Royal Revels by Joan Smith Page A

from Virginia, but was reluctant to pinpoint his home more closely.”
    “Tobacco-growing country, I believe,” she said with a nonchalant nod. “That’s what he told me, in any case.”
    “You! You mean you met up with that rattle!”
    “We met him at Lipson’s Tea Shop when we stopped for a cup of cocoa. It was unplanned,” she said, smiling complacently. “Luck is important in this sort of work, is it not?”
    A quick gasp of shock came from the sofa, causing conversation to halt, but the duchess only turned a page and continued reading.
    “An amateur must count on luck. I make my own luck,” he said, burned to the quick that his accomplices had prospered without him.
    “What did you learn from him?” she asked.
    “A few items of interest. He offered me a sample of snuff, purportedly from his papa’s plantation. It was Spanish Bran, the most common sort. It comes from Spain, as the name suggests. To compound the offense, he had drenched it with scent to freshen it. A man who knew anything about snuff or tobacco wouldn’t have done so. In short, I don’t believe Mr. Smythe has ever been in Virginia.”
    “He spoke of it a good deal,” she said, harking back to the conversation.
    “Oh, yes, perhaps even knowledgeably. He’s taken a couple of books about Virginia out of the library.”
    “He said he’d never even been there!” Deirdre exclaimed.
    “Well, he lies. I wanted to do a little research, hoping to trip him up, and he has the two books on the subject checked out of Donaldson’s this minute. They’re overdue,” he added irritably.
    “That does look a little suspicious,” she admitted.
    “There were other things as well. I notice he called himself a ‘colonial’ a few times. I should think real Americans consider that a term of contempt since their break with England. He spoke, too, as though his father still had a good spread of land when he died, yet Smythe is penniless. If he’d lost a fortune in gambling, people would have heard of it,” Belami said.
    “Perhaps the plantation was mortgaged,” she mentioned. “If you don’t think he’s from America, who do you think he is then?”
    “It’s too early to say. He wears provincial tailoring. Provincial, not American, and his clothes aren’t new, not purchased within the past few months. The nap’s off the cuffs and the edges here and there. And if that’s an American accent he has, I’ll turn in my ears. Some slight drawl in it suggests Devonshire. He’s educated, but not terribly well educated. He holds his American upbringing to account for knowing no Latin or Greek. I’d say he was tutored by some country parson and has done a bit of reading on his own. I don’t know what to make of him,” he said, tossing up his hands.
    “He didn’t mention being connected to the Prince Regent, though he did say he’d met him. He called him a queer nabs, which is not at all a filial thing to say.”
    “He said the same thing to me. Since he’s not pushing forward a claim of kinship with the prince, there seems no point in falsifying his background. Unless he’s wanted for some crime in Devonshire or wherever he comes from,” Dick said, frowning in perplexity.
    “Couldn’t he have had his jackets made in England and sent to America?” Deirdre asked.
    “The odd dandy might go to such extremes, but that sort of gentleman would send to Weston or Stultz, not to an unknown provincial tailor. And it wasn’t only the jacket. His curled beaver, his shirt, his boots—every stitch he had on was English. I’ve met a few Americans over the years. There are little oddities, differences in their tailoring. The buttons are different and the stitching—just little things, but they add up to a look. Smythe didn’t have the American look.”
    “You’d think he would have taken care to get the look if he meant to hazard such a project as passing himself off as the heir to the throne,” Deirdre said with a puzzled frown.
    “For such an