Page 5 of A Lord's Chance
Nobbie held up one finger, and when Lawndry stopped talking, he marched into his bedroom and grabbed the watch out of the little lockbox he kept it in when he wasn’t dressed, safely hidden in a false drawer in his bedside table. It was the one possession that he wasn’t going to lose or have stolen. He arrived back in the room to see that Lawndry had spread a cloth over his table and had some tools neatly arranged to the side.
“Here it is.” He held it out, reluctantly.
“Please place it on the cloth. You may sit opposite me and observe.” How did Lawndry know that he couldn’t let the watch out of his sight? The only time he did was when he locked it up as he slept.
“Thank you.”
Lawndry didn’t speak again. He simply picked up a cloth and began to clean the outer surface of the watch. There was something erotic about his dedication to his task, and the way he occasionally smiled to himself, as though he’d discovered something satisfying. Nobbie couldn’t look away. His friend Sebastian was like this about horses; as children, he’d always been distracted as soon as he saw a horse and then Sebastian would tell Nobbie all about the horse with more detail than Nobbie cared to know. Nobbie had spent his childhood years wondering if Sebastian was just lucky to know what he wanted to do, but then he’d discovered money when he was about ten.An orphanage had been the perfect training ground for him and Adam to perfect their little financial schemes, and now he was able to afford this London townhouse and his own servants. He could even attend social gatherings with high society, although with grudging acceptance.
“It’s definitely a Hobart.” Lawndry rubbed his thumb over part of the watch and damn it, Nobbie wanted Lawndry to touch him with such reverence. “You see the maker’s mark here.”
Nobbie leaned in closer and looked at a little dent in the silver.
“Hobart was a famous recluse. No one knows where he learned his craft, and then one day in 1759, he brought three watches to Sotheby’s and offered them for auction. Every year, he sold between three and five watches of absolutely exquisite quality with stunning workmanship. Each one numbered.”
“How strange.”
Lawndry glanced up. “My mother is a Leichti. Sometimes watchmakers can be a little peculiar.”
“Are you telling me that a random guy turned up at auction every year with three watches and no one asked any questions?"
"People asked many questions.” Lawndry returned to his task dismantling the watch, as if that was all there was to it. But Nobbie owned one of these rare watches.
“Did they sell for much money?”
“At first, not really, perhaps 10 guineas but by the end, upwards of 60 guineas. Some were resold at auction for even bigger sums, but most disappeared into collections.” Lawndry shrugged as if he didn’t care for the money, but Nobbie was blinking hard. Sixty guineas, or more, for the watch that he had assumed was sentimental junk. He paid his butler less than that for an entire year’s work.
“If he only sold three watches a year, then there can’t be too many of them?”
Chapter 5
“There are believed to be 126 Hobart watches in existence. Each one is numbered.” Lloyd would soon know which one Mr Gilbert owned. The numbers were always etched on the balance wheel. He carefully removed the balance wheel, turning it over to read the number.
“Seventy-nine.” He did a quick calculation. “Which means it was sold at auction around 1785. How old are you?”
“Why is that relevant?”
“The watch is twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old. You appear to be of a similar vintage. Perhaps it was a birthright?"
Mr Gilbert tilted his head. “Do you mean to tell me that I’ve been carrying around 60 guineas worth of watch for years?”
“Yes.” Lloyd began to clean the mechanism. It was slow fiddly work but would be worthwhile to have the Hobart running in perfect condition. As he worked, he realised that Mr Gilbert hadn’t disclosed how he acquired the watch or why he didn’t know how rare it was.
“When did you get this watch?”
“The first time or the second?”
Lloyd nearly dropped his tools, carefully placing them and the pieces of the watch on the cloth with a slight tremor in his fingers. Had he stolen it? “What do you mean?”
“It is no secret in society that I am a graduate of the Duke Street Orphanage. My surname was given to me by a Mr Gilbert who donated funds to the orphanage.”
Lloyd frowned. “I don’t follow how that answers my question.” Sometimes people were so illogical.
“I was left on the doorstep of the orphanage wrapped in a blanket with this watch. That was the first time I acquired the watch. The second was on my sixteenth birthday when I wastold to leave the orphanage and get a job. I was given a box containing the things that had been with me when I arrived.”
“The watch. Had the orphanage simply kept it in a box for sixteen years? Did you know about it?”
Mr Gilbert shook his head slowly, his dark brown hair sliding over his pale skin. He had a freckle just below his hairline that peeked out from between locks of hair occasionally. “The orphanage has many such boxes, one for every child who is left there. I didn’t know the contents of my box, didn’t know the watch existed until the day of my ‘graduation’.” Mr Gilbert said that last part with a snide tone, as if he didn’t approve of the way the orphanage had treated his watch. It was a fair thing to be upset about given the condition of it.
