‘I REGARD MATRIMONY IN MUCH the same manner as I regard the purchase of stock—there are risks involved and patience may be required, but, assuming I have researched the proposed investment thoroughly, I am usually confident that sooner or later my returns will justify the initial outlay.’ Colonel Huntington leaned back in the leather armchair, easing open a button of his paisley-printed waistcoat to aid the digestion of an excellent supper of jugged hare and claret.
‘You’re not as phlegmatic as you would like to appear, Huntington. I have to confess, up until this marriage of yours, you have been extraordinarily secretive about your trysts. Why, Charles and I had quite given up speculating what your pleasures might be.’ Henry Smith, a jovial man in his early fifties, retorted after belching loudly, spreading his weight a little more territorially then the younger man. He felt like pulling rank after the sanctimonious lecture the Colonel had bored them with throughout the meal—a treatise on the responsibility of the colonial powers, primarily the English. It was an issue Henry felt personally responsible for, given his involvement with Clive and the Colonial Office. ‘After all, I don’t believe you married for money yourself. Nor beauty, I’m told. Youth, perhaps?’
An aggrieved expression clouded the Colonel’s brow. The third member of the party, Charles Sutton, sensing the dismay that had temporarily floored the normally loquacious anthropologist, leaned forward and refilled his glass with more of the excellent port he had purchased for his friends.
‘My dear fellow, that’s a blow below the belt. Mrs Huntington has her charms.’
‘Indeed she has,’ the valiant husband added, then fell awkwardly silent.
‘She reminds me of an unbroken colt,’ Charles said. ‘A great deal of potential which simply necessitates some reining in.’ He turned to the still pained anthropologist. ‘Quite seriously, Huntington, she appears to possess an inherent sophistication that merely requires some tutoring.’
‘So you married for love?’ Henry Smith snorted derisively. The idea was absurd.
‘A manner of love, or perhaps affection might be the more apt term,’ the Colonel responded. ‘I will concede, however, that my initial impulse was emotional, believe it or not, Harry. I now realise that I was most certainly in the grip of that sentiment which affects gentlemen of a certain vintage. But I cannot tell you what it means to me to have a son. To see oneself in another, to know that one creates wealth and reputation for a reason other than sheer egotism.’
Charles, English to the marrow, coughed politely and tried to diffuse the intensity of the moment by distracting himself with the colour of the wine. Conversely, Henry concluded that this was a providential opportunity to gather some potential slander that could possibly prove useful in the future. He nodded encouragingly.
‘But there was another influence,’ the Colonel continued, aware that
his uncharacteristic revelations were leading him into a confession he would doubtless regret. ‘I had tired of the travel, of the battles, of having little but the maintenance of properties to hold me to Mayfair and Inverness. In short, I needed anchoring.’
‘Indeed, a wife and child will provide an anchor—and a short chain,’ Henry interjected, thinking of his own estranged wife and seven children.
‘And there is the enthusiasm of youth. Lavinia has that at the very least. And she also has a sharp intellect, and in relation to my work she is quite the inspiration.’
‘Ah, but do you love her?’ Henry insisted, amused by the debating of such a nebulous subject.
Several men sitting nearby turned at his raised voice. One, immaculate in tails and a silk top hat, who looked as if he had come directly from the theatre, glanced critically at the group through his monocle then turned to his companion and laughed.
The Colonel, ignoring the slight, drew heavily on his cigar before answering. ‘Love? Don’t be ridiculous; you know as well as I that love is the domain of Lotharios under thirty.’
‘Come now, Huntington, however private you might be, I believe I’m correct in surmising that you have dedicated a good portion of your life thus far to the sensual pursuits?’ Henry continued.
‘I have been fortunate to have had the means to do so, indeed.’
At which each of the three gentlemen fell into his own private reverie: Huntington reflecting on his past debaucheries and whether they had, as had been suggested, rendered him incapable of deeper emotion; Henry on his financial difficulties, the result of his inability to control his own baser passions; and Charles, suddenly overwhelmed by the epiphany that he had never loved and was, quite possibly, incapable of such an emotion. Was this fortunate or not? After glancing surreptitiously at his distracted companions, Charles consoled himself with the observation that at least he enjoyed a stable, if uneventful, existence and was probably the richest man at the table. The glum lull was broken by a reveller who drunkenly began a clumsy rendition of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy on the club’s pianoforte.
‘Bessemer’s converter—what do you make of it?’ the Colonel barked suddenly. Henry, for a moment completely disorientated, struggled to grasp the connection between love and the manufacture of steel.
‘You mean the machine he has set up?’
‘I do. What are the commercial advantages?’
‘Well, it may be mere knives and forks now, but I dare say there shall be a greater industrial application in the future. The stocks will be floated, and when they are, I, for one, shall be buying.’With what capital he had no idea, but, vindicated by the authority of his own declaration, Henry sat back, relieved that the conversation had moved to a more masculine theme.
‘It’s bound to have something to do with railways; that’s the new world you know—to use industry to carve mystery up into small palatable pieces,’ Charles offered. ‘Soon there will be nowhere left where Man has not been, except for your Amazon, Huntington. That shall remain impenetrable for some time, I should imagine.’
Charles’s ironic tone left the Colonel pondering whether his friend meant the Amazon as a metaphor for his own impenetrable psyche.
‘Colonel James Huntington?’
The trio looked up. A young man clad in a black evening coat with a white silk waistcoat, satin top hat in hand, bowed elegantly.
‘Sir, allow me to introduce myself: Mr Hamish Campbell. I was Lady Morgan’s companion at that delightful supper at your home several weeks ago.’
‘No need to remind me, sir, you were quite memorable,’ the Colonel responded drily.
Campbell indicated his companion, a tall, pencil-thin man of about thirty years, dressed in what appeared to be a Grecian-style smock with a dark purple velvet cap rakishly pulled over one ear. ‘My friend Lord Edward Valery, a painter of socialites and other dubious beauties.’