Last evening had gone well, but the afternoon had been beyond tedious. The solicitors were coming at Effington in twos and threes now, armed with figures and innuendos about another firm being a better match for the Effington family’s priorities in the coming years.
The lawyers were jumping ship, in other words, and that would signal the creditors, when everybody knew the trades weren’t to be paid until December.
Soon, Yorick would have to go back to working for a living.
“I did what you asked,” Mannering said, patting Yorick and tugging on a doggy ear. “Exactly what you asked. Green garter in a prominent location, remarks at the punch bowl. Drat the luck, m’sisters have stuck their oar in. I was trying to avoid that.”
Effington put Yorick down, and gestured to the table near the windows. The drawing room was chilly, because a fire had become a luxury.
“Shall we play a few rounds of vingt-et-un, Mannering? Let you get back some of your own?”
“I have done my bit, Effington,” Mannering said, taking a seat and flipping out the tails of an exquisitely stitched morning coat. “The little Haddonfield woman has been muttered about, gossiped over, and subjected to narrow-eyed glances from every corner of a half-dozen ballrooms. How about you hand over my vowels?”
Effington really should, but Mannering was both gullible and wealthy, a combination hard to come by among the beau monde.
Effington snapped his fingers. “Yorick, sit.”
Down went a little doggy bottom with gratifying alacrity. Effington took the seat nearest the windows, and riffled through a deck of cards. The edges were minutely patterned, so Effington would know exactly how many points Mannering’s hand held.
“Come here, Yorick,” Mannering said, patting his knee. “You’re a lucky little fellow, and I can use some luck. My sisters saw me leaving the garter about last night, and that wasn’t lucky at all.”
Effington shuffled, taking his time because the markings on the cards were subtle and not easily read. Yorick leaped into Mannering’s lap, and looked entirely happy to be there.
“A gentleman occasionally keeps a garter as a memento of a pleasant encounter,” Effington said. He’d had an encounter or two with Mannering’s sisters, and what they lacked in scruples, they made up for in stamina and inventiveness.
While all of the virtue and coin and none of the brains in the Mannering family sat across from Effington, now wearing dog hair on a beautifully tailored pair of doeskin breeches.
“Keep a lady’s garter?” Mannering asked. “What a peculiar notion. Anyhow, I’d put the garter on a bust of some old Roman fellow—Socrates, I suppose—and here come the harpies, full of questions and sly remarks. If we’re to play cards, hadn’t you ought to deal a few my way?”
Effington had been shuffling in hopes of putting a poor combination before his guest. He ended up dealing Mannering a pair of sevens.
“I’m sure you told your sisters to mind their own business, and Socrates was Greek.” Two kings smiled up at Effington, hearts and diamonds.
“Poor fellow’s dead, in any case,” Mannering said, scratching Yorick’s shoulders. “My sisters, by contrast, took a keen interest in why their brother was leaving garters about other people’s corridors. Nosy pair, those two.”
Nosy, but not overly concerned with propriety. “Another card, Mannering?”
“Yorick, what do you think? Shall Uncle Lyle have another card?”
Yorick gazed adoringly at Mannering, tail wagging.
“Yorick says one more card, please,” Mannering said. “As I was saying, my sisters got to pesterin’ me, and there we were in the corridor, and rather than be found arguing with a pair of perishin’ females, I told them you had instructed me to leave the garter about, and it was all in aid of gaining a good match for Lady Della. They got quiet then. When those two get quiet, a man should worry.”
Effington tossed a card across the table. A two, by the feel of the edge and the design along the border.
“Mannering, you will not get your vowels back at this rate. In fact I ought to double the interest rate on your debt.”
“Interest? Now see here, Effington. Those vowels ain’t thirty days old, and they’re debts of honor, not a mortgage on the ancestral pile. Let’s have no mention of interest. Yorick doesn’t like nasty talk like that.”
More tail wagging, drat the beast, but Effington was nothing if not resourceful, and the Mannering twins were well placed to aid his cause.
“You may tell your sisters whatever you please,” Effington said, “as long as you remind them that old friends generally guard one another’s interests if they know what’s good for them. Does Trudy still have that darling mole on her right hip?”
Mannering put down his cards and covered Yorick’s ears. “How the deuce should I know? Really, Effington. My sisters aren’t exactly nuns, but a gentleman ought never to tell. Will you have another card?”