His Lordship's Last Wager

by Miranda Davis

  Jane was grateful for the bear’s affability. She, of all people, knew how dull a confined life was, but she dared not walk him herself. So Bibendum passed his time within the high walls of a city garden. She could only console herself that he had more freedom than most creatures housed in menageries, with more to come.

  This part of her plan progressed quickly. In every other way, time passed at a glacial pace. Uncertainty made the wait nerve-racking. Soon, she succumbed to her childhood habit and found herself nibbling her nails to the quick whenever her hands were bare.

  Jane heard from Seelye on the 4th of April, when the man himself appeared on the doorstep, tired, disheveled, and mud-spattered from his ride to London.

  Such was her relief, her first impulse was to throw her arms around him but she checked herself.

  You’re back!” she cried, clasping her hands tightly together. “How is the duchess? And her babe?”

  “She’s alive, by inches,” he said, his expression unusually somber. “And the babe was twins. Boys. I left as soon as they were out of danger.”

  “When I called on her, she was,” Jane hesitated to speak of pregnancy, “almost overwhelmed by her condition. Twins don’t surprise me—though how so delicate a woman delivered them is a miracle. I am so thankful.”

  “Her background helped. She was alert and made certain demands of the doctor,” Seelye said. “He didn’t like that but, by God, he did as she asked. We saw to it.”

  “The Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride again!” she teased. “No doubt you enjoyed terrorizing him.”

  “I did rather,” he said with a fleeting smile. “Your bear leaves tonight or tomorrow, as soon as Percy returns. My PPC will be your signal to prepare for it. When you get it, expect me at half-past one. I’ll draw the tooth before we cart him off to the barge—if I can see what I’m doing in the dark.”

  “I will send word to Richard Martin that you’ll be on your way to Bristol. And I’ll have an oil lamp on hand and dose Bibendum in the crate once you’re here. That way, he’ll sleep through the tooth-drawing and part of the way to Reading.”

  Seelye turned on her. “You expect me to crawl in there with him to yank his tooth?”

  “If he’s insensible, he’ll have to be inside it beforehand,” she said.

  He gaped at her. “If?”

  “When he’s insensible,” she amended.

  “You’re certain he will be?”

  “I couldn’t test the tincture ahead of time in case he disliked the taste,” she said. “What would we do if he refused to take it when we need him to?”

  “Shoot him?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Is it wiser to test your bear drops when I have my face inches from his fangs and I’m hurting him?”

  “I’m certain the dose will be sufficient,” she stammered. She had the duchess’ clear instructions and more than enough tincture for multiple doses, but she did have concerns she didn’t dare voice.

  “And if Bibendum wakes up,” Seelye said, “I may die gratified that I’ve proved you wrong about something at least once in my life.” He bowed to her with a theatrical flourish. “Y’ servant, ma’am.”

  Jane clapped slowly. “Thus concludes Act One. Act Two to follow the interval.”

  * * *

  At another Mayfair address, Earl Rostand was growing impatient about his bear. His man of affairs dared not admit he failed to obtain Bath’s permission to remove it.

  When Whitcombe failed to purchase it at the outset, the earl’s displeasure resembled an infant’s tantrum when a rattle was snatched away. His round face grew purple, his close-set eyes clenched tight, his mouth opened wide to bawl his frustration.

  Weathering his ongoing tempest sorely tested Whitcombe, for he was not the guilty party. His lordship’s disappointment should be laid at Lady Jane’s doorstep. Yet, the earl raged at him whenever he had business matters to discuss.

  Desperate to be back in the earl’s good graces, Whitcombe hired men out of his own pocket to steal the bear away in the middle of the night.

  At four o’clock when only dustmen were about, Whitcombe clutched his frock coat about him and silently directed five burly men and the bear’s former owner, Ned Livens, to the Duke of Bath’s potting shed.

  At his signal, Mr. Livens crept to the door and drew the bolt. The others uncoiled ropes ready to drag the bear from the garden, if it proved reluctant.

  “Boodles?” whispered Livens. He opened the door a crack, peered inside and exclaimed, “Boodles!”

  The waiting men tensed.

  In a low voice, Whitcombe said, “Dash it, man, get on with it! Muzzle the thing.”

  Livens reappeared. “Boodles ain’t here an’ that ain’t on me.”

  The useless imbecile whined something more, but Whitcombe couldn’t hear him, his thoughts were too jumbled, his fury too all-encompassing. He strode in to search for himself, as if Livens might have overlooked a bear in the dark.

  All that remained was the faint smell of wet dogs.

  Somehow that accursed female had made off with the animal in time to leave him in bad odor with his employer yet again. The men he hired were useless. He paid them off and sent Livens away with nothing but a snarl that silenced the man’s whining.

  No question, he shared Lord Rostand’s hatred of Lady Jane Babcock.

  When first he met her, Whitcombe merely disliked her. She ignored him, but he kept a cool head, considering it the prerogative of the elite to snub their inferiors.

  He despised her when she interfered with the bear’s purchase.

  She’d said, ‘You could take that little man’s three quid, Mr. Livens, or you could have my eight guineas to take it where I say. What will it be?’

  Since he hadn’t thought to bring more cash than agreed to, Whitcombe was caught short.

  He knew what awaited him now, having suffered the brunt of the earl’s earlier displeasure. His gathering fury focused itself. Her ladyship made his life doubly miserable. How would he repay her?

  He’d be sacked unless he contrived an entertainment more appealing to the earl than a pack of fighting dogs killing a tamed bear. His thoughts began to formulate a fitting revenge.

  He had no more than a day or two before the earl would send for him expecting good news. From his rooms near Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Whitcombe dispatched lads to all of London’s bridges, toll roads, and waterways seeking news of the bear.

  Among his informants was a stevedore working the docks. For a shilling—an extortionate price—the earl’s man learned that a large, iron-reinforced crate had been loaded onto a barge headed for Reading the night before.

  That was not the only intelligence he gleaned from his sources. Another yielded the bear’s likely destination.

  Word was, Richard Martin boasted to acquaintances about granting asylum to a bear saved from the Hellfire Club. He said it was ‘snatched from under those toffee-nosed prats at the very gates of its doom.’

  Next, Whitcombe recalled that Connemara was Martin’s stomping grounds, however, he sat as the member from Galway currently. Hadn’t Denis Bowes Daly occupied that seat until recently? No love lost there. They were political rivals with estates cheek by jowl in Ireland.

  A bear must cause a furor wherever her ladyship intended to release it. But a bear set loose by Richard Martin near Mr. Daly’s property—without his consent—was bound to antagonize him. Martin’s flagrant disregard and the novelty of a bear hunt would doubtless prove irresistible to the Irishman.

  With growing satisfaction, Whitcombe designed a retaliation to amuse his master, satisfy himself, and teach the meddlesome lady a lesson she wouldn’t forget.

  The following day, he laid his proposal before the earl.

  Rostand pursed his lips, steepled his fingers before his pout, and considered it. Whitcombe waited through the uncomfortable silence, ready for a tongue-lashing.

  To his astonishment, Rostand said, “That should do nicely. D’you think I might
have its head? Be handsome over a mantle.”

  “Indeed, my lord, I do,” Whitcombe said and allowed himself to gloat inwardly.

  He lost no time penning a letter on the earl’s behalf to Daly. He sent it express to reach its recipient long before the bear reached Connemara.

  Whitcombe imagined Lady Jane Babcock’s horror upon learning her rescued bear was hunted for sport in Ireland.

  Serve her right, the snooty bitch.

  Chapter 23

  In which our hero finds managing our heroine is much like pulling teeth.

  4 April 1817

  Shortly after Seelye returned from calling on Jane, Percy arrived at Mrs. Carmody’s establishment. As it happened, he’d left Greyfriars Abbey an hour after Seelye. Dust clung to his greatcoat, but he made himself at home.

  Percy had a nice set in Albany that overlooked Vigo Street. It was an enviable address for a bachelor. Yet, no gesture or expression of his denigrated Seelye’s abysmal lodgings.

  “Thought to come here directly rather than clean up first,” Percy said in apology.

  “Your dust is welcome to join what’s already here.”

  “Maid?” his friend asked, looking about idly.

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Then let’s begin,” Percy said.

  They discussed preparations: Seelye’s for the tooth extraction and Percy’s for Bibendum’s transfer to a barge at the docks afterward. They agreed on a meeting time and parted in excellent humor.

  Nothing like the familiar rush of excitement to lift one’s spirits.

  For Seelye, it was as if he’d revived from a deep torpor. Gone was the dandy’s habitual languor. With a light step, he gathered necessities into a battered rucksack, his gestures quick and efficient. To this collection, he added a fresh journal and pencils. He enjoyed sketching on campaign. Why not present a visual travelogue to Jane when he returned? After all, life was alive with possibilities and it was all thanks to her.

  The thought brought him up short but it was true.

  Complaints about boredom and danger had turned to excitement. If not for Jane, his blood wouldn’t be thrumming in his veins. His mind wouldn’t be calculating the odds of success and considering how to improve them. Martial instincts dormant for two years would still be slumbering fitfully. He had a mission and would accomplish it or die trying.

  Seelye called on Jane for a second time to leave his PPC—the signal to ready her bear for his early morning cruise.

  Back in Gower Street, he considered more carefully what he was about to attempt and, being a rational man, concluded that only a nincompoop would undertake a bear’s tooth-drawing—and his own possible disemboweling—completely sober.

  At half one on the morning, Seelye alighted, or rather, tripped from a hackney cab with his kit bag. He wended his unsteady way into the mews, where less than an hour hence, Percy and his stevedores would find him alive and whole, God willing.

  At the garden gate, he was met by two beautiful females holding shrouded oil lamps.

  “Hallooooo!”

  They recoiled and hissed, “Shhhh!”

  He blinked hard. Perhaps he’d overshot the mark in his preparations. Jane had acquired an identical twin. Both looked cross.

  “Have you been drinking?” Their question was accusatory and unnecessary, given their reactions to his breath.

  “Can’t blame a fellow for wantin’ to feel as lit-tle of his own dismemberment as possible,” he explained to them patiently. “An’ there’ll be George shootin’ what’s left when he finds out.”

  “George knows.”

  “Oh, lovely, he’ll kill me if your bear don’t.”

  “Luckily, George shoots wide of the mark,” he and the Janes said in chorus.

  He laughed until a sobering thought occurred to him.

  “Then again, there’s worse than death, ladies. George might expect me to savage—no, wait.” He tapped his nose. “Meant to say, salvage, to salvage your reputation.” He focused on right-hand Jane. “What reputation, you ask? You’re already the In-in-something,” he flubbed.

  Even legless, he knew she wasn’t intolerable.

  Turning to her doppelgänger, he sniffed, “And you, I don’t know.”

  “You are foxed” was their second statement of the obvious.

  “Drunk as a lord,” he said ponderously and wagged a reproving forefinger to deliver his direst prediction. “If you’re not careful, Pest, you or that one and I’ll end up in the parsnip’s mousecrap.”

  He stared them down to quell their chortles but efforts to narrow his eyes made him queasy.

  “You needn’t worry,” they said. “I’d refuse.”

  This hurt despite analgesic doses of brandy.

  “Good, only consider the mayhem,” he said.

  Determined to have it out with each of them in turn, he glared at left-hand Jane and lo, she resolved into right-hand Jane. Through his brain’s toxic haze, he noted her lovely, bright laughter when genuinely amused. She had a nice laugh.

  The next thought crept up on him more slowly: she found him amusing. He drew himself up, all muzzy, injured male dignity.

  “Not funny,” he said, “I wouldn’t like it much either. Only do it if I had to.”

  “It won’t come to that,” she told him. “George is too fond of you to foist the Insufferable on you.”

  “Hold there. Mustn’t say that about y’self, Pest,” he said. “I can say it, ‘cause it’s in jest. An’ George can, ‘cause he’s your brother, he’s bound to. But you mustn’t. Truth is, you’re sufferable enough.”

  “Honeyed words, my lord.”

  Even drunk, Seelye detected her arid tone and knew he’d offended her.

  “An’ dash it, you’re tolerable enough, too. Won’ let anyone say otherwise,” he declared with ponderous gallantry, “’cept George. An’ me, of course. An’ maybe Gert, she means well.” He refocused his blurry eyes. “Clear?”

  “Perfectly, Lord Seelye,” she replied. “Before we start, I want you to know how grateful I am. I never doubted that you’d be Bibendum’s hero.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said.

  She stood within arm’s reach, moonlit and inviting. He stepped close. Desire for her started his heart pumping and the rush of blood began to clear his head. From his mental muddle emerged these thoughts:

  Pretty.

  Botheration.

  No.

  Mustn’t.

  Not again.

  “Quick, Jane, fetch more brandy, I’m sobering.”

  She set the lamp on top of the crate and returned a few minutes later with hands full.

  “Wait!” He stopped her and leaned over to eyeball the contents of the stoneware bowl in one hand, then the crystal decanter in her other.

  He snatched away the decanter with a reproachful, “Can’t fool me.”

  “No, you’re much too clever to drink a bowl of slugs drowned in ale,” she said and set the bowl aside. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

  “If I can think, I haven’t,” he said and tilted back the decanter to take a pull.

  “Leave some for—”

  “No!” he cried. “Not George’s best brandy, you don’t. Nectar of the gods, Jane, and you will not swill it into that creature’s ripe maw t’ wash down slugs.” He clutched the decanter to his chest protectively. “How could I look your brother in the eye?”

  “I’ll take that, if you please,” she said and tried to pry it from his grasp.

  “On your head be it,” He averted his face and relinquished it.

  “Kudos, Mr. Kean, what a performance!”

  She led Bibendum into the crate. It was well built, with barred window-like openings for ventilation that allowed Seelye to peer inside. The bear sat for his treat, while she counted out dozens of drops of Prudence’s laudanum tincture into the bowl of ale-drowned slugs. To this witch’s brew, she added a number of glugs of George’s best brandy before placing it at his paws. Last, she removed the re
d leather muzzle.

  “Mmmm! Yummy, Bibendum, slugs,” she cooed.

  The bear sniffed the bowl delicately, wagged his head and huffed over it with his ears alert. But he refused to partake.

  Seelye came in to encourage him. “Try it.”

  He leaned down to smack his lips and happened to belch. This captured Bibendum’s interest. With upper lip pointed, he sniffed Seelye’s mouth then the bowl.

  “See? Seelye loves it,” she coaxed the bear.

  Overcome by curiosity, the bear tested the contents with a touch of his lip. He dipped the tip of his tongue to taste it, sniffed once more, and finally curled a paw around the bowl possessively to lap it up.

  “Look, Seelye! He likes it.”

  He looked. “I don’t feel well.”

  Bibendum emptied the bowl, ‘mmmm’ing in Bear. Next, he nosed around for stray drips and licked his paw clean.

  Seelye watched and waited. “He’s awake, Jane.”

  “It takes time,” she said

  The parish constable passed in the square, called out two o’clock in a stentorian voice and reassured high society that the night was fair.

  Seelye’s mind sharpened by the minute. A racing heart did that to a man. Same thing happened at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball. He was stone-cold sober by the time the cavalry mustered.

  “He’s still awake,” he reported.

  “Yes, I see that.”

  “Give him another dose.”

  “Prudence said—”

  “Oh, so it’s Prudence now?” He swung round to eye Jane quizzically. “How did that come about?”

  “I appealed to her humanity and she agreed to help Bibendum.”

  “A bear’s all it took?”

  “I also apologized, made a mortifying confession, and gave her a rare book. I’m not sure which earned her forgiveness,” Jane admitted. “But she prepared the draught herself.”

  “I’d say she’s off by half.” He watched the bear nudge the empty bowl along the crate floor with his snout. “In any case, well done you. That took courage, Jane.”