The Whites and everyone else at the party immediately wanted to hear the story of Malcolm's exploits at Culloden from his own lips. He declined to utter more than a few monosyllables, which only made them admire him all the more for his modesty. I sat beside Robert Nicolls at the table, and as the other guests reiterated Malcolm's heroism, we gazed into each other's eyes without illusions.
“I trust Miss White's dowry is satisfactory,” I said in a low voice, smiling as if we were chatting about the latest play in Covent Garden.
“Eminently,” Robert said.
“And of course you're in love.”
“Eminently,” he said.
Beneath the table, he took my hand. “But there's a part of my heart that remembers and regrets. Is that true for you as well?”
I trembled inwardly. It was amazing. I was still vulnerable to Robert's charms. “I remember a great many thingsâand regret all of them,” I said.
Elizabeth White was a sweet, totally innocent young woman, with plaintive eyes and a face like a teardrop. She had been raised in a highly protected atmosphere which rendered her singularly susceptible to Robert's poetic apostrophes. The thought of her hundred thousand pound dowry made me taste again the humiliation of the day Robert rejected me and my paltry fifteen hundred pounds. Out of old anger and shame, I suddenly conjured an exquisite idea for revenge.
Walking back to the White Horse Inn along the Strand, London's most fashionable street, the masses of prostitutes that prowled this part of London by night assailed us, making lewd suggestions about three in a bed. Were they the reason Malcolm was shunning me?
“I've thought of a way to regain your estate,” I said. “If I threaten to tell Chesley White about the way Robert Nicolls seduced and abandoned me for want of a dowry, I think Robert might persuade his father to settle the lawsuit in your favor.”
“Do what you please,” Malcolm said. “Though it sounds like ill-gotten gains to me.”
He began comparing me to Walpole and the Pelhams in my lust for
money and raved about his detestation of my mockery of patriotism and the sordid life I had forced him to live. Still unaware of the chaos in his soul, I let the bitterness he had already ignited in my heart burst into a wicked flame, all but consuming my love for him. I could hear the Evil Brother laughing in that dark corner of my soul.
I only promised you your heart's desire.
In the morning, I summoned Barrister McDuffie to discuss the Nicolls situation. The shrewd little fellow thought that my threat might very well settle the lawsuit and readily agreed to play the negotiator. Within the hour Robert showed up at the White Horse Inn for a parley. In the shadowy taproom, he looked sadly diminished, in spite of his stylish clothes.
“This is unworthy of youâof our love,” he said.
For a moment my resolution almost faltered. Was he right? I reminded myself of the mercenary way he had abandoned me and cold anger armored my heart. “The issue here is not love but money. All you have to do is persuade your father to help us regain Malcolm's property. Get him to deny he and his secretary witnessed George Stapleton's will. If the signatures are forgedâthe case is over.”
Robert fiddled with the watch fob dangling from the pocket of his mauve breeches. “I'll see what my father thinks. May I say this only convinces me that my intuition of your money-grubbing soul was correct?”
“When it comes to money grubbing, you're hardly in a position to cast stones.”
When Lawyer McDuffie visited later in the day, I told him our prospects looked favorable. “It's a simple matter of computation,” the little Scotsman chortled. “Old Chesley White is probably worth a half million pounds, every cent of which will go to his daughter. That's ten times what the Stapleton lands are worth.”
Malcolm joined us and McDuffie told him the good news. He sloshed down a tankard of rum and snarled: “How can the two of you sell that innocent girl into the arms of a whoremaster like Nicolls?”
“Damn you and your morality!” I said. “How can you be so high-minded when you've seen the true state of this country. Is there a scrap of morality visible anywhere?”
“There's nothing I can do about that,” Malcolm said. “But I won't be a party to selling an innocent girl to a rascal!”
“He's no more of a rascal than any other fortune hunter she's likely to encounter,” I said. I managed to convince myself this was more or less true. Robert could be charming when his financial needs were satisfied.
McDuffie, a total cynic about the English like most Scots, agreed with me wholeheartedly. But Malcolm declined to be persuaded. “Ill-gotten
gains,” he said, sloshing down more rum. “I don't know whether I can live with them.”
I had no idea how ominous those words would soon prove to be. “Show me some gains that aren't ill-gotten, one way or another, in this great and glorious empire,” I said.
The following day, a note from Robert Nicolls was delivered by a panting messenger. The bargain was seatedâand it only remained to work out the conditions. These turned out to be rather sticky, since mistrust and resentment were rampant on both sides. Would the lawsuit be settled before Robert married Miss White? Or would the wedding take precedence? I insisted on being first in line and the governor, after some grumbling, gave way.
Georgianna Stapleton was another sticking point. She was enraged by the whole negotiation. Not until Governor Nicolls's lawyer pointed out that forgery was a hanging offense did she finally consent to signing an agreement which turned over the estate to Malcolm and his brother, to share equally. Jamey had already indicated his readiness to accept the settlement.
To soothe Georgianna's temperâand no doubt to retain access to her personâGovernor Nicolls persuaded the Duke of Newcastle to find her a sinecure in the royal household. She became a lady of the stole, with duties so nebulous she only had to appear once a year at the Queen's Birthday Ball. This single attendance was worth four hundred pounds from the treasury annually. That was as muchâpossibly moreâthan Georgianna was getting from Hampden Hall.
A week later, Robert Foster Nicolls married Elizabeth White at St. Clement Dane's church on the Strand. As a client of Chesley White, I had to go. Malcolm refused to join me. “Make an excuse for me with your forked tongue,” he said.
“Is this all the thanks I get for regaining your property?”
Again, there was no answer.
When I returned from the wedding, I found Malcolm in the taproom of the White Horse Inn with his friend Hartshorne. They were both somewhat drunk. “I've been trying to cheer up this fellow,” Hartshorne said, beaming at Malcolm in his asinine way. “I took him to one of London's best entertainments, the Royal Cockpit. The cocks were in fine fettle and the lad was soon a match for'm. I've seldom seen a fellow as fond of bold wagers. 'Pon my word I had trouble matching him.”
“Did you win?” I said.
“I'm afraid not. Between us we must have lost five hundred pounds, eh, Stapleton?”
Malcolm glowered defiantly at his wife. “At least,” he said.
“Five hundred pounds!” I cried.
“From his Walpole wallet,” Hartshorne said, foreseeing my tantrum.
“We needed every penny of that to begin paying off his father's debts!” I said. “What about your oath not to make another wager?”
“Oh, I've kept that promise long enough. Upward of six months now,” Hartshorne said. “A man isn't a
man,
Mrs. Stapleton, unless he bets now and then.”
“Tonight we're going to Almack's,” Malcolm said. This was one of the most notorious gambling clubs in London. “I'll win it back, never fear. You'll see I'm not the only one who can make a fortune in this family, Wife.”
For the next week Malcolm went off with Hartshorne to Almack's or some other gambling club or the Royal Cockpit every night and came home drunk, sometimes with hundreds of pounds of winnings which he flaunted at me, sometimes with empty pockets and copies of promissory notes for as much as a thousand pounds. I saw that behind his mad flamboyance, he wanted to lose all our money. Somehow that would purify him of the taint of corruption he associated with it. As for Hartshorne, he was as addicted to gambling as some men were to liquor. He was on his way to losing his second fortune.
In our room, I pleaded with Malcolm. But he remained beyond my reach, inside his perpetual drunkenness. He became even more unreachable when the government began executing the Jacobites at Tyburn. He went to the beheadings of three noblemen (several others were pardoned) and returned declaring they had died like brave men and he wished he had taken their side.
I persuaded our innkeeper, John Williams, to pay one of his waiters to trail Malcolm to the gambling dens but his only value was the accurate reports he gave me of the latest losses. One night I carried little Hugh to the taproom, where Malcolm and Hartshorne, after a lucky run at Almack's, were treating the whole establishment. “If not for my sake, will you stop this madness for his sake?” I pleaded.
Malcolm sat the boy on his lap and contemplated him mournfully. The child was half asleep. “I wish I could, I wish I could,” he said.
Chesley White summoned me to his office to show me a squib in the
Public Advertiser.
A certain American hero is fast using up the credit he won at Culloden. Rumor has it that he's now 50,000 pounds in debt at the gaming tables and no one in the administration is inclined to lift a finger for him. Worse rumor has it that his simple noggin has been infected by Patriotism.
White said he would find it hard to extend me credit if the story were true. “It's nowhere near fifty thousand pounds, I can assure you,” I said,
wondering if someone in the government who had not forgiven Malcolm for his outburst against them at the Old Lodge had supplied this information to the paper. It was hardly surprising to discover we were under secret service surveillance.
“Do you have money to pay these debts?” White asked.
“I have ample funds in Amsterdam, where I've traded for years,” I lied. “Philip Hooft of the Hooft Bank will vouch for me.”
Chesley White was impressed by the Hooft name. He let me go with renewed promises of friendship and credit which I was using to make extensive purchases of cloth and other goods for the Universal Store. Robert Nicolls and his bride were in Bath, London's favorite resort, penning White letters full of gossip and good cheer. All I had to show for my scheming was George Stapleton's debt-laden estate in New Jersey and his quondam son here in London, drunkenly gambling away its value.
Back in the White Horse Inn, I found two burly fellows talking to the proprietor, John Williams. “Here's his wife,” Williams said.
The two visitors were bailiffs. They had a warrant to take Malcolm Stapleton to Old Bailey, the debtor's prison, if he could not produce the ten thousand pounds he had lost last night at Almack's, playing faro. I was tempted to let him go to jail and sail back to America without him. But how could I explain such a disgrace to our friendsâmuch less our enemiesâin New York? I could practically hear my Van Vorst relatives cackling with glee.
I told the bailiffs Malcolm had sailed for America that morning. Innkeeper John Williams loyally confirmed the lie. Upstairs, I routed him out of his drunken sleep and sent Williams rushing to the Thames's wharves to find a ship that was sailing for New York on the next tide.
“Are you happy now?” I said, showing him the bailiff's order. “You've brought us to the brink of ruin. I can't pay this without ruining my credit here in London.”
“Let them have me,” Malcolm said. “Go back to New York and forget me. Tell the boy I died of smallpox over here or some other lie that will make him at least mourn me.”
“What's
wrong
with you? Why do you want to destroy all we've tried to build?”
Finally, he told me what he had learned in Scotland about his real father. “Don't you see what I've done?” he said. “Betrayed my own people, spilled their blood in the name of a gang of plunderers like Walpole and Pelham.” Marrying me was of a piece with this theme of moral capitulation. He reiterated his comparison of my ethics and the Great Corrupter and his crew. “Between you, you've made me a traitor to everything I believe,” he raved.
“I think Godâor whoever runs this miserable disordered worldâis far more responsible,” I said.
Even if he were not accusing me, I could not have sympathized with him. Perhaps it was my Seneca contempt for pain, perhaps it was the bitterness my uncle Johannes and Robert Nicolls had steeped in my soul, but I was incapable of tolerating weakness. It seemed especially offensive to discover it in the spirit of this gigantic man whom I had chosen as my protector, my prize in the lottery of love.
I could not help him. I could not even bear the sight of him. I summoned Hartshorne to persuade him to flee. The colonel continued to assume Malcolm's funk was caused by the way the Patriot Party had collapsed. With that marvelous ability to turn his opinions inside out, Hartshorne assured Malcolm patriotism was moonshine and eventually grown men faced up to that hard truth. He added a graphic portrait of the sordid life of debtor's prison. He himself was rejoining his regiment in Scotland to escape the bailiffs on his trail.