’
Eleanor smiled somewhat ruefully. She was remembering the first occasion on which Ned had visited Stanton House after her great-aunt Almeria had taken her over. She had only been away from Yorkshire for three months—the longest three months of her life, she had thought at the time.
At first she had fought and argued in her determination not to be turned into a fine lady. She had hated London and longed for her carefree life in the country. Worst of all had been to be told to forget notions of educating herself beyond the mere demands of most fashionable women’s lives.
Finally she had confronted her great-aunt with an ultimatum. ‘If you will allow me to spend a few hours each week with Charles and his tutor, Mr Dudley, then I will agree to be groomed for the life of a fine young lady. Otherwise…’ And she had shrugged.
Almeria Stanton, faced with a will as strong as her own, had capitulated.
‘A bargain then,’ her aunt had agreed, amused by Eleanor’s strange mixture of learning, and athleticism, both qualities totally unsuitable for the lady of fashion which she was destined to be.
Charles was Lady Stanton’s grandson, a lively twelve-year-old who had been left behind in England when his soldier father had been ordered to India. His tutor, an earnest young man, had been pleased to teach her once Eleanor had proved that her interest in learning was genuine. He had also, much against his will, fallen in love with the lively young woman who was so far beyond his reach.
Eleanor kept her promise. Ned, meeting her again after nearly two years, had barely recognised her. She had entered the room where he’d been reading the Morning Post, stripped off her gloves, pulled off her poke-bonnet to reveal her fashionably dressed hair, and smiled at him in the cool, impersonal way she had learned from her great-aunt.
‘Oh, Ned, how nice to see you,’ she’d murmured, graciously offering him two fingers and her cheek.
Ned had been lost between admiration and horror. Where had tomboy Nell gone to?
‘Good God, sister, what have they done to you?’
‘I’m a lady now, Ned. I’ve had my come-out and two proposals of marriage. Both unsuitable, I hasten to add. I’ve also got a marquess dangling after me. Not that I care about him; he’s as old as the hills.’
Almeria had surveyed her transformed charge approvingly. ‘Well done, my dear—although we could have done without the bit about the Marquess.’
‘Well done?’ Ned had exclaimed scornfully. ‘What do you think that Stacy will have to say about this?’ He had flipped his hand derisively in his sister’s direction. ‘I thought that you, at least, were a girl of sense. Never thought that propriety would overtake you, Nell.’
‘Eleanor,’ she’d said automatically, colouring faintly and moving away from him. ‘Nell’s days are over. Sir Hart was right. My behaviour was not proper. In any case, I have to leave now. I need to change for Lady Lyttelton’s soirée.’
‘Oh, you’ll come about, I’m sure,’ Ned had said uneasily, but she hadn’t. Some of their old rapport had returned, but the Nell who had romped with Ned, Nat and Stacy had gone for ever.
Now, sitting opposite to her, months later, drinking coffee and nursing a thick head after the previous evening’s debauchery, he asked, somewhat blearily, ‘Going to be in this afternoon, Eleanor?’
She looked up from her plate. ‘I shall be with Charles and his tutor until four-thirty, and then I’m free. Why?’
‘I’ve invited an Australian friend I made last night to meet me here around half past four. I promised to take him to Cremorne Gardens this evening. Thought that you might like to meet him before we go.’
He did not say so, but Ned was hoping to play a jolly jape—his words—on his sister when Alan arrived. It was all that she deserved for turning herself into such a fashionable prig.
‘An Australian?’ said Almeria Stanton doubtfully. ‘Is he a gentleman, Ned?’
‘As much as I am,’ returned Ned ambiguously. ‘Which isn’t saying much, I know. But I think that you’ll like the look of him.’
He