That evening, Octavius headed for his brother’s house in Curzon Street, where he found not only Quintus, but also Ned and Dex.
He expected a barrage of questions about his foray into Rumpole’s house, but they didn’t come. Ned was fully occupied ribbing Dex.
Octavius tried to follow Ned’s jokes and Dex’s increasingly prickly responses while he poured himself a glass of claret, but they made little sense. He sat down beside Ned on one of the sofas—the philistine had his boots on the rosewood sofa table again—and said, when his cousin paused to quaff a mouthful of wine, “What’s happened?”
“Dex and his latest widow have parted ways,” Ned informed him.
There was nothing unusual about that. Dex was a rake. He liked aristocratic young widows and they liked him. He bounced from bed to bed, a f
