Lord Portman's Troublesome Wife Read online

  He picked up his tall hat from the floor at his side and stood up. The high red heels of his shoes and the height of his white wig made him seem at least six inches taller, even though, at five feet eleven, he was by no means short. Most men of his acquaintance found it more comfortable to shave their heads for wearing a wig, but as he often needed to go out and about without one, he put up with the discomfort to appear the fop. The real Harry Portman was a person very few people knew.

  ‘Are you to give evidence?’ Jonathan asked.

  ‘No, don’t want to blow my cover, do I? Do you fancy coming with me?’

  ‘No, Louise is expecting me home.’

  ‘I will come,’ Ashley said.

  They left together and a greater contrast between two men would be hard to find. Ashley’s clothes were muted in colour, though they were superbly tailored and he wore his own dark hair tied back in a queue. Unlike Harry, whose face was powdered and patched, Ashley’s was tanned and rugged. But appearances were deceptive because they were equally athletic, equally observant and sharp-witted, able to react swiftly to any given situation. It was simply that it amused Harry to play the fop.

  At first his dandified mannerisms had been a front to disguise his deep hurt and the terrible guilt he felt over the death of his wife six years before, but then he found it useful when pursuing criminals. Seeing him mincing along in his fine clothes, they thought he was a fool and it pleased him to let them think it. Naturally the members of the Piccadilly Gentlemen’s Club knew better.

  ‘How did you bring the Dustin Gang to book?’ Ash asked, as they emerged on to the street and looked about them for chairs for hire. The road was busy, but they could see no chairs and so began to walk, or rather Ashley walked and Harry picked his way daintily between the dirt and puddles.

  ‘By becoming one of them.’

  Ashley laughed. ‘You! Why, you would stand out a mile. I cannot believe they were taken in.’

  ‘Oh, I can be one of the great unwashed when it suits me, Ash.’

  ‘I believe you, though many would not.’

  ‘That is as it should be. My long association with the theatre has stood me in good stead when it comes to putting on a disguise and acting a part. I do believe if I had pursued it, I could have become as famous as David Garrick.’

  ‘Why did you not?’

  ‘The responsibilities of an estate, dear boy. I came into my inheritance when my father died in ’53, and it behooved me to marry and settle down to bring forth the next generation of Portmans.’

  ‘I did not realise you were married and had a family.’

  ‘I was married less than a year. My wife died giving birth to a daughter.’

  ‘I am sorry, Harry, I did not mean to pry. I always assumed you were a confirmed bachelor as I am.’

  ‘It is no secret. I simply do not talk about it. Beth was too young, barely seventeen. No one had told her what to expect and she did not understand what was happening to her when her pains began.’ He paused, remembering her screams which went on and on and the strident way she had cursed him. ‘God will punish you for this!’ Her words were punctuated with screams of pain. Feeling helpless and unable to stand any more of it, he had gone out to walk about the garden until it was all over. He should have been with her to comfort her, but no, men had no business anywhere near childbirth and he would be told when he could come in. Why had he not insisted?

  Instead they had called him in to look at her pale, dead body. It had been washed of blood, but a heap of linen thrown in the corner was saturated with it. He tried not to look, but his eyes were drawn to it in horror. He had not wanted to know his lustily yelling daughter and had packed her off to a wet nurse and after that to a foster mother. She wanted for nothing, but that did not make him feel any less guilty about it. ‘No woman, let alone one so young, should be asked to give up her life to gratify a man’s need for an heir,’ he told Ash.

  ‘You are being too harsh on yourself, Harry. You could not have known what would happen and next time it will surely be plain sailing.’

  ‘There will not be a next time. How can I put anyone, particularly someone for whom I have the tenderest feelings, through that torture?’

  ‘Women do have a choice, my friend, to marry or not to marry, and most, if you ask them, would certainly say they want to be married and have children. It is their lot in life and they know it.’

  ‘You are a fine one to talk,’ Harry said. ‘A bachelor of, how old?’

  ‘Thirty-two. I have given up expecting to meet the lady with whom I could contemplate sharing my life. I am too set in my ways. We should drive each other to distraction and as I have no great estate to worry about, there is no need.’

  ‘But you have mistresses?’

  ‘Naturally I have. But there are ways to prevent conception.’

  ‘What use is that to a man who needs a legitimate heir?’

  ‘But you must have an heir somewhere,’ Ash said.

  ‘So I have, a muckworm of a cousin who has no care for the land, nor the people who depend upon it, and would ruin his inheritance in a twelvemonth with his gambling.’

  ‘Then you must prevent that and marry again.’

  ‘I am not like to die in the immediate future.’

  ‘I hope you may not, but you can never be sure, can you?’

  ‘No.’ The answer was curt, and spying a couple of chairs for hire, Harry beckoned the men over and they climbed in, effectively ending the conversation. In this fashion they were conveyed to the Old Bailey where they took their seats to listen to the trial.

  The room was already crowded. Some of the audience had an interest in the case, but many came to the proceedings simply out of curiosity. Until the entrance of the court officials they talked, ate pies and fruit and noisily speculated on the fate of those to come up before the judge.

  Those of the Dustin Gang who had been apprehended were brought into court and ranged in the dock. There was Alfred Dustin, his wife Meg, their twenty-four-year-old daughter, Matilda, and her husband, Bernard Watson. All were charged that ‘they not being employed at the Mint in the Tower, nor being lawfully authorised by the Lord High Treasurer and not having God before their eyes, nor weighing the duty of their allegiance to our lord, the King, and his people, did between the first day of May and the tenth in the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and sixty-one, feloniously and traitorously forge and counterfeit forty coins of pewter in the likeness of silver shillings and sixpences’. They all pleaded not guilty.

  The first witness was the landlady of their lodgings who had gone into their rooms to clean them when they were out and had found a mould filled with chalk, some clay pipes, much burned, and two sixpences, which had been stamped on one side but not the other. When Bernard Watson came home she had taxed him with her finds and he had admitted to her that he was counterfeiting and had shown her how the coins were made.

  ‘He had a mould,’ she said. ‘It was filled with chalk and had an impression of a sixpence in it. He poured in pewter, which he had heated in a tobacco pipe over the fire. He said good-quality pewter was best and he obtained it by cutting up a tankard. When the piece was taken from the mould he nicked it with a clean tile to mill the edges, then he scoured it with sand to make it look bright. Lastly he put it into a pot of water boiled with a powder he called argol to make it look silver.’

  ‘What did you say to this?’ the judge asked.

  ‘I told him I would have none of it and they must all find other lodgings.’

  ‘You lie,’ Bernard Watson protested. ‘I never made a false coin in my life.’

  The woman turned to the judge. ‘Your honour, as God is my witness, I tell you true.’

  ‘Then what happened?’ the prosecutor urged her.

  ‘He said he would pay me well to pass the coins off when I went shopping, but I refused and said they must all leave.’

  ‘And did they?’

  ‘I left the house and went to fetch a constable. When I
brought the constable back, they had packed up and gone and taken all the sixpences with them.’

  The constable was called next and told the court that he found nothing except a broken-up pewter tankard and the bowl of a pipe with a residue of pewter in it. He saw no counterfeit coins.

  ‘God, I do believe the rascals will get off,’ Ash murmured.

  ‘Patience,’ Harry responded, flicking invisible fluff from his sleeve.

  ‘Where did they go?’ the prosecutor asked the witness.

  ‘They went to a house in White Lion Street. I got the address from a man at the Nag’s Head, who heard them speak of it. I went there with Constable Bunting and we broke down the door and found them all gathered to make coins.’

  ‘I suppose you were the man at the Nag’s Head,’Ash whispered to Harry.

  ‘Shh,’ Harry warned him, smiling.

  Other witnesses were called to corroborate. Their defence that they were making buttons and buckles to sell in the market was thrown out. Alfred, Meg and Bernard were sentenced to hang; Matilda’s plea that she was not aware her parents and husband were doing anything but making buttons was accepted and she was set free. She left the court vowing vengeance against whoever had ratted on them.

  Harry and Ash did not wait to hear the next trial, but made their way out to the street and comparative fresh air. ‘I did not know it was so easy to make false coins,’ Ash said. ‘But surely the profits are minimal.’

  ‘Not if you make enough of them. Take a counterfeit shilling or even a sixpence to a shop to buy something for a ha’penny or a penny and receive the change in good money and you soon make a tidy profit. Usually the coiners employ what they call passers-off to go into the country with a supply of bad coins with which they buy goods needing change.’

  ‘Not worth the candle,’ Ash said.

  ‘Not for such as we are, but for the lower sort a welcome supplement to low wages and, for those with no work at all, better than starving.’

  ‘The young woman was very angry. Do you think she will try to carry out her threat?’

  ‘She has no idea who turned them in.’ He paused. ‘They are small fry. The really big profits come with clipping gold coins, but for that you need to be supplied with real coins to make a start and it is altogether on a more lofty plane. That is what I’m going after next.’

  ‘What have you discovered?’

  ‘Not a great deal as yet, but I was handed a clipped guinea at the wine merchant’s the other day. It had been used to purchase wine. Unfortunately he could not remember who had passed it to him. He has promised to let me know as soon as he sees another one.’

  ‘You can’t do it more than once in the same shop, surely?’

  ‘It depends how observant the shopkeeper is. And if the rogue thought he had got away with it he might be tempted to try again.’

  They had been walking back towards St James’s as they talked and turned into White’s and the subject of coiners and, indeed, of crime in whatever form was dropped in favour of playing cards. Harry drank and gambled in moderation; he found that men in their cups often let fall titbits of information that helped him in his work for the Piccadilly Gentlemen. And there was nothing to go home for. He could attend soirées, routs and balls, he was always a welcome guest, simply because of his title, wealth and unmarried status, but he became tired of gushing mamas throwing their daughters in his way. He found himself reiterating that he had decided not to marry again, but that did not stop them trying to change his mind.

  He could, of course, find one of the hundreds of ladies of the night to amuse him for an hour or two, but he had always found paying for that dubious pleasure distasteful. He went frequently to the theatre and enjoyed supper with the cast afterwards, but there was a limit to the number of times he could view one play, especially if it were not particularly well done. It was easier to spend his evenings at one or other of his clubs.

  A four was made up by Benedict Stafford and Sir Max Chalmers. Benedict was a pimply youth of no more than twenty, heir to a Viscount who kept him on short commons, which everyone knew. Harry had never met Sir Max, but he was well dressed in sober black, relieved by silver embroidery and a white lace cravat, matched by the froth of lace emerging from his coat sleeves. With his sharp nose and chin and thin legs, he reminded Harry of a magpie.

  ‘You have the devil’s own luck,’ Stafford complained several hours later when Harry scooped up his pile of winnings. ‘Unless you take my voucher, I can play no more.’

  ‘Naturally I shall accept your voucher,’ Harry said, using the high-pitched voice of the fop, though he drew the line at a lisp. ‘But if you have scattered too many of them about, I wonder when I might be paid.’

  Benedict laughed. ‘That I cannot tell you, but you are in no hurry, are you? I believe you to be prodigious high in the instep.’

  ‘So I may be, but neither am I a fool.’ He was idly looking at the coins he had won as he spoke, but not so much by a flicker of an eyelid did he betray the fact that one of them was clipped. He wondered which of the players had put it there and if he was aware of what he had done. The trouble was that it was easy to pass clipped guineas without realising it; they had once been genuine and their only flaw was that, after clipping, they were smaller and weighed less than they should. He put it in his pocket. ‘I like a man to pay his debts.’

  ‘Then I withdraw,’ Benedict said huffily. ‘Any other man would demand satisfaction for that slur on his honour.’

  ‘I am relieved you do not,’ Harry said, smiling lazily. ‘I abhor violence.’

  ‘I will toss you the dice for my share of the pot,’ Ash told the young man. ‘If you win, it will give you the stake to go on playing.’

  ‘And if I lose?’

  ‘I will take your voucher.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  The card game was suspended while the dice were called for. Harry spent the time studying his playing companions. Benedict was a young fool, wanting to impress, to be counted a man about town, but he would not have the stomach for passing counterfeit guineas. Max Chalmers was different. He was thirty or thereabouts, not ill looking, though his expression was surly. His clothes were well made and his powdered wig one of the best; a vain man, he decided, then chuckled secretly at himself for his own pretensions.

  ‘Allow me to offer condolences and congratulations, Chalmers,’ Ash said while they waited. ‘I believe you have recently come into your inheritance.’

  ‘I thank you, though there is little enough to salvage and I am left with an unmarried sister to provide for.’

  ‘Is that such a burden?’

  ‘It would not be if our father had not invested foolishly and left no portion for her. My wife is not over-fond of her and is reluctant to offer her a home.’ He sighed. ‘If only I could find her a husband. You do not know of anyone requiring a wife, do you?’

  Ash looked meaningfully at Harry, who frowned at him, but he took no notice. ‘What can you say in her favour?’

  ‘Not a great deal,’ Max said gloomily. ‘She is twenty-six and not beautiful, but I suppose you could say she has a good figure…’

  ‘Why does your wife not like her?’ Harry demanded.

  ‘She is too opinionated.’

  ‘Mmm, a bad trait indeed,’ Harry said. ‘Is that why she has never married?’

  ‘It could be. But she has been housekeeper to our father since our mother died. To give her her due she is very good at it. The house always ran like clockwork. That is half the trouble—if she comes to our house, she will want to impose her own ideas…’

  Harry laughed. ‘Then you have a problem, my friend.’

  ‘Marry her off,’ Ash said.

  ‘So I would, if I could find someone to take her.’

  ‘Is she healthy?’ Ash persisted in his questioning.

  ‘Never had a day’s illness in her life.’

  ‘It seems to me,’Ash said thoughtfully ‘that your contention that she has little in her favour is fa
lse. She is a good housekeeper, can hold her own and is healthy enough to bear children. Is she particular as to a husband?’

  Max laughed. ‘She cannot afford to be.’

  ‘You mean she would agree to a marriage of convenience?’

  ‘If one were offered, I think I could persuade her.’ He paused, realising he might have sounded unfeeling. ‘Of course, I would not let her to go any Tom, Dick or Harry…Oh, I beg your pardon, Portman.’

  ‘Granted.’

  ‘I would wish to know she would be dealt fairly with, not kept short of pin money or treated like a skivvy,’ Max went on. ‘She is, after all, a lady. Our family can trace its lineage back to Tudor times.’

  ‘Dowry?’ Ash asked, ignoring the kick Harry gave him under the table.

  ‘Alas! There you have me.’

  Ash chuckled. ‘Not much of a bargain, then. How do you propose to bring this marriage about? Advertise her for sale?’

  ‘That’s a thought,’ Max admitted.

  ‘How can you be so callous?’ Harry burst out, forgetting his usual languid air. ‘She is your sister and a lady; surely she deserves your protection.’

  Max looked startled by this outburst from a man who had the reputation of indolence and a studied lack of finer feelings, except when they were his own. ‘Naturally she does and until she marries she shall have it, but she would be happier married, of that I am certain.’

  ‘We should like to meet the lady, should we not, Harry?’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Harry said brusquely, wondering how much longer the waiter was going to be fetching the dice. The whole conversation was becoming offensive.

  ‘You?’ Benedict queried, addressing Ashley. ‘I thought you were content to remain a bachelor.’

  ‘So I am. I was thinking of someone else.’

  Max laughed. ‘A man-matchmaker—whoever heard of such a thing?’

  ‘I would not go so far as to say that,’ Ash said.

  ‘I should think not!’ Harry put in. ‘I beg you to forget it.’