Page 19 of Wicked Scoundrel

Matthew finished his breakfast, then made his way to the second floor.Passing his mother’s room reminded him he needed to send her a note now that he had married.She was going to be extraordinarily happy, not just for the marriage but that she would also immediately become a grandmother.He pulled out his small notebook and nubby pencil and jotted it down.

The household activity in service to Her Grace pleased Matthew.When he asked a question, and the answer wasyesorit’s being taken care of, also pleased him greatly.He’d built his staff from the foundation up, just like this house.

What had helped attract some very loyal servants out to the country had been relatively simple.He’d designed a four-day-work, one-day-off schedule.It was an extra day per month, some months two extra days.Sundays were still a pain in his ass because he preferred to work seven days a week.Eight would have been better.

The servants were coming and going: up the back staircase, down the main staircase.Hands loaded with sheets, towels, clothing, boxes, lamps, books.

He peeked inside the children’s room.The third bed had been removed, new armoires were in place.The doors were open, and their dresses and accessories were all lined up or folded into drawers.The floors had been polished and matching carpets were in place where they set their small feet in the morning.

A few paintings depicting children had been placed on the far wall.Where had those paintings come from?Where had the shelves come from?He knew where the books and toys had been last night, but already everything was in place as if they’d been in his home since the beginning.

Rose had chosen the room next to his—he felt this was a good start to an ordered life.And last night was a good start to what made life worth living.Her three paintings were hanging about as she had them positioned on Sandhurst’s walls.He walked toward one and glanced at the signature.Thomas Gainsborough.

“Well, shit.Sandhurst is going to miss those,” he muttered.

His logic was simple.If she had directed the decoration of her rooms there, the pieces were things she had liked or even loved.Why should she have to start over?He could feel his mother’s fingers pinching his ear as if he’d made a mistake.Maybe she wanted none of this andwantedto start over.

Her armoires held the clothes that had been cleaned and pressed overnight, but it was impossible to believe twelve trunks’ worth of personal items were going to fit in the storage provided.He nodded in approval at the progress they’d made, though.He supposed any wife worth her salt would request what she needed.

Well, there was more to be done but he had to get back to the dirty businesses in London at which he excelled.Niggling thoughts of Rose would have to be set aside.Until eleven o’clock.When she would be sitting across from him, and he could allow his imagination some space to roam.

Jack Sparling met him promptly at nine.Matthew’s house had a library, but he found it to be unsuitable for a man of business.He had another room that might be mistaken for a library as it was full of shelves, but those shelves were full of ledgers, rolled city maps, project plans, proposals, drawings and a large globe of the world.He’d keep the sphere out until he conquered that too.

“I sense a change is upon us,” Sparling said once he sat down.Jack had been his partner at theDaily Informerfor the past several years.Jack did the editing on articles written by various hopeful journalists, but it was the information which Matthew procured through his vast network of servants, court personnel and jilted lovers that provided the best stories.The newspaper was on the first floor of a St.John’s Wood building.On the second floor with a private entrance, informants collected much of the information that greased the machines of his operations.Knowledge was as valuable as gold in some cases.

They never published false stories.They went for facts but peppered them with humor and ribald drawings.Or in the case of politicians and nobles, skewered them as hypocrites.

“Indeed.Madame DuPuis’ reputation is to be believed.She would have made a great partner in our business.”

“If only I wanted to go into debt and marry a desperate woman, I might be persuaded to follow your example.Wait!You saidis to be believed.Did you go through with your mad plan?”

Jack was likely the best friend Matthew had or would ever have, but Jack had a normal London life, the son of a cobbler with a large extended family.He enjoyed fishing, Sundays with his mother and father, carpentry and the written word.He could easily be drawn into the etymology of a single word and collected odd tomes to support his astonishing fascination with this peculiar habit.He could twist the tail in the articles he wrote, too.

They’d met at a horse race and had bonded over their mutual attraction for a filly with seventy-to-one odds.It was a fateful decision to pool every shilling they had in hopes of a rags-to-riches payday.Brilliant Sappho had won!

At the time, Matthew already had his hands and feet in the dirty work of chimney sweeps and night-soil men.He’d had over forty men working for him by the time he was fifteen.He hated the grime and he hated that his men were considered the dregs of London society.Nearly twenty of them still worked for him in some capacity.

Once he sold that business, he expanded.Less dirty businesses but still undesirable.Every two years, he wrapped up what he was doing and turned a tidy profit to boot.He still had thirty-three butcher shops all along the outskirts of London.A handy way to deliver fresh meat to the masses without clogging the streets with slow-moving, dumb creatures.He’d also found a secondary business with those same farmers transporting horse dung from the streets of London and getting it back to the farms that needed fertilizer.Everyone profited.No one ever thought twice about the men who did the work, though.

There were times when he thought he would never be clean again.For all his businesses, he was in the thick of it and did everything he asked his laborers to do.

And there was the time he’d worked in the Marquess of Tetbury’s stables.He thought it was a brilliant plan, but it had turned into the worst moral failure of his life.

At nineteen, he opened the Grand Gala Bazaar.It started with one small warehouse, but he bought two more and opened the interior so paying clients and shopkeepers had an unobstructed, dry place to buy and sell goods.It was a great success, and nearly as enjoyable as the paper.

He had booksellers, used clothing dealers, lace makers, basket weavers, silver smiths, needlework samplers, paper maché and feather-work crafts from the country.If it could be transported easily or be made by hand, it was for sale at the bazaar.The bazaar had taught him the value of having rents.

And with every success came new purchases to add to his balance sheet.Land and homes were his favorite assets.

After the horse racing win, they had purchased their first large warehouse at Twenty-Acres, cashing in on oceanic trade.Wines and spirits were coming in from France, Italy and Spain.Wool from the north.The goods were valuable and sold quickly.Two years later, they’d purchased the rundown rag called theCity Tattleand transformed it.

When he’d stumbled into the debtor and creditor business, the money started flowing.Financing building purchases; securing payments for ships, crops, cattle; and investing in the most lucrative business of all:tonnobles.

Of course, none of that had to do with his mother’s money.Her money they never risked and pursued the best investments possible.He knew he would inherit, but she was primarily invested in agriculture land and a few spacious homes in London and Brighton, even one that Welliver’s heirs had let on occasion.Life did have its ironic moments—that were sweet as honey.

This, he brought to his marriage.How much of it would Rose object too?Fertilizer and dry goods weren’t topics he discussed with any woman, let alone a duchess.

“Not so insane after all,” Matthew said to Jack’s question.“I am now married to the Duchess of Sandhurst.”