Death Among the Ruins Read Online Free Page B

kinds of unpleasant things, being little more than foul repositories for those substances that man flings away from him in disgust. Thus, when the mist rises off the water, collecting to itself all the available moisture, this filthy residue is condensed and distilled into poison. And while most Londoners are hardy enough to survive such miasmas, even the fittest are often subject to chronic coughs and sick headaches in the autumn.
    The season also presents major problems for the traveler, owing to its close temporal proximity to winter, and long journeys begun in the autumn are best begun early. Napoleon would come to realize this in a couple of weeks, during his invasion of Russia, but Arabella knew it already. And so, the elder Beaumont sister, who, like the younger, was reckless on the surface yet sensible deep down, ordered their trunks brought in from the stables and cleaned of hay and cobwebs that very evening.

Chapter 5
     
    B ROTHERLY L OVE
     
    “I can think of few situations less likely to inspire lustful passions than being raised in a household with sisters,” said Charles, perusing the racing results. “Watching them grow through their gangly or dumpy stages, observing their pimple eruptions, fighting with them and enduring their endless sulks at the dinner table . . . but that is the idea, I suppose: If brothers always had first crack at their sisters, as it were, humanity would dwindle away, its bloodlines contaminated with disease and deformity. Look at what happened to the pharaohs.”
    Charles was sitting and smoking in the bow window of his club, occasionally glancing out at the street, frequently returning to the newspaper, and addressing, with a semi-distracted air, the odd remark to Lord Carrington. Or, in this case, the more-than-odd remark.
    “And yet, in these modern times, when men of our station have the leisure to look upon sex as recreation rather than procreation, I ask myself, why not? Though I didn’t ask at the time; I simply followed my inclinations. You look shocked, but remember, Carrington, I grew up in a bad family.”
    “Bad, did you say?”
    “Oh, not in a social sense. Pater was a baronet, and we always lived as though we had plenty of money, but my parents were decadent, and much given to vice. So it is not terribly surprising that Arabella and little Belinda caught the fraternal eye one day whilst at their dancing lesson . . .”
    His audience jumped to its feet.
    “Spare me the details, Beaumont! I am a friend to both ladies, sir, and I’m damned if I’ll listen to these foul confessions!”
    “. . . And then he left in rather a huff,” Charles explained. “Probably to go off and brood over what I’d told him.”
    “It was very wrong of you, Charles!” cried Belinda.
    “Indeed, it was!” agreed Arabella. “Lord Carrington was on the brink of proposing to Bunny!”
    “I know, Bell. That is precisely why I invented the story: Carrington has not a bean in the world.”
    “Hasn’t he?”
    “Not anymore. I have saved our Bunny from an ignominious marriage. You are welcome. Please feel free to demonstrate your gratitude in the usual way, by showering me generously with monetary appreciations.”
    One of the advantages in being a courtesan was that one’s income was always in flux, so that the public had no very clear idea of one’s actual financial situation. Members of the peerage, on the other hand, might just as well have had their net worth stamped upon their foreheads in violet ink: Their livings were as familiar to all and sundry as their surnames. And Lord Carrington, as everybody knew, was possessed of twenty thousand pounds per annum. Or had been. But the world was soon to hear of a certain game of Loo which had taken place the previous evening, in the course of which the wretched fellow had gambled away his entire fortune. His clubmen knew it already, of course.
    “That’s why I lied to him,” Charles explained. “The poor devil hasn’t two