Free Sweet and Twenty by Joan Smith Page B

the man’s pocket for me. He put me in touch with a few other flash culls and I find their skills very useful.”
    “Upon my word, you are shameless!”she said, but in a low voice, to help him conceal his conduct.
    “You wrong me. I am very much ashamed of myself,”he answered her with mock humility.
    “You said it would be a clean campaign!”
    “And so it will be. Throwing dead cats, you must admit, is not a gentlemanly thing to do.”
    “I suppose you had nothing to do with the rotten apples that littered the stage of the Veterans’Hall after last night.”
    “I heard something about that ...”
    “Yes, before it happened, I haven’t a doubt.”
    “I did happen to hear Farmer Squibb had a barrel of windfalls that were going bad on him. I hate to see good food wasted, don’t you?”
    “Especially at election time! There is another hundred pounds from the Whig coffers down the drain.”
    “No, on the platform at the Veterans’Hall. And he let me have them for twenty-five pounds. But we couldn’t—didn’t—catch any cats.”
    She stared at him open-mouthed.
    He laughed aloud. “I only said it to shock you. I never have dead cats thrown, for my mama was used to be fond of them. Rats occasionally, but…”
    “Oh, that’s worse than cats!”
    “Killing them is not worse. Everyone hates rats, and it is usually considered a benevolent act to dispose of them. Don’t tell me you like them?”
    “Of course I don’t like them! Nobody does, but that’s no reason . . . Oh, you should be in chains and fetters, Mr. Hudson.”
    “I have an excellent picklock in my retinue, if that contingency should arise.”
    “As you never at point non plus?”
    “I must confess I very nearly was yesterday. You’ll never guess what little trick Tony played on me.”
    “What?”she asked, smiling in anticipation.
    “Do you happen to recall our mentioning the other day a certain Sir John Sinclair, who is bankrolling the Tory campaign almost singlehanded?”
    “Yes, the one who is going to build the bridge.”
    “Oh no, he isn’t! But that is the one I mean all right. I was driving in all my naive innocence to strut Tony before a few scattered houses in the countryside, and he tells me he has a good friend at Ashley Hall—a fine old place, and the dame apparently on terms with him, so we stopped off to make ourselves agreeable, and who should live there but Sir John Sinclair! I thought he’d pull a gun from the wall and shoot us off the premises. He was livid, and who shall blame him! Can you see Alistair and Reising blundering into Allingham’s place? But I blame myself entirely. I ought to have questioned him more closely as to the identity of the mysterious Lady Marie. Her being an earl’s daughter and not using the title Lady Sinclair led me astray. She was once a flirt of Tony’s, if I have the story straight. And what a woman she is—fat and ugly. I was at point non plus. You would have enjoyed to see me.”
    “What on earth did you say?”
    “I asked for directions to the next farm, Wetterings. I let on we had lost our way, but old Sinclair didn’t know what to make of it and thought we were up to something devious. With Tony simpering at Lady Marie and generally making an ass of himself, I believe he thought we went there bent on flirtation. I heard him lighting into her before we were out the door. Lord, what a day! Well, you learn something new in each campaign.”
    “What have you learned in this one?”she asked, laughing in glee at his having been discomposed for once.
    “That lovemaking and campaigning are a poor mix.”
    “You’ll have to shorten Fellows’s rein.”
    “Yes, I’ll have to keep an eye on him, too.”
    She looked startled at his last words, but refused to dwell on them. “So you received your comeuppance for once. I am glad to hear it.”
    “Yes, but if I succeed in getting Tony a set of letters after his name I’ll be so set up in my own conceit there will be no bearing