“Bah! I forget all that!” The past was consigned to perdition with a snap of thin fingers. “It might have chanced otherwise. I seized opportunity, as ever. Do you blame me for the Rebellion’s failure?”
Prudence shook her head. “Ah, sir, you should have been put at the head of it,” she mourned. “The Prince would be at St James’s today then.”
My Lord was forcibly struck by this view of the case. “My child, you have intuition,” he said seriously. “You are right. Yes, beyond all doubt you are right.” He sat lost in meditation, planning, they knew, great deeds that might have been.
They exchanged glances. My lady sat by the window, chin in hand, raptly gazing upon the old gentleman out of her narrow eyes. There was nothing to do but to wait for him to come out of his trance. Robin sat back in his chair with a shrug of fatalism; his sister continued to sling one booted leg.
My lord looked up. “Dreams!” he waved them aside. “Dreams! I am a great man,” he said simply.
“You are, sir,” agreed Prudence. “But we should like to know what you plan now.”
“I have done with plans and plots,” he told her. “I am Tremaine of Barham.”
There seemed to be no hope of getting anything more out of him. But Prudence persevered. “So you have told us, sir. But can you prove it to the satisfaction of Mr Rensley?”
“If Rensley becomes a nuisance, Rensley must go,” my lord declared, with resolution.
“Murder, sir?”