"Wheddon Cross. Wherever the devil's that?" Clotworthy asked.

"Devon, near Exeter."

"Ah, damn dreary, I should think." Peter Rushton shivered.

"You'd think right," Alan agreed. His post-war visit had been the most boresome two weeks of his life. The Nuttbush cove his granny had married to transfer the Lewrie estate to his coverture, so his father Sir Hugo couldn't lay hands on it, was a dour old squire, not much taken with him from the first, no matter his repute as a sailor-hero, and had made it perfectly clear than Alan should harbor no hopes of getting his sinful little paws on a farthing of the new Nuttbush estate. He'd also made it pretty clear that the farther such a rake-hell was from his own kith and kin the better, no matter what his grandmother wished.

"Old granny still dotes on you, don't she?" Clotworthy asked further. "He hasn't turned her off you, has he?"

Clotworthy was one person Alan would never discuss money with. He'd started out school days a living sponge, just borrowing at first, but had graduated to a higher calling of criminal endeavor lately.

"Aye, she slipped me a little on the sly. Not much, mind." Alan lied. Actually, his grandmother had done him rather proud: a purse of bank notes worth an hundred extra pounds above his two hundred a year remittance. And she'd gone shopping and had outfitted his suite of rooms with a new Turkey carpet, a handsome wine cabinet and desk, and a new set of chairs for his second-hand dining table. She'd also provided a new lock-box for his chocolate, tea, sugar and coffee, and, while strolling with him through one of the Academy exhibits at Ranelagh Gardens, had purchased a nautical painting he'd taken a fancy to which now hung over his sitting room fireplace mantel.

"Ah, well," Clotworthy sighed in slight disappointment, knowing he couldn't hit Alan up for a loan, not right then, at any rate. Alan was surprised Clotworthy Chute had even agreed to go shares on their supper. Usually he lived on someone else's dole like a Roman client, when he wasn't bamboozling some idiot out of some ready pelf.